While deciding on this title, I first wanted it to be “Things that don’t have names, but ought to” but felt that was going to lead to smartasses showing that there really is a name for that thing you thought of that you don’t know the name for.
Then I thought about “Things that have weird names” and ruled that out because of the tendency just to list funny words.
So here’s what I’d hope to see in this thread.
In spite of the many technical terms from many arcane, abstruse and highly specialized fields of endeavor, there are just some things that (as far as you have been able to find out) have no commonly accessible name.
The sorts of things where “dololly” or “whatsit” and their synonyms are used, or where you have to come up with a description of several words to identify what you’re talking about.
Of course if you know the name for something already mentioned, it’s fine to divulge it. But this could be an exercise in demonstrating that in spite of the human race’s tendency to have at least one name for everything useful and interesting, there are just some things whose use and/or interest has yet to produce a name we can use for it.
I mostly had the idea for the thread without any really good examples but here’s a try.
What’s the name for that point in time when one era stops and the next era bgins? Like, what’s the name for the moment in time when the Dark Ages ended and the Renaissance began? Not the date, the name!
Surely, y’all can do better than that for stuff that ought to have a name, but doesn’t.
We need a name for that piece of the Netflix envelope with your address on it that you tear off and throw away when it arrives. There’s millions of these things being produced every week, so it’s absurd that there’s no name for them.
Some of them definitely might be, especially those intended purely for their humor. As would those collections mentioned in the “See Also” section of the article.
However, even if the OP doesn’t sound that way, I was hoping for more serious items, concepts or activities that we just don’t have a name for.
One way to approach the problem is to think of those times you have to use a phrase, instead of a name, for something you are trying to communicate.
The particular state of maladjustment that occurs when an analogue clock has been set so that the minute hand is between two minute marks when the second hand reaches the 12 marker.
I agree that it’s a good analogy, but since the astrological (and perhaps astronomical) usage gives it a space context, I wonder if the time counterpart is even considered in the same manner.
It’s been a concept I have wondered about, and even posted about, that allows “cusp” to be used to approach the issue, even if it’s not precise enough to stand alone as a name.
A similar idea involves the distribution of some natural phenomena. Things like ranges of plants, animals, soil types and the sorts of thing you see maps with different colors or shadings to indicate the big picture of how something like cactus, armadilloes or red clay are found in areas of the country. It’s like there must be some specific place where you would find fewer of those things than the threshold number it took to let the map be a good approximation. It’s almost like if you crossed the imaginary boundary between “some cactus” and “no cactus” you could put up a sign next to that last one that says, “Last Cactus.”
Would “cusp” still work to define that cutoff/boundary situation, you think?
BTW, good to see you again Sternvogel! We’ve had some good times here.
Someone mentioned Sniglets. From that came my idea for the little bits of lovey words and whispers that my new husband and I would say to each other before we went to sleep at night: snuglets
Zeldar, I don’t know what you call that thing between eras, but it sounds just like a mosquito that just comes in long enough to give you a sniff and then zips out again. It’s very high pitched and you usually only here this sound at night. It’s sort of a Ssszzt–but shorter in duration. That’s what the changing of an era sounds like.
One area that has always bothered me involves the Systems of Measurement before Metric became the de facto standard for groupings, i.e., 10 somethings become one something else.
An old one I really like is the tod: any of various units of weight for wool; esp : one equal to 28 pounds (13 kilograms)
Is it just blind luck that a stone is 14 pounds?
And just this week I got a neat email that went into great detail about why railroad tracks are the distance apart they are, and the trail to the origin of that distance turns out to be Roman roads! And the modern offshoot of that is that the distance apart the tanks on the space shuttle are is because they had to go through a railroad tunnel that was just wide enough to allow them through if they were whatever distance that is.
BTW, Mangetout, do you suppose the punt as it is used in bottles ( Wine bottle - Wikipedia ) might be used as a synonym for your dimple or void dohickey?
And I can definitely agree with your consternation, gotpasswords! A tragic oversight!
Years ago, my friends and I came up with a word for something that doesn’t exist anymore: “Blasterpop.” It’s the audible popping sound that would come from your speakers when your SoundBlaster’s driver loaded. You see, kids, back then, computers didn’t automatically come with a sound card; if you wanted one, you had to go buy one separately. And there was this thing we used to have to do called “loading the drivers”…
(This post was created using Turbo EDLIN 9.4 for Windows!)