“The Piss Shiver” needs a better word.
I think Middle, Early Modern English had a word like “swive” that meant basically to have sex, but without the vulgar sense of f*** or any of the clinical senses of coitus and its synonyms
.Swive - definition of swive by The Free Dictionary
Chaucer used it…not sure if Shakespeare did…
It would fill a very useful lexical gap (yes that sounds dirty too).
There’s not one good word for eye boogers.
“Sleepsand,” actually.
And the activity described in the OP is a “gleeclap.”
“Micturital palsy.”
“That which I have fetched”. Actually, English is very weak on nouns for things that have been or are being acted upon, and no regular forms of suffix to construct them.
Yet we have well-known suffixes (suffices?) for this in legal jargon, which are sometimes used colloquially. The fetchor and the fetchee.
My wife and I use this “word” as an adjective describing music with an annoyingly high-pitched vocalist. We both use it to refer to typical music from India with that screechy baby-voice female singers use (“Turn off that Tamil song, it’s so eeee!”), but she also uses it for, say, some Beach Boys songs (but I disagree – I like their falsetto harmonies).
Reminds me of Sniglets.
There’s no good word for when you are walking and attempt to go around someone headed the opposite direction, but you both inadvertently sidestep in the same direction, only to do it again in the opposite direction, two or three times. My wife will joke, “are we dancing?”. So, “dancing”?
There’s no good word for getting buzzed at home before you go out to a club/concert/game/event in order to save money on overpriced booze.
There should be a funny word for when a person accidentally farts and immediately loudly coughs to try to disguise the noise.
According to Wiki, it’s a pre-party.
(Completely uninteresting sidenote: In Norwegian, we refer to this by the German term “vorspiel”, and it’s practically compulsory here, since booze is so insanely expensive. Oddly enough, this word doesn’t actually denote “pre-party” in Germany, where it means “foreplay” in the sexual sense. This has led to more than one embarrassing conversation for Norwegian tourists in Germany.
We also have the term “nachspiel” for when you leave the bar at closing time and continue the party at someone’s house. This is also pretty much a mandatory practice, since the bars here all close at some stupidly early hour. This is also the event where 95% of all copulation in Norway takes place.)
We have no word meaning “we including you”, or for “we excluding you”.
If I say “we could go out to dinner” and you aren’t the only other person, I’d have to add either “but I don’t want you to come” or “and guess what, you are allowed to come”. Not that there would be anything awkward or wordy about either of those options.
34 posts in and I’m the first to suggest “procreate” as a normal, nonscientific way to say “baby making?” If anything, baby making has TOO MANY words to describe that act.
“or” is interesting. It can be inclusive (particularly to computer geeks) where you mean any combination of the possibilities up to and including all of them or it can be exclusive (what people IRL usually mean) where you mean “pick one and only one”.
Regardless of which meaning you accept for “or” there is no single word for the other meaning. “Pick one and only one” can be abbreviated xor (exclusive or) but I don’t think many people would accept that as a word yet.
Backbrungbric-a-brac.
We don’t really have a verb meaning “commit suicide” – although the word “suicide” itself is sometimes used that way. ( “He suicided” :dubious: )
We also have the phrase “commit perjury”. There’s a verb for that – “perjure” – but it’s usage is odd, because (AFAIK) it’s always used reflexively – One doesn’t say “He perjured on the witness stand”, but instead “He perjured himself on the witness stand”.
There’s a Korean word that has no english translation, “jung.” It describes the relationship between family members in the absence of emotion. It only describes the feeling of connectedness relatives feel. The closest in English is “obligation.” If you’re happy with a family member you love them, if you’re fighting, you hate them, but regardless of the emotion there is still jung. So, unconditional love doesn’t really fit.
Eye boogers is on SDMB somewhere, I asked about it years ago. Also, belly button boogers. The only one I can remember though is the white oily stuff behind your ears, that had a medical term.
This one just came up in another thread: the term for the practice of giving hiring preference to graduates from the same college as yourself. Nepotism, cronyism, and in-group/out-group doesn’t quite fit.
Another Korean word with no english translation: mushik. It describes a person, usually born poor but can also have money, who has a complete absence of manner or class.
My friends and I made a word for nerds and geeks who do have social skills: squids. We all had girlfriends, took AP courses, and played trumps in the hallways. I think virtually everyone was president of at least one school club (1 baseball team, 1 basketball team, 1 track and field, 2 chess club, 2 tennis club, 1 band, 1 bowling club,) and 2-3 people had after school jobs. On weekends we traded computer games. During the prom, we got a hotel room and 3 cases of booze. Is there a word for that?
edit: for suicide, each type of suicide has it’s own verb: hang, self-immolate, jump, exsanguinate, etc.
Another one came up in another thread: A eulogy for a dead person where you talk about what a jerk that person was instead of sharing positives.
If someone has a sixth finger, what is the name of that finger? (Thumb, index, middle, ring, pinky and…?)
I know there’s different terms for paraplegics depending on what is paralyzed. Is there a difference if your legs are paralyzed with or without your penis? Can a vagina be paralyzed?
A bit closer to home we have consuegro/a in spanish which means the father/mother of my child’s spouse.