157

What's a word you've spent a long time not using right? (lemm.ee)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

257 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Just recently I was in a conversation with a number of UK mainlanders and we had a debate over what "tories" meant, apparently disproportionately ordinarily it refers to a political party and it's not usual to use it as short for "territories" as I've used it (according to how the debate ended, it was half and half between them). And once again I'm reminded of how people feel to look back at their usage of a word/phrase over the years and cringe.

More tragically, me and a friend were embarrassed once upon realizing everyone was confusing "encephalitis" with "hydrocephalus" when talking to someone about their kid with hydrocephalus. Awkward because encephalitis is caused by HIV.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago

Is encephalitis caused only by HIV, though?

I seem to think it was a thing before HIV.

[-] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago

You are correct. -itis just means inflammation or infection, encephalon just means brain. You can have encephalitis caused by multiple things, viruses, bacteria, fungal, auto immune diseases and so forth

load more comments (3 replies)

this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023

157 points (94.4% liked)

Asklemmy

43394 readers

1425 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]