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=== SPOILER ALERT! === The most interesting question, to me, is the one about which words you know the meaning of. About half of them aren't real words. I ass
by kittenfluff 11y ago
=== SPOILER ALERT! ===
The most interesting question, to me, is the one about which words you know the meaning of.
About half of them aren't real words. I assume this question is used partly as a gauge of vocabulary (how many of the real words do you recognize) and partly of honesty (how many of the fake words do you claim to recognize).
- dudul 11y agoAnd not at all biased toward native english speakers...
- VikingCoder 11y agoOr people with access to a computer and the internet. He addressed that in the heading text: "This is obviously not going to be a real random sample of people"
- smackfu 11y ago"Biased" in the sense of correlation, yes.
- lotsofcows 11y agoReally? I thought it was biased toward native USAian speakers. What the fuck is Cilantro?
- TJSomething 11y agoTechnically that's a bias toward Spanish speakers too, since cilantro is just "coriander" in Spanish, usually referring to the leaves.
- throwaway999777 11y agoTechnically examples are biased to the specific examples given though they aren't supposed to serve the particular examples in particular.
- rspeer 11y agoCoriander leaves. Does this not have its own word in British English? Even given their international cuisine?
- M2Ys4U 11y agoWe generally just call it coriander.
- VikingCoder 11y agoI thought all of the words were perfectly cromulent.
- cpt1138 11y agocromulent https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cromulent https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cromulent
- VikingCoder 11y agoD'oh!
- ddlatham 11y agoI thought you had intentionally misspelled it as a play on intentionally including non-words
- Roonerelli 11y agoexcellent comment - I offer you my most enthusiastic contrafibularities https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOSYiT2iG08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOSYiT2iG08
- oaktowner 11y agoThey're great words to learn for anyone wishing to embiggen their vocabulary.
- cromulent 11y agoAgreed ;)
- VikingCoder 11y agoI saw a Reddit post once about how Google was releasing Cromcast. I immediately pictured a device with an HDMI interface that continuously forces your TV to change to that input, turn up the volume, and then repeatedly play short videos from different scenes, of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan the Barbarian, yelling "CROM!"
- bunderbunder 11y agoKinda wish you had waited until after the results were published to mention it. Plenty of people will read the comments first, so by talking about it now you're actively harming the very experiment you're so impressed by.
- mfringel 11y agoUnless, of course, it was assumed this discussion would take place. [[dramatic chord]]
- justinlardinois 11y agoThat only applies to people who saw this on Hacker News; the survey link is on xkcd's front page today, and I imagine there are many xkcd readers who don't come here.
- ohitsdom 11y agoIt was funny to see the slang word "fleek" in there, very unexpected.
- ZantaWB 11y agoI put yes for this because I've heard the funny sounding slang phrase 'on fleek' (similar to on point) before, but I'm not sure if it actually is an OED word.
- Kluny 11y agoWhat are a couple of different ways you would use "fleek" in a sentence? Only, I want to start using it but don't want to sound like a fool.
- earless1 11y agoYou must accept that you will sound like a fool just for using this word. You can use it for anything you want to show satisfaction/approval for. React.js on fleek, eyebrows on fleek, uptime on fleek
- ohitsdom 11y ago"Eyebrows on fleek" is definitely most popular, but "uptime on fleek" is now one of my favorite phrases and will be used liberally.
- earless1 11y agoYou must accept that you will sound like a fool just for using this word. You can use it for anything you want to show satisfaction/approval for. React.js on fleek, eyebrows on fleek, uptime on fleek
- earless1 11y agoYou must accept that you will sound like a fool just for using this word. You can use it for anything you want to show satisfaction/approval for. React.js on fleek, eyebrows on fleek, uptime on fleek
- WorldMaker 11y agoSome of them were definitely highly specific jargon to medical fields and the like. I'm betting fewer of them are made up than you think.
- Fishkins 11y agoAre they un-googleable jargon? I googled all of them, and about half of those searches yielded bupkis. Phoropter was the only medical term I found.
- a3n 11y agoI wonder if there's jargon in the intelligence services that's classified?
- WorldMaker 11y agoCertainly some jargon is typical in spoken environments but rarely necessary in written contexts, just as vice versa. Not that I have any specific proofs on the specific words in the survey, but given at least one example of curious slang ("fleek"), I wouldn't put it past Randall to attempt to find some. Also, the fun thing about pronounceable neologisms is even if Randall made them up, there's a curious tendency in English at least to actually start using some of them.
- kittenfluff 11y agoI checked them after I'd submitted the survey. The only real words that I hadn't ticked were "regolith" (I was almost sure it was a real word, but I didn't know the meaning of it), "phoropter" (I believed it could be a piece of engineering terminology, but again didn't know the meaning) and "peristeronic" and "apricity" (I would have given better than evens that these were made up).
- lawstudent2 11y agoMmmm... no. * Phoropter * Tribution * Slickle * Cadine * Fination * Apricity * Revergent * Unitory * Trephony These are not words. They are not highly specific jargon either. They are just made up nonsense.
- cko 11y agoI thought I had an above-average vocabulary, so I was getting nervous when I didn't recognize many of them.
- pierrec 11y agoAnd the first word in the list, hubris, refers a personality trait that the question is likely to reveal. Well played.
- puzzlingcaptcha 11y agoSome of the words came up in urban dictionary definitions, so perhaps it was a descriptivism vs prescriptivism angle.
- octatoan 11y agoI don't know why, but I was able to recognize the non-words instantly (with one exception) even though I didn't know the meaning of every single "real" one. (Peristeronic, etc.) Perhaps a remnant of my spelling-bee days.
- skykooler 11y agoI knew "Peristeronic" was a real word, because I'd seen it somewhere before. Turns out it was another xkcd: https://xkcd.com/798/ https://xkcd.com/798/
- debacle 11y agoMakes me feel better, then. I consider myself to have a relatively large lexicon, but only knew about 40% of the words.
- smackfu 11y agoIf he had given the final round list of words from the US National Spelling Bee, I don't think I would have even been able to tell they were real. balletomane? zimocca? scacchite? http://spellingbee.com/public/results/2015/round_results/speller/90 http://spellingbee.com/public/results/2015/round_results/spe...
- Scarblac 11y agoAs a non-native speaker, this was a hard question to be honest on. I recognize the word "rife", I can use it in a sentence, but _do I know what it means_? I can't remember what I clicked.
- tripzilch 11y agoI wondered the same (also a non-native speaker), but I figured if I can use the word correctly (to my knowledge) in a sentence, it means I know what it means. Even if I can't succinctly describe its meaning in English or Dutch. That's a job for dictionary-editors :-) The problem with "rife" is that it's mainly used in the context of "rife with", where it means something like "full of". Then it gets confusing because it's not really correct to say "rife" means "full". Or, "rife means full changing with to of", which is just word salad.
- roryokane 11y agoThere’s a list of which words are real and which are fake on the wiki at http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1572:_xkcd_Survey#Difficult_words http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1572:_xkcd_Survey#.... The fake words aren’t even in the Oxford English Dictionary – I checked.