What words are odd to you?

Camouflage, finale, psyche, leprosy… are some words in my mind. They don’t sound like English to me.

Sure, why do we pluralize the clothes we wear on our legs but not our torso. Why do we refer to them as a “pair of” pants, trousers, shorts, jeans, khakis, culottes, etc? Yet on our upper body we wear a shirt, blouse, polo etc.

My personal theory is because at one time the clothing of choice were leggings, two separate articles of clothing that came together and were tied around the waist and groin. And that eventually someone decided to sew the two halves together, probably because one side always disappeared, much like socks manage to do today.

Why are there three meanings for ‘draft’?
– breeze
– way of serving beer
– being forced to serve in the army

One of my favorite words – it just sounds good – is
sesquipedalian

“Ebullient” and “enervate” both sound, to my ear, the opposite of what they mean.

@elbanditoroso You forgot that it also is a drawing or written attempt. As in the first draft of a letter or architectural drawing.

Tons of words in English have multiple, seemingly unrelated, meanings. Fine, bear, led; the list goes on and on, draft is a great example that I had never thought about before.

@Mimishu Good point. English uses and adopts a lot of words so there are quite a few that don’t sound English, especially to people who learn English as a second language. We have many many words that I think are like that. Naive, sautéed, schadenfreude, purée, attaché, angst, zucchini, salami, deli, actually the food list is long. Some foods we use a different name like Eggplant and orange to name a few. Others we keep the name from the countries that introduced the food item.

tailgate

Bottom or Backside or Behind meaning Arse.
It’s the top of my legs & neither of those makes any sense at all.

@ucme – are these any better? link

“Fanny” giggles like a schoolboy

I had a distant aunt whose name was Fanny. (Well, it was actually something eastern-European, but we knew her as Aunt Fanny.

When we were kids, it made us laugh.

it’s still funny when you consider the UK/US definitions, which is why I giggled so.

I had a great aunt Fanny, so she was granny Fanny to my cousins. Fanny in America means something different than in the UK, but both definitions make you not want it as your name.

At least a vagina suits being called a fanny, an arse, not so much.

When someone is described as being anal.

@Afos22 That’s short for anal retentive. It’s a Freudian term. What I’ve always found amusing is that the opposite of anal retentive is called anal explosive. Ha!

Why is colonel pronounced that way?

@Afos22 Ahem…I meant to type anal expulsive. Freudian slip, perhaps?

@fluthernutter correct. It is still not proven that early childhood anal stimulation has anything to do with an obsession to order. But we still use the term. So when someone is described as being anal, instead of obsessive, am forced to think about their anus. haha

Also before I posted my first response, I looked up anal retentive, and glanced over a reference to anal expulsive, and comprehended it to be “explosive” and thought, that’s strange. And only after you said that, did I realize that it is expulsive. lmao

@Afos22 Your ass is already off.

All of them. They are nothing more than our most recent form of grunts and clicks and yet folks the world around give them tremendous power.

in the spirit of the thread i have always had a problem with two of my favorite words succulent and succinct.

@ucme I remember learning about the word “fanny” when I read Trainspotting, and how it meant vagina in the UK. Always seemed weird to me because over here in English, fanny is used to describe an ass. It’s a cute word you usually use with kids, like sit your fanny down and the like.

One word that doesn’t necessarily sound weird but that I don’t like, tits. For boobs. It sounds so…vulgar, and slutty haha. Mind you I use it sometimes, even if I don’t like it.

Very few. Language convention is pretty arbitrary. The only thing that matters when it comes to language is that the convention is universally accepted. Otherwise, nobody is universally sure what anybody else is talking about.

@Symbeline I like tits, not the word so much, just the actual baps themselves :D

@Mimishu1995 “Camouflage, finale, psyche, leprosy… are some words in my mind. They don’t sound like English to me”

Camouflage is French in origin. Finale is Italian. Psyche is Greek. Leprosy is derived from Latin.

Most words in English are originally from somewhere else; a good proportion are Germanic or Scandinavian, a good portion more are French. Thanks to invading Saxons, Vikings and Normans. Before these invasions, the people of Britain spoke mostly Welsh, which used to be the main language of the island and is now restricted to just Wales.

How about “tinny” words?

Repugnant.