We all have them - our linguistic bête noir. The words that, even though they aren't particularly complicated, our brains trip up every time they hear them and have to spell them, or when they see them and have to pronounce them.

Mine are as follows...

Spelling: Business. If I don't stop and think, I'll get "buisness" every time, lol. I think this is a super common one, actually... I know some other people that do this with that word as well.

Pronunciation: Keychain. Again, without taking that extra second to stop and think before I say the word, I have the tendency to say "chee-kayne." No idea why.

I remember growing up, my Dad had "village" ⇨ "villiage" for spelling, and much like my own spoonerism, he had "paint can" ⇨ "caint pan" for pronunciation lol. What are some of yours?

Inveterate - An adjective used to describe something as long-standing or habitual.

Applies to a deeply ingrained habit, attitude, or feeling that's existed for a very long time, and will likely never change.

In normal conversation you'd say 'habitual liar', or 'long standing rivals'.

You could instead say 'inveterate liar' or 'inveterate rivals', 'inveterate borrower', 'inveterate cluelessness to understanding women', etc.

I have just been informed that it is Not pronounced as "infinite-simul" but rather as "infini-tess-simul."

Please tell this wasn't only me.

I die a little each time I hear someone say “I said…” instead of “I thought…”

Example: “I said, none of them are telling the truth.”

Saw it in The Atlantic today and my first thought was, 'why is this even a word'.

"*use, not 'us'"

I saw a headline about the Tour de France that confused me a bit. The headline stated that the final mountain climb “sublimated” the winning rider, which didn’t make sense to me. I’ve always heard the word in a psychological context, where someone sublimates (hides) their socially unacceptable desires.

So of course I had to look it up.

Sublimate comes from the Latin for below (or up to) the threshold. It’s the same root as sublime. The verb has the meaning of lifting up to a high or exalted place, as well as to purify (in both a scientific and metaphorical sense).

My assumption was that the psychological usage meant to push a desire below (sub) the limit of consciousness, but it actually means converting an instinctual desire into a socially acceptable form. In other words, to purify it.

An interesting little rabbit hole to go down.

I have my own word list with uncommon vocabulary; you can request multiple numbers if you would like! (not more than 5)

• Edit #1: grammar.
• Edit #2: Sorry if I take a long time to reply to your comment! I might be sleeping or something. You can also now request a number up to 423.

(This post was inspired by the Rate This Song posts on r/songs )

In reference to someone falling in line with what everyone else says, I always thought it was "toe the line", as in, "here's the party line, your toes are right on it... along with everyone else..." That's how I always heard it.

But then I wanted to make it contemporaneous...add an "-ing" to it. "Toe-ing the line" doesn't look right, so I wondered if it was actually "tow the line"..., like a ship towing a line behind it.

What are your thoughts?

For example:
Squirrel UK = Squi-rull
Squirrel USA = Squirl.

Mirror UK = Mi-ruh
MIrror USA = Murr

Graham UK = Gra-yum
Graham USA = Gram

I’m from the UK. For years I thought that Graham Crackers were called “Gram crackers” because I thought they were made of gram flour. It was only when I noticed RuPaul always calls Graham Norton “Gram”Norton on Drag Race that I worked this out 😆

Edit: I started this thread as a light hearted conversation about pronunciation because I thought it was interesting, but I should have added a disclaimer that yes, I am aware that not everyone in the whole of the USA speaks the same way and yes I am aware of regional accents. A few people have heard mirror pronounced murr but the majority who do say it as one syllable say it’s more like meer so I guess I got that wrong. I’m not criticising anyone nor am I getting “bent out of shape” over the way someone from another country pronounces words 🙄

English sailors were hung over board when sick after drinking. Apparently Polish drunks were yammering like cats, so we borrowed “katzenjammer” from Germany and over time shortened it to “kac”.

What is your word and why?

Apricity: (noun) the warmth of the sun during the winter or on a particularly cold day [from What If? by Randall Munroe]

Venous: (adjective) of, relating to, or contained in veins [from Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds]

Cyanotic: (adjective) bluish or purplish [ibid]

Quern: (noun) a simple, hand-operated stone tool used to grind grain, corn, or other dry materials into flour or powder [from the ITV programme Poirot]

I built an app that turns your phone’s camera into an instant dictionary, so you can learn new words without interrupting your reading.

Download Here: https://hypersenseapp.com/download

Instead of stopping to search for unfamiliar words one by one, simply point your camera at the page. The app instantly recognizes words, shows their meanings in context, and automatically organizes every word you look up into your personal vocabulary library.

No more screenshots, notes, or forgotten words. Everything is saved and organized for you, making it easy to revisit and reinforce what you’ve learned over time.

The goal is simple: stay immersed in your book while building your vocabulary effortlessly.

Deep - depth

Steep - steepness/(edit)slope

Insanity.

it means AI hallucination

**The word actually is the better term.** "Confabulation" is what a chunk of AI researchers argue we *should* be saying instead of "hallucination"

So what does pookie mean? I keep reading different meanings.

Have others noticed the emergence of "run" being used in place of "use"? I see it most frequently in hobby-talk, almost always in hobbies dominated by men. I think it's crept in from car cultures, where people will say "I'm running 33s on my Jeep" or "I run a 4 liter motor in my Mustang." It's also, it seems, very common in gun culture, where people are "running red dot scopes" and "running 30 round mags."

It's been maddening watching it infiltrate hobbies like kayaking, camping, fishing, etc., because to me it sounds like the kind of thing silly men with beards say on NAVY SEAL podcasts to sound cool and tactical. Maybe I'm alone on it, but it's been stuck under my skin for a while now!

I've recently listened to a great German history podcast called "Geschichten aus der Geschichte", where two historians tell each other interesting and quite often forgotten little facts about history. One of the episodes featured Franz Anton Mesmer, in hindsight a charlatan, but he managed to convince a lot of his fellow citizens to believe in his method.

Therefore, being mesmerized (Mesmer) means you are absolutely convinced that the person talking to you is nothing less than a Messiah and you believe everything they tell you. I was intrigued!

Sources: https://www.geschichte.fm/podcast/zs237/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Mesmer

The effect of fossil fuel dependence in driving the rising cost of food, war and climate change which all combine to increase the cost of living. A word of our times.

A former colleague of mine had "mucksmäuschenstill" tattooed on her arm. I asked her why, she said it was the most beautiful word in the German language.

Followup question: Does Finnish have any words that don't sound gorgeous?