this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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[–] radix@lemmy.world 124 points 2 months ago (3 children)

queue

Most "Q" words are weird to start with, then just adding a bunch of silent vowels at the end doesn't make it any less so.

[–] radix@lemm.ee 71 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's a Q: a bunch of vowels are lined up behind it!

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)
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[–] tahoe@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Thank the French for this one

[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 11 points 2 months ago (5 children)

oiseau -- for when consonants are overrated. (it means bird).

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[–] Nemo 59 points 2 months ago (2 children)

pulchritudinous

such an ugly word, yet it means "beautiful"

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[–] Corno@lemm.ee 58 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Gerrymandering sounds like some sort of magic class.

[–] fubo@lemmy.world 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's from a political cartoon depicting a corrupt districting plan as a salamander.

[–] Davel23@fedia.io 21 points 2 months ago

A plan proposed by a man named Elbridge Gerry.

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[–] charonn0@startrek.website 48 points 2 months ago (11 children)

Be, is, are, was, am, were, being, been... are all the same word.

[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 39 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Languages that conjugate every verb for every person:

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Same with “go” and “went”.

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[–] Davel23@fedia.io 48 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I suppose technically it's Latin, but I've always been fascinated with "syzygy".

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

That looks like something Snoop Dogg would say.

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[–] ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 41 points 2 months ago (11 children)

“Rhythm” doesn’t rhyme with anything and doesn’t contain a letter that’s always a vowel.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 16 points 2 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_without_rhymes#Masculine_rhymes

I wanted to double-check, but I don't see any other words here that have that property, so it's probably unique!

[–] ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

Apparently, there’s an obsolete English word “smitham” that means (or meant) “small lumps of ore random people found.” They were exempt from taxation by English nobility so large mine owners started breaking up large chunks into “smitham” to avoid taxation. Apparently, the Duke of Devonshire put a stop to that in 1760 and the word fell out of use.

So, I think rhythm still counts as weird. Noah Webster was 2 years old in 1760 and the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary doesn’t have it.

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[–] son_named_bort@lemmy.world 37 points 2 months ago (7 children)

Colonel. Why is it pronounced like kernal?

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[–] voracitude@lemmy.world 35 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (8 children)

Pick any of them, and repeat it over and over again. It'll quickly become the weirdest word in the language, at least for a while.

[–] TechLich@lemmy.world 25 points 2 months ago

This is called "semantic satiation" which are both pleasingly weird words now that I think about it...

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[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 35 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Akimbo

It's an honest-to-goodness English word and not derived from French, Latin, Greek or anything else, like a lot of the words here. Yes, it looks like it might be from an African language, but it's a squashed form of "in keen bow" meaning "well bent" or "crooked".

[–] scroll_responsibly@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 2 months ago

I always assumed it was a loan word from Japanese. TIL.

[–] Clepsydrae@lemmy.world 27 points 2 months ago (5 children)

"Though"

The first two letters don't sound like themselves, and the last three are silent. The word is 83% lies.

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[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 27 points 2 months ago

Awkward is spelled awkwardly.

[–] LemmySoloHer@lemmy.world 24 points 2 months ago (1 children)
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[–] Etterra@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago
  • Funny weird: gobbledygook
  • Longest weird: antidisestablishmentarianism
  • Shortest weird: A
  • Literally weird: weird
  • Dangerously weird: Conservative
  • Unexpectedly weird: vanilla
  • Properly weird: FNORD
[–] 1hitsong@lemmy.ml 19 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Biweekly.

It means twice a week.

Or, it means once every other week.

Good luck.

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[–] tal@lemmy.today 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

I don't know about weirdest, but here are some quirky words:

  • inflammable means the same thing as flammable

  • "the/a". If you're a native English speaker, like me, it probably doesn't look unusual. I was listening to a lecture series on linguistics and it wasn't until then that I learned that most languages out there don't have a mandatory definite/indefinite article. In most languages, if you want to say "cat", you can say "cat". English requires you to say "a cat" or "the cat" -- the presence of an article to indicate whether the thing you're talking about is unique or not. That's an unusual feature for a language to have. It's baked into how I think, but a lot of the world just doesn't work that way.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar)#Crosslinguistic_variation

    Articles are found in many Indo-European languages, Semitic languages (only the definite article)[citation needed], and Polynesian languages; however, they are formally absent from many of the world's major languages including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, many Turkic languages (including Tatar, Bashkir, Tuvan and Chuvash), many Uralic languages (incl. Finnic[a] and Saami languages), Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi, Tamil, the Baltic languages, the majority of Slavic languages, the Bantu languages (incl. Swahili). In some languages that do have articles, such as some North Caucasian languages, the use of articles is optional; however, in others like English and German it is mandatory in all cases.

  • "data". It used to normally be the plural of datum, but within living memory has normally become a mass noun, like "water" or "air" or "love". It's not the only word to do this, but it's unusual.

  • "deer". It's not the only word to do this either, but it's one of a small number of words in English where the plural and singular form can be (and traditionally, needed to be) identical. Today, it looks like regular forms of these are increasingly being considered acceptable, at least in American English ("deers", "fishes", etc).

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[–] plactagonic@sopuli.xyz 18 points 2 months ago (3 children)

As a native speaker of language that is spelled the way its written. I can say that most of them are weird.

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[–] shinigamiookamiryuu@lemm.ee 15 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Eye.

We take it for granted now, but I'm sure we all questioned the word at one point in our lives, the shortest word guaranteed to fool any child who is an intuitive spelling pro if they don't already know the word's spelling.

[–] KittenBiscuits@lemm.ee 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Fun anecdote, in DC the east/west streets are named A St, B St, C St, and so on. But not i street. Capital i could be confused with L Street, so all the signs are written "Eye St"

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[–] Lauchs@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I love salubrious as it sounds like the exact opposite of what it is (health giving or healthy.)

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[–] SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

"of"

It's just odd that you're supposed to say it like it rhymes with "love". It's also almost always with other words, so by itself it truly looks suspicious.

        of
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[–] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Epicaricacy. We chose to use a German loanword instead.

Or words that came from fiction like cromulent and thagomizer.

[–] Akasazh@feddit.nl 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

For others about to look up the word:

Epicaricacy is Rejoicing at or derivation of pleasure from the misfortunes of others

[–] VinesNFluff@pawb.social 13 points 2 months ago (3 children)

In its defence

Schadenfraude is a really fun word to say.

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[–] PM_ME_WRISTS_GIRL@lemmynsfw.com 13 points 2 months ago

Albeit, caveat, awry, segue, haphazard, and facsimile are all pronounced weirdly and incorrectly for those who learned a lot of English by reading.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago (3 children)
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[–] angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

"Cwm"

One of a few words that use W as a vowel. (This is how the word "Pwn" works too)

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[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 months ago

British English - lieutenant is pronounced "Lef-tennant"

[–] piranhaphish@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

"Sphere"

That pronunciation ... like WTF ... did word inventors just figure we had totally exhausted the sound combinations that we could splice together?!

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[–] BlitzoTheOisSilent@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I'm gonna throw "forecastle" out there. It's referring to a specific part/area of a ship, but it's pronounced similar to "folks-sole."

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[–] JimVanDeventer@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It's a little weird that syphilis and chlamydia are way more euphonic than they ought to be. They just roll off the tongue and feel so good to say.

[–] rainynight65@feddit.org 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

sew

Pronounced exactly the same as sow, if you mean the right sow and not the other sow, which is spelled the same but pronounced differently.

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