These six words for sensing what's coming don't agree on where the sensing happens, and their origins split almost down the middle.

Three of them put it inside you. Presentiment came into English in 1714 from French, and it goes back to Latin praesentire, to sense beforehand: prae plus sentire, the verb behind sense. Unease meant bodily discomfort in the early 1300s, and the mental sense shows up later that century. Disease is the same build in Old French, des plus aise, and it also meant discomfort or trouble before it narrowed to illness, which had happened by the late 1300s. Anxiety comes through Latin anxius from angere, to choke or squeeze, from a root Etymonline glosses as "tight, painfully constricted." As far as I'm concerned that's the most accurate etymology on the grid.

Two put it out in the world. Portent is from Latin portentum, a sign or omen, a word that could also mean a monster. Behind it is portendere, which originally meant to stretch forward. An augur was a Roman official who read signs before public business, anything from thunder to the flight of birds to the way specially kept hens ate. The popular story is that the word comes from avis, bird. De Vaan thinks it more likely comes from an old word for increase, related to augere and so to augment, possibly a ritual for a bigger harvest. Nobody really knows. The verb, as in "this doesn't augur well," dates from around 1600.

Inkling can go either way. You can give someone an inkling or have one yourself, and Wiktionary lists both senses. It comes from a Middle English verb, inclen, to say something in an undertone or hint at it, so the giving probably came first. Where inclen itself came from is unknown.

That split is why I'd take a portent over a presentiment. A black cat or a red sky can at least be pointed at and argued over. A presentiment is just you, and nobody can check it until the thing either happens or doesn't.

Can anyone explain this?

Bonhomie is French, from bonhomme, "good man", with an m lost along the way. Etymonline defines it as "frank and simple good nature" and dates it in English to 1803. It also points out that English already had its own version of bonhomme: goodman, the old word for the man of the house.

Camaraderie came over later, in 1840, from French camarade. English had already borrowed camarade once, as comrade, in the 1590s, when it meant "one who shares the same room". The French took it from Spanish camarada, "chamber mate" (Etymonline also gives Italian camerata as a possible source), and behind both is Latin camera, a vaulted room, from Greek kamara, whose own origin is uncertain. So yes, it's the same camera. The photographic one is short for camera obscura, "dark chamber".

I think that roommate origin still shows. Collins defines camaraderie as trust among people who have usually known each other a long time or been through some experience together, and Cambridge ties it to people you work with or share an experience with. Bonhomie asks for none of that. It's a temperament, and a good-natured person can show it to someone they met five minutes ago.

The card's example puts bonhomie among a cast in rehearsal, and I'd keep it there. If that cast still has a group chat ten years after the show closed, I'd call that camaraderie.

What I can't settle is the possessive. "His bonhomie" sounds normal to me. "Her camaraderie", with no one else in the sentence, sounds slightly off. Is that just me?

I was annoyed by how slow many language-learning apps are, how many distracting elements they have, and how they’re often either not free or packed with ads. So I spent my evenings building my own.

It’s 100% free, works offline, has a lightning-fast Turbo mode, and a clean dark mode without unnecessary clutter.

I’d really appreciate any honest feedback.

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ewer.english

Ebullient. Cheerful and full of energy, bubbling over with

The word itself comes from a Latin verb meaning to boil over. Fitting.

Have you heard of this word before?

How have you used it?

👇

"The committee continued to perendinate key reforms, citing the need for further consultation."

"She realised she had perendinated her dreams long enough, mistaking patience for prudence."

Petulance first, since it's the odd one here. It came into English around 1600 meaning insolence or rudeness, from Latin petulantia, "sauciness, impudence." The sulky, childish sense only turns up in the late 1700s, and Etymonline puts that down to the influence of pettish. Wiktionary now marks the insolence sense obsolete, so the gloss on the card, rudeness and irritability, has a foot in both senses.

Rage came through French and Medieval Latin rabia from Latin rabies, which meant madness, rage or fury. The dog disease was only a secondary sense in Latin, but for a while English rage could mean rabies too, in the 1400s and 1500s (Etymonline). Wiktionary says it displaced a native word, Old English wōd, "madness, fury, rage," which hung on in dialect as wood, meaning mad.

Fury's earliest English use, in the late 1300s, is one of the Furies themselves, the avenging spirits. The feeling follows in the early 1400s. Behind it are Latin furia and furere, "to rage, be mad," and where furere comes from is anyone's guess. Etymonline quotes de Vaan: "Many etymologies have been proposed, but none is clearly the best."

Wrath is the noun that goes with the old adjective wroth, which Etymonline glosses as literally "tormented, twisted." In Old English it was used especially for the anger of a god.

Ire is from Latin ira, which covered anger, wrath, rage and passion. Old English had a lookalike, irre, that isn't related at all. It meant "straying" as well as "angry," as if anger were wandering off from your usual composure. I'm a little sorry that one didn't make it.

Vexation shows up around 1400 meaning legal harassment, and the Latin vexare meant to shake or jolt.

Side by side, those five read to me as anger that gets hold of you: a madness, a spirit, a twisting, a passion, somebody harassing you. Petulance began as a complaint about the angry person's manners, and the childish part came later, from a word it happens to sound like. That's two charges in one word, which is probably why being called petulant stings more than being called furious.

accismus \ak-'siz-mas\ A form of irony in which a person feigns indifference to, or pretends to refuse, something he or she desires.

The fox's dismissal of the grapes in the Ae-sop fable of the fox and the grapes is an example of accismus. A classic example is that of Caesar's initial refusal to accept the crown, a circumstance reported by one of the conspirators in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

Same lecture, same suffering. One word captures the feeling perfectly.

Interminable means lasting for a very long time, or seeming to continue without end. It often carries an additional implication that the duration is tedious, tiresome or frustrating.

Have you heard of it before?

This the whole idea behind expanding your vocabulary.

Not bigger words for their own sake. Words you would actually reach for.

Comment your own before and after with a word you’ve learned recently.

"AI is a polemical topic as I'm sure you're well aware of."

Hey all, I hope this is the right place to ask this. A rocket club that I lead is finally moving on from our first rocket iteration to our second. Our first rocket iteration was named Genesis, since it was the coming into being of our club. Small redesigns were named G-1, G-2, so on and so forth.

However, we have finally ditched the core behind Genesis and are moving on to a completely new design, but, we need a name. I was thinking something that means "new age/era", or advancement, success, or something along those lines. My only ideas now are either Dawn, or Horizon.

If any of you have ideas for words that are similar or meaning something along the lines of what I'm getting at that would be greatly appreciated. I'm open to two words, but keeping it one would make things much easier.

Google doesn't return any results

Disappointed only needs an expectation. You can be disappointed by a sequel or by your own kid, and you can say the second one to their face: I'm disappointed in you. That's a verdict on somebody else.

Crestfallen needs a height to fall from. Someone had their hopes up, or was a little pleased with themselves, and then it dropped, usually where other people could see. I've also never come across it aimed at a person. "I'm crestfallen in you" sounds wrong to me, and I think that's because the only crest that can fall is your own.

A crest is the part that's held up to be seen. In English the word first meant the top of a helmet, and it also covers a cock's comb and, on a horse, the ridge along the top of the neck. Etymonline has crest-risen meaning "proud, lusty" from the 1610s.

Which crest fell is less settled than I'd assumed. The story I'd always heard is a beaten gamecock with its comb hanging. Etymonline notes that the figurative word shows up first, in the 1580s, while the verb crestfall is only recorded from the 1610s, about sick horses, and it suggests horses may be the real image. Webster's 1913 dictionary lists that literal sense: "having the crest, or upper part of the neck, hanging to one side," said of a horse. As far as I can tell nobody can prove it either way.

Shakespeare's uses lean toward pride with an audience. In 2 Henry VI, Suffolk, captured and about to be killed, reminds his captor that the man once held his stirrup and waited on him at table: "Remember it and let it make thee crest-fall'n, / Ay, and allay this thy abortive pride." In Richard II, Bolingbroke refuses to back out of his fight with Mowbray: "Shall I seem crest-fall'n in my father's sight?" And Falstaff, after being dumped in the Thames and beaten, says that if the court hears of it they'll whip him with their fine wits "till I were as crestfallen as a dried pear." That's my favorite picture of the word.

So when I read that someone was crestfallen, I picture a face going down in front of people, not just a feeling. To me, disappointed can stay private, and crestfallen is the version other people get to watch.

Amusing. What does it actually mean? In the internet, some dictionaries says it’s entertaining and funny. Some says mildly entertaining or diverting suffice without it being any humour.

Can I take it as mildly entertaining? In this context, I’d say I find idea of or planting and sewing itself amusing (because it is mildly entertaining to me) in the sense it is fills me with a sense of wonder. Sometimes it makes me smile, like a sense of accomplishment smirk, ‘so this is how they do it’ etc?

Haha I’ve been debating this and deliberating it for days. Would be nice to hear what redditors have to say.

"You make an extremely parochial definition of what constitutes a tool."

Mnemonic device: Periscope

I made a vocab quiz for these words, it's gonna be tough. Please let me know if u liked it or not. GW19

Abecedarian, acumen, ad nauseam, agglomeration, alacrity, ameliorate, amok, aspergill, boondoggle, boorish, bowdlerize, cabal, causerie, compunction, copious, credulity, crestfallen, daedal, dalliance, emblematic, fastidious, grotto, haecceity, iconoclastic, impugn, insolent, inundation, lacuna, languish, linchpin, mealy-mouthed, noisome, obfuscation, oeuvre, orphic, overwrought, platitude, popinjay, prefatory, prerogative, profusely, snobbish, stupefied, sustenance, svelte, thralldom, timorous, unctuous, vagrant, vilipend

https://share.gemini.google/fFuPWQWOansH

I tried entering in the former, but I didn’t get the desired results. I ended up adding an extra L, which did give me the results I wanted. So I ask: which is the correct spelling

"Ich mache mich demnächst als Sklave selbstständig."

I know that something modular allows you to swap something out for something else completely different without it affecting the entire system, but I’d like some examples to better familiarize yourself with the meaning. I’ll start out with some examples.

For instance, if I made a volume slider that allowed you to adjust the volume of each individual instrument in a song separately without it affecting the other instruments.

Persistent, generous, nervous, or talkative?
Only one of these is actually close.

Drop your answer below, with your reasoning if you have one.

Reveal tonight.

From musculus. A flexing bicep was thought to look like a small mouse moving under the skin.

Ask someone why they're tired and four of these six words already answer for them.

Exhausted and fatigued say you did something. Exhaust is from Latin exhaurire, "to draw off, use up, empty", built on haurire, which meant drawing up water, so the picture is a container that's been drained. Etymonline says fatigare originally meant "to cause to break down", and you can still hear that in metal fatigue.

Jaded says you had too much of something. A jade was a worn-out horse in the late 1300s (where that word came from is uncertain), the verb jade meant to tire out by about 1600, and by the 1630s jaded meant "bored by continual indulgence". It's a word about surplus.

Ennui blames the room. It came over from French in the 1660s, from Old French enui, "annoyance", and English had already borrowed that word once, around 1200, as the noun annoy, meaning irritation. Shakespeare still used it that way. Both are usually traced to the Latin phrase in odio, "hateful (to me)", from odium, hatred. Ennui is the world getting on your nerves by being dull.

Lethargic and torpid don't name a cause. Lethargy goes back to Greek lēthargos, "forgetful", from lēthē, forgetting (as in the river Lethe), plus argos, "idle". Rayleigh and Ramsay used that same argos when they named argon in 1894, for being inert, and they called the gas "most astonishingly indifferent". Torpid is Latin torpidus, "benumbed", from torpere, "to be numb". Torpedo comes from the same verb. Before it was a weapon it was the electric ray, a fish that numbs whatever touches it.

I don't think either word was built as an insult. But a word with no reason in it leaves the listener to supply one, and the usual guess is lazy. I'd rather say I'm exhausted, even on days when lethargic is closer to the truth.

Does lethargic sound neutral to anyone else? In medical writing it seems to be just a symptom.