Anonymous asked: i love you and your passion for word and language. thank you for having this amazing blog and teaching me new, wonderful words every day.

I love you and your passion for word and language! Thank you for reading this blog and learning new, wonderful words every day. <3

Anonymous asked: Since you'll be published, can I just fix your Hungarian post?

Yes please. Send corrections!

Anonymous asked: what's the word that describes the realization or understanding that everyone you ever meet or pass in life has their own life and that you may or may not be a part of it but everything is connected? (sorry, i honestly can't remember very well)

My original answer to this question kind of turned controversial, for reasons I don’t entirely understand myself. In order to maintain the appearance of this blog and avoid further controversy, I’ve relocated the huge walls of text all the posts relevant to this discussion to my answerblog.

The direct answer is here. A further discussion about using “made-up” words, and this one in particular, is here. Here are the rest of the posts about language, language’s evolution, new words, “made-up” words, the wordness status of “made-up” words, and my personal stance about what I call “the balance between invention and tradition”. And here is my defense against people calling me a prescriptivist, which I am not.

I really recommend reading through all these posts; it’ll help you understand my opinions on the fairly sticky idea of “real words”, and you can decide your own opinion. Questions or comments can be directed to Otherwordly’s askbox! Dialogue is welcomed.

Anonymous asked: Hi, I was wondering if you could name different types of "thropes." Er, I know this is an odd request, but I'm curious as to what other "thropes" there are. (i.e. misanthrope, thanatothrope) Sadly, those are the only two I know. I also want to say that I really love your blog and I love the fact that you have such a passion for words. Alternatively, congratulations on your book! I'll be sure to buy it!

Thank you! And odd requests are totally okay by me—t’s just that I don’t think you’re asking quite the right question. In the word “misanthrope”, the root isn’t -thrope. It’s -anthrope, meaning ‘human’. A misanthrope is someone who doesn’t like people.

So “thanatothrope” isn’t actually a word, since -thrope doesn’t mean anything. I’m actually kinda curious to where you heard that from and what you thought it meant. I know thanatos means sea I LIED—it means “death”. (thank you, other anon) But I can’t find any word that’s similar to that at all.

If you’re looking for other -anthropes, there’s lycanthrope, which is a werewolf. A therianthrope is a shapeshifter. Philanthropy is loving others by helping them, especially monetarily (but one who does this is called a philanthropist).

edit I got your other ask, I just can’t find it in my box. I found you a few more -anthropes, though half of them are related to shapeshifting. An ailuranthrope is a werecat; an arctanthrope, a werebear. An exanthrope is a cause of a disease that is external rather than from inside the body. Synanthropes are animal species that live near and benefit from humans—things like pigeons and rats and not things like cows or dogs. That’s about it, actually, unless you want to get all the werecreatures.

Otherwordly is one year old today!

So I figured today would be a good time to announce that OTHERWORDLY IS GOING TO BE PUBLISHED BY CHRONICLE BOOKS!

asdf;lkj you guys I’m so thrilled. Think about it—soon you’ll be able to have a book full of strange and lovely words with you wherever you go! (I’ve even got a word for that: vade mecum, a favorite book carried everywhere. Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

And really, it’s been a great year all around. Otherwordly’s posted 473 words so far (the first was “saudade”) and the blog reached 50,000 followers just last week. So THANK YOU to each and every one of you wonderful word-lovers, and a million thank-yous to my agent John Cusick.

Anonymous asked: What's a nice word for "special day"?

really now

“Red-letter day”? Sorry, I got nothin’. But on a related note, qualtagh means “the first person you meet on a special day”!

(alittlebirdysays: “吉日 (kichijitsu) means ‘lucky day’ or ‘special day’ [in Japanese]!”)

tomorrow is a special day

so you should totally check back here then to find out why it’s special!