pulchritudinous
such an ugly word, yet it means "beautiful"
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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It's so similar to "putrid"
I suppose technically it's Latin, but I've always been fascinated with "syzygy".
I really only know of this word because of Scott Manley
Akimbo
It's an honest-to-goodness English word and not derived from French, Latin, Greek or anything else, like a lot of the words here. Yes, it looks like it might be from an African language, but it's a squashed form of "in keen bow" meaning "well bent" or "crooked".
I always assumed it was a loan word from Japanese. TIL.
Gubernatorial
This word makes me physically angry. Why b? Why not governatorial? It is from the same word. Government, governor, etc. I know hsitorically bs and vs change places a lot, beta in Greek is pronounced veta but just pick either v or b god damn it!
British English - lieutenant is pronounced "Lef-tennant"
Biweekly.
It means twice a week.
Or, it means once every other week.
Good luck.
The fact that American English doesn't have the word 'fortnightly' is incredibly confusing on every level.
Gerrymandering sounds like some sort of magic class.
queue
Most "Q" words are weird to start with, then just adding a bunch of silent vowels at the end doesn't make it any less so.
Thank the French for this one
oiseau -- for when consonants are overrated. (it means bird).
How is that pronounced?
wazo
It's a Q: a bunch of vowels are lined up behind it!
God damn it. That's good.
Thanks, stole it myself!
"Though"
The first two letters don't sound like themselves, and the last three are silent. The word is 83% lies.
It would be half-true if we hadn't gotten rid of a letter (the thorn, which made the"th" sound)
For a long time, they used the letter "Y" instead of "th".
That's how we have weird relationships with old English words like "You/Thou," and "The/Ye."
“You” and “thou” come from different roots. They are not simply different orthographies like “ye” and “the”.
80% of the letters in "queue" are unnecessary.
No, they’re demonstrating how to line up quietly.
Side note, I was a young teen when I first saw this word and it was in reference to computer things I barely grasped and had no idea. I was asking my parents what a qwe-we was because I could not for the life of me figure out how to pronounce it. It stuck with me for years until BBC content started coming to America, then it all finally made sense.
Pick any of them, and repeat it over and over again. It'll quickly become the weirdest word in the language, at least for a while.
This is called "semantic satiation" which are both pleasingly weird words now that I think about it...
"Winningest"
Trump, that you?
That's a word?
Be, is, are, was, am, were, being, been... are all the same word.
Languages that conjugate every verb for every person:
"be" is an irregular verb in all languages, so it's not unique to English. Bonus fun fact: Russian doesn't have the verb "to be".
As a native speaker of language that is spelled the way its written. I can say that most of them are weird.
I would love to see a language that isn't spelled the way it's written
https://mastodon.nu/@jdskog/113021722561159823
I mean this.
I was joking. I think you meant "spelled the way it is pronounced," since technically all words are spelled the way they are written haha
"Cwm"
One of a few words that use W as a vowel. (This is how the word "Pwn" works too)
A Welshman about to traverse a steep-sided hollow at the head of a valley: "Oh baby I'm gonna cwm!"
All I heard was "head" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Moist
“Rhythm” doesn’t rhyme with anything and doesn’t contain a letter that’s always a vowel.
Y is always a vowel! I don't know why they tell children it isn't.
A vowel is the core of a syllable. Y is not always that, as in "yes" - it works as a consonant in that word.
It's part of a diphthong with E in that word, two or more vowels making a sound in combination.
Apparently, there’s an obsolete English word “smitham” that means (or meant) “small lumps of ore random people found.” They were exempt from taxation by English nobility so large mine owners started breaking up large chunks into “smitham” to avoid taxation. Apparently, the Duke of Devonshire put a stop to that in 1760 and the word fell out of use.
So, I think rhythm still counts as weird. Noah Webster was 2 years old in 1760 and the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary doesn’t have it.