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Wakephan's Modern English Usage: OFFICIAL Tunnels Guide to terms, words, and idioms

wakephan09

fuck duke
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I'll update this post as required. I hope that it will become a collaborative effort. The refutations most familiar to me are obviously my own -- and the examples most recent via the search function -- but if anybody wants to point me towards new or better ones, please do so. Examples of incorrect usage are followed by the OED definition for convenience.

These terms, in general, have fixed meanings and are not open for interpretation. No linking to conservapedia. No citing Derrida. If I had any talent at all this would be a vintage scout-board MS-PAINT thread. Alas.

NB: I should point out also that I have a long and proud history of taking the "L" when deserved. Corrections and additions very gladly accepted.




nonplussed, adj.


1. Brought to a nonplus or standstill; at a nonplus; perplexed, confounded.

It's fun watching the posters here who pretend they didn't vote for Trump pretending that they are nonplussed about the dumb shit he says and does daily.

So Spurs, who haven't won a real trophy in years, are non-plussed they're out of the FA Cup. Nice.


DeacHead puts it nicely here:
I've apparently been using the word incorrectly for years now. It has a formal definition (bewildered) and an informal one in North America (unimpressed, the usage I had adopted). So I'm just going to move it onto the list of words to avoid using.




strawman fallacy
Tough to find a good definition of this one because it is an informal fallacy and not in textbooks of classical rhetoric. The key is that the rhetorical opponent is misrepresenting your argument rather than simply "building" one of their own. Here are two examples of posters using it correctly.

jhmd sure does love to beat up on that poor strawman of big bad teachers unions preventing accountability, but he never explains how charter schools provide any more accountability.

Here, doofus has correctly identified an actual strawman argument put forward by 2&2.

Where in my post did I state that "actual business experience should be irrelevant?" You're attacking an argument that I wasn't making.




tilting at windmills
Everyone will remember the annoying betterphan rant, so I won't recapitulate it here. In short, the phrase is more an allusion than an idiom, so it is best used when specifically referring to a certain kind of delusion -- idealism even in the face of impracticality.

I took a half-L in that battle and the boards ruled doofus' definition acceptable:

When I use "tilting at windmills" I use it in the "he's attacking things that only exist in his own mind" sense.




nepotism, n

1. The showing of special favour or unfair preference to a relative in conferring a position, job, privilege, etc.; spec. such favour or preference shown to an illegitimate son by a pope or other high-ranking ecclesiastic

At Wake Forest:
Wake Forest Human Resources Policies and Procedures -- January 2016

Nepotism

1. GENERAL
In order to minimize the potential for conflicts in the workplace, the University has
adopted a nepotism policy to address the hiring of relatives and to address relationships
that may develop after employment.

2. POLICY

a) “Relatives” refers to immediate family members including spouse, child, parent,
sibling, same-sex partner, step-parent, grandparent, in-laws of these, niece, nephew,
aunt, and uncle

http://hr.wfu.edu/files/2016/04/Nepotism.pdf

Junebug was concise:

Nepotism is family
Cronyism is friends

Let's move on




irony
, n.
We are fortunate, here at the OGBoards, to have an official irony-arbiter in Townie.

1. As a mass noun. The expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect;

Also, romantic irony:
"an attitude of detached scepticism adopted by an author towards his or her work, typically manifesting in literary self-consciousness and self-reflection."

and dramatic (or tragic) irony:
"the incongruity created when the tragic significance of a character's speech or actions is revealed to the audience or reader but unknown to the character concerned; this incongruity as a literary device"

Funny but not ironic.:
If the 1st debate only has 10 entrants, how do the others stay relevant or are they basically out of the race for all intensive purposes? Which of the morons make the top 10?

Ironic but not funny:
There is some irony here given all the foreign elections the US has worked to manipulate.

Also, I liked this exchange:

Penn state got fucked in the arse






luck, n.

1. The chance occurrence of situations or events either favourable or unfavourable to a person's interests; the sum of chance events affecting (favourably or unfavourably) a person's interests or circumstances; a person's apparent tendency to have good or ill fortune.


DV7's crusade against "luck" in sports is one of my favorite boards memes:

There is no such thing as "luck" in sports. Ugh.

You are good enough to win or you aren't. The shot was good enough to go in or it wasn't. There is no luck.

An egregious call that goes against you is "unlucky", but that is just unskillful by the referee.

Name one time where a shot was made that wasn't the result of skill. Go.

LOL

I never said that being lucky was a skill. I entirely reject the notion that their is much, if any, luck involved in sports. You are good enough to make the shot, stop the offense, etc. etc. Or you aren't.

From a kenpom thread:

But I'll take back my contention that there might not be any luck in sports. There is some. Very little, but it is there.




socialism/fascism, n.

I've seen some very distressing posts from individuals, both on the board and on Facebook, arguing vehemently that Hitler was a liberal (because the Nazis had National Socialism in their name), that socialism = fascism, etc. Something like this:

The Nazi's were socialists. It's not just in their name. Read their highly socialistic program.

Guys, I don't see what's so hard here. The Democratic People's Republic of North Korea is clearly a democracy. It's in the name, people!
lol.

What do you think Leninism and Stalinism were? That they were socialist is in the very article that you cite. The one confused here is you. The very wiki page you cite, which was obviously composed by a bunch of lefties trying to distance themselves from the worst aspects of socialism and trying to make socialism appear as acceptable as possible, is full of facts that contradict you.

Furthermore, as you demonstrate in your next post, you don't even know what a republic is.

Your intellectual underdevelopment on these subjects is beneath all criticism. What would have us do next, discuss the history of anti-Semitism without reference to the Holocaust or the National Socialist German Workers Party?

Frosty and 923 offer some helpful distinctions here:

Fascism relies on extreme nationalism, a disregard for basic human rights, militarism with an emphasis placed in the importance of the military elite, tightly controlled media run by the state, strong national security typically brought on by creating some sort of common scapegoat for every problem that arises, a disdain for intellectualism (manifested through heavy censorship), and a lack of true democratic elections. Socialism does literally none of these things. Yes, a fascist government may socialize some/all industries, but only in a way that benefits the power elite and not all of the population. Socializing something doesn't necessarily make it socialist; the socialization of industry can happen in a way that is strictly fascist.

Um, socialism and communism are different. The USSR and Mao's China were not socialist states (despite the name of the USSR). They were avowedly communist. Anyone who is hung up on the inclusion of the word "socialist" in USSR can do a little basic research to discover that the Soviet constitution and laws guaranteed the Communist Party (that was its name, not "socialist") the right to single party rule. Communism, communal ownership of all property, as practiced in the 20th century looked a lot like fascism in practice because they are both extreme ideologies that no population would implement voluntarily in the absence of force. There is a big difference between a Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist communist state and the democratic socialist states of Western Europe. Anybody with half a brain can see that. Trying to conflate Stalinism with, for example, French socialism doesn't even pass the laugh test. You can't say that socialism = fascism by throwing out example of how totalitarian communist states were like Nazi Germany. Come on.




[sic], adv. (and n.)

1. A parenthetical insertion used in printing quotations or reported utterances to call attention to something anomalous or erroneous in the original, or to guard against the supposition of misquotation. Also as n., an instance of ‘sic’.

One of my personal favorite nonsensical boards memes:

e.g.
They have showed a decided preference for gun-free [sic] zones.

I can't unfortunately search for any more of jhmd's sick jokes because the search function won't let me, but i think he stopped after I posted this:

Just to be explicitly clear here, once and for all: JHMD's [sic] jokes don't actually make any sense. Check out wikipedia or something. Adding [sic] after a word or phrase as some sham-intellectual equivalent of scare quotes is dumb and wrong.




pederast, n.

1. A man who has or desires sexual relations with a boy.

An unusual one, to say the least. I'm surprised it has come up on the boards more than once.

Fuck any pederass who does that shit, regardless of religion. I hope their dicks fall off and they are raped in whatever the consider Hades for eternity.

rs7tck.png


fmswuu.png


Important addendum. We haven't seen them stand up against straight pederasts yet.

Important clarification: while pederasty is not necessarily about sexual desire, it is a fundamentally homosexual/homosocial institution.




millennial, n.

1. A member of the millennial generation.
(unhelpful)


I'm too lazy to do any more at the moment. If someone wants to find me some sweet examples of Wrangor and bkf lambasting millennials for having cellphones or not being married at 18, please do it.




y'all
, cntr.

Contraction for "you" and "all". Often mistakenly misspelled "ya'll". Mostly by ITC.

kinda like when ya'll are selectively pissed a cops being shot but don't care when unarmed citizens are shot

how often do ya'll do product registrations, if ever?

if ya'll want some weird history repeating itself, read up on the election of 1948

ya'll eat a lot of fast food

also, ya'll listen to the "Crimetown" podcast? good stuff

how do ya'll feel about artisanal sand in your pasta?

if ya'll don't kill eagles my mind is going to explode.

I told ya'll he was 6'8".

so what did ya'll have for breakfast

yeah, ya'll are nuts if you think holding the door is a southern thing


pretentious, adj.

pre·ten·tious
prəˈten(t)SHəs/
adjective
attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.
"a pretentious literary device"
synonyms: affected, ostentatious, showy; More




interpolate, v.

To introduce (words or passages) into a pre-existing writing; esp. to insert (spurious matter) in a genuine work without note or warning.

Goddamn, Sig, it's not just typing. The guy has 47,000 posts and you have to interpolate what he is trying to say in about half of them. If a guy has the time to make 47,000 posts, he has the goddamned time to post in a manner so that all the other posters don't have to read his 47,000 posts two or three times to try to figure out what the hell he is trying to say.

If you want to make your point in a way that I can understand what you are saying I will be happy to respond, but I'm not interested in trying to interpolate your message. I have to do enough of that with RJ's posts....and I don't really care what you point is anyway.

Cut RJ some slack. He only screwed up 2 words in a 5-word post this time. Most of the time he just leaves out a word in about every other sentence so that you have to interpolate the post to figure out what he is trying to say. I read one of his posts yesterday that had 5 or 6 sentence fragments in the same post.

RJ likes to keep you guessing. Many times you have to interpolate his post to determine its meaning. After 42K posts, one would think that would not be necessary.




peruse, v.

[kindly submitted by BobStackFan]

To examine in detail; to scrutinize, inspect, survey, oversee; to consider, to take heed of. Also: to look over briefly or superficially; to browse.

You should peruse the Facebook thread sometime.

Just go over to campus and peruse the type of cars these children of rich parents drive around our campus. They certainly are not used Pintos

I don't regularly read The_Donald but I do peruse it occasionally to see what absurdities are coming out from Trump's camp.

**N.B. This is one word with which I'd generally disagree with a prescriptivist, since the word "peruse" meaning something to the effect of skim, browse, or look over superficially has been in use, though informally, since at least the 16th century. It's in Johnson's dictionary! Here's an early example from the OED:

1589 G. Puttenham Arte Eng. Poesie i. xxviii. 45 An Epitaph is..pithie, quicke and sententious for the passer by to peruse, and iudge vpon without any long tariaunce.




day and age, idiom.

Now, as opposed to an earlier time. NB: Not day in age.

I think I am a little jaded about the impact of marching (this day in age).


That's what I mean/reference when I say that this day in age, I question the effectiveness of marching.




jibe, v.

"To chime in (with); to be in harmony or accord; to agree."

This seems to be one of the most misused words on the OGBoards. Often confused, at least on the internet, with "jive" (which means to "mislead, to deceive, to 'kid'; to taunt or sneer at")

First examples from search, out of many, many:

doesn't really jive with the mission statement of the marches taking place the day after inauguration but keep telling yourself this

It is irrational, but I get it - some internet personas don't jive - its the same for me and Bym, I just hate that guys e-face.

doesn't really jive with Nietzsche (though at this point he was a syphilitic, sinking deeper and deeper into incomprehension)

That pick doesn't exactly jive with his promised increased spending on defense and infrastructure and cutting taxes at the same time. It'll be interesting to see what gives.

these 2 bolded statements don't jive brothahman

Somewhere between these is best:

Christianity, at least as I interpret the texts and traditions, is extremely radical...It doesn't jive well with suburbia.

That vibes I believe with what DF07 said earlier as well.


tee'totaler, n.

One who abstains (esp. one who pledges himself to abstain) from the use of any intoxicating liquor; a total abstainer.


IMPORTANT: NOT...

Do relationships between drinkers and non-drinkers every really work? Maybe if one elects to be a tee toddler after they've been together, but from the start? I can't see it working that well.

Tee toddler:
tigerasboy3.jpg


OR:

Haha I think I spelled it Tee toadler and it ended up like that


 
Last edited:
nep·o·tism
[ˈnepəˌtizəm]
NOUN
the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs.
synonyms: favoritism · preferential treatment · the old boy network

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To ONW and all the other Hillshills who gave this pos thread 5 stars, try as you might you'll never get it up to 5 stars. NEVER!
 
To ONW and all the other Hillshills who gave this pos thread 5 stars, try as you might you'll never get it up to 5 stars. NEVER!

LOL, I didn't even know rating threads was a thing. I gave this one five stars. It's not my thread, it's our thread.
 
:golfclap::golfclap::golfclap::golfclap::golfclap::golfclap::golfclap::golfclap:

Must spread rep, but I'll definitely get back to you.
 
pre·ten·tious
prəˈten(t)SHəs/
adjective
attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.
"a pretentious literary device"
synonyms: affected, ostentatious, showy; More

 
pre·ten·tious
prəˈten(t)SHəs/
adjective
attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.
"a pretentious literary device"
synonyms: affected, ostentatious, showy; More

Using words properly isn't pretentious. Insisting on using them incorrectly, on the other hand, is by definition #pretentious.

I've added it though, since you've humored me by participating. If you'd like me to include some quotations in your entry, please do list them here.
 
I don't know, man. I was using the informal. This is a message board. You calling me out for using a listed usage? Seems like a stretch but ok.

non·plussed
nänˈpləst/
adjective
adjective: nonplussed; adjective: non-plussed; adjective: nonplused
1.
(of a person) surprised and confused so much that they are unsure how to react.
"he would be completely nonplussed and embarrassed at the idea"
2.
NORTH AMERICANinformal
(of a person) not disconcerted; unperturbed.
 
I don't know, man. I was using the informal. This is a message board. You calling me out for using a listed usage? Seems like a stretch but ok.

non·plussed
nänˈpləst/
adjective
adjective: nonplussed; adjective: non-plussed; adjective: nonplused
1.
(of a person) surprised and confused so much that they are unsure how to react.
"he would be completely nonplussed and embarrassed at the idea"
2.
NORTH AMERICANinformal
(of a person) not disconcerted; unperturbed.

You can literally do whatever you want, bro.
 
You could write an entire chapter on the way the terms "political correctness" or "PC" are used on here
 
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