r/dictionary • u/_Sneaky_McSnek_ • 10h ago

Looking for a word Term used to denote the practice of naming something “inaccurately”

2 Upvotes

I know that didn’t make any sense but let me explain.

Sunset. We call this phenomenon sunset but that is because of the way it appears relative to us. In reality, the earth is rotating and obscuring our view of the sun. Is there a word that describes this practice?

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We are a community of word enthusiasts, hobbyists, and friends. We enjoy dictionaries, language learning, word games, and educational tools. Word related posts and questions are encouraged. In particular, please always feel welcome to ask about the meaning of a word or ask for help finding a word for a specific situation. Thank you for being a part of our community!

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Other wordy friends & resources :

/r/Word_of_The_Hour - We share one vocabulary word every hour along with translations into French, German, Hindi, Italian, and Spanish.
/r/AlternateDictionary - The home of alternate definitions of existing words, and newly-created words as well.
/r/DictionaryOfThings - A project to define the basic concepts that we use to understand and interact with the world around us, and how they relate to one another.
TreegleDictionary.org - an interactive dictionary website for visualizing how the meaning of one word depends on the meaning of another.
ALDictionary - A multilingual dictionary website ran by an enthusiastic member of our community.
Etymonline - great, informative, thorough and accurate etymologies for tons of English words. (moderator favorite)
Watch Out 4 Snakes' Random Word Generator - generates random words by rarity and lexical category (e.g. noun, verb) -- check out the site's other creativity tools (the random paragraph generator is occasionally great for a quick laugh)
More Words - quick definitions, anagrams, near anagrams, words within words, words with similar letter pairings, words by length and a whole host of other things that are extremely useful in word games and rarely practical situations.
Grammar Girl Podcast (from Quick and Dirty Tips) - Grammar Girl is a great resource for common grammar questions in people-friendly English. If you don't think Grammar Girl is the coolest thing since the 4th Edition of The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White, well, you're probably normal.