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How I Met My Wife (1994)
- nyokodo 6y agoI don't know whether it's a hug or a slap. It's enormously hard to read but great fun! Do yourself a favor and read this article if you looked immediately at the comments.
- dharmab 6y agoSeriously, it's one page long, go read it. I was very whelmed.
- ryantgtg 6y agoI can’t read it because I have the New Yorker app installed, and they use universal links to launch the app whenever you click a link to their domain, and this article isn’t on their app. Edit: nevermind. Long click gave me more options!
- circumvent123 6y agoAn unexpectedly good read.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- telesilla 6y agoHow fantastic, wonderful brain food.
- glitchc 6y agoIt’s so hard to read, it hurts. But so clever all the same! It’s a true test of “Can you deal with the double negative?”
- jsinai 6y agoI must admit, I was rather fazed by it at first.
- mgkimsal 6y agoMy English teacher used to tell us that double negatives were a no-no.
- dang 6y agoNice. Reminds me of Sidney Morgenbesser's famous "yeah, yeah": https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/sidney-morgenbesser https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/sid...
- _carbyau_ 6y agoOr the more recent - hopefully only Australian fad to spare suffering - of "Yeah Nah" or "Nah Yeah". https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2020/07/difference-between-yeah-nah-and-nah-yeah/ https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2020/07/difference-between-yea...
- richardfontana 6y ago
- Wonnk13 6y agoThe more I fret about keeping up with the latest and greatest tech, the more I need to come back to stuff like this. Words are fun too, and creativity isn't limited to building startups. -Someone who majored in neither comp sci nor literature.
- Icathian 6y agoI guess I'll be that guy, since everyone else in the comments is praising the post. This feels twee and goofy, at best. Not sure why it's on the front page.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoBecause it's hacking. It's hacking the English language to do things that are outside the "normal" usage, but that still work.
- zamfi 6y agoI'm not sure either, but I don't object -- and I think it's actually related to topics that folks here care about, like cognition, language, and interpretation. Personally, I find it fascinating that this is spectacularly harder to read than I think anyone would reasonably expect it to be.
- paublyrne 6y ago> This feels twee and goofy, at best. Not sure why it's on the front page. Because it's twee and goofy.
- _carbyau_ 6y agoI would add quality and novel to the twee and goofy. It isn't often I come across something that is well executed and novel while existing simply for fun. I feel as though I need more of that in my life.
- dang 6y agoI think it's because it's so well executed. If it were a fraction less than perfect the bottom would fall out.
- suifbwish 6y agoNow it hang like sleeve of wizard
- schoen 6y agoExplanation for non-native English speakers: Guvf fgbel vf jevggra hfvat n frevrf bs Ratyvfu jbeqf naq svkrq cuenfrf gung abeznyyl bayl bpphe va n artngvir sbez, arire va n cbfvgvir sbez. Ubjrire, gur nhgube gerngf nyy bs gurz nf univat cbfvgvir sbezf gung jbhyq zrna gur bccbfvgr bs gur artngvir sbez. Guvf vf fhecevfvat naq shaal, ng yrnfg sbe angvir fcrnxref jub unir arire frra gur cbfvgvir sbezf orsber naq znl unir gb fgbc naq guvax nobhg jung gurl jbhyq gurbergvpnyyl zrna. Rknzcyr: abaqrfpevcg (glcvpny, trarevp, beqvanel), qvfneenl (pbashfvba, punbf) → qrfpevcg (erznexnoyr, rkgenbeqvanel), neenl (beqre). Gur ynggre gjb jbeqf ner abeznyyl arire hfrq guvf jnl va cenpgvpr.
- FpUser 6y agoThank you so much. I had troubles understanding the original but this makes it perfectly clear bar couple of errors.
- compscistd 6y agoRarely have I see ROT13 in the wild. A surprisingly sipid and not at all nocuous way of earthing spoilers.
- _wldu 6y agoIf you double rot 13, they'll never crack it!
- jpmattia 6y agoThey won't even try to crack it!
- jolmg 6y agoUnfortunately, it only makes sense to use with this type of crowd. I can't imagine it'd be that useful for spoilers in other groups that don't have easy access to a ROT13 encoder. EDIT: BTW, is there another ROT13 encoder in a typical linux installation besides vim's g? command or emacs's rot13* commands? EDIT2: Looks like the most practical one is: tr 'A-Za-z' 'N-ZA-Mn-za-m'
- geluso 6y agoConsider me absolutely plussed. This reminds me of hanging out with friends when someone wondered, "what is the opposite of nonchalant? Is 'chalant' its own thing?!"
- mkaic 6y agochalan translates from french as "hot" apparently
- seszett 6y agoChalant is the present participle of the (disused) verb "chaloir", which means "to matter to someone", "to be important (to someone)". It's only used anymore in the words "nonchalant" (someone to which things don't matter much) and the expression "peu me chaut" (it matters little to me). But although "nonchalant" has a clear meaning, the meaning of "chalant" wouldn't be as obvious, since while it's easy to not care about things generally, "generally caring about things" is just the normal state of a person. It's the same reason you don't often hear about a stoppable force or a wieldy tool.
- touisteur 6y agoBien achalandé ?
- seszett 6y agoChaland is something unrelated, it's a slow delivery barge from which derive two meanings, one for a shop being well-stocked (bien achalandé, because it's well served by the barge) and the other for visiting things at a leisurely pace (because the barge is slow and makes many stops).
- dan-robertson 6y agoNonplussed is a particularly weird case as it means surprised but many people (particularly in North America) think it means not surprised, and so they might think plussed means surprised when through this backformation it ought to mean non-surprised.
- dmoy 6y agoAh nice, today's reminder of why I hate English (my native language) so much. Thanks, I hate it. Got any more?
- recursive 6y agoWhelmed. Plussed.
- dxdm 6y agoGood grief, maybe it's time to change to a different native language! Or if you can't for some reason, you could try if using a less strong word to express your displeasure will actually make you feel less of it and make happier - more gruntled, so to speak.
- poulsbohemian 6y agoWhen we have certain friends around and have had a few drinks and some food, someone will ask if everyone is now "gruntled" as in we were previously disgruntled but that has now been resolved.
- dvh 6y agoIt did nothing to me.
- gred 6y agoThis article is very relatable. I also usually arouse bridled passion.
- marcodiego 6y agoAs a non-native speaker this just reads a bit strange. Somewhat like trying to read 1600's english. I have to ask: what is so special about it?
- yial 6y agoIt’s comedy. Most of the phrases are used in a way where it makes sense what’s being said, but most native speakers only use the phrases slightly modified to mean the opposite of how they’re being used in the writing. Kempt vs unkempt for example.
- im3w1l 6y agoI've seen well-kempt used though.
- contingencies 6y agoKempt is also used in isolation.
- yial 6y agoTo clarify, I wasn’t trying to say these words can’t be used in isolation. I just meant that the frequency of occurrence is usually used in ways that mean the opposite of. Kempt I would say has a rare occurrence in most speech. Unkempt is much more common.
- paublyrne 6y agoMany of the words used are rarely seen without a prefix. Disgruntled, for example is a common word; gruntled is not.
- klodolph 6y agoIt’s doing something called back-formation, to create new words and phrases by removing parts of other words and phrases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-formation Examples from the article: - Disgruntled -> gruntled. - Nonchalant -> chalant. - Make no bones about it -> make bones about it. - Traveling incognito -> traveling cognito. - There were no two ways about it -> there were two ways about it. - Inadvertently -> advertently. - Misnomer -> nomer. - Unrequited -> requited. In general, these words and phrases formed by back-formation are not recognized as standard English. A native English speaker will see “gruntled”, have to pause for a moment, and consider that it must mean the opposite of “disgruntled”. Native English speakers will not use the world “gruntled” in conversation or writing unless they are doing it for comedic effect.
- Aaronstotle 6y agoI know it's satire, but the writing style of every New Yorker magazine makes me toss the magazine away immediately. It's a shame because there are good topics in the magazine, yet the unnecessarily bloated writing style makes it painful to read. (Edited for substance)
- dang 6y agoOk, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
- z3t4 6y agoIts like in school when you copied an article and replaced every second word to avoid plagiarism.
- agency 6y agoI've heard these called unpaired words, and the wiki has a bunch more examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unpaired_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unpaired_word
- aarchi 6y agoA particularly useful one from that list: prepone - to reschedule to an earlier time The page on defective verbs is also interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defective_verb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defective_verb
- collyw 6y agoIs it really useful if many / most people will need to look it up in a dictionary?
- andy_ppp 6y agoHow do words come into existence at all?
- shawabawa3 6y agoFun fact, prepone is used commonly in Indian English
- hyperpallium2 6y agoShouldn't it logically be "make heads and tails of"? There are a few superfluous expressions, that make me think I'm missing something (but it's hard enough to read as it is, the reader needs something familiar to hang on to). e.g. So I decided not to rush it. But then, all at once, I was, after all
- klodolph 6y agoIt’s the opposite of “couldn't make heads or/nor tails of”, and the logical opposite of NOR is is OR. “But then, all at once, for some apparent reason…” might be the opposite of “little by little, for no apparent reason…”
- mtVessel 6y agoI agree with gp. The opposite of "neither this NOR that" is "both this AND that".
- klodolph 6y agoTruth table shows you that the opposite of NOR is OR: this that | this or that | neither this nor that ----------+--------------+---------------------- T T | T | F F T | T | F T F | T | F F F | F | T
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- atum47 6y agofor a non-native english speaker, there's a lot of new words in this article. very rich vocabulary
- klodolph 6y agoMost of them are not recognized as standard English, so be careful…
- kraag22 6y agoMy english is not good enough to translate this. Even with dictionary I have no chance. What is meaning of this - for example? "She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array." I understand every word, but don't get meaning at all.
- czzr 6y agoUnderstand firstly that it’s a joke. The common English expressions are: “Nondescript” -> not memorable, doesn’t stand out “disarray” -> messed up, disorganised This is just changing those to the positive version, but those words are not usually used in English. So it sounds amusing to an English speaker. You might translate the sentence to normal English as: “She was a striking and very composed person.”
- jxy 6y agoFor people unfamiliar with it, Shouts & Murmurs are, from the html code, '<meta name="description" content="Weekly humor and satire about politics and daily life, from The New Yorker's writers and humorists.">'
- EGreg 6y agoRelated... words that are their own opposites: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their-own-opposites https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their... (I always wondered what people mean that something was sanctioned. It is so ambiguous!)
- peterburkimsher 6y agoThat's an autoantonym! Like cleave, or impregnable. They're literally my favourite. http://www.fun-with-words.com/nym_autoantonyms.html http://www.fun-with-words.com/nym_autoantonyms.html
- yen223 6y agoMy favourite example is the word "deceptively". "The pool was deceptively shallow" could mean the pool was shallower than it looks, or it could mean the pool was not as shallow as it looks, depending on who you ask.
- Dig1t 6y agoWeirdly, I kind of like it. I wish some of these words were actually used.
- whoisjuan 6y agoI mean despite not understanding many of the words you definitely understand what's going on. It's weird.
- aniijbod 6y agoFantastic challenge for AI sense-making software, no?
- realjohng 6y agoVery cool! I have never actually seen many of these words in their root forms-- so the author has managed to present something fresh. Also makes me think that the English language is overly abundant in negativity sigh.
- schoen 6y ago> never actually seen many of these words in their root forms The humor of this is that they generally don't occur that way in English. That's why you haven't seen them! (This is discussed in much greater detail elsewhere in the comments.)
- realjohng 6y agoYes its fabulous. I looked up many of these "new" words and was surprised and delighted to find out they're in fact valid words, but never used in speech or writing.
- owl57 6y ago«State of total array» sounds like some serious CS shit.
- emmelaich 6y agoI used an unpaired word the other day in conversation .. souciant. Quite proud of myself :-) Like many unpaired, it derives from French.
- todd8 6y agoTwo other unusual and clever language constructions are xkcd's Up Goer Five a description of a Saturn 5 rocket using only words contained in the 1000 words of basic English, see [1], and Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright, a novel of 50,000 words without using the letter e, see [2]. [1] https://xkcd.com/1133/ https://xkcd.com/1133/ [2] https://www.abebooks.com/books/gadsby-lipogram/ https://www.abebooks.com/books/gadsby-lipogram/