For me, it’s hirsute. It may not be that common, because 4 of the first 10 google results are definitions, but I first noticed the word yesterday while reading Esquire magazine. I made a mental note to look it up later the first time I saw it. Then I saw it twice more in that magazine. And once in Scientific American. And then in this thread. Apparently I managed to not only fail to learn the word, but to never actually notice it being used.
Am I alone in my ignorance? What common words have you recently discovered?
ok, this barely counts because nobody says it in Australia, but…
copacetic.
I encountered it in a post on the Dope one day and I was almost about to make some sarky remark about people making up words. And then suddenly I swear to God it was “Let’s All Say Copacetic Week” at the SDMB. It was everywhere. Even in Cecil’s column.
Some people say it in the U.S. but I have to deduct 20 IQ points any time I hear someone say it. It is indeed a peculiar, pointless, confusing, gratuitous word that no one should ever use. Any alternative is preferable because the meaning does not fit the sound of the word and the meaning is not nuanced enough in the first place to warrant a strange new word. Ban it.
As God is my witness, I have never encountered hirsute before.
If it makes you feel better, it’s not said much here either. Until a (40-something-year-old) coworker said it today, I’d never heard or seen the word outside of two rock songs, a Straight Dope column and the threads poking fun at its subject matter.
Woah! Thanks for the link–I got the two lines (“And you just don’t get it/keep it copacetic”) stuck in my head, and since I never knew the name of the song or the band I couldn’tve looked it up.
In a way, it probably is. It sounds onomatopoeic (sp?) to me, not inherited from another language or Middle English or something; and the sound it mimics, sounds like something you need a spoon and a modern sour cream/cream cheese container for.
One month on the Dope last year, everyone and their dog was using the word “schadenfreude”. Seems like every damn post had the word in it. I was like “what the hell?” and made a thread about it. Much ridicule ensued. Especially since what I thought it meant wasn’t what it meant.
Oh, my point was, the word had been used a lot for quite a while, I was just too oblivious.
I once had a heated discussion with a friend on the subject. It went like this (sorta).
He said of a TV show we had just watched, “That wasn’t a Tales From The Crypt!”
I agreed that it lacked “Tales-ishness.”
Him: That isn’t a word.
Me: It is now–I just said it.
Him: It’s still not a word.
Me: If ‘Tales-ishness’ isn’t a word, what is it?
Him: I don’t know, but you can’t just make up words.
Me: Where do you think words come from? I said it–it’s a word.
Him: It isn’t in the dictionary.
Me: Do you think the people down at Merriam-Webster make up new words just in time for people to need them?
Him: …?
Me: People make up words all the time. If they catch on then sooner or later they become part of the language, but even if they don’t they’re still words because words are things-you-can-say and someone said them.
Him: It’s still not a word.
Me: Nevermind. :rolleyes:
Back on subject…I had never heard the word ‘shibboleth’ until I got curious about the username of a SDMB member and looked it up. Right after that I started coming across the term everywhere. I don’t know how I could have not noticed it being used so often, unless it just achieved a new popularity at just the moment that I first noticed it.
On the contrary, I would argue that borrowed words in English (or whatever the “destination language” is) aren’t. For example, the French word “mayonnaise” was made up, but the English word “mayonnaise” certainly was not–it came into the language fully formed.
If I’m right, then the majority of modern English words are not made up, since they came to us through another language or an archaic English form. What say you?
Heck, “Brobdingnag” is spelled two different ways in Swift’s book! He has Gulliver say at one point that the printers apparently mistook the name he spelled as “BrobdingRag” as “BrobdingNag”.
My eyes are too foggy right now to look it up, but I’ll try to tell you what I was told about the word. WW II servicemen brought back from the south Pacific, where it is a real word in Tagalog, or something. It means Just fine or going well, and that’s prretty much what it means here, too.
