anonymous asked:

“What are some books you suggest? Have you read The Book Thief before?”

Click for feelings about The Book Thief and some other book recs. And ask me about fantasy/sci-fi recs!

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Anonymous asked: What's the word for a hard-won battle that has lost too many men, only to gain very little land?

I don’t know a single word for it, unfortunately. But what came to mind was “Pyrrhic victory”—a victory won with little gain and at tremendous cost. I hope that helped a little?

Anonymous asked: I don't know if this has been asked before but what is the word for the smell of ice or snow, the smell of rain is petrichor; is there one for crystallized water (it has a particular smell I'm not crazy right? lol)

I’ve had a number of people ask me about a word for this smell, so you’re definitely not alone. I know that smell too—it’s a high, sharp scent. I want to say that it smells like metal looks, but then I sound crazy.

The thing is that English has very few words for specific scents. I don’t mean words for smells that are related to the things that produce them—it of course has words like fishy or tang or pine—but words like petrichor. (Petrichor is actually not just the smell of rain, but the smell of dry earth after rain. We lack a word for the smell of rain, too.) To my knowledge, there’s only one other, and it’s nidor, which is, um, the smell of burning animals. Or burning fat. Gross, I know. Ozone might count too.

Anyways, I’ve been searching for this word for a long time, without results. It definitely doesn’t exist (yet) in English. But, if you speak another language and know a word for it, please let me know! 

Anonymous asked: Hello. Do you have a word for a person who has ALOT of ambition and goals ?

Slytherin!

Also aspirant, an ambitious person (usually young) with several dreams or goals. You can also try altitudinarian—someone who sets lofty goals and aspires to great heights.

Anonymous asked: the swedish word "fika" (drinking coffee along with eating something sweet), that you tagged as delicious and your personal favorite, means snot in hungarian. :D

Still delicious!

Okay no I’m kidding about that one, please don’t take me seriously. But that’s the fun thing about languages—a little confusing, but definitely fun. Input from even more languages:

anonymous said: “Fika” in swahili means to reach or to arrive.

melanie-baker said: A fika in Sweden can also be a date, fyi.

dragonflytehanu said: “Fika” (infinitive: “fikać”) is also a synonym to jump or hop in polish.

gatamiau said: Fica means stay in portuguese.

icanbakeyeah said: Fika in Hindi means “not sweet enough”. Referring to the taste.

lucky13astard said: “fica” in italian means “pussy.”

Meaning, of course, the cat.

Anonymous asked: asterismos sounds like a cool word.. it is a noun right? could you expound through an example of its usage? does it imply an effect like, say, onomatopoeia?

“Behold, I have arrived!”

“You’re late. Can you come here and help us with this?”

“Truly I tell you, I will not.”

“Cut it out. You’re not important enough to preface all your sentences with asterismos.”

“Ow! Hey, you can’t hit me!”

“Behold, I just did.”

Behold, truly I tell you, and hey are all examples of asterismos. Asterismos, more broadly, is any word or phrase at the beginning of a phrase or sentence that doesn’t add to the meaning, but that tells the audience, “Hey, listen up”. It can also be pretty poetic, if you use the “marking with stars” meaning. So it is pretty neat!

Anonymous asked: What is your most favorite word, if not, your most favorite list of words?

I only post words on this blog that I like, of course, but I do tag my special favorites! Running Otherwordly has taught me a lot.

I’m fond of unceremoniously, I quite like quite, and I’ve secretly wanted a tattoo of sehnsucht ever since I posted it here. I love the sounds of silver, desert, resonance, rush, oceans, arrogance, riot, passion—and a hundred more, because words are about sound as well as meaning. There are so many lovely words in the world.

asdf;klj sorry I just have lots of word feels

Anonymous asked: The sanskrit phrase शुभ कामनाएँ really means something like blessings and 'I wish you well' etc. Its usually said when greeting someone for a festival and things like that. So it could sort of mean good luck. And its pronounced as shubh- kaam-na-yein (the last 'n' being only the nasal sound - sorry im a pronunciation nazi!)

Thank you, that was super helpful!

This means that I still don’t precisely know what “good luck” is in Sanskrit. So if you were hoping to—oh, I don’t know, get a tattoo or something—I would definitely double-check with a source that is not this blog, which is run by a person who unfortunately but definitely does not know Sanskrit.

(see this ask)

Anonymous asked: any synonyms to the verb laugh? I'm only getting chuckled and snickered... (and i love the way you answered the last one)

“A Spanish-speaking man who didn’t speak English well was in an American store, looking to buy socks. Unable to find them, he approached a nice-looking saleswoman who asked if she could help. ’Quiero calcetines,’ the man said.

“‘I’m afraid I don’t speak any Spanish, but we have some nice suits on this side,’ said the woman, trying to be helpful.

“‘No, no quiero trajes. Quiero calcetines,’ said the man.

“The woman said, ‘Well, what about these shirts? They’re on sale this week.’

“‘No, no quiero camisas. Quiero calcetines,’ he said.

“‘I’m sorry, I still don’t know what you’re trying to say,’ said the saleswoman. ‘There are some fine pants on this rack.’

“The man insisted, ‘No, no quiero pantalones. Quiero calcetines.’

“‘Our undershirts are over here,’ she tried, beginning to lose patience.

“‘No, no quiero camisetas. Quiero calcetines!’ the man repeated.

“But as they passed the underwear section, the man spotted a display of socks and grabbed a pair excitedly. Showing them to her, he exclaimed, ‘Eso sí que es!’

“‘Well, if you could spell it,’ said the exasperated saleswoman, ‘why didn’t you do that in the beginning?’”

[significant pause]

The blog owner, looking slightly dismayed, says, “That was a joke! No? Not a single boffola? No one’s going to chuckle, snicker, giggle, titter, crow, howl, chortle, guffaw, or cachinnate?”

She sighs. “Well, it means roughly ‘That’s what it is!’ Please don’t get mad at me for this joke. Or for how unnecessarily long this answer is.” As an afterthought, she adds, “I was actually surprised by how few synonyms there are for ‘laugh’. But of course there are many ways to describe amusement without it.”

Anonymous asked: Do you know any adverbs that are synonyms to 'rudely' or 'harshly' ?

Brusquely, she rattled off, “Roughly, curtly, snippily, abrasively, gruffly, crudely, sharply, abruptly, derisively, disparagingly, bluntly, acidly, acerbically, nastily, caustically.”

“And also brusquely,” she added, her tone milder, and slightly apologetic for her earlier rudeness. “Of course, there are probably more, and not all of these are exact synonyms, but you can see which one feels right for you.”

Anonymous asked: Can you tell me how I would use 'brumous' in in a story? Also, 'brume' is the noun od brumous, right?

Yep! “Brume” is heavy fog, clouds, mist, vapor. An anon also added, 

Alongside brumous, there is also brumal—both functioning as adjectives and essentially meaning the same thing.

“Sitting on the couch with the soggy last of a bowl of cereal, Robin looked out her window at the brumous six o’clock sky and just felt morose. The minor thrill of starting her last year of high school had long since worn off, and what she really felt like she needed was some good old-fashioned adventure.”

(That’s from the rough, rough draft of a story I’m writing. Writing is hard.)