strange English words

How about words that are only common in the negative?

Nonplussed

Disheveled

Ruthless (I got Eeees on this one once while playing Scrabble. We play a cutthroat game where challenge-losers forfeit a turn. One time, I played “ruth” which earned me a challenge. I figured that if you can be ruthless, you can have ruth. Sure enough, it was in the Scrabble Dictionary and she lost a turn.)

The Wolf

For Wolf: unkempt (kempt is one of my favorite words :D).

supercalifragilisticexpealidoshes(Mary Poppins in case you had a hard time reading the word)

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

quiddity

bdellium

alfalfa

gneiss

jodhpurs

ukulele

yucca

gigue

Occident

gobsmacked

Orthochlorobenzalmalononitrile

— otherwise known as Pepper Spray

Ken Zayn – when I was little, that word was supposed to have been the longest in the English language, and our spelling teacher gave us extra credit if we got it right on a test. I think we studied it harder than the rest!

oxymoron

egalitarian

pterodactyl

grist

umpteen

enth

moot

TOLERANCE haven’t heard that word in a long time

one of my favorites is brouhaha (not sure if i spelled it right)

hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia – fear of long words, and NO i didn’t use a dictionary or copy and paste it! LOL

uneeq

Can you please explain those? I’d love to understand them

never mind, just googled them. pretty neat, eh?

there are three definitions of buffalo:

1) the city: Buffalo, NY

2) the animal (bison)

3) to bully

usage 1) the city is a proper noun and therefore must be capitalized; therefore when you see a capitalized “Buffalo” in the sentence assume it is the city.

the next two are a bit more difficult to figure out without punctuation, as the punctuation gives the sentence tone and thus, context.

on to had had and had.

had had is an alternate form of had when referring to the verb in the past tense.

hadpast participle, past tense of have (Verb)

Verb:

Possess, own, or hold

as per that definition had had should be incorrect, but there are specific instances where each usage is proper. the statement that the teacher was more pleased with had had expresses a thought without context and is therefore misleading.

had on its own is a verb which denotes previous possession.

had had is a pluperfect which denotes both tense, in this case past, and perspective. in other words, whereas had refers to actual possession, where the possession is the focus of the discussion, had had refers instead to the time of possession, or a time frame of possession.

example for had: i once had a dog named scruffy.

example for had had: i had had a root canal before, but this one still seemed like pain beyond anything i had ever experiences.

the focus of had’s use in a sentence is to tell you that the subject is in possession of something.

the focus of had had in a sentence is to tell you that the subject experienced something, be it actual possession (as in i had had dogs before, but this one was particularly rowdy) or a description of a past event (as in the example with the root canal.)

the pluperfect is not exclusive to had had and the second had can usually be replaced with something more specific.

getting back to the example with the dog, “i had owned dogs before, but this one was particularly rowdy” would be a perfect use of the pluperfect (pun intended).

another indication of when to use or how to recognize a pluperfect is the timeline of the sentence.

“i had a dog.” tells a story about a man and a dog and then stops. it fixes on one specific point in time and moves no further.

the pluperfect had had or had (insert participle here) refers back to a fixed point in time and then moves you forward.

let’s examine the man who had owned dogs before. he is telling you that he had owned dogs before, or had had dogs before, however is or was surprised by the dog he acquired either sometime after his previous possession of dogs or the present. a sentence with a pluperfect has a timeline–a sentence with a simple verb does not.

therefore, depending on the message you are trying to convey, you may choose had or had had; however, the terms are NOT interchangeable as implied by that sentence.

Hi soliek.

You seemed to cover and explain the tense of words with quite a degree of expertise. Very impressive.

So, if I were to say, “I had a tense lesson,” that would be an accurate statement.

And if I were a writer paid by the word, it might suit me to say, “I had had a tense tense lesson.” that, too, would be valid.

; )

Soliek: now ordinarily i wouldnt nitpick as much, but i know that you got those sentences from wikipedia where the grammar is explained in great detail and you therefore should have known better.

I did know better. I was going for shock value, so naturally I didn’t put in the punctuation.

i teach english, btguy 😀

and yes, that would technically be correct, albeit very confusing 😛 and tense-lesson wold probably be hyphenated in that case to avoid confusion…but tzarich iyun 😀