English

Today I am going to ramble about English a little bit.

Okay, first off, here are some crazy words.

Omphaloskepsis: this fancy word means "to contemplate one's navel."

So, if you're ever thinking about your navel, now you got a word for it.

Other fun words are:

Pulveratricious: this word means covered in dust.

widdiful: someone who deserves hanging.

nudiustertian: the day before yesterday.

limerance: an attempt to study love scientifically

Oh, and here is a really long word. It was the longest word in the first Oxford English Dictionary:

floccinaucinihilipilification: to judge that something has no value.

This is actually a sorta funny word. It was originally a joke, but it caught on. Some person took 4 words in Latin that meant nothing. The first word "flocci" this word comes from flouccus which means a tuft of lambs hair (which was used to mean nothing). "Nauci" means worthless. Nihil means "nothing." "Pili" means hair, which is also abstracted to mean little or nothing.

Some person took all these latin words that meant worthless and nothing and then strung them together, and then they placed the suffix "ification" at the end to make it a noun describing the act of making something worthless.

I dare you to use that word in a sentence.

Speaking of words, here is a complaint: the words data and media.

Today I read something where the person wrote "the data are private."

That just sounds stupid to me. Now, I realize that data is plural and datum is singular, but the meaning of the word "data" has changed over the years.

The problem is that data is rarely used as singular because data is such a nebulous term. What would be the smallest unit of data (which we would call "datum"). It's hard to say. A bit? A byte? A kilobyte?

I think it would be best to classify data as a collective or mass noun. I recently read online that some people have a problem with this; they think that data can't be a collective noun because collective nouns are always singular. And, while this is true, I don't think we use the word datum frequently enough (or with enough clarity) to split the word making the plural verb form necessary. Basically, what we'd be doing is making a hideous sentence like "the data are confidential" correct so we could make room for a word we don't even use: datum. I don't think it's worth it, and luckily, most grammar guides agree with me.

You can say "the data are saved," but if you do you should lose your friends. That is just so pretentious sounding, and I can only imagine the kind of person who would say that would be someone you wouldn't want to talk to.

Well, that's my rant for today. I hope you all have a wonderful day.

Oh, and another cool thing: many people know that there is a tendency to get sad during the wintertime when the sun is hidden and it's sorta gloomy. Well, there is a name for that problem; it's called "seasonal affective disorder." The cool thing is that the acronym for this is S.A.D. Isn't that a cool name? I appreciate diagnosticians with a sense of humor.

Anyway, that's all I got. I might get driving today to go to CA to see my niece, Summer. She's supposed to be the bee's knees. I can't wait to meet her.