The FAKE words in the dictionary

[@BritishBeachcomber]

My favourite dictionary definition has got to be in Chambers... *mist: a light fog* and *fog: a heavy mist.* A never ending loop.

[@SpiritmanProductions]

Like the computing glossary that literally had "Endless Loop - see Loop, Endless" and ... you know the rest. ;-)

[@gcewing]

recursion: see recursion

[@hanstheexplorer]

@@gcewingLoop: See loop.

[@yahccs1]

It's a good thing it wasn't a formula on Excel, it would object and pop up an error box "circular reference warning"!

[@kindnessfirst9670]

Like my being severely dyslexic and told to look up in a dictionary the correct spelling of words. If I can't spell a word how can I find it in a dictionary in the first place?

[@grahamrankin4725]

As an academic who is required to publish a "syllabus" which many students immediately lose, I enjoyed learning it was a ghost word.

[@silvertbird1]

Seemingly appropriately, given how many syllabi (Cicero, forgive me) so spook the students.

[@maikehudson333]

IKR?

[@quakxy_dukx]

@@silvertbird1 since it’s supposedly Greek, should it not be syllaboi?

[@zorkwhouse8125]

Similarly, going through all levels of college and being handed a syllabus (often written on the sheet or at the very least called it such out loud as it was handed out) for each class at the beginning of the semester does make this absolutely hilarious. Doubly, with the stuffy, though I guess grammatically correct were it an actual word, sounding plural version as well. :-)

[@pyropulseIXXI]

Your mom is an academic

[@TheGreatRoja]

"Ampersand" is a bit of a ghost word as well. The symbol "&" was originally called "per-se and" (i.e. literally 'and'), and it was included at the end of the alphabet as the twenty-seventh letter. School children, rushing through their recitals of the alphabet, would run the last few letters together as "X, Y, Z and-per-se-and" much like they do today with "H I J K elemeno P". It's also interesting to note that the "&" symbol itself is actually the latin word "et", with the "e" and "t" merged together into a single symbol.

[@JustinShaedo]

I found this fascinating. Then my housemates found it fascinating too :D

[@Kualinar]

I prefer the French name of that character : «éperluette» = & Also, the French name for @ is «arobas». Not new at all. It was used in the medieval times to address mail to a specific person in some place. Initially a monk in a monastery, then, expanded to peoples in a village : Mail to [e-mail]. Does that look familiar ?

[@MommyOfZoeAndLiam]

Cool! How long ago was that dropped from inclusion in the English alphabet?

[@TheGreatRoja]

@@MommyOfZoeAndLiam I think it was within the last one or two hundred years

[@ValkyRiver]

I thought that the ampersand was used by the French physicist Ampere...

[@sixbirdsinatrenchcoat]

In Danish dictionary circles, the term “penguin words” refers to commonly used words that made it into the dictionary far too late because they were just … forgotten. The word “penguin” was not in the dictionary until 1986.

[@pashakdescilly7517]

The word 'penguin' itself has amusing origins. An early Antarctic exploration ship had some Welsh sailors. They saw a weird bird swimming / flying at speed under water, and one exclaimed 'Pen gwin' - 'pen' is Welsh for 'head', 'gwin' is Welsh for 'white'. Those funny birds flying under water had white heads.

[@eekee6034]

@@pashakdescilly7517 Sooo... why was it originally the name of the great auk, an arctic bird? :) And... um, I simply must ask, what penguin has a white head?

[@HeatherMyfanwyTylerGreey]

@@eekee6034 When a penguin is swimming it is the white face you see through the waves at a distance, not the black. Therefore the sailors saw the 'white' heads first.

[@lapatron555]

​@@HeatherMyfanwyTylerGreey unfortunately you are mistaken about this source! It is probably a false cognate because the Great Auk, (Pinguinus impennis, 1791) was named much earlier than antarctic exploration in Europe (from the latin pinguis meaning plump and other romance language names for the bird) and later penguins were named after the Great Auk because of their similar appearance.

[@indowneastmaine]

Back in the 80s I used to call danish pastries ‘penguins’, so that makes sense.

[@deanmeservy1319]

Decades ago I worked as a musician and arranger for an entertainment company. The tall amplifiers that we would take on tour had protective plastic shell covers attached with spring-loaded fasteners that were attached or released by pulling on a ring and twisting. One day a colleague said, "You know what these are called? Cows!" He pointed to a red plastic label, the kind made with an old label gun, that said "To release turn cow." For nearly three years we called those things "cows" around the studio and shared this "knowledge" with venue crews up and down the American west coast. Then one day I took a closer look at that label and realized that the somewhat faded "o" was in fact a weakly pressed second "c." What the label really said was "TO RELEASE TURN CCW" -- counterclockwise.

[@RedRouge-j4j]

I was told that those beer mats that you fold and put und table legs to stablise a four legged table - were called a "ludlow" . I have no idea if it was genuine, but I spread the word often, why not? I assumed it originated in the quaint UK town of Ludlow - in England near mid Wales.

[@stephenbaker7079]

We say 'anti-clockwise' in England!

[@jessicapatton2688]

Lol! Good story. I wonder how far your wrong word traveled before someone noticed.

[@InventorZahran]

To be fair, "cow" is one letter off from cowl, which does mean a protective cover.

[@stegra5960]

The place name Agloe, in NY State, was used as a copyright trap by map makers who felt certain they had a claim against a rival when it appeared on another map. It turned out that someone had opened a shop in that location and looked on the map for help in finding an appropriate name. They opened Agloe General Stores and the place became real. Edited: Agloe, not Algoe

[@ragnkja]

It’s actually Agloe, and it’s an anagram of the initials of the cartographers who made it up, Otto G. Lindberg and Ernest Alpers.

[@mattmexor2882]

Not sure the veracity of this, but I heard that the mapmaker attempted to sue someone who had included Agloe on their maps and they lost the case, owing to the existence of the business.

[@gauharjamal8791]

Mission failed successfully

[@stegra5960]

@@mattmexor2882 I believe Esso had acquired the rights to the map and began the legal process but quickly dropped the case when rival enlightened them as to the situation.

[@aimeepotts2137]

The book "The Cartographers" is all about Agloe, NY. It was really interesting.

[@merman1974]

I can't help but be reminded of the Blackadder the Third episode featuring the late Robbie Coltrane as Samuel Johnson, and Blackadder trying to confuse him with made-up words. And also the Victoria Coren series Balderdash & Piffle, which looked into the origin and use of words. I offer you my contrafibularities on another excellent episode.

[@siggimund]

I'm anaspeptic, phrasmotic, even compunctuous to have ever heard of such a pericombobulation. 😁

[@rogink]

Yes, I was hoping there would be an RIP for the late great Mr Coltrane.

[@mcolville]

Rowan Atkinson was also on a sketch comedy show called Not The Nine O'clock News which featured a sketch in which he played a gorilla, and they used the term "flange" for the collective noun. A flange of gorillas. Which then entered the actual scientific lexicon for a while.

[@RobWords]

I remember Balderdash and Piffle. Loved it. Thanks for the comment.

[@RobWords]

I'm stealing this for my video about collective nouns. Thanks.

[@dzymslizzy3641]

LOL...the tale of "DORD" reminds me of a supposedly true story I read WAY back when I was in high school...(that would be over 50 years ago...)! There was a young military recruit whose parents, for some unknown reason, had given him only initials as his first and middle name. "B. N. Jones." At the recruiting station, the officer filling out the forms wrote "B (only), N (only) Jones." After a some time had passed, at mail call, the sergeant called out mail for "Bonly Nonly Jones." !!!

[@robomonkey6219]

I once knew a man who said he never had a middle name until the army gave him one: Nmi. The recruiter had filled out the forms with nmi to indicate "no middle initial".

[@hanstheexplorer]

D or d!

[@ericwilner1403]

I heard that story with the name being Ronly Bonly Smith, and it was the name on a credit card.... And I thought "DorD" was Dungeons or Dragons (take your pick; we're on a budget).

[@mal2ksc]

Are you sure you didn't hear that story from Harry Sonly Truman?

[@bengilkes7676]

I researched my ancestry and found that one of my female ancestors was on the census with the same surname as myself, but her five children were listed as having the surname "aswell".

[@Mortimer50145]

The best transcription error that ive seen, countless times, is in British censuses when doing family history research. In rural areas a lot of people are listed, in modern transcriptions, as "daisy farmer" instead of "dairy farmer" - a combination of misreading handwriting and ignorance of "country ways".

[@mrcroob8563]

I doubt anyone thinks they're daisy farmers...

[@Mortimer50145]

@@mrcroob8563 It is standard advice given to newcomers to the census, when doing family history research, that what is often transcribed as "daisy farmer" is almost always "dairy farmer". It's poor editing that someone hasn't done a global replace.

[@revjohnlee]

"Morse" may be a mistake in relation to nurses but it IS a real word. In some formal circumstances, clergy sometimes wear a vestment called a cope. Anyone else would say, "cape". The morse is the name of the metal clasp just under the neck that holds it closed. In some churches, bishops will have distinctive morses different than the deacons and presbyters.

[@mcloughlinguy4127]

morse code

[@clairebpbutler2789]

It also made me wonder about "remorse" (as in, to 'morse' again) although I'm sure that's not how that word works.

[@molybdomancer195]

Morse is also a rare word for walrus.

[@Milamberinx]

@@clairebpbutler2789 hah, that's funny. If every re- word were to be doing something again it would make for some very funny interpretations. Is a 'request' a second 'quest'? Perhaps when I 'remember' I'm bringing back a former 'member'.

[@SenselessUsername]

I'm not underwhelmed by this thread as there's plenty good arguments nor am I overwhelmed by the masses of good points --- so, I'm... whelmed.

[@braintalk9664]

Thank you for the great content! In Italian we have a famous ghost word still used to this day: "busillis". Originally a misreading from a scribe (circa 1100) of the word phrase "in diebus illis". We still use it to this day (including in famous literature) to talk about, variously, a "confusing issue", "nonsense" and also "complex issue". 😊😊

[@lsittig]

But how can you have remorse unless you have first felt morse? (Sorry, I’m having way too much fun with this 😅)

[@clairebpbutler2789]

My thought exactly 😂

[@leefisher6366]

I think that is a very ept comment.

[@larsjonasson2959]

In French you can feel a "morsure" (bite). Remorse is simply feeling the bite again.

[@bryanjackson8917]

How can you go "back" unless you first go "forth"? How can you "relax" unless you first "lax"? How can you "return" unless you first "turn"?

[@edinacloud5968]

@@leefisher6366 is that the opposite of inept?

[@Dr3wBaby810]

As a modern American English lyricist, finding your page is like a kid in a candy store. Thanks for all this content, now I'll be busy for a while absorbing it all😂

[@marienbad2]

That D or d had me laughing out loud fr! Honestly, I didn't even see it until Rob showed it. Now we expect no esquivalience from Mr Words going forwards! Another great video, love this channel!

[@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648]

And here I was going to ask That Chemist what the dordiest substance is.

[@taraking6472]

And it took 5 years to catch it.

[@human7491]

@@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648 dordest*

[@derbazi257]

When i saw this I was for the first time in my life grateful we use as many Greek letters in science as we do

[@bryanjackson8917]

Only a dork would think that "dord" was a real word.

[@robertallen4774]

"Dord" really is a word, though whether it's English or not depends on your definition of an English word. It comes from the Irish Gaelic and means a bronze battle trumpet from the Bronze Age. A few dords have been found by archaeologists, and musical experts speculate on how it was played

[@borderlands6606]

For a long time, I read the word "com" in an antique song book. As it was old, I assumed the word had fallen into disuse. It turned out the word was "corn" in an old-fashioned type face that blurred the letters together. Strangely as I write this I have a sense of deja vu, as though I've explained this before in a dream. Most odd, as I have never related this to anyone previously.

[@rhiannon.de.rohan-thomas]

Maybe the deja vu was your conscious mind connecting with a subconscious hive mind of all the other people who have done this. 👻 Sometimes when I write too fast, this accidentally happens; my 'rn' will look like 'm' & my 'cl' will look like 'd' etc.

[@ericpaul4575]

Ah good old keming.

[@b.a.erlebacher1139]

Programs that convert images of text into text have a lot of trouble with r n -> m in particular.

[@bryanjackson8917]

The original spelling of "corn" was actually "corm", so perhaps someone just left out the "r".

[@h00db01i]

there's a strange cult I've seen on facebook where people replace "r" with "n" and "n" with "m". I believe it's called "lomgposting"

[@prakkari]

In Iceland we combine two or three words into one. If written separately the sentence often makes no sense. For example if you say hairbrush, the emphasis is on brush as the object and the first part tells you what kind of brush it is. Separately these are just the words hair and brush like if you are listing those things without the comma in between. Orangepeel is a specified thing. A type of peel. Orange peel are two separate things you have to name in the right order in English to make sense, but you could just as well be saying peel orange. To complicate there is a thing called orange peel oil. In Icelandic it would be one word with the emphasis on oil. We are talking about a certain type of oil, not an orange nor a peel.

[@hya2in8]

yeah the english custom of writing these things separately was imposed by the french. when it happens in dutch they call it the english sickness

[@PalKrammer]

I’m glad you mentioned the fake placenames used by cartographers - I’ve found a few of them on maps. I like the nouncombining of Richard Jodrell - that certainly makes English more of a funlanguage.

[@bungaIowbill]

the inconsistency in compound words is so confusing. like, why is it a teaspoon and a tea cup? from now, I am a staunch Jodrellian -- compoundwords shall be spaceless! Infact,abolishspacesalltogether!Lettherebeunityamongallwords

[@twincast2005]

I actively hate the English language pretending in arbitrary spellings that it grammatically forms more specific nouns the French way instead of the German way. "It looks nicer," is even less of a valid reason (and I've several peeves with German on that basis - V, EI, ST, SP, a bunch of nonsense). Also, due to how little inflection is left in English, spaces between parts of a noun cause much more confusion ("Is it a verb or not?") than any long compound ever could (and the latter can be solved with dashes).

[@riverAmazonNZ]

@@bungaIowbill have you heard the story about #susanalbumparty? 😆

[@ragnkja]

@@riverAmazonNZ And that’s one of the reasons why you use CamelCase for hashtags. The other reason is that it enables screen readers to read the tag correctly.

[@geoffroi-le-Hook]

@@ragnkja Thirty years ago we called that WordPerfect case.

[@tunguskalumberjack9987]

The “foupe” mistake could have another impact on modern English (or American English) slang. If “soupe” was the intended word, and meant accelerating impetuously, it is probably the source of the term “souped-up”, meaning mechanically enhanced to go faster. Great channel! I’ve just finished watching three of your videos in a row, and subscribed immediately. 👍🏻

[@ericcsuf]

Well "foupe" seemed pretty normal to me. We used to use it when we were joking around and used a spoonerism for "fell swoop". "He knocked them down in one swell foop." Funny that "swoop" was involved in your presentation as well. Entertaining and instructive video as usual. Thanks.

[@driverjayne]

Swell foop is the title of a piers Anthony book

[@claydenlinger2043]

I love spoonerisms. As someone who grew up in Cipp Tity - I mean Tipp City, Ohio, I've had a lifetime obsession with them.

[@LemoUtan]

I suppose there's a souped-up motor for the impetuous driver

[@rahb1]

People who say "foul swoop" make me want to knock them down in one fell swoop! (I really *love* 'swell foop' though!)

[@pvp6077]

@@driverjayne i read that book as a kid and immediately thought of it when he started saying "foupe"

[@brooktu4249]

I only found it a month or so ago but I have come to love this quirky little channel. There have been times in which I am absolutely enthralled with the wacky information Rob has to share. Love it 👏

[@Zobeid]

I have an original Dord dictionary - Webster's New Second Edition Unabridged with Reference History - and I love it. I wish they still made encyclopedic dictionaries like this.

[@jonimaricruz1692]

I can’t even imagine how difficult an editor’s job must have been when all manuscripts were handwritten. Love your channel. Take care! 🫶

[@dmgroberts5471]

Not only that, but there were no standardized spellings until after the printing press was invented, so in addition to editing by hand, you also need to ask people if "wrygt" is meant to mean "right," "wight," "write," "rite," or "white."

[@ailaG]

Re Phantomnation, that reminds me of a bit I've heard on a Doctor Who extra from a DVD. A fan who later went on to work on Who was terrified by Terry Nation's daleks, and his aunt then thought that the word for being terrified by them was "terrination".

[@unclecreepy4185]

I remember being told “gravy” and “gravity” shared the same root word, meaning heavy. Gravy was a thick, heavy sauce. Made sense to my young, pre-Google, mind.

[@vahonenko]

I imagine, "gravy" could also have been a word with meaning "full of graves". "He heard once the village he was going to was foggy, spooky and gravy".

[@ofacid3439]

I for some reason always confused gravy with gravel. Like gravy country road

[@hassegreiner9675]

A Dane approach a tweedclad Scotsman and asked if he'd consider his tweed jacket durable? "I don't know", he answered, "I've only worn it for 35 years".

[@bryanjackson8917]

Just like when someone asks me "have you lived here all your life" to which I often reply "I don't know, I haven't died yet!"

[@RSProduxx]

@@bryanjackson8917 In Bavaria and Austria they say something like "Greet God" as a greeting.. I usually answer "well, if I get to see him..."

[@AndrewAMartin]

@@RSProduxx That's a bit of a mis-translation - "Gruesse Gott" doesn't mean the imperative (You) Greet God, but the noun Greetings (from) God.

[@RSProduxx]

@@AndrewAMartin Honestly, it´s a joke, I don´t care about historical or etymological accuracy in that case.

[@AndrewAMartin]

@@RSProduxx but your joke doesn't work if it isn't funny, because it isn't understood. To any German speaker, your answer doesn't make sense and can even be taken as rude. That's nothing to do with etymology or history, it's just bad manners...

[@HasekuraIsuna]

There is something even weirder in Japanase, called "Ghost Characters" (幽霊文字). While you can certainly make up new Japanese compound words or loan words, for a new "word" i.e. kanji character to become legitimate you would need to add it to unicode/JIS as a separate character. Thus, the fact there are characters of unknown meaning registered there, makes them more spooky than the ghost words. 墸 壥 妛 彁 挧 暃 椦 槞 蟐 袮 閠 駲 Most of them are probably misinterpreted of existing kanji (i.e. 妛 → 𡚴 or 彁 → 彊 or 挧 → 栩), or characters used in old names that have been forgotten (駲 probably). ... _but who can know for sure_ ... 👻

[@edderiofer]

Yep, I was just about to mention this myself. I think at one point someone even came up with whimsical definitions of each one as a type of Japanese youkai (ghost/monster), but unfortunately I can't find it now. Annoyingly, 𡚴 is used in the name of some Japanese villages, but 𡚴 wasn't added until years after 妛 was. So for some time, the people living in those villages had no choice but to misspell their village's name when typing it out! Ditto for a number of these other characters.

[@HasekuraIsuna]

@@edderiofer With how rather common 髙 is, it's amazing it was so hard to type on a computer for the longest time.

[@a-bombmori7393]

This reminds me a lot of MissingNo. from Pokemon. When a Pokemon was removed during development they didn't move all the other Pokemon in the list up one to replace it, they instead replaced the spot in the index with junk data, which ended up as MissingNo.. Because of that, all of the several Pokemon that never made it to the finished game have something very similar to a ghost, with what remains of them haunting the game's memory. Certainly adding to the mystique and atmosphere of the situation is the fact that when encountered in certain contexts, MissingNo.'s sprite uses the skeletal sprites of fossil Pokemon or the ghost sprite used by Pokemon in Pokemon tower.

[@eyeofthasky]

or since "Japanese" characters dont exist, they are CHINESE, just put them into a online version of an character dictionary (like ShuoWenJieZi -- the remaining fragment of the original is even unjustly in a Museum in Japan instead of China) which also includes ancient and outdated characters if u wanna know what they mean . . . 壥 > ancient variant of 廛 market place 妛 > ancient variant of 媸 ugly woman 暃 > the color of sunlight 椦 > ancient variant of 棬 with 3~4 pronunciations: 1) "utensil, made of bent wood", a wooden scoop or bowl, 2) the thing u put into the nose of cattle to restrain them, 3) the name of a province in vietnam during han dynasty 4) (i am not able to translate the cryptic ancient chinese there properly sry) etc. ... right now no time to check the other characters, sorry :x

[@jonadabtheunsightly]

@@eyeofthasky There are a handful of uniquely Japanese kanji, (wasei kanji, i.e., characters in Japanese that are made out of radicals in the manner of Chinese characters but never existed in Chinese or Korean). Though there are way more wasei eigo words, i.e., Japanese words _supposedly_ of English origin, that never existed in English.

[@godless266]

Thank you for embiggening my knowledge!

[@davidacus956]

I'm glad you brought up the concept of putting in fake words as a way to spot those copying their work at the end, because I immediately thought of how map makers will do that at the beginning of the video. Honestly, if the people making dictionaries were a bit more quick-witted, I imagine they could've covered half of these blunders by claiming these words were for that purpose

[@sand0khan555]

The word esquivaliance reminds me of a Dutch made up word : epibreren. It means 'being very busy with looking busy to others, while doing nothing.' it was made up by a quite famous writer.

[@ROBYNMARKOW]

That can describe a lot of people while at work..😅

[@nanwuamitofo]

It was coined by Simon Carmiggelt, reporting it was used by a city hall clerk to send citizens away because there case was "epibreren", i.e. in the midst of undergoing some undefined process behind doors. People didn't dare ask what "epibreren" was, for fear of looking stupid.

[@57thorns]

In Swedish creating compound words is perfectly normal. Translating those literally to Swedish all make sense. Writing words apart is often a bad error, such as "rök fritt" meaning "smoke freely" while "rökfritt" mans "smokeless" (or more often "no smoking").

[@hansdorst3005]

Same in Dutch, allthough due to the big exposure to the English language nowadays you very often see words (wrongly) spelled with a space between them.

[@Ned-Ryerson]

@@hansdorst3005 And of course in German, where compound nouns are so well known that they are never mentioned in relation to the other Germanic languages that have them. We even have two words for this very common spelling mistake: "Deppenleerstelle" (idiots' gap) or "Agovis" (a portmanteau of "agora" (space, emptiness) and "divis" (hyphen)).

[@yahccs1]

I know someone who used to wonder who 'Nosmo King' was... this name was written in so many places!

[@larsjonasson2959]

Compound words were much more common in English before the Norman Conquest in 1066. French became the official language until well into the Hundred Years' War and only the poor and illiterate used English, which changed the language a lot.

[@Banom7a]

@@hansdorst3005 ah yes, the Engelse ziekte

[@terryechoes3192]

Planting false words for any reason undermines the validity of the resource and the integrity of those who created it.

[@BariumCobaltNitrog3n]

ChatGPT has entered the chat.

[@charbroiledmonk1033]

Please never run out of words. The erudite commentary and soothing narration tamps down the murderous misanthropic rage inside me.

[@PiousMoltar]

Mm yes words good

[@zombieregime]

Then we all must agree to stop holding each other to such rigid ideals of communication. In order for there to be the infinite words you desire, one cannot chastise another for using a turn of phrase or a twist of word parts to make a new word. If language never evolved we would all still be speaking Latin. Instead of playing the superiority game, let us celebrate word play. You never know what will stick through the ages....

[@envitech02]

@@markdavis7397 😂😂😂 Shakespeare would be proud!

[@soldierside365]

@@markdavis7397 *morse

[@elizabethsohler6516]

@@markdavis7397 Nicely put or classic burn? I'm not sure which.

[@davidhull1481]

I appreciate your low key presentation. So much of KZbin is frenetic, so much of the world is frenetic, it’s refreshing.

[@LilithsOwn303]

I love how you find all those oddities in the English language. I would call you a language detective! Well done so far, keep up the good work! 👍🙂

[@ryandavis7593]

My seventh grade teacher took offense to a word in one of my papers I wrote for her class. I had been very diligent in looking up the words in my mothers unabridged, library dictionary. She had marked me off for spelling errors that I knew to be correct. I looked them up again and made notes of each word marked as incorrect. I then brought this to my mothers attention who double checked my work and approved of it with the only note being that they were archaic spellings but nonetheless technically correct. I then had a plan. I wrote my next assignment with as many archaic words and spellings as possible. I had my mother proofread it and turned it in. My teacher spilled red on my paper from a bucket. A metaphor of corse. She gave me an F which is precisely what I was hoping for. I showed it to my mother who laughed about it. My mother took the day off and confronted my teacher and demanded an explanation. My teacher said that paper was simply incorrect and would not be acceptable. My mother then stated that she had personally proofread it and found it correct. My teacher then said “clearly you are not qualified to proofread your sons work”. My mother laughed and demanded her change my grade. My teacher then stated my mother didn’t have the knowledge or authority to demand such a thing as she clearly didn’t have a very good education. My mother laughed again. She said “I am a technical publications editor for The United States Army and was a graduate of the Officers academy. Needless to say I got an A on my paper. Don’t laugh and say my momma wears combat boots because she could kick your…. I am very proud of my mother and grateful that should stood up for me.

[@roberthudson1959]

Great story, but what in the world is "the Officers academy?" USMA, OCS, or ROTC?

[@ampleparkingTV]

is this a creepy pasta? 🫠

[@KECOG]

I wish I could star this comment! :) ✴✴✴✴✴

[@walterthomas8855]

I had a female highschool teacher of English who used to say: "dictionary habit...". but she marked "thorpe", in my work, with a red question mark. I re-submitted the essay with a photocopy of a dictionary entry of the word "thorpe" and her favorite expression written boldly upon it. She never mentioned dictionaries again! Never got an A on any work after that! I wonder why...!

[@ryandavis7593]

@@walterthomas8855 Lol. Teachers have diaphanous egos.

[@FreakyRufus]

I have a problem with intentionally adding fake words to a dictionary. With maps, people are unlikely to try and get to a place that doesn’t exist. However, people do use dictionaries to learn new words they haven’t heard of previously, and it is entirely possible that they would start to use the fake word for real.

[@dizzydaisy909]

How's that a problem? New words!

[@douglascummings9837]

Ultimately all words are made up, so no problem, imo.

[@PalKrammer]

Is there a word for adding fake words to a dictionary? Well, I’m creating one: wordfaking. Cool.

[@robomonkey6219]

@@PalKrammer I believe the act of creating a word is called "coining"... so creating a fake word might be "counterfeit coining"

[@DyreWolfBC]

In summary, dictionaries musn’t esquivale the perpetuation of fake words.

[@m.a.6478]

One of my favourite ghost words in German is "telligent". I read it first as a German translation of a "User friendly" comic strip from 2005. It meant someone is telligent "if he has a serious lack of gorm" as a description of "gormless".

[@AwesomeAngryBiker]

Rob, you're the "word" equivalent to Brian Cox, absolutely so enjoyable to listen to

[@heronimousbrapson863]

I'm reminded of Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky", with invented adjectives such as "frumious" and "tulgey". Then there are words from American cowboy slang such as "absquatulate" (which I believe means to steal) which were meant to sound as if they were of Latin or Greek origin, but which were inventions.

[@sydhenderson6753]

Some of those made-up words enter the language, like Carroll's "snark" and Samuel Foote's grand Panjandrum (which became a World War II weapon which was a spectacular failure).

[@bryanjackson8917]

@@sydhenderson6753 Speaking of words that came out of WWII, few people know that the word "fubar" is actually an acronym first used in radio communications that stands for Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition (or Repair) and that "snafu" was an acronym that stood for Situation Normal All Fucked Up!

[@lizj5740]

@@bryanjackson8917 Why do you think that few would know the meanings of fubar and snafu? I would think anyone who had been in the military (at least, the U.S. military) would be au fait with those words.

[@bryanjackson8917]

@@lizj5740 Military? Perhaps. Civilian? Very rare.

[@nekotranslates]

@@bryanjackson8917 Gamer Geeks that play CoD and Battlefield be like: Yeah yeah, we are fubar

[@A_Baguette_]

The funny thing with "dord "is that I've only seen D used in high school. In post-secondary physics and chemistry, I've seen both ρ(rho) and λ(lambda) used in different cases

[@JulieWallis1963]

Yeah! F@cking hysterical. Always has me rolling on the floor laughing.

[@yahccs1]

It doesn't work in lower case letters. No difference between d and d. Density has always been ρ(rho) to me, usually with subscripts after it to say what it's the density of. λ(lambda) is usually wavelength, sometimes angle, perhaps. What about "P or p" for pressure or "M or m" for mass, (or magnitude of stars)? I think it would have made more sense if it had been written with the capital letter 2nd: p or P, d or D, m or M, then they are less likely to be mis-read as one word. t or T for time, T is also temperature.

[@A_Baguette_]

@@yahccs1 Totally agree. I only have seen λ(lambda) used once for density, it was for linear density which was necessary when calculating center of mass

[@bryanjackson8917]

Only a dork would think that "dord" was a real word.

[@silkwesir1444]

Remember that it was a long time ago. Such conventions tend to change over time.

[@gildedpeahen876]

I find it comforting that even Samuel Johnson, way back in the eighteenth century… looked at old timey writing and thought the “s” looked like an “f”!

[@lisam5744]

I really enjoyed your videos...I love how you make learning about why things are spelled/pronounced the way they are fun.

[@sherylbegby]

While looking up "esquivalience" I discovered "Mountweasel" and sundry other types of fictitious entries/words. Great topic. I wondered if you would discuss the story of "floccinaucinihilipilification", but no matter. Great series!

[@sonyasandoval1477]

I had read somewhere that the word "hoodlum" came about as the result of a misspelling. It supposedly came from the surname "Muldoon", which was then reversed to "Noodlum". Someone mistook the "n" for an "h", and the rest is history.

[@molybdomancer195]

The OED says the origin of hoodlum is lost but many stories have arisen trying to explain it.

[@ontheroad5317]

I’ll bet that “nudloom” became “hoodlum” for the same reason a napron became an apron. A noodlum became an ‘oodlum.

[@fduranthesee]

@@ontheroad5317 sounds like what's happening right now to "another" "that's another story" became "that's a whole 'nother story"

[@bryanjackson8917]

Or perhaps you should say, "the rest is nistory"!

[@bryanjackson8917]

@@fduranthesee Actually, the word "nother" (which can also be spelled as "'nother" with a glottal stop at the beginning) is a legitimate word in the dictionary, often used in informal speech or prose, and comes from the word "other", not "another". How that came to be is, of course, a whole 'nother story.

[@joshuakurtenbach1972]

Great video! Unrelated, but if you are looking for topics, it might be interesting to look at the etymology behind "farm animal words" like words differentiating between sexes of different farm animals, whether they are intact or not, etc. There are quite a few of them, obviously stemming from an agricultural heritage.

[@dougbaker7897]

Grané is hilarious! Every one of these is hilarious. Thank you for these videos!

[@alessandropizzotti932]

On a parallel topic, you might want to make a video about the word mondegreen and mondegreens in general, I'm sure it would be interesting.

[@jthev]

Your words on words are always delightful, even when they are "spooky." Such tricks are not limited to dictionaries, whether inadvertently or purposely included. In my distant past I did typesetting for an appraisers' association. Part of their income was generated by selling mailing lists aimed at the various genre appraised. In order to spot illegal usage of address information garnered from its membership directory, some people listed as experts in various fields were shills. I was a book "expert." My "job" was to inform the association when I received any mailings regarding book appraising. They could compare the sender's information with known purchasers of their mailing lists, looking for illegal users of the information. The "book appraiser" was not too much of a stretch, as I did, and still do, collect books by one particular author, having several hundred various American editions of his 81 published titles. So I do know something about books, though it's a very specialized niche.

[@tiny_gabi_]

I would love to know more about words in the English language that have completely disappeared from use in VERY recent history (kind of like talking to gen z about fax machines). For example I recently saw a menu from the 1960s spelt ‘menue’. I also found out that until recently female ushers would be called ‘usherettes’ which I find completely mind blowing. Might be a bit niche but I just find the sudden death of words/ spellings, and the reasons why they die, really interesting!

[@patrickmurphy3048]

There are many languages that are dying when their last speakers die. Let us take some of their nicest words and adopt them into English as a lifeboat, to preserve them.

[@viddork]

Wait until you find out what the Disney artists called the female centaurs in _Fantasia._

[@ragnkja]

@@viddork Presumably either centaurides or centauresses, since those are the classical terms.

[@Mercurio-Morat-Goes-Bughunting]

I love these ghost words. They remind me that I may not necessarily have complete monopoly over my epic spleling!

[@bryanjackson8917]

Don't worry too much about it, as one of the most commonly misspelled words is "misspell".

[@joeharris2659]

The ‘Dord’ example reminds me of the case of ‘rectal earache’ recounted in ‘Medication Errors: Causes and Prevention’. A doctor prescribed ear drops to be administered to the patient’s right ear, but this got abbreviated to ‘R EAR’ in the notes and the ear drops ended up being applied in completely the wrong location…

[@PopeLando]

Talk of the long S in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, a programme on BBC Four about the Dictionary accidentally revealed an unintentionally hysterical entry in the original 1755 edition. The camera was focused on a word lower down, but up above, the entry for "Pettitoes: _n_ . The feet of a [long S]ucking pig."

[@sandradermark8463]

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 LMFAO

[@MarcVL1234]

"They cracked the... morse code, if you will." Beautiful, it had to be done. Thank you for all that I continue to learn from your videos!

[@ender5312]

-..- -.-. -.. ..-

[@coasterblocks3420]

The clock is running out, but a video on the origin of actual ghostly, ghoulish and spooky words would be both timely and phantasmagorical.

[@richardnedbalek1968]

Yes, Rob, please! 🎃

[@crusaderACR]

Or rather... timely and _phantomnational_

[@richardtofield5210]

i think 'gibberish' comes from shakespeare where he describes ghosts of dead romans who 'squeak and gibber'

[@Cadfael007]

In Germany we have a member of parliament (Bundestag) who does not exist! His name is Jakob Maria Mierscheid (look Wikipedia). His birthdays are celebrated. The Stone Louse also doesn't exist but it has its own cage in the zoo of Dortmund and has appeared in the clinical dictionary "Pschyrembel" ("Bible" for medicine and doctors) since 1983.

[@ThunderhawkVeronicaLazerwolf]

The whole Latin to German / Caesar to Kaiser transition would be fun to learn!

[@reinhardtreinsch2923]

Well in Latin "C" is spoken like a "K" in English. And the rest is hardly changed anyway 😁

[@andrewgamblin7264]

I seem to recall reading somewhere that the word "quiz" was invented specifically to win a prize for getting a made-up word into a dictionary (or it might have been into a newspaper article). I'm enjoying the videos - keep up the good work, Rob

[@peterschaffter826]

Ghost or not, esquivalience just got added to my list of indispensable words. How did I ever manage without it? Thanks, Rob.

[@DyreWolfBC]

I was also thinking I rather liked esquivalience as well. Dictionaries shouldn’t esquivale by allowing this to remain a ghost word.

[@bryanjackson8917]

The funny thing is, I have occasionally heard the word "esquivalience" used in more formal settings, and if you ask what that means you will usually be told to "look it up in a dictionary" where, of course, it doesn't exist (well not as a legitimate word anyways). Even funnier still is that many online dictionaries have unwittingly picked it up as if were really a legitimate word!

[@drewdabbs418]

Surely it exists as a word. Just because it has an unconventional creation doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

[@vahonenko]

I imagine, "gravy" could also have been a word with meaning "full of graves". "He heard once the village he was going to was foggy, spooky and gravy".

[@thevalarauka101]

gravey more likely?

[@Draber2b]

I've seen gravy used a whole lot of times. Especially in books. And it normally donates a grave-like mood/setting...

[@cadenceclearwater4340]

You could, therefore, legitimately play a false word in Scrabble, because it's in their dictionary. Cool 😎

[@RichM3000]

William Shakespeare would have been the best ever Scrabble player. His made-up words are actual words.

[@cadenceclearwater4340]

@@RichM3000 Scrabble, freestyle 😎

[@Oturan20]

@@RichM3000 He'd have competition from F. Scotts Fitzgerald whose made-up words are also actual words.

[@RichM3000]

@@Oturan20 True

[@stevetournay6103]

My dad was forever trying that. Particularly spurious extensions. I remember him trying to sneak "reoozers" in, being multiple items that ooze more than once...🙄

[@bungalowjuice7225]

This video was very pickadious. Pollinne Rob!

[@frankhainke7442]

Sometimes non existing words are able to cross the boundaries into the world of the existing words. In German we have the word Lappalie, wich was invented by students some hundred years ago. It comes from the word Läppchen and was used so frequently that it is now use as if it where a synonym to Kleinigkeit.

[@kevbee8325]

I remember Robbie Coltrane portraying Dr Samuel Johnson in Blackadder.

[@pwblackmore]

As usual, Rob, you serve up a delightful melange, olio and/or plain 'soupe' of humour and information. Thankyou for brightening my morning, eh ... ... no, that's not a question, 'eh' is the Canadian shibboleth

[@RobWords]

And a charming shibboleth it is!

[@molybdomancer195]

The OED has several of these ghost words in it but usually indicates their status. A good clue is that they don’t (probably can’t) give any examples of usage outside of other dictionaries

[@vivianjahncke2140]

This isn't a dictionary definition but pyggy was a type of clay used to make containers and someone interpreted "pyggy bank" as piggy bank and made a pig shaped coin holder

[@ShadowDrakken]

Paper towns and intentional ghost words undermine a source's reputation. Those sources are supposed to be reliable and trustworthy, but by putting in intentionally false information, it brings into question all of their information.

[@jayartz8562]

I am anaspeptic, phrasmodic, even compunctious that ghost words have caused such pericombobulation.

[@CCoburn3]

Rob, here's a video idea. Words with both countable and uncountable plurals. Fish, deer, alcohol, etc.

[@Elesario]

I'm reminded of the comedy sketch Gerald the Gorilla (from Not the Nine O'Clock News) and they used the word Flange to refer to a group of gorillas, however this wasn't the correct word (troop or band is accepted); but since then it has been picked up in the scientific literature and is now a valid way to refer to a group of gorillas. Learnt this on QI.

[@stonestreaker]

Even stranger is the fact that it's a flange of baboons, not gorillas.

[@BlueberryDragon13]

As a English learner, I learned with this video that ‘syllabus’ and ‘syllable’ have no connection. Fascinating.

[@Pyrogecko08]

Ever since reading Paper Towns by John Green, which is named for the copyright traps cartographers add to maps, I have wondered how many copyright traps get added to dictionaries and how often they turn up in games of scrabble or trivia questions and the like, where people seek out obscure words to use intentionally. And then from there, how often do they become real words with real usage, in the same way that fake towns sometimes become real towns as people decide to actually settle there anyway.

[@h.washingtonsawyer6614]

"Ghost" is a ghost word, or at least the "h" in it is a ghost letter. The word in English was always "gost" until William Caxton set up the first printing press in England in the 1470s. He brought the press and the printers from Flanders, and in Flemish the word has an "h" in it: "gheest". The Flemish printers just misspelled it, but Caxton's work was so early and influential that other people started spelling the word with an "h" and it became accepted. No other English words start with "gh" except those related to "ghost": "ghastly" and "ghoul".

[@gavinathling]

I like the idea of a paper town in a dictionary. Is that a "paper word"?

[@elderscrollsswimmer4833]

A town exporting paper and most of the residents work in the paper mill?

[@austinsontv]

A town with tensions so high betwixt its residents, it could be torn apart as easily as paper.

[@DominicJCollins]

And here, I had assumed "gravy" was derived from the Latin "gravis"! What a grave misunderstanding!

[@lsittig]

But then again, the word “foupe” has made it into my lexicon in the intentional malaprop “In one swell foop!”

[@mattjackson9859]

"Dord"... as in The Stone Roses song "I Wanna be a Dord"....

[@bumbleguppy]

Well, logically if "remorse" was a root word with a prefix, then "morse" meaning the feeling of guilt or regret BEFORE a grievous act, then it would have made sense in the context given. Just saying.

[@bryanjackson8917]

Not all words with prefixes have a root word (i.e., a word that can stand alone on its own) to which a prefix is simply added, and many examples of such words abound: abyss, antecedent, contradict, companion, exhale, intervene, macrocosm, omniscient, triathlon, etc., etc., etc. IOW, the use of prefixes is a rather sublime subject!

[@Ithirahad]

@@bryanjackson8917 There is such a word as 'cede' (i.e. give something up to another entity), but alas... yes, the rest are missing. We can dictATE but not dict (we just say), We can exhale but can't *hale We can intervene but not *vene (we just "come" instead) A *cosm' on its own is a 'cosmos' for whatever reason, We have science but can't be *scient (we have the word 'aware' for that), and of course Athlon is trademarked. :P ...And I have no idea what's even going on with the word 'company'. (It sounds like it comes from something about sharing bread, which we Germanic-speakers don't call pan, but I have no clue...)

[@MarcusCactus]

@@bryanjackson8917 Most of those words are borrowed from French or Latin, where the root exists by itself.

[@bryanjackson8917]

@@MarcusCactus It doesn't matter what language the root word was borrowed from, in this analysis it only matters how those root words are treated within the English language. And the fact of the matter is that there exists no stand-alone "root word" for many words in English that begin with a prefix, and that was the whole point I was making in my comment. In addition, note that while I only listed a few such a words, a more comprehensive list would likely stretch into the hundreds if not thousands of examples of such words.

[@LorenzoF06]

Fun fact: "good bye" comes from "god b w y" ("God be with you"), misread as "God by" and then "good" was stuck in analogy to "good morning", "good evening"...

[@buteomont]

Please don't change a thing about the way you do your videos. They are delightful!

[@baruchben-david4196]

Poor Samuel Johnson. That first image of him looks as though he's having a hard time reading whatever it is he's holding. Maybe his vision wasn't so great, and he misread soupe as foupe... Poor guy.

[@stevetournay6103]

"There's more of gravy than of grave in you...whatever you are." -Ebenezer Scrooge, trying to convince himself he is imagining Marley's ghost

[@DawnDavidson]

Hahah. Exactly my thought!

[@richardnedbalek1968]

So when we speak ghost words to actual ghosts, they’ll be sure to understand us, right?!?! 😂

[@skyrocketcoast219]

Just found you you tube channel , via you tube shorts: your channel is beyond Epic! Absolutely brilliant, to be sure!

[@christ2381]

In one German dictionary you can find a Steinlaus (stone louse). It was in memory of a sketch about this stone eating animal.

[@pierrefley5000]

Oh, I know that one! It's from a medical dictionary, the Pschyrembel. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pschyrembel_Klinisches_W%C3%B6rterbuch for more information.

[@svenlima]

You forgot to mention how it found its way into the dictionary. It was a joke by a typographer who sneaked that word into the dictionary. Although it has been detected decades ago it's still in there because the buyers find it funny.

[@jhfdhgvnbjm75]

Excellent video Rob, I must offer my heartfelt contrafibularities.

[@VivianMakin]

I invented the word "viff" as a kid as my word for a "question mark". 40+ years later, I still call it a viff. For me, a perfectly valid word I use naturally but confuse the heck out of everyone else.

[@KECOG]

My father and I invented the word "Squeegee" (soft G, not the hard one) to mean Milkshake; it was a discussion we had where he illustrated that words are merely symbols that are agreed upon to have a certain meaning. I love your word Viff! :)

[@talastra]

Viss feemf perfectly lufid to me af a word.

[@AndrewAMartin]

Harrier jet pilots use VIFF, an acronym for Vector In Free Flight. The Harrier uses ducts to direct (or vector) the thrust of the engines downward in order to take off or land vertically; pilots would turn the ducts during flight as a way to maneuver in ways not normal for an aircraft, or beyond what its control surfaces would normally allow. Moving the ducts is called VIFFing...

[@TayWoode]

I’ve noticed “addictive” seems to be changing into “addicting” especially with younger people who tend to only read their friends texts or comments on here written by younger people so they pick it up wrong

[@h.g.wellington2500]

"Sorry it was the Moops" "It's 'Moors'!" "Sorry, the card says 'Moops'". "It's a typo!!!!!"

[@myangelina100]

I love this channel! ❤

[@dougfowler1368]

And here I thought tweed got its name because it was something the infamous Tammany Hall boss wore all the time. As for syllabus, I thought it was pretty obvious that it came from syllable and a combination of many and Rose from there. The actual meaning is a perfect reason why everyone should remember to cross their T's. Maybe the original printer didn't. He was guilty of esquivalience. :-) Edit, oh boy! My tablet didn't auto correct that! It's still a word!

[@robomonkey6219]

Foupe sounded pretty normal to me. But I spelled it foup. It's what I call the Front Opening Unified Pods that the semiconductor industry uses to transport silicon wafers from machine to machine during processing. It's basically a box to keep the wafers in a super clean environment.

[@richardnedbalek1968]

11:19 The irony does not escape us that we refer to the outline of an educational course as a syllabus. Thanks for “schooling” us, Rob! Or should I say “ghouling” us? 👻

[@fredwmanzo8580]

I was told by a former editor of dictionaries that the use of “ghost words” is s standard anti-piracy defense. But they are usually of very obscure terms that no one would ever think of using. Such as an extinct Amazonian mushroom known for its striking purple color.

[@adamlaceky8127]

In his time, Cicero's name would have been pronounced Kikero.

[@andersaxmark5871]

Linguist here - I've been very impressed with your work. Thank you, very well done

[@davidlloyd3116]

Rob, would the word 'unword' as used in Orwell's 1984 be a real word?

[@davidlloyd3116]

Sorry don’t have Telegram

[@JeremyWS]

This was a good video. Keep up the good work.

[@Redmenace96]

I really like this guy! He returns to misunderstandings and how language is fluid, at all times. So-called English is a human invention, full of mistakes? I live and work in Asia, Africa, ME.... grow very tired of people who tell me the 'correct' way to pronounce words, and the 'correct' meaning of words. Within my lifetime (not born in 1755) words have changed, and words are used by many other than English Speakers. There is no 'correct' way!

[@ragnkja]

The idea that there is a single correct pronunciation for each word completely ignores dialects, and to ignore dialects is to ignore an important part of people’s identity.

[@nataliebutler]

Some ways are wrong though.

[@enjoyslearningandtravel7957]

It’s true that dialects have different pronunciations but it does make it more useful to agree on just a few pronunciations so people from different areas regions can understand a person better. For example, instead of saying 12:30 PM when I was very young I would say noon: 30 and my dad would say you can’t say that and I would say why? And he said nobody says that, so I guess anybody could make up something new but people sometimes would just stare at you and not know what you’re talking about. ???

[@IntelVoid]

On syllabus, it doesn't help that people used to cross their l's (if doubled, at least in abbreviations). So it's not quite so egregious that a double t could be read as a double l.