freudenfreude (12. 960)

First coined circa 2022, the German neologism formulated in English in response to the popular rediscovery of the concept of Schadenfreude (see more here plus an obscure native synonym) has through variants. The apotheosis of its source, word connotes the contagious nature of joy—whose own English equivalent is the uncommon confelicity—is also sparking compound snowclones to express appreciation for tiny victories: Parkenfreude, Schlangefreude, Platzenfreude, etc. Alternatively, there is the nascent Schadenfreudeschaden, for the compounded misery experienced by witness the former delight in one’s misfortune. Can you come up with some more examples?

10x10 (12. 899)

linguistic fossils: an exercise in autocomplete, eight English words only used for very specific circumstances 

elevated concerns: locations in Greater London above sea level and how those heights compare to countries existentially threatened by rising waters 

new meme format just dropped: the surprisingly cordial meeting between Trump and new New York City mayor Mamdani—“go ahead and call me a fascist—it’s easier, it’s easier than explaining—I don’t mind”  

the long game: US federal judge rules that Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp are not anticompetitive 

terra firma: a few modest proposals to rename our home planet  

squirearchy: the economy and governance of Hobbiton, which seems fifty-percent dependent on upper-class failsons—via Super Punch  

petsmart: Shanghai-based domestic animal supply store will close all physical stores after a year-long retail experiment 

home of the gnomes: a charming, anachronistic “Hansel and Gretel” cottage in New York City—via Strange Company  

houndsditch: Gustave Doré’s illustrations of the East End crocodile tears: the origin and spread of the oft-detested response “no worries”

synchronoptica

one year ago: high concept art (with synchronopticæ) plus assorted links to enjoy

twelve years ago: neuter and neutral plus limits on executive pay in Switzerland

thirteen years ago: talking turkey plus WWI day-by-day  

fourteen years ago: an insulation upgrade 

sixteen years ago: droid flu 

stigler’s law of eponymy (12. 894)

Via Kottke, we are introduced to the above occurrence, recursive like instances pleonasmy, which proposed by statistics professor Stephen Stigler in 1980, attributes his own discovery to an idea formulated by sociologist Robert Merton, whom also popularised such notions as unintended consequences, reference groups, role models and self-fulfilling prophecies, and holds that no scientific discovery is named after its original pioneer, citing Hubble’s Law of universal expansion derived by Georges Lemaître among others and that credit is an object lesson in plagiarism and immodesty. Fully aware of his legacy, Merton’s own version was a variation on his so called Matthew Effect of cumulative advantage from the gospel summarised in the adage “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” though the apostle was quoting the rubric of Jesus—specifically referring to women’s sidelining in the academia and the arts, like the Matilda effect or the Bechdel test who repeatedly attributed the idea to her friend Liz Wallace but to no avail.

acrophony (12. 893)

Having written quite a lot of about the NATO Phonetic Alphabet beforehand (see previously here, here, here and here), we quite enjoyed this deeper dive into the history (with new-old antecedents of enunciating preceding and following letters with the target in between—see also) of the widely adopted set of clear-code words for communication transcription codified in 1956 and profile of each letter courtesy of Language Log. The title refers to the Ancient Greek convention of naming a grapheme according to to its first sound: ALFA, BRAVO, CHARLIE, DELTA. The first letter and JULIETT (which could not be with her ROMEO) are spelled such for those not familiar with English orthography and QUEBEC for Q for the University of Montreal where the standard was developed, and few personal names were adopted as well as toponyms for their stability and relative universality (though India has a wealth of exonyms) after the old-new German system—with other notable national carve-outs—albeit whose own signifiers like C for Chemnitz (formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt) underwent changes and were carefully chosen, though a misnomer and somewhat misleading regarding its provenance. As a further mnemonic, like how the English alphabet can be sung to the tune of “Ah vous dirai-je, Maman” (“Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star as arranged by Mozart) so too can the NATO Phonetic Alphabet be repeated to Beethoven’s “An die Freude” (“Ode to Joy”), similarly with only a few infidelities.

*    *    *    *    *

synchronoptica

one year ago: manifesting (with synchronopticæ) plus capitol conveniences 

twelve years ago: the history of the unicorn plus the annals of the Basil Registry

thirteen years ago: American secessionist movements  

fourteen years ago: house-hunting 

fifteen years ago: a foiled terror attack on the Reichstag 

most other two-digit numbers had no meaningful trend over that period (12. 891)

For its WotY, Dictionies.com has selected “6-7” from its list of contenders for terms capturing the Zeitgeist of language and culture over the past twelve months, not just about confusion, neologism or popularity but moreover as a socio-linguistic mirror to visage. In the shortlist of other reference authorities, the meme, phrase and accompanying hand gestures from a nonsense lyric in a song by Philadelphia rapper Skrilla, titled “Doot Doot (Six-Seven).” And while grammarians have tried to apply several interpretations as to its meaning and etymology—from a reference to a street in the artist’s hometown or police code, which despite being incorrect have increased its rather enduring lore as opposed to recent marketing campaigns by fast food franchises and rumours that the next AI model will be called GPT-6-7 (surely a sign the trend is about to plummet)—it is genuinely a meaningless phrase though positive among cohorts who can share it together. The Wikipedia entry for the much older, fourteenth century English idiom to describe a situation in disarray—“at sixes and sevens”—from the proto-version of gambling dice game craps called hazard has not been updated to reflect this new phenomenon.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the events that inspired The Wicker Man (with synchronopticæ), an ancient amulet discovered, a thousand days of the war on Ukraine, shifting through default video titles plus Mister Plow (1992)

twelve years ago: digital footprints 

thirteen years ago: market bubbles 

fourteen years ago: in for a penny, in for a pound 

fifteen years ago: free-range exoplanets 

sixteen years ago: preppers and doubters 

10x10 (12. 889)

trip hop: frustrated with his limited role in Massive Attack, Tricky embarked on his independent project Maxinquaye  

chud atlantis: more regional car-dealership rococo from McMansion Hell  

linguistic zombie hunting: a revival of the old prescriptivist superstition against ending a sentence with a preposition and the grammarians that support it 

state capture: the revolving door between government and industry creating the post-democratic world order—via Quantum of Sollazzo 

♾️ series: visual proofs that 1/4 + 1/16 + 1/64 + 1/256… yields ⅓  

circlesquare: filmmaker Jaron Albertin’s rather disturbing music video for “Seven Minutes” 

artful dodger: Victorian mugshots of juvenile offenders—via Nag on the Lake  

stay puft: some facts all about marshmallows sealab: project Tektite and experimenting with submerged human habitats  

giscardpunk: Fifth Republic techno-futurism reimagined—see previously 

synchronoptica

one year ago: farming by lottery (with synchronopticæ) plus assorted links to revisit

twelve years ago: coded correspondence

thirteen years ago: Thanksgiving salutations  

fourteen years ago: Bretton Woods and monetary unions 

fifteen years ago: privacy and Google Maps plus trade unions and Ricardian economics

parasocial (12. 888)

A term from academia coined by sociologists back in the mid-1950s observing how viewer formed very much unrequited bonds with television personalities—particularly soap opera characters but also news anchors and any regular guest hailing from TV land—the word chosen as Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year (previously) remained a clinical one until recently, having in the past few years entered into popular parlance thanks to social media fandom. The paramour phenomena not just restricted to following, the confessional nature of podcasts and AI chat is also forging confidants in hosts and bots alike—see also. Driven by look ups alone with no judgment passed on the healthiness of such a one-sided connection, as surrogates for actual friends and family, learn more about the term’s provenance that pre-dates publication by centuries at the link up top.

baud rate (12. 883)

Reading about the last remaining telegraph stations in China closing a few months ago, we were excited for another look at the topic from the angle of the challenges overcome to adapt sinographs to telegraphy and more broadly to mechanical reproduction—ironically having invented the printed word but challenged with technology made for alphabetic encoding and decoding.

To overcome or work within the conventions of Morse code, the four-corner system (四角號碼檢字法) was put in place for characters based on cardinal shapes as an ununqiue identifier but winnowing it down (0000—9999) to a contextual range of possibilities that operators could interpret and pass along. This shape-based method (with help of gun-boat diplomacy and special entrepôts) declined with the reliance on telegrams but has seen a revival in numerical texting shorthand to limit the range of possibilities with natural word order. Much more from Language Log at the link above.

book and backmasking (12 .882)

Calling to mind this wonderfully laugh out loud and still arguably the only legitimate use of LinkedIn that matches the names of CV-holders to pop songs, Futility Closet directs us to an earlier effort scouring the telephone directory of Toronto’s 1977 white-pages choosing entries to approximate the lyrics to nursery rhymes (as published later in anthology of recreational linguistics and onomastics). One example cobbling together of the Roud Folk Song #19626 of disputed historical meaning:

Merrie Merry Quaint Caunt Ririe
Howe Dussiaulme Garden Groh
Witt Silver Belson Cockell Schells
And Pretty Mayes Allin Arro

Whist predating Mary Tudor and Mary Queen of Scots, despite popular associations, scholars believe the English traditional poem is an allegory for Catholicism with pretty maids representing nuns, the sanctus bells and the cockleshells as the pilgrimage badges of the Way of St James. Click through at the link above for more examples plus a 1963 television show that assembled a live studio audience to the tune “Inda Good Old Somerstein.”

synchronoptica

one year ago: the first human-non-human organ transplant (with synchronopticæ) plus polls open for the OED Word of the Year

thirteen years ago: alternate search engines, International Day of Philosophy plus more flea market finds

fourteen years ago: the myth of unlimited growth 

sixteen years ago: a visit to Coburg 

give into the vibes (12. 866)

Coined this February by OpenAI Andrej Karpathy as a machine-aided solution for those wanting to create a bespoke programme yet never learned the basics of coding—which admitted on a certain level is the sort of in-group jargon that keeps the out-group out but are also instructions that computers understand—allowing users to become transcendental and forget that the underlying code even exists, vibe coding was selected by Collins Dictionary as their WotY for 2025—see previously. As with other forms of rocket-surgery, going with one’s untempered intuition and trusting the machine does not always achieve the desired outcome and the requester would not have the skills to edit or debug something that came close. Other terms on the shortlist included Henry, an acronym for “high-earner, yet not rich,” micro-retirement for a work sabbatical, aura farming, clankers and broligarcy.

9x9 (12. 865)

amor fati: Fredrich Nietzsche’s philosophy (previously) of passing on engagement can break the cycle of polarisation without becoming disengaged and nihilistic 

the memes of production: the internet reacts to Zohran Mamdani’s mayorial win in New York City  

unpaving paradise: an urban greening game to optimise replacing parking spaces in Berlin with trees  

№: why number is English is abbreviated n-o 

no springs: a hypnotic video of manufacturing robots politely waiting their turn in the assembly process—see also  

alive internet theory: a seance with the vibrant web and all its expressive artefacts against the countervailing argument it has become overrun by bots—see also—via Waxy 

gathering wool: online apparel retailers in China employ oversized hangtags to curb high return rates  

hatch act violation: US federal judge rules administration overstepped its bounds by inserting partisan blaming into furloughed government employees’ out-of-office autoreplies  

bleak outlook: astronomical survey deposits galaxy could be riddled with the artefacts of long dead alien civilisations that could avoid destroying themselves—we suppose that depends on what sort of religion they develop—see also, see previously—via MetaFilter

synchronoptica

one year ago: a monument to the Armenian diaspora (with synchronopticæ), the Carrington count, backstage customs plus US presidential numbering

fourteen years ago: food and drink prohibited plus Inventors’ Day

rare, obc. (12. 861)

Futility Closet directs our attention to a volume first published in 1974, with multiple reprintings over the decades of some eighty thousand entries of preposterous and over-specialised English nonce words—though uncommonly, sometimes only once (see above) glossed in accessible corpora, that is at least outside the fandom of committed logophilia—compiled single-handedly by one Josefa Heifetz Byrne. The author was also a renowned concert pianist, taking her married name from her husband Robert Byrne, an expert pool player and instructor of billiards as well as a prolific humour columnist and civil engineer.  The book covers some of our old favourites, like ucalegon and anatiferous (an arguably useless word), as well as a treasury of terms new to us like foraminous, full of holes (see previously here and here), the Scots word groak for to look fixed at a party eating in anticipation of receiving food, anemocracy, a metaphorical term for governed by the changing winds and quaquaversal, going off in all directions. Click through at the link up top to check out a copy from the Internet Archive and adopt something you see that needs returning to common-parlance.

13x13 (12. 845)

norwalk platform: architect Jackie Ferrara ends her life, aged 95  

antedating: lexicographers talks lexicography through canonical form  

spoiler alert—some counties pronounce it as rhyming with stone: further exploration on British toponymy

index of multiple deprivation: UK office of government statistics releases its deciles of the most under-served  

willy and the poor boys: Creedance Clearwater Revival (previously) released their third studio album on this day in 1969 

loss-leader: an image editing tool on par with Adobe makes itself freely available to appeal to non-professionals  

holy war: Trump readies troops for action in Nigeria to protect Christian popular despite a paucity of evidence for persecution 

perfectly al dente: a research roundup of scientific investigations nearly overlooked 

body horror: biopolitics, the body politic and David Cronenberg  

police brutality: Sting and company release their debut album Outlandos on this day in 1978 

county stripes: visualising US demographics and distribution—see also 

anthimeria: the verbification of mystery writers—see previously 

first woman of fluxus: Alison Knowles passes away, aged 92—see more, see also

c’est l’halloween (12. 841)

Reported by Stop Podcasting Yourself’s Dave Shumka, we learn about the greatest French language seasonal song ever, written by language immersion teacher Matt Maxwell in Halifax to teach his young pupils about the then mostly exclusively Anglophone tradition and acquire some vocabulary in a fun way. Notwithstanding thematic and lyrical similarities to the Jack Skellington number from The Nightmare Before Christmas, a more modern carol but still losing out in terms of popularity—according to recent and perennial polling to Monster Mash among Americans at least (like “Dominick the Donkey” for the latter holiday), it’s still of a shouty banger. Although a word of foreign origin, the Office Québécois de la Langue Française still prescribes adding an article which leads to elision and a silent h.

neurodiversity (12. 835)

Whilst the term seemingly entered popular parlance with the COVID lockdown and gradual reemergence addressing the range of ways that people cope and adjust, neurodivergence originated in the late 1990s coined by then high school student Kassiane Asasumasu who went on to become a champion for autism rights and recognition, using in her AOL email signature line in forums for the autistic community. Not a clinical term, though often mistaken for one—as it also conflated with the title word, like the hapa-haole descriptor applied, unbidden, to her own multiethnic heritage that was imposed by Christian missionaries in Hawaiʻi uncomfortable with all the people who did not fit into their categories—it filled a lacuna that the above understanding of being within spectrum of dominant norms fell short of addressing, including those who deviated from accepted social bounds. Advocating for acceptance and pushing back on the idea that some outsiders have that such populations need to be readjusted, Asasumasu also later came up with the phrase caregiver benevolence to reframe best-intentions.

11x11 (12. 833)

krasnaya polyana: luxury Black Sea ski resort under development linked to Aleksandr Lukashenko—the town makes a good name for the Russian asset in the White House 

bride of frankenstein: tour guide uncovers unknown grave of silver screen legend and horror icon Elsa Lanchester decades after her death 

parlour of prestidigitation: a visit to Hollywood’s Magic Castle in 1978 with tour guide Orson Welles  

kunstformen der natur: the discovery of microscopic marine life informed one of the most influential illustrated books published in the work of Ernst Haeckel  

heptarchy: the realm of the Anglo-Saxons could have just as easily turned out being called Sexland  

🌀:potentially unprecedented in terms of strength and destruction, Hurricane Melissa makes landfall on Cuba and Jamaica  

open house: the real estate industry has entered the era of AI slop for virtual tours

turing patterns: the hypothetical evolutionary mechanism that might explain the emergence of complex geometries in Nature 

fiend without a face: a 1958 scifi horror feature 

if you are a werewolf—and very likely you may be—for lots of people are without knowing: a comedy of manners about a coven of witches is considered a classic of early feminist writing 

neunundneunzig luftballons: Lithuanian forces shoot down dozens of balloons invading their airspace dispatched by Belarus

7x7 (12. 816)

east wing: for a nation that’s precious about conserving its precious little history, there’s not much outcry over Trump’s extensive remodel of the People’s House—see more  

west bank: US vice president and secretary of state angry over a bill advanced in the Knesset to annex the larger of the two Palestinian territories against Trump’s twenty-point plan  

parallax view: a glasses-free three-dimensional mapping demonstration 

fairytale of new york: a tribute to the recently departed Alfa-Betty Olson and her Sin City Fables  

schleicher’s pie: revisiting the constructed Proto Indo-European apologue—see previously  

yerkökü və çubuq: Russo-American summit in Budapest is cancelled and a raft of new sanctions are imposed on Moscow 

arc de trump: plans drawn up for a triumphal arch over the Potomac

7x7 (12. 789)

snaggletoothed landfill goblins: a journey into the heart of the Pop Mart economy—via Web Curios  

battle-rattle: a Wikipedia-style directory on camouflage—via ibīdem   

urgent fury: revisiting Grenada and arguably the only modern foreign war that the US ever won  

lahaina noon: twice annually objects in the between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn lose their shadows  

my life of the ptsd list: Kathy Griffin—don’t call it a come back—via MetaFilter  

yclept: a gloss on the Old English term that is still in common-parlance—via Strange Company

the niña, the pinta and the santa maría: Trump issues a declaration ahead of the US federal holiday to re-enshrine the myth of Columbus’ discover and the settlers’ conquest   

spreekwoorden (12. 788)

Having a passing familiarity with how the artwork of Pieter Bruegel the Elder could be read as an illustrated catalogue of Flemish proverbs and idioms to puzzle out, we appreciated this bit of art history presented,
via Web Curios, as an interactive canvas to explore each interpretation of the 1559 painting originally titled The Blue Cloak for the striking bit of contrast in the lower middle of the ensemble with the Max Rebo-looking figure representing a cuckold—Zij hangt haar man de blauwe huik, literally another proverb of pulling the wool over his eyes to hide her deception and faithlessness, see above. There are a hundred or so to parse and figure out one’s native equivalent.

9x9 (12. 784)

readme.txt: an experiment to assess whether AI can parse the drastic downfall of the United States and pen near-term speculative fiction that forecasts the next four years based on the daily news cycle—via Web Curios  

citation needed: famous cognitive truisms that fail replication 

take the a-train: a data-driven tribute to the New York City subway  

peso convertible: despite US government shutdown impasse and soaring inflation, the US is bailing out the Argentinian economy  

out of all the clergy, why did ice target the hot priest: minister scoured with pepper ball ammunition rebukes US administration’s narrative about lawlessness in Chicago  

dead reckoning: quantum sensing of the magnetic field of the Earth’s core could prove to be a more reliable method of aerial navigation in the age of GPS spoofing and jamming, see also—Via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest  

rezagado: Trump suggests ejecting Spain from NATO for their failure to show commitment snail’s pace: a sculptural statement on the frenetic everyday  

coo-coo-ca-choo: birds across all species seem to understand the universal cry of warning of predatory nesters  

babystar: a cautionary influencer tale with echos of The Truman Show