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  • Showing only topics with the tag "words". Back to normal view
    1. Is Tildes 18+?

      I was thinking about posting this to ~news, but suddenly I've realised that I don't know if the word “fuck”, or any of the Seven Dirty Words, are allowed in titles. Is Tildes adults-only? Should...

      I was thinking about posting this to ~news, but suddenly I've realised that I don't know if the word “fuck”, or any of the Seven Dirty Words, are allowed in titles. Is Tildes adults-only? Should people write something like “f***” in titles instead?

      11 votes
    2. Proposal: Weekly neologism thread

      I'm a terrible writer, in part because I've got that epistemophiliac adoration for obscure, archaic or onomatopoeic words, word-play, and more pedantry than most audiences can bear. That being...

      I'm a terrible writer, in part because I've got that epistemophiliac adoration for obscure, archaic or onomatopoeic words, word-play, and more pedantry than most audiences can bear.

      That being said, I think it would be a fun exercise to create and justify new words. A broad range of examples can be found here.

      I'm suggesting this both to give serious writers new tools, and as a light-hearted lower-but-not-low effort community-building exercise to include those who don't consider themselves writers yet.

      Rules:

      1. Any subject matter, though I'd prefer we kept this SFW.
      2. The "logos", or rationale, of the neologism should need little explanation, or be presented in the context of usage, e.g. "asshat", "we're not leaving town, we're staycationing this year."
      3. English language is not required - if you can make a logical creole word and provide English justification, that's fine.
      4. Please Google to ensure originality.
      5. Puns are going to happen. If that's a problem for you, please refrain from complaint unless you feel there's unnecessary cruelty outside the bounds of Tildes' terms of use.

      Here's a starter:

      mortlifting - abusing the occasion of a celebrity's death to make an unrelated political point.

      7 votes
    3. "Guy" should be a neutered term. Change my mind.

      In light of @Deimos mentioning that we have a lot of "favorite" topics going around, how about something a little meatier? I've seen it a few times already around threads that someone uses the...

      In light of @Deimos mentioning that we have a lot of "favorite" topics going around, how about something a little meatier?

      I've seen it a few times already around threads that someone uses the word "guy" to refer to a poster and the response is "I'm not a guy". I'm not trying to invalidate this stance, but rather make this argument in the same way I argued for a singular "they". Consider the following:

      • the plural form, "you guys" is already neutered. I can walk up to a group of women and ask "How're you guys doing?" and it doesn't draw any ire
      • we've similarly neutered "dude" in both the singular and plural, but it's especially casual and almost familiar
      • "gal" sounds like something out of the forties, "girl" is diminutive, and "person" is clinical / formal
      • we don't have another common, non-gendered, non-specific term that fits the "sounds right" criteria and fits in the environment like the one we have (wherein users are getting to know each other and don't know exactly how to address one another).

      I realize that this is probably masculine-normative and therefore problematic, but my main goal here is to stimulate discussion on a meatier topic (gender) without having it be an incredibly serious topic.

      [EDIT]

      I want to clarify a few things, as this reads a lot more trolly than it did 6 hours ago.

      generalizing "guy" is a sexist idea because it attempts to make the masculine the generic (what I called "masculine-normativity" above). However, there isn't a term that adequately replaces "guy" but is neutered (@Algernon_Asimov brought up that "dude" fits, but is as more casual than "guy" than "person" is more formal). [Edit edit: I'm an idiot. They pointed out that "dude" as I had defined it earlier in my post would work just as well, but they did not agree that it has been neutered]

      Instead of bringing this up as purely a matter of diction, I set myself up as an antagonist to see what would happen. And for this I apologize.

      That said, I feel like there is some good discussion here and do not want to call making the thread a mistake. More that mistakes were made in the manner of its posting.

      42 votes