The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby linguoboy » 2021-04-23, 15:36

(en-us) operationalize (specifically in the sense of "make a part of ordinary operations")
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby Rí.na.dTeangacha » 2021-04-25, 14:33

(en-gb) dyad, dyadic

In sociology, a dyad is a group of two people, the smallest possible social group. As an adjective, "dyadic" describes their interaction.
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby linguoboy » 2021-04-26, 15:22

precentor the leader of a cathedral choir
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby Aurora-Evie » 2021-05-06, 6:41

(en) ananas - any of several plants of the family Bromeliaceae, such as the pineapple

I knew the word existed in other languages, but I had no idea it was in English, too :silly:
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby Rí.na.dTeangacha » 2021-05-08, 20:58

(en-gb) verisimilar

Describes something that appears to be true or real but may not be.
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-05-08, 22:21

crest - reach the top of a mountain or hill (and, by extension, a sand dune or other hill-like structure?)
EDIT: തെന്നുക [ˈt̪en̪n̪uga] - to slip

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby linguoboy » 2021-05-15, 14:46

irrumation
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby Rí.na.dTeangacha » 2021-05-17, 22:00

(en-gb) apodictic - beyond dispute
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby linguoboy » 2021-05-20, 18:51

timebox to assign a fixed period of time to something

(In context, it was used to refer to stopping a particular discussion with an hourlong meeting after 30 minutes.)
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby Rí.na.dTeangacha » 2021-06-05, 10:09

(en-gb) sward - (literary) a stretch of short grass
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-06-06, 3:10

stalag fiction (basically, Israeli Nazi rape porn, both highly sexualized Nazi women raping prisoners and vice versa. I learned about this from reading about Dr. Seuss, then reading about anti-German discrimination of the kind he experienced during World War I. The Wikipedia article on anti-German discrimination leads to the article on stalag fiction)
തുടി [t̪uˈɖi] - a type of small drum or 1/4 second

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby Rí.na.dTeangacha » 2021-06-14, 23:28

(en-gb) bowdlerize - to expurgate or censure a text, especially when said expurgation leads to a weaker text.
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby Dormouse559 » 2021-06-18, 2:13

(en-us) Talmudic adj - (figurative) hair-splitting, making extremely fine distinctions

The Wiktionary entry for this usage was apparently edited in December to label it as offensive. I saw the word in a Politico news article on some recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings :noclue:
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby Osias » 2021-06-19, 0:14

The only time I saw that word was by a Jew blogger, I think.
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby linguoboy » 2021-06-20, 10:01

Osias wrote:The only time I saw that word was by a Jew blogger, I think.

NB: The use of “Jew” as a modifier is considered highly offensive. The preferred term is “Jewish”.
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby Naava » 2021-06-20, 11:19

linguoboy wrote:
Osias wrote:The only time I saw that word was by a Jew blogger, I think.

NB: The use of “Jew” as a modifier is considered highly offensive. The preferred term is “Jewish”.

Is there a reason why it's offensive? Has it been used as an insult or a pejorative?

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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby linguoboy » 2021-06-20, 13:53

Well, there’s a general tendency in English for nouns to be more pejorative than adjectives. (Hence the tendency to replace them with modifying phrases, e.g. “the disabled” > “disabled people” > “people with disability”.)

With “Jew”, I think it’s related to the fact that this word by itself has been used as a slur. (Slurs in English tend to be short words—often monosyllabic—so another general tendency is that longer words sound more polite.)

But whatever the history, saying “Jew poster” or “Jew actor” or “Jew school” etc. is rude and offensive in English. Just don’t do it.
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby linguoboy » 2021-06-21, 16:28

loctician someone who styles dreadlocks
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby Car » 2021-06-24, 20:41

linguoboy wrote:Well, there’s a general tendency in English for nouns to be more pejorative than adjectives. (Hence the tendency to replace them with modifying phrases, e.g. “the disabled” > “disabled people” > “people with disability”.)

Same in German with compounds. Juden- is used pejoratively, while jüdisch is neutral (it depends on the context, but that's the general direction).
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Re: The last word of your mother tongue you have learnt ?

Postby OldBoring » 2021-07-15, 17:55

“People with disability” would be considered pejorative in Italy nowadays. The politically correct term means literally "differently able".


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