Unique Words I've Learned

[2cute]

I looked this up further, because that is super-gross -- it's used in tanning leather, not in tanning people. I was thinking it was for like tanning salons.

Exactly, disgusting for either. Natural choices aren't always better. Synthetic tanning created in some lab would certainly be more antiseptic.

There I was, in a 4x4 board, playing away...took a guess, and yes, SMEATH is a word (as is the plural, SMEATHS).

I was awarded highest letter count (7) and highest score (12?) for the game, so I scrolled down and clicked on my winning word to find out what the heck it was. It sounded vaguely familiar, but not in my current active vocabulary.

SMEATH definition: n. the smew. Umm, okay.
SMEW, from my Macdictionary: noun. a small migratory merganser of northern Eurasia, the male of which has white plumage with a crest and fine black markings. Umm, okay.
MERGANSER, also from Macdictionary: noun. a fish-eating diving duck with a long, thin serrated and hooked bill. Also called sawbill.

There it is, three words for the price of one.

smew.jpg

I also got MEATH, which is, more normally, mead, a sweet liquor. It's also a county in Ireland.

meath.jpg

Excellent! Right by looking up one you learned 3. @ least your finds went in the same direction.

Can I say awww, the smeath/duck is sooo cute! I just love the photo!

You know I've heard of Mead before, sounds yummy!

Puer: n. The dung of dogs, used as an alkaline steep in tanning.

I looked this up further, because that is super-gross -- it's used in tanning leather, not in tanning people. I was thinking it was for like tanning salons.

There I was, in a 4x4 board, playing away...took a guess, and yes, SMEATH is a word (as is the plural, SMEATHS).

I was awarded highest letter count (7) and highest score (12?) for the game, so I scrolled down and clicked on my winning word to find out what the heck it was. It sounded vaguely familiar, but not in my current active vocabulary.

SMEATH definition: n. the smew. Umm, okay.
SMEW, from my Macdictionary: noun. a small migratory merganser of northern Eurasia, the male of which has white plumage with a crest and fine black markings. Umm, okay.
MERGANSER, also from Macdictionary: noun. a fish-eating diving duck with a long, thin serrated and hooked bill. Also called sawbill.

There it is, three words for the price of one.

smew.jpg

I also got MEATH, which is, more normally, mead, a sweet liquor. It's also a county in Ireland.

meath.jpg

[2cute]

Found another one and can I say ewww ... first off. Good thing I never participate in this activity.

Puer: n. The dung of dogs, used as an alkaline steep in tanning.

When all the good 5x5 games dried up in mid-July I went over to 4x4 and collected a few hundred best/longest words there. There were lots of new and interesting words there. I too found SEPULCHRING on that board but dumped the game when it was only worth 10 pts.

lalatan, I had never noticed you had infiltrated the 4x4 boards. Okay, that is more sarcasm on my part. Of the kindest sort.

Thank you for leaving SEPULCHRING for me! That word delighted me. Weirded me out, too, but overall, fun!

I do not go after the highest-point words, or the most words or highest scores. I decided awhile ago I was going to focus my modest skills on trying to find long words in the 4x4 boards. I do hope for one ~24-point word, and one ~14-letter word, per month, just so I land on the month-end tallies, if toward the bottom. I'm trying to narrow my focus, because quite honestly, I've spent waaay too much time playing this game, especially during these last 18 months or so. I've started dumping more boards after I looked at this month's scores and I'd played liek 462 games and had an average game score of 95.3 or something. No one needs to know all that.

I've also stopped trying to find all the words. I find that typing out words does usually help me find the longer ones, but once in a great while, I look at a board when it comes up and I can just see the word before I type a thing. That is so interesting to me, that I can see the word, but not all the time. I've watched a few of your videos, and it seems like you play like that, without even typing any other words at all.

And before you even mentioned HYPER-, I got one! HYPEREXTENDED. Not so remarkable as your finds, but not bad for this old girl. I am beginning to learn that if there is an 8-letter word on the board, and there is a clump of consonant-y mess somewhere, that's usually the place to start. That is how I found the HYPER-.

Congrats on the English MA! That's an achievement.

Thank you. I'm glad I did it when I was young and naive, you'd never get me back into school now. Of course, now that I'm older, more of it might make sense. Not all of it, but some.

[2cute]

In my case, it's not a hamster wheel thing, I rarely try anything in WordTwist that I don't already know from elsewhere. I looked up Colombian gaita music because my community orchestra is playing this piece:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mErTr_W3YuA

No, you misunderstand, the hamster reference comes from "Originally posted by Naboka View Post
"Yeah, sometimes looking up definitions is a hamster's wheel of nonsense going nowhere. " which is actually shared in this thread above.

Meaning you had said "GAITA (and GAITAS) is one that I learned outside of WordTwist recently, tried in-game, and scored points for. It's both an indigenous flute from Colombia's Caribbean coast, and a genre of music that uses that instrument extensively." So I wanted to listen to music played by this instrument so I would have a picture & sound of the music so I could remember it in the future, as like I said above the word alone won't register, it needs a meaning behind it for me to remember.

Soooo, when I looked up "Gaita" I found a different meaning that what you had stated. You had said it was a flute from Columbia & I found a bagpipe from Spain. Yes, they are both instruments. Yes, both are blown into for the sound. Yet, a flute and a bagpipe are 2 very different instruments. Meaning I was going round and around on the hamster wheel not really understanding the type of instrument of which you were referring.

So to make a long comment shorter, Thank you for including the link. Now I've heard & saw the Gaita played.

[DrPlacebo]

Remember the hamster wheel ...

Okay so Gaiteros means players in Spanish, these are the flutes you meant I'm guessing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CTZRTl6Aio

Yet when I researched the Gaita or Gaitas I found ...

Apparently originating from Galicia Spain(& Northern Portugal) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOVKHbfwjxI It has a higher pitched sound than the traditional bagpipe from Ireland.

In my case, it's not a hamster wheel thing, I rarely try anything in WordTwist that I don't already know from elsewhere. I looked up Colombian gaita music because my community orchestra is playing this piece:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mErTr_W3YuA

[Naboka]

Originally posted by Naboka View Post
Yente: (also yenta) Yiddish for a vulgar shrew, a shallow coarse termagant. A woman who's regarded as quarrelsome and scolding.

Not so fast on this one! I don't know which dictionary you were using, but it's definitely not written by Jews! As a member of the tribe, a yente is an older woman who is into everyone's business, knows everything about everyone, and is responsible for the lightning speed at which personal news travels in the community. She is not necessarily vulgar or coarse or a shrew. As for the termagant... "a harsh tempered or overbearing woman"... maybe, but not really part of the definition.

Sigh.

To trust. The eternal internet question: what sources to trust.

With lazy fingers, I used the reference dictionary linked to the words used in Wordtwist. When you tap on a word, you're redirected to lexic.us. From hence the definition, copied and pasted.

Not sure that one definition has ever excluded another in language. Most words have multiple meanings.

When I had the OED, I was shocked at how many pages of definitions there were for a word like stand.

Definitions change with usage. People make connections, misuse a word; others pick up on the misuse, and before long a new meaning is attached.

I'm not overly picky about the exclusivity of meaning. Historically, it's a losing horse. Scholars used to demand that "enormity" only be used for something exceedingly bad. More and more, people misuse and now acceptably use the word for extremely large.

Every language is littered with the flotsam of obsolete definitions bobbing in the wake of culture's advance.

After researching "yente", I agree that you are far more accurate in your definition of the word--it being appropriated from your culture.

The problem with language is that people use words to communicate meaning. If the originator has a different meaning than the recipient, misunderstanding occurs. Happens between me and my wife weekly. If a word has fifty definitions and a person only knows two, he's likely to misunderstand when the word is used to mean any of the other 48 possibilities. Knowing all fifty probably gives one a better chance of getting what the speaker meant. But, even then, it's often a losing battle. We all have different experiences and have different meanings attached to our language. If I said, "my house" you would probably only get a tiny fraction of the meaning attached. You wouldn't know the size, the location, the neighborhood, the smells, the furniture, the wall art, the layout, the personnel, etc. You'd have some very vague notion of what I really meant.

We all tend to have supporters and detractors. The sweet old lady who's a matchmaker may seem like the most wonderful woman in the world to some. To others, she's a meddlesome, irritating, troublemaker. Each person will have a different experience with this matchmaker, this gossip, this busybody. I've never met a busybody who wasn't irritating, so believing that the meaning attached to such a person would be entirely positive and lack connotations about being irritating would be suspect. In my experience, such persons are a bit insensitive to the feelings of others, thus considered a bit unrefined, or vulgar.

Then again, I'm not Jewish, so my only reference is personal experience as reflected in my surrounding culture. What is praised in one culture might be anathema in another.

[mdyak]

Originally posted by Naboka View Post
Yente: (also yenta) Yiddish for a vulgar shrew, a shallow coarse termagant. A woman who's regarded as quarrelsome and scolding.

Not so fast on this one! I don't know which dictionary you were using, but it's definitely not written by Jews! As a member of the tribe, a yente is an older woman who is into everyone's business, knows everything about everyone, and is responsible for the lightning speed at which personal news travels in the community. She is not necessarily vulgar or coarse or a shrew. As for the termagant... "a harsh tempered or overbearing woman"... maybe, but not really part of the definition.

[2cute]

GAITA (and GAITAS) is one that I learned outside of WordTwist recently, tried in-game, and scored points for.

It's both an indigenous flute from Colombia's Caribbean coast, and a genre of music that uses that instrument extensively.

Remember the hamster wheel ...

Okay so Gaiteros means players in Spanish, these are the flutes you meant I'm guessing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CTZRTl6Aio

Yet when I researched the Gaita or Gaitas I found ...

Apparently originating from Galicia Spain(& Northern Portugal) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOVKHbfwjxI It has a higher pitched sound than the traditional bagpipe from Ireland.

[2cute]

For you loggers:

birl: to cause a floating log to rotate.

Also spelled as birle. With birler, bilers, birles, birls.

So if anyone wants to go birling this weekend....

I don't know why but birling reminds me of that film 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers'.

I think though that's a popular 'sport' in certain regions. Certainly would take some balance and coordination.

[2cute]

Ovoviviparous.

Thank You. As you can see, spelling isn't really my forte either.

[DrPlacebo]

Without the definition, the word has no meaning for me & I won't remember it.

Lalatan would be so proud, the other day an acquaintance asked me (since I play word games) what new words have I learned & the first thing I remembered OVIVIPOUROUS (gosh, now I can't remember how it was spelled), a creature that lays an egg inside their body before its hatched, like reptiles.

Ovoviviparous.

[2cute]

Yeah, sometimes looking up definitions is a hamster's wheel of nonsense going nowhere. That's why I often just remember them as letter patterns rather than vocabulary.

Saves on the migraines.

Without the definition, the word has no meaning for me & I won't remember it.

Lalatan would be so proud, the other day an acquaintance asked me (since I play word games) what new words have I learned & the first thing I remembered OVIVIPOUROUS (gosh, now I can't remember how it was spelled), a creature that lays an egg inside their body before its hatched, like reptiles.

[Naboka]

For you loggers:

birl: to cause a floating log to rotate.

Also spelled as birle. With birler, bilers, birles, birls.

So if anyone wants to go birling this weekend....