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A Perfectly Cromulent Word (2016)
- weatherlight 5y agoSo... Is Embiggen a cromulent word?
- TheLocehiliosan 5y agoIt sure is. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/embiggen https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/embiggen A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.
- lproven 5y agoInteresting thing about "embiggen" -- the Simpsons _didn't_ invent it. It was already a thing, the show merely popularized it. It's a century older. Merriam may not know, but the OED does: https://www.lexico.com/definition/embiggen https://www.lexico.com/definition/embiggen
- mongol 5y agoYes but if it was not cromulent, what would you say instead?
- chrisweekly 5y agoIf it were not cromulent, one might choose a less disputatious synonym, such as "enlarge".
- wruza 5y agoFor unwonted synonyms I usually refer to Thesaurus. https://www.google.ru/search?q=oh+crap+it%27s+a+thesaurus&tbm=isch https://www.google.ru/search?q=oh+crap+it%27s+a+thesaurus&tb...
- nescioquid 5y agoPerhaps mongol was fishing for > A noble spirit encromulates the smallest man.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- evilotto 5y agoFrom page 28 of https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0610212 https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0610212 > For large P , the three-form fluxes are dilute, and the gradient of the Myers potential encouraging an anti-D3 to embiggen is very mild.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rahoulb 5y agoIt's always been one of my favourite Simpsons' jokes, precisely because it's so subtle. And yes, I use both words all the time.
- AbsoluteDestiny 5y agoSee also https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thagomizer https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thagomizer which has seen adoption.
- riffraff 5y ago"Grok" is quite commonly used verb which comes from a made up concept in Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange land".
- lsaferite 5y agoGrok is certainly a standard part of my lexicon.
- m463 5y agowhat about grep?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jjtheblunt 5y agogeneralized regular expression processor ?
- gnubison 5y agoComes from the ed command ‘g/re/p’ (g: for each line matching; re: regular expression; p: print)
- I_complete_me 5y agoI reach for funner so often it's in my wordbag.
- cattleprodigy 5y agoone of my favorite uses: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tommy-needy-drinky https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tommy-needy-drinky
- billfruit 5y agoI think it is all copacetic now.
- tantalor 5y agoThis story has no byline or dateline. Please don't do this.
- seattle_spring 5y agoOh come on, this is a perfectly cromulent submission.
- fouc 5y agolooks like it was first published in 2016
- daveslash 5y agoThis is an interesting point. You're right - no byline or dateline. Not great things on a "News" platform. But that begs the question: is Hacker News a "news" site? Despite having "news" in the name, I prefer to think of it more as a "Directory of Mostly Wonderful [Hacker] Things". At least, that's what I lurk here.
- dang 5y agoI see it like this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22new%20to%20you%22%20hacker&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- vincent-manis 5y agoThat use of “begs the question” is unfortunate. “Raises the question” would be more cromulent, provided that cromulence can be compared.
- JCVI-syn10 5y agoWhile some may accuse you of pedantry, I applaud your embiggening others' understanding of this common mistake.
- 5y ago
- notapenny 5y agoThis being a perfectly cromulent candidate to be entered into Merriam-Webster gives me great hope for tnettenba.
- milliams 5y agoI'm not sure that's a word. Could you use it in a sentence?
- jedberg 5y agoGood morning, that's a nice tnettenba.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y agoIs the addressee of the greeting naked or not?
- LegitShady 5y agoYou're supposed to just ask me what I'm wearing - you jumped the gun a little.
- criddell 5y agoThey just did!
- nielsbot 5y agoI really want to make a joke about me wearing mine every day… But I also don’t want to contribute to the redditification of HN.
- BitwiseFool 5y agoIt embiggens us all.
- AuthorizedCust 5y ago
- filmgirlcw 5y agoI used to have a t-shirt from a now-defunct television recap website that said “perfectly cromulent” and it was the best “in joke” shirt. Would always bring out the fellow Simpsons nerds.
- COGlory 5y agoIs this related to the usage of cromulent in this submission?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28641170 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28641170 >First, btrfs is a perfectly cromulent single-disk ext4 replacement. Or am I just getting that bias thing where because the word cromulent is now on my radar, I'm seeing it everywhere I look?
- mattnewton 5y agoThe later probably, cromulent was a word made up for a Simpsons episode about another made up work a while back
- duskwuff 5y ago> a while back Over 25 years ago, actually! Lisa the Iconoclast, which coined the words "embiggen" and "cromulent" as part of a gag, aired in February 1996.
- lproven 5y agoCromulent yes; embiggen no. See https://www.lexico.com/definition/embiggen https://www.lexico.com/definition/embiggen
- franky47 5y agoThis whole article gave me a fronache.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y agoIs “cromulent” a woody or a tinny word?
- KineticLensman 5y agoWoody. (I just like the word. It gives me confidence. Gorn ... gorn. It's got a sort of woody quality about it. Gorn. Gorn. Much better than `newspaper' or `litterbin')
- kube-system 5y agoWords are just memes that stick around for a while.
- Lammy 5y ago“Unite humanity with a living, new language.”
- Rendello 5y agoMy favourite example of this is "ok", which comes from a nearly 200 year-old meme: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-word-ok-was-invented-175-years-ago-180953258/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-word-ok-was-in...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- prvc 5y ago>While we don’t yet enter cromulent into our dictionaries, it’s a perfectly cromulent candidate for future entry. Although the dictionary editors surely were hypnotized by their own humorousness, they ought not to have published that sentence.
- sblom 5y agoWhy not? M-W's lexicographers openly discuss their process of descriptively documenting language as it's observed in real use. If usage of the word "cromulent" continues to grow to the point that it reaches the threshold for inclusion, it, by definition, belongs in the (descriptive) dictionary.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- margalabargala 5y agoIf we hold the M-W editors to the standard of only using "real" words, then a contradiction is present. If "cromulent" has not yet reached their threshold for inclusion, then they themselves should not be using it in casual language. Contrapositively, if they are using it casual language, then presumably it has reached their threshold for inclusion as a word. For them to casually use the word as though it were real after arguing that it is not harms their credibility as arbiters of what words are or are not real, despite the comedic value of them doing so here.
- clouddrover 5y agoIt's okay. The Oxford dictionary has them covered: https://www.lexico.com/definition/cromulent https://www.lexico.com/definition/cromulent https://www.lexico.com/definition/embiggen https://www.lexico.com/definition/embiggen
- Uptrenda 5y agoWhat a pretentious way to say acceptable. If I ever hear anyone using cromulent unironically I'll automatically think they're a douchbag and avoid them. Language is suppose to be simple so you can... IDK, communicate. Stuff like this is cringe and not at all based or red pilled. Downboated.
- petersellers 5y agoIt's hard to tell whether you are being sarcastic or oblivious with those last few words of your comment.
- Cats_In_Love 5y agoAnd it is useless. Synonyms have subtle differences in meaning. In this case, it has no different and it's existence adds no new information.
- oolonthegreat 5y agolove made up words! this reminds me of "The Meaning of Liff", the "dictionary of things that there aren't any words for yet" by Douglas Adams & John Lloyd. here's an online version (with dubious legality?): http://www.lib.ru/ADAMS/liff.txt_with-big-pictures.html http://www.lib.ru/ADAMS/liff.txt_with-big-pictures.html
- Cats_In_Love 5y agoOh, thank you for that.
- Cats_In_Love 5y agoNext they'll be trying to tell us that "figuratively" means "literally" Oh, wait, they literally did... or is that figuratively.
- eh9 5y agoAll words are made up