Word recall

The Picard Maneuver@lemmy.world to ADHD memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 930 points –
61

I'm in this picture and i... am ambivalent.

Your specificity here isn't needless. You did the meme wrong.

Balderdash, the specificity employed in this context was superfluous in comparison to the minimum required for conveying his emotional response to the situation.

An ex once told me her mother wasn’t a fan because talking to me was like talking to a thesaurus.

Yeah, well, Donna, your daughter decided to start fucking me because I was the only person who could consistently beat her at words with friends.

I had a girlfriend try to make me speak differently because I embarrassed her by using big words in front of others. The company you keep eh?

I both

  • do that too, and
  • can also see how it comes across as pretentious.

Back then I was a mess socially. I'm still an introvert but I code switch like a pro. I only break out the big vocab with close friends who know I'm not trying to look smart.

There's an episode of Northern Exposure where a young woman says to Ed "give me your words" in a very sexual way. It's outrageously funny, and simultaneously insightful.

If you've never watched it, the writers are all about studying people, warts and all. Very thought-provoking.

It's interesting, they used to think that having a big vocabulary or knowing multiple languages delayed having Alzheimer's. It turns out that family often first become aware that a person is developing Alzheimer's because the person starts regularly forgetting common words, but people with big vocabularies can come up with alternatives when they can't remember one, so their family doesn't recognize it as early. When those people are diagnosed, they end up being further along.

I had a political conversation with a right-wing co-worker a while back, and he generally operated in good faith, but he got flustered and tried to do the "why do you use big/pretentious words" scold on me, and he did not handle it well when I responded "I guess home school and Liberty University didn't land you with much of a vocabulary".

Good writers and speakers use clear and simple words. If you can't explain something to a five year old then you don't know very much about it.

Holy crap, I thought I was the only one.

Consecrated fecal material, I entertained the notion that I had embarked upon this adventure without companions!

i like when people use big words cause then i can learn a new word. it's nice knowing words to say stuff with

i like using big words as an excuse to teach them!

Same energy as "your English is so good". No, I just don't know normal words.

I just don't know normal words.

As an ESL, I felt that in my bones. One time my boss asked me to get the pail to water the plants and my only exposure to that word had been the wailmer pail from the Pokémon games that I misremembered as a "whalepail". It was awkward trying to explain why I was stumped.

"This is a complex subject with a lot of subtleties. We have to choose the right words to make sure we avoid misunderstandings. Any sufficiently developed topic has a language all its own."

My oldest bitches about me doing this constantly. ‘We haven’t learned that yet’. ‘Sorry it’s all the voices gave me’.

Your kids have to tolerate it forever. Nobody said when exactly you're supposed to stop teaching them to talk.

I write a lot of fantasy, and that definitely affects my practical vocabulary. I don't think the specificity is needless though, especially in English, this Frankenstein of cognates and loaner words. You have so many options because the human experience is so diverse and multifaceted. Clarity helps, and it makes language more beautiful, something we should all strive for

"You talk like a smart person" mate I can't remember how to talk like a normal person

Damn, no one ever put it into words like that but this describes me perfectly

It gets worse the more deviations you get away from the mean:

Scientists and other academics who often pride themselves on their rhetoric act in peculiar ways when they're challenged on their assumptions with sources.

Normally, you'd expect the open-minded to be like: "Wow, that's something I hadn't considered! Thanks for expanding my intellectual horizons!"

Instead its: "You completely invalidated my work, you fuckwit! We're going to lose funding!"

Always be kind to everyone you meet. C:

I never pontificated like that, but you're utterly correct.

I find it inconceivable that when I stirred from my bedchamber this morning, that I would find myself with an appeal to my senses that would brighten my day.

obliged

That's me, but also with english words instead of my native language's ones.

I've noticed that many fluent English speakers who had a different native language come across as better speakers than English natives.

There was a Basic Instructions comic about exactly this, but unfortunately the only thing I can remember about it is that the protagonist describes someone's hair as "turgid" and "basic instructions turgid hair" isn't getting many relevant results.

Also, is "chariots chariots" related to the rest of the post or am I just oblivious?

edit: s/coming/comic

Reminds me of my lawyer relative talking about defending a case involving undercover cops and strip clubs. "Turgid" is a legal concept, I guess. Honestly I think that's very stupid.

Apparently it can mean "excessively embellished in style or language," so I guess if you were to describe a legally contested situation in a ... Turgid manner, it could distort any case made based on your testimony? IANAL, so that's just a wild swing at the appropriate application based on one web search.

Preemptive aside: I've seen lots of jokes made, so for anyone not familiar, IANAL is neither sexual nor any kind of innuendo or entendre.

Unfortunately, that particular legal brief that I read, which was written by "real lawyers", used "turgid" in reference to genitalia. The argument had something to do with the intent of undercover officers in strip clubs. I've forgotten why the cops were there to begin with, but my relative has a career in representing cops when they did illegal and horrible stuff. I am NOT defending any of that.

chariots chariots

Oh, good. We've got Prime Cave Johnson this time!

you avail yourself of eloquent parlance for you cannot recall simpler vocabulary
i partake in sophisticated linguistics for it is greatly entertaining
we are not the same

Is been literally decades, so I'm forgetting, but that particular case had some arguments regarding the turgid state of penises. I read a brief from this case, because my relative was like, this is silly, you'll enjoy it