Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for the most interesting words of the week. The latest: side struck by lightning; an unusual second toe; feeling icky about technology.

side splash

“Justin believes that he experienced what’s called a side flash or side splash, in which the lightning ‘splashes’ from something that has been struck—such as a tree or telephone pole—hopscotching to a nearby object or person.”

Charlotte Huff, “What It’s Like to Be Struck by Lightning,” The Atlantic, May 25, 2017

According to U.S. meteorologist Ron Holle, direct lightning strikes “are surprisingly rare,” and “responsible for no more than 3 to 5 percent of injuries.” Side splashes make up “20 to 30 percent of injuries and fatalities” while “by far the most common cause of injury is ground current, in which the electricity courses along the earth’s surface.”

silk

“Pupil barristers, as trainees are known, start there at £65,000 per year, and the top silks each make several million pounds.”

Simon Akam, “The Exquisitely English (and Amazingly Lucrative) World of London Clerks,” Bloomberg, May 23, 2017

Silk is the nickname given to “barristers who’ve achieved the rank of Queen’s Counsel,” says Bloomberg, and comes from “the plush material used to make their robes.” The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest recorded usage is from 1821: “Our solicitor has heard with due attention the speeches delivered from learned silk.”

postural sway

“‘Most of us aren’t aware that we’re moving around all the time,’ says Lena Ting of Emory University, who measures what’s called postural sway in standing people as well as in animals.”

Susan Milius, “Here’s how flamingos balance on one skinny leg,” Business Insider, May 26, 2017

Postural sway refers to horizontal movement around one’s center of gravity. Simply “keeping the body vertical,” says Business Insider, requires “constant sensing and muscular correction for wavering.”

Greek foot

“Today the toe—and the foot it belongs to—is often called a ‘Greek foot’ by art historians and podiatrists.”

Melissa Banigan, “Why the Venus de Milo Has Extra-Long Second Toes,” Atlas Obscura, May 23, 2017

Greek foot refers to having a second toe that’s longer than the first, says Atlas Obscura, so-called because of its frequent depiction in ancient Greek sculptures. In the early 20th century, Dudley Morton, an American orthopedic surgeon, christened the phenomenon after himself, calling it Morton’s toe. Fifteen to 20 percent of the general population has it, and it may cause bunions, hammertoes, and chronic pain.

yuck factor

“He couldn’t face the idea of the operation. It devastated the family. That shows the strength of the yuck factor.”

Anonymous, “Why I donated one of my kidneys to a stranger,” The Guardian, May 20, 2017

The yuck factor refers to an instinctive negative response against new technology and was coined by bioethicist Arthur Caplan, according to Environmental Health Perspectives. For example, the yuck factor might deter people from using recycled sewage as their tap water or from donating a kidney, as discussed in The Guardian article. The yuck factor is also known as the wisdom of repugnance or appeal to disgust.

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for the most interesting words of the week. The latest: the Danish law of “average”; how horoscopes pull a fast one; becoming “plantainized.”

Jante

“The character of Denmark has been consistent in its exemplification of Jante even though it’s never named as such.”

Cole Seidner, “These 10 Rules Are How Denmark Won ‘World’s Happiest Country’ — Three Times,” Big Think, April 4, 2017

Like the cozy hygge, Jante is a Danish untranslatable and thought to be the reason Denmark keeps getting picked as the world’s happiest country. The law of Jante, says Quartz, is a code of conduct which suggests “Danes are happy because they aspire to be average.” Jante was originally the fictionalized town in a satirical novel which the author wrote “to skewer the people of the small town and region where he grew up.”

Why would such a law make you happy? It’s all about expectations. Quartz cites a therapist who says that if you expect a “very average life,” you’re more likely to be content “when life hands you average things.” And if you get something “above and beyond average,” you’ll probably be “pleasantly surprised” and “pretty darn happy.”

tago nang tago

“Lola’s legal status became what Filipinos call tago nang tago, or TNT — ‘on the run.’”

Alex Tizon, “My Family’s Slave,” The Atlantic, June 2017

Other Tagalog terms in Alex Tizon’s moving yet troubling piece include utusan, “people who take commands”; katulong, “helper”; and kasambahay, “domestic.”

Forer effect

“It’s hard to know whether I found them to be true — I am charming, TYSM, but am I irresponsible?! — or whether I’d fallen victim to the Forer effect.”

Haley Nahman, “Does Your Birth Order Affect Your Personality?” Man Repeller, May 12, 2017

The Forer effect, also known as the Barnum effect, is a psychological phenomenon in which people tend to agree with “vague descriptions about themselves without realizing they could apply to basically everyone and their cousin,” as How Stuff Works puts it. It’s named for Bertram Forer, a 20th-century American psychologist.

thunder god vine

“Now scientists have figured out how the thunder god vine works to prevent pregnancy.”

Katherine Ellen Foley, “A new study has confirmed the science behind an ancient form of birth control,” Quartz, May 18, 2017

The thunder god vine is known more formally as Tripterygium wilfordii, says Quartz. Researchers at University of California, Berkeley have figured out how a compound in the plant prevents sperm from fertilizing the egg, which “could lead to an alternative to the hormonal birth control pill.”

aplatanada

“Recently, I spent more than a month in this cinematic metropolis, getting properly aplatanada (slang for ‘plantainized,’ meaning Cubanized).”

Anya von Bremzen, “Where to Eat, Stay and Shop in Havana,” Food & Wine, May 22, 2017

Plantains are often equated with Cuban cooking — hence the slang term aplatanada, literally “plantainized,” to mean becoming Cuban — although “the fruit probably originated in India and landed in the Caribbean via the Spanish settlers,” says Fine Cooking.

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for the most interesting words of the week. The latest: war of the words, the French edition; another Frankenstein food; and a bouncy mouthfeel.

poudre de perlimpinpin

“Macron used this colourful phrase, meaning ‘fairy dust’, to refer to Le Pen’s promises.”

“The new French words we learned thanks to Macron and Le Pen’s verbal joust,” The Local, May 4, 2017

Poudre de perlimpinpin is just one of several interesting French words used during the presidential debate between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. It “can also mean star dust or snake oil,” says The Local. Other English lying, cheating, and stealing words include smoke and mirrors, chicanery, and subterfuge.

crotilla

“Based on the response to Crotilla so far, which has ranged from bewilderment to contempt, the product isn’t on its way to living up to the Cronut’s legacy.”

Michele Debczak, “Walmart Unveils the ‘Crotilla,’ a Tortilla and Croissant Hybrid,” Mental Floss, April 25, 2017

This latest culinary monstrosity (only to be rivaled by the frork, which may or may not be a joke) is an unnecessary cross between a croissant and a tortilla.

Q

“I grew to seek out Q like a favored friend, pining for the texture itself rather than looking to satisfy flavor expectations.”

Laura Russell, “The Curious Case of Q,” Roads and Kingdoms, May 2017

Q is a “springy, chewy” kind of mouthfeel — think mochi, fish cakes, shrimp dumplings (or har gow), and tapioca pearls, says Roads and Kingdoms. The term is also known as QQ and tan ya, which translates as “rebound teeth,” and may come from the Taiwanese Hokkien k’iu.

clicker

“Spaceplan is what’s known as an idle game, or a clicker. They’re the video game equivalent of background noise.”

Andrew Webster, “Spaceplan is a simple sci-fi game about saving the world and also potatoes,” The Verge, May 7, 2017

A clicker is also known as an incremental game, and “consists of the player performing simple actions (such as clicking on the screen) repeatedly to gain currency.” The term might come from Cookie Clicker and Cow Clicker, perhaps the first type of these games to gain success.

lip-pointing

“The girls were instructed to slip their paintbrushes between their lips to make a fine point — a practice called lip-pointing, or a ‘lip, dip, paint routine,’ as playwright Melanie Marnich later described it.”

Kate Moore, “The Forgotten Story Of The Radium Girls, Whose Deaths Saved Thousands Of Workers’ Lives,” BuzzFeed, May 5, 2017

After the U.S. joined World War I, hundreds of young women got jobs painting watches and radio dials with radium, says BuzzFeed. Why radium? Because it glowed in the dark.

But it was also deadly. Every time the women lip-pointed, “they swallowed a little of the glowing green paint,” having been told that small amounts of radium was actually beneficial to their  health. While the effect was magical at first — these “ghost girls” would literally shine in the dance halls at night — they were soon beset with disfigurement and disease. In the end, the women’s cases “led to life-saving regulations and, ultimately, to the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.”

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for the most interesting words of the week. The latest: a snap decision, election style; losers winning in China; saving the Icelandic language in the digital age.

snap election

“Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain is calling for a snap election on June 8, breaking a promise not to seek a vote before 2020.”

Russell Goldman, “Key Points About a Snap Election in Britain,” The New York Times, April 18, 2017

Before 2011, says The New York Times, prime ministers in Great Britain could call an election whenever they liked. Then a law was passed scheduling a general election every five years but with two exceptions: if Parliament members “lose confidence in the government, or if two-thirds of the members agree, a ‘snap’ election can be held.”

Diaosi

“Online, types give way and Diaosi is an identification made by those who earn comfortably middle-class salaries, have mortgages and university degrees, to others who work long hours in factories for little pay, having almost no disposable income.”

Graham Candy, “Winning and Losing in Modern China,” Peeps Magazine

The Chinese term Diaosi, which translates as “loser,” originated in 2012, and was originally used to insult others online, says Peeps Magazine. However, a year later, it was estimated that over 500 million Chinese self-identified as such.

While various sources define Diaosi in various ways, they agree on three features: the majority are men born in the 1980s, play online games, and don’t see themselves as Gao Fu Shuai, those who are “tall, rich, and handsome.”

hemdem

“Ertugrul flips through the book and points to hemdem. ‘Do you have any word in English that means close friend?’”

Alexandra Locke, “The Turkish Shop Reviving Forgotten Words,” OZY, April 21, 2017

Hemdem means more than “a close friend,” says OZY. It means “sharing the same air,” a friend so close “that you’re sharing the same air in your past.”

gaman

“As we announce this landmark musical, I keep thinking about the Japanese term gaman, a word that means enduring the unbearable with dignity and strength.”

Jessica Gelt, “The George Takei musical ‘Allegiance’ is coming to L.A.,” The Los Angeles Times, April 20, 2017

Another untranslatable that comes from an Asian language is han, a Korean term that “denotes a collective feeling of oppression and isolation in the face of overwhelming odds,” and “aspects of lament and unavenged injustice.”

hundslappadrifa

“The people of Iceland, a rugged North Atlantic island settled by Norsemen about 1,100 years ago, have a unique dialect of Old Norse that has adapted to life at the edge of the Arctic. Hundslappadrifa, for example, means ‘heavy snowfall with large flakes occurring in calm wind.’”

Egill Bjarnason,“ Icelandic language at risk; robots, computers can’t grasp it,” The Associated Press, April 22, 2017

The Associated Press says Icelandic “ranks among the weakest and least-supported language in terms of digital technology – along with Irish Gaelic, Latvian, Maltese and Lithuanian.” One billion Icelandic krona, or $8.8 million, “is needed for seed funding for an open-access database to help tech developers adapt Icelandic as a language option.”

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for the most interesting words of the week. The latest: a possible euphemism of the year; a cute name for a dangerous phenomenon; more is more.

reaccommodate

“There is something to be said for the fact that the context in which reaccommodate was used was air travel, a realm plagued by stilted euphemisms from the lavatory to the full, upright and locked middle seat.”

Katy Steinmetz, “United Airlines ‘Reaccommodated’ a Passenger. Is That the Euphemism of the Year?” TIME, April 11, 2017

Reaccommodate in this context refers to the forcible removal of passenger David Dao from an overbooked United Airlines flight. Past euphemisms of the year from the American Dialect Society include locker-room banter for “lewd, vulgar talk”; EIT, or “enhanced interrogation technique,” itself a euphemism for torture; and least untruthful, “involving the smallest necessary lie.”

MOAB

“Despite the huge power of the MOAB, it is a smart bomb with wings and grid fins for guidance, and usually explodes mere feet from the ground.”

Anna Cummins, “5 things to know about the MOAB,” CNN, April 24, 2017

MOAB refers to GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, as well as, more commonly, the “mother of all bombs,” and was recently dropped by U.S. forces on Afghanistan. This thermobaric bomb (it generates both heat and pressure) is not the largest of its kind. Russia claims to have developed one four times larger than the MOAB, says CNN, aptly called FOAB, the father of all bombs.

pingo

“Don’t be fooled by its cute name—pingos can do some serious damage.”

Cara Giaimo, “Siberia Has Installed Its First ‘Exploding Pingo Detector,’” Atlas Obscura, April 11, 2017

Pingos are “common in Arctic permafrost,” says Atlas Obscura, and look like small hills (the term comes from an Inuit word meaning “small hill”). However, underneath they’re “full of ice, water, and, increasingly, methane gas, which bubbles up from underground vents.” They can “even explode,” resulting huge craters.

maximalism

“Appealing to impulses, as maximalism does, could also be interpreted as a consumerist strategy to get more people to buy more design.”

Diana Budds, “Minimalism Is Dead. Hello Maximalism,” FastCo Design, April 14, 2017

Maximalism is a reaction against minimalism (think “less is a bore”). Signs of maximalism might include a multitude of colors, objects, and patterns, and a lack of white space.

shaku maku

“The riddle at the heart of shaku maku seems to sum up the contradictions of the modern Iraqi experience.”

Rob Kunzig, “The Iraqi Version of ‘What’s Up?’ Is an Existential Riddle,” Atlas Obscura, April 14, 2017

Shaku maku is a greeting used in Iraq but also more than a greeting. Roughly translated, says Atlas Obscura, it means, “What is everything and nothing?” One Iraqi expatriate says the phrase “might show the confused and curious Iraqi personality,” and “that we care about everything that happened with the other, but also it shows we don’t know anything specific.”

Photo via The California Sunday Magazine

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for the most interesting words of the week. The latest: going nuclear, a dignified scavenger, a kind of blue.

nuclear option

“In deploying this so-called nuclear option, lawmakers are fundamentally altering the way the Senate handles one of its most significant duties, further limiting the minority’s power in a chamber that was designed to be a slower and more deliberative body than the House.”

Matt Flegenheimer, “Senate Republicans Deploy ‘Nuclear Option’ to Clear Path for Gorsuch,” The New York Times, April 6, 2017

The nuclear option refers to “a parliamentary procedure that allows the U.S. Senate to override a rule or precedent by a simple majority of 51 votes, instead of by a supermajority of 60 votes.” The term is apparently an analogy to the extreme option of nuclear weapons in warfare.

Dutch Harbor pigeons

“People in town call them Dutch Harbor pigeons. The rest of us call them bald eagles.”

Laurel Braitman, “Dirty Birds: What it’s like to live with a national symbol,” The California Sunday Magazine, March 30, 2017

While to many, the bald eagle is a symbol of courage, freedom, and dignity, to the 4,700 permanent residents of Dutch Harbor, Alaska, says The California Sunday Magazine, they’re rats with wings. The estimated 500 to 800 scavengers swarm at boats looking for scraps of bait, hang out at the dump, and dive bomb unsuspecting Coast Guard members and teenage boys with pizza.

Fermi paradox

“[The Fermi paradox is] an ‘interesting, fascinating paradox,’ Greg Laughlin, the Yale astronomer and astrophysicist, told us in his Ingenious interview. ‘There’s no good answer to why we don’t see manifestations of intelligence throughout the universe.’”

Brian Gallagher, “What Donald Trump Teaches Us About the Fermi Paradox,” Nautilus, March 31, 2017

The Fermi paradox is supposedly named for physicist Enrico Fermi and says that:

we should see intelligent aliens here if they exist anywhere, because they would inevitably colonize the Galaxy by star travel—and since we don’t see any obvious signs of aliens here, searching for their signals is pointless.

However, Scientific American (SA) says Fermi never made such a claim. Rather, the idea came from astronomer Michael Hart who said that if smart aliens “existed anywhere, they would be here,” and since they aren’t, “humans are probably the only intelligent life in our galaxy.” SA also says the Fermi paradox isn’t a paradox at all because:

there is no logical contradiction between the statement ‘E.T. might exist elsewhere’ and the statement “E.T. is not here” because nobody knows that travel between the stars is possible in the first place.

junbungaku

“The dignified but somewhat aloof word ‘junbungaku’ is an expression apparently peculiar to Japan. It refers to a type of literature pursued purely for its artistic quality.”

Kanta Ishida and Yomiuri Shimbun, “Glimpse into world of a precocious literary genius,” The Japan News, April 10, 2017

Junbungaku is basically the Japanese equivalent of belles-lettres, “literature regarded for its aesthetic value rather than its didactic or informative content.”

mizu

“English speakers have ‘light blue,’ sure. But ‘mizu’ is its own color, not merely a shade of another.”

Stacey Leasca, “There Is No Word In The English Language For This Gorgeous Color,” GOOD, March 31, 2017

What English speakers might call “baby blue” is called mizu in Japanese. Mizu translates as “water” and is “as different from ‘blue’ as ‘green’ is from ‘blue,’” says GOOD, and is “similar to how people in the United States use ‘magenta,’ rather than ‘purplish-red.’”