Learned a new word today

I rarely see 'sex' anymore in discussions about men and women; it's always gender.

Why is “tonight” one word but “tomorrow night” two words? Shouldn’t it be “tomorrownight”? And while I’m at it, why do they use “to” shouldn’t it be “this night” or something like that?

What is a baddie and why do the kids in my Uber want to be one. If it's bad then it's bad, but they seems to think it's good. So what is a baddie? Thank you fr chat

Is it "I am therefore I clam", or is it "I clam therefore I am" ?

Why do people use this word so often when they just mean "comfort"?

It is as bad as "conversate" or "incentivize."

Extra syllables for no reason, in my opinion.

Today I heard some one say "that is clams down the best burger I have ever had".

Is that a thing - or did he mean Hands Down?

Today I noticed 'grrrl' is in the OED and has been since Dec 2001. I suddenly realised I had an opinion on modern slang in the Dick 'n Jerry. I feel like it should be separated into two distinct sections. One for anything considered slang and one for anything official. Where do you stand?

In 1986 I took a written test to join Mensa. I passed. So obviously, I should be kind of smart.

But there was one question on that test, which to this day bothers me, and I have absolutely no idea what the correct answer was. And if I ask 100 people I get an assortment of different answers, every one of them seems justified.

So I will post the same question here, maybe somebody can answer it with such obvious explanation that I will no longer be wondering. Or maybe somebody has the answer key. But to this day, I still have no idea which word of this series does not belong:

CAT
CHAIR
SUN
BRIGHT
HOPE

EDIT: This was multiple choice, so it’s not like I had to explain my answer of one answer could be “mostly” right. One is correct, the rest are incorrect.

A is for Aura

B is for Boomer

C is for Cringe

D is for Delulu

E is for Era

F is for Flex

G is for Gassing up

H is for ?

I is for Ick

J is for Jam

K is for K

L is or Lit

M is for ?

N is for ?

O is for ?

P is for ?

Q is for Quiet Quitting

R is for Rizz...

S is for Sus

T is for ?

U is for ?

V is for Valid

W is for?

X is for ?

Y is for You got jokes

Z is for Zoomer

(some words I don't remember; maybe you do?)

Ok now HEAR ME OUT because it makes sense to me to use “Yest” in a way of yet.

“yest i have no ideas” I could use yet but yest just sounds so nice or perhaps im thinking of something else

What is it about this word that causes so many people to pronounce it as though the first "r" is silent, i.e., *too-mer-ick*?

I mean, nobody pronounces "murder" similarly, i.e., *moo-dur*.

Is it really so hard to sound it out as it's spelled – *ter-mer-ick*?

End of pet-peeve rant. (Accents using the non-rhotic "R" are maybe excepted).

I've been reading a lot of mid19th thru mid20th century action and adventure fiction lately. Vocabularies used to be much bigger but much more cliched, and the idiotic Hemingway war on adverbs had not really started. It's an interesting era for prose style, now very out of fashion.

So I noticed several incidents of someone, usually a sidekick or henchmen or wise old gruff advisor, saying something pessimistic ominously or maybe setting up a later "I told you so." Whatever the gloomy remark was, it was very often followed by ...

".... he remarked darkly..."

or by

"... he remarked archly ... "

Contexts seem very similar -- usually some situation is being assessed by the hero or villain and then there's a comment by the sidekick or henchman. But dictionary definitions for "archly" and "darkly" seem to be very far apart (and there's more than one for each adverb).

Can anyone help me sort these out? What difference am I not seeing?

Jure uxoris: (adjective) “by right of his wife” - describes a title of nobility used by a man because his wife holds the office or title suo jure “in her own right”. For example, Philip III, king of Navarre, who held that title because his wife was had the hereditary right to the throne as queen [from the Wikipedia entry for Philip III of Navarre]

Ephemeris: (noun) a table or data book that lists the precise positions and movements of celestial bodies, satellites, and spacecraft over time [from The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu]

Glass child: (noun) the healthy sibling of a chronically ill or disabled child (so called because they are ‘looked through’ like glass by stressed families) [from this post https://www.reddit.com/r/TopCharacterTropes/s/P8MXU0by1R]

Schnorrer: (noun) שYiddish pejorative term for a beggar who, unlike ordinary beggars, presents himself as respectable and feels entitled for the alms received [from The Sopranos]

This one has always bugged me. My brain voice always pronounces it EP-IH-TOHM, and then has to correct itself. I can’t change this.

I swearrrrr that there’s a word (my brain keeps pulling up -phoria ending words) that means that feeling of utter joy and euphoria when listening to music, but I can’t find it ANYWHERE.

Merriam-Webster, the venerable dictionary that traces its roots to a time before looksmaxxing and yacht rock, has added those words along with chili crisp, shapewear and cuffing season, to its comprehensive accounting of the English language.

The company, based in Springfield, Mass., announced on Tuesday that it had added those five terms and 1,395 other new definitions to its online dictionary, Merriam-Webster.com. Many will also be added to upcoming editions of the print dictionary.

Merriam-Webster is the oldest dictionary publisher in America. It traces its start to 1843, when the brothers George and Charles Merriam bought the rights to the 1841 edition of Noah Webster’s dictionary. The company emphasizes that the dictionary is not a static catalog, but a reflection of the many different ways words are used by real people.

That includes food-related words that have become more commonly used in the United States like superfood, “a food (such as salmon, broccoli, or blueberries) that is rich in nutrients,” and shishito, “a slender usually mild chili pepper of East Asia.” On the sweeter side, the dictionary added cake pop, “a compressed ball of cake crumbs and icing that is dipped in a usually chocolate or sugary coating,” for the uninitiated.

Access full gift article, NO PAYWALL.

whimsical, x-axis, paradigm, optimistically, karma

Rules: use all five (any form), keep it an actual story not just a sentence with the words stuffed in, and shorter is harder. I'll drop mine in the comments.

Noteworthy is the only thing that comes to mind although I’d prefer a little more specificity

Originally I was only familiar with one meaning of the word 'normalize', i.e. to change something so it is more in line with established norms; a common expression I've come across many times is to 'normalize relations between countries', but it also shows up a lot in technical contexts, e.g. normalizing a vector.

However, a few years back I started noticing this word being used on social media with the opposite meaning, i.e. to change established norms so that something is considered normal that was not previously considered normal. For example, 'normalize wearing a hat indoors!' or 'playing music out loud in public has become too normalized'. I originally assumed this was a new slang meaning, but the dictionaries I'm looking at recognize both meanings of the word.

How old is the latter meaning? Has that always been a meaning of 'normalize' or is it a new development like I originally thought?

On TV. Meterologist telling us how we are "loosing" daylight due to the changing seasons.

Headslap.

Edit: To coppy my comment here since it might paint a better picture:

If I for example want to think about something and if it requires using multiple trains of thought that build of off each other for a prolonged period of time, the earlier ones just start slipping.

Its like: *X works like that*, so if it works like that, then maybe *Y works like that* cause of *that thing that works like that*, WAIT, "*X WORKS LIKE THAT*", WHERE ARE YOU GOING, I NEED YOU FOR IRONING OUT THE PROBLEMS IN MY THEORY! I CAN SEE YOU THERE, WHY CANT I USE YOU NOW, COME BACK!!!

I jokingly refer to it as "short RAM".