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Ridiculously precise words that amuse you.

Discussion in 'January And Everything After' started by Mark M, Dec 20, 2012.

  1. Mark M Elitist Negative Nancy

    Let's avoid jargon or trade-specific cant. That stuff is specific for a good reason, and there's mountains of it.

    I'll start:

    1) Triskadekaphobia - fear of the number 13

    2) To welch - to skip out on the results of a lost bet.
    (Thinking of Bob Cherub's failure to produce an essay in QT3's P&R section is what remnded me of this word)

    3) Nimbar - to encircle with a halo
    (This one's Spanish, obviously. When I discovered it during my time in Spain, I thought it was the funiest thing. The Spanish people, most of whom were familiar with the word, did not share my amusement. This only made it funnier.)
  2. jerri blank Despondent Fancybear

    Defenestrate: To throw something or someone out a window.
    CSL, MulMizu, Alligator and 11 others like this.
  3. Griot Despondent Fancybear

    Location:
    Raleigh, NC
    MulMizu, shift6, Elyscape and 2 others like this.
  4. Speak With Bread Magister Mundi Elyscape

    Location:
    San Jose
    This article. And this one.

    Favorites include "pochemuchka," definitely something I've been called, and "backpfeigenbesicht."
    Siren, Elyscape and Astromarine like this.
  5. Astromarine Elitist Negative Nancy

    It's "backpfeifengesicht". Also:

    [IMG]



    (just kidding <3)

    Also, "backpfeigenbesicht" seems to be, to my shitty shitty german skills, "baked figs inspection", which is awesome.
    Kalle, Mark M, Jemjewel and 3 others like this.
  6. cnahr Hard Cider Gal

  7. Elyscape Hatoful Pigeon

    Location:
    San Jose, CA
    Teledildonics.
  8. wisbechlad Hard Cider Gal

    Somewhat like the way that the Eskimos have many words for snow, the Javanese have many words for rice, both for different growing stages, and different processing/ cooked states.

    To welch has racist origins - the more modern equivalent would be to "jew" someone out of a payment. But the sheep-shagging lot across the Severn shouldn't have broken their promises all the time, if they didn't want to be stereotyped as deadbeats
  9. Speak With Bread Magister Mundi Elyscape

    Location:
    San Jose
    Wow, thanks for that little correction, then. "Baked figs inspection?" Sounds tasty. :D

    ...and, unfortunately, you are not the first person to draw that conclusion upon hearing that word. Love you, Aaron!
  10. IainC Your Tour Guide For Los Angeles

    Location:
    Schwarzwald
    Jumentous. Having the frothiness, warmth and cloudiness associated with horse urine.
  11. Dan Lawrence Sangry Grognard

    Location:
    London
    German is the clear language winner in this competition due to their habit of just compounding little words into longer more precise ones. I just gathered a few up from around the internet but you could do this all day:

    • Handschuhschneeballwerfer - A person who wears gloves to throw snowballs, used as a metaphor for a person who throws abuse from a safe distance.
    • Sitzpinkler - A man who pees sitting down
    • Umweltverschmutzung - The dirtying up of the world via pollution
    • Drachenfutter - A gift bought to placate one's wife when you've managed to upset her. (literally dragon food)
    • Kummerspeck - The fat that accumulates after too much comfort eating (literally sorrow bacon)
    • Fremdschämen - The shame you feel for someone else.
    I think this is a wooden floor polishing shop:
    A3Iz76ZCcAAhSyH.jpg

  12. Hanzii Magister Mundi Elyscape

    I don't have enough likes to give. Whenever these things show up, I regret I'm not better at speaking German.
    Farnsworth and Mind Elemental like this.
  13. Thoro Beardy Magnificence

    Location:
    More like Snoreway
    Weltschmerz - literally "World-pain": mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state.
  14. IainC Your Tour Guide For Los Angeles

    Location:
    Schwarzwald
    It's a rental shop for wooden floor polishing machines.

    My favourite extremely specific German word is one that we were given in a list of words to block in the profanity filter for our game. Sony supplied the list and we imported it. The word is Diplomverkehrinselbeflanzer which means someone who has a qualification in planting flowers on traffic islands. Quite why that particular word needed to be filtered I'm not sure.
  15. Omniscia Despondent Fancybear

    Location:
    Vermont
    And yet they don't have an equivalent word for "Do-it-yourself-System."
    Major Icehole and Canuck like this.
  16. Ben Sones Elitist Negative Nancy

    Location:
    Lordran
    This is what happens when you give your cat a laptop and ask him to name your business for you.
    Alligator, Jacquelle, Siren and 5 others like this.
  17. Rapunzel Despondent Fancybear

    Location:
    Kansas City
    It's a phrase, not a word, but I've always been a big fan of "l'esprit d'escalier" - when you think of a great comeback way too late to use it.
    Mirriam, Alligator, Jacquelle and 6 others like this.
  18. Dan Lawrence Sangry Grognard

    Location:
    London
    Don't worry the German's have got you amply covered with 'Treppenwitz'. Which covers exactly the same concept but niftily encapsulates it in a single word.
    Umazes, Mirriam, Alligator and 8 others like this.
  19. Bahimiron Already Beat BF's New Expansion

    Finally, a word for everyone on BF. Pilkunnussija.
    Major Icehole and Elyscape like this.
  20. Dan Lawrence Sangry Grognard

    Location:
    London
    Surely; you's mean 'Finally? a word, for, everyone's on: BF"
    Major Icehole likes this.
  21. Bahimiron Already Beat BF's New Expansion

    I meant

    FINALLY GUYS A WORD THAT DESCRIBES EVERYONE ^_^ IN MY HEADCANNON WE ARE ALL PIKUNNUSSIJA-KUNS AND PIKUNNUSSIJA-CHANS! YA TAH! ;_o,O@@``````P
  22. Hanzii Magister Mundi Elyscape

    Sharing some of these on Facebook taught me these three words for wuz (from a German friend):
    In -der Sauna- Untensitzer, (he who sits on the lower bench in the sauna), Warmduscher (someone who takes warm showers) and Schattenparker (someone who parks his car in the shadow).
  23. RyanMM Magister Mundi Elyscape

    Location:
    Ferndale, MI
    Warmduscher ahahahahh lololol
  24. Fishbreath Oh, Come On

    Of course they don't. That would put all of these very specifically-named professionals out of work.
    Elyscape likes this.
  25. Horrible Oscar Already Beat BF's New Expansion

    Location:
    Bern, Switzerland
    It's actually "Diplomverkehrsinselbepflanzer". This is very important because somebody who would actually use that insult is obviously also the kind of person who would make sure he's spelling it correctly.

    "Warmduscher" is one of those wonderful words that basically mean "wimp". Synonyms include "Turnbeutelvergesser" (someone who forgets his gym bag, likely intentionally in order to be excused from gym class), "Pizzarandliegenlasser" (one who leaves the pizza's crust behind) and the devastating "Teletubbyzurückwinker" (one who waves back at the Teletubbies).

    German is ridiculously fun for insulting people.
  26. Nute 2013 Calamity Jane Award Winner

    Location:
    KC MO
    I think Afrikaans wins for my favorite insulting word, "stoepkakker" - which means, basically, a fat little dog that sits on your front stoop and will not move, even to take a dump. Literally "stoop shitter".
  27. RSharp Armchair Designer

    cnahr's link helped me with an adjective I can use on my girlfriend: Callipygous

    It fits well!
  28. shift6 Magister Mundi Elyscape

    I am going to spend the rest of my day and perhaps week integrating this word into my mind as a new insult for someone. If I am lashing out in anger like with road rage it will still be FUCK YOU! DAY BY DAAAAAAAAAAY! But if I'm just grumbling about something at the office, I will call him a sitzpinkler; with a lower-case S because FUCK YOU DAY BY DAAAAAAAAAY!
  29. Nute 2013 Calamity Jane Award Winner

    Location:
    KC MO
    [IMG]
  30. Mind Elemental Hard Cider Gal

    All right, Horrible Oscar, I cave. IainC gave us the literal meaning, but what's the actual insult?
  31. Elyscape Hatoful Pigeon

    Location:
    San Jose, CA
    Fun fact: it turns out that this is just an urban legend. That is to say, they do not. In fact, English has more words for snow than the various Eskimo languages do.
    Mind Elemental likes this.
  32. sinfony Keeper of the Elemental Materials

    Which reminds me of one of my all-time favorite bits from The Straight Dope:

  33. Jason T Keeper of the Elemental Materials

    Handy-am-Gürtel-Träger loses points for hyphens in a German burn but gains points for incorporating the word handy.
    Elyscape likes this.
  34. M Sheep Hard Cider Gal

    Mayhaps my favorite word of all time: Cromulent
    Alligator, NyimaR and Rapunzel like this.
  35. Horrible Oscar Already Beat BF's New Expansion

    Location:
    Bern, Switzerland
    It implies that you're dumb because you have an academic degree in something ridiculously trivial and specific, meaning you had to study for it and aren't good at anything else. Also it's a really long word. I never said it was a particularly good insult.


    If you google a bit you can find joke lists of long insult words that include Diplomverkehrsinselbepflanzer along with the ones I've described above, though like everything else on the internet 90% of the list will be kinda dumb and unfunny. What probably happened in IainC's case is that somebody at Sony found one of these lists, assumed that these were all deadly weapons that internet trolls would actually use to hurt people's feelings instead of just calling them "Arschloch" and copy/pasted it into the swear filter wholesale.
  36. Elyscape Hatoful Pigeon

    Location:
    San Jose, CA
    Fun fact: the spellcheck dictionary in Windows Phone 8 has "screwed" as a bad word and as such, while it treats it as properly spelled, it won't let you correct "scrwwed" (for example) to it.
  37. IainC Your Tour Guide For Los Angeles

    Location:
    Schwarzwald
    Actually looking at the list we were sent, I'd bet money that every time they got a complaint about a name, they added it to their filter list. For example Japkiller is filtered which seems a bit specific. And then, instead of filtering with wildcards (*Japkiller*) the list then goes on to ban Japkillera, Japkillerb and so on all the way through to Japkillerdd. I suspect that long block of entries in the filter list harks back to a drawn out battle between customer service and a particularly stubborn player who really didn't like the Japanese for some reason.
  38. Mark M Elitist Negative Nancy

    I'm imagining a stubborn 14 year old boy with his jaw sticking out, furiously swearing to himself "I *will* tell the world about those dirty Japs" as he types in his latest entry: Japkillerac.
  39. Anders Hallin Despondent Fancybear

    Location:
    Stockholm
    http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/12/24/121224fa_fact_foer?currentPage=all
    Hanzii, Elyscape, AaronSofaer and 3 others like this.
  40. jerri blank Despondent Fancybear

    I was telling my partner, an English professor and all-around geniusperson, about this thread and about how most of the words in this thread were German.

    "Well, the Germans are ridiculously precise people," she says. I can't argue with that.