What's the good word?

This thread is for posting fun and unusual words and what they mean. Mine is “ninnyhammer”. (Thanks to ScallioXTX) It means “basket case” or “someone who is overly nervous”.

What’s your good word? (Don’t forget to post what it means.)

I know it’s pretty common but the word never ceases to amuse me : gobbledygook which means gibberish.

A bit rarer one is ‘doohickey’ which means any object (especially a gadget) whose name you don’t recall – sort of like ‘thingy’.

“Defenestrate”: to throw out of or jump from a window. Useful for those in high-stress positions. :wink:

hemidemisemiquaver: In musical notation, it’s a 64th note (or, 1/64th of a whole note)

I got that as a bonus vocab word way back in elementary school, and it’s stuck with me ever since. I can’t say I’ve ever used it in a sentence.

doohickey, gadget, thingy…

here are a few more:

bric-a-brac, contraption, dingbat, dingus, doodad, folderol, gewgaw, gimmick, gizmo, jigger, knickknack, thingamabob, thingamajig, thingum, whatchamacallit, whatnot, whatsis, widget

You forgot ‘wossname’.

My current favourite word is interregnum, meaning the period between one ruler/leader finishing and the next one starting (lit. between kings). Mainly because someone at work got very cross with me today for correctly guessing it and knowing what it meant :cool:

I remember that one from piano lessons. Sheesh… like anyone could ever play that fast anyway!

There must be folks who can…I just poked around on wikipedia and found semihemidemisemiquaver…a 128th note :eek:

I would think noting a trill would be more appropriate, though

Oh I agree! Did you take a look at how those notes look when placed in music? They are almost impossible to read!

Yep.

I’ve only seen up to 32nd notes (demisemiquaver :D) in music I’ve played…and those can be quite fast.

My Good word is dhishoom dhishoom. I feel very calm

Sounds like the word interbellum, the period between the two world wars.

I like the word paradigm.
I like to use it when explaining something difficult, so it sounds a lot more difficult.

Gamut is the word i use often and the meaning is entire set or range of…

lullaby is song to make children sleep.

<snip/>

I actually dislike that one. It’s overused and not always properly.

It certainly was misused here. A paradigm is not something difficult. It is an ideal, a model, a prototype or (another odd word) an archetype.

“The paradigm of virtue”

I see.
In my own language, Dutch, this word exists aswel, but is very rarely used.
I learned the word by reading English texts where it occurs quite often.
But, when using ‘paradigma’ in Dutch, people suddenly don’t understand anymore what you’re talking about, because they mostly haven’t heard that word yet, and from that moment they’re not listening any further to your story but are thinking about what that word ‘paradigma’ actually means. If I use this in some context, easy things get suddenly difficult.

But I understand it’s not that way for native English people :wink:

Here’s one I’ve got to one of my friends on fb - Olly

  • a friend you know only online.

it took me almost 30 mins to search for that word. lol! :slight_smile: really sounds new to me.

Makes me wonder if the pronunciation is the same in Dutch as in English. I see the spelling is a bit different with an “a” on the end in Dutch. In the English pronunciation it sounds like “pair a dime”. Is that the way you pronounce it in Dutch?

The definition from Dutch to English is certainly different.

Backword; to give backword is to call off a previous arrangement.

No, it’s quite different in Dutch. The “para” sounds more like it does in “paranoia” than “pair”, and “digma” sounds a bit like “dogma”, except that the “g” is a lot more articulated in Dutch than in English. I don’t think there is a sound in English that even comes close to the Dutch “g” :slight_smile: