this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

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Just based on how often I notice someone mispronounce a word without realizing it (or have done so myself and realized it later). Statistically I'm probably still doing it with some word.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (6 children)

My teacher told me that he'd fail me if I mispronounced "Data" as "Da ta" and not "Dait a". So I always mispronounce it

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My wife pronounces ‘foliage’ like ‘foil-adj’.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Mine says window-seal.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

My favorite example of this happened during a D&D game years ago in which the DM kept pronouncing the word portcullis as PORK-YOO-LISS.

To this day, the word causes the image of some sort of ancient Roman pig gladiator to appear unbidden in my mind.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Though I want to know why Wednesday is pronounced "wendsday" or "wensday". The n is after the d!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The d before n is inherited from the original name Wodans dag (like Tiu's dag, Thor's dag and Frey's dag inherited through the Saxons and Danes from pagan germanic gods)

The rest is just linguistic shift through the centuries of changing language. Like Dag -> Day while for example in German Dag -> Tag.

But the root of the word is still Wodan then old english Weoden then Wedn.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The channel this video is from can be a useful resource.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Thanks for reminding me of these. A while back I met someone named Chateauneuf, and I tried to look up how to pronounce his name and found this very helpful answer.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Panacea. I pronounced it incorrectly for a long time. Never knew because no one corrected me. Fortunately it didn't come up too often.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

My wife says "wheelbarrel" and I giggle every time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • genre
  • only
  • gif
  • croissant
  • Aloysius
  • Edinburgh
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The rest I can understand, but... only?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I had heard the word “only” spoken in English, but didn’t know how to spell it. At the same time, I had seen the word written, but thought it was pronounced “on-lie” — oddly enough, I had never heard anyone use “on-lie” in speech; I thought it was one of those words that exist but aren’t used very much, like “splendid” or “indubitably”.

I just remembered I also had trouble for so long with the English words “union” (pronounced like English “onion”) and “onion” (pronounced “onny-on” or “on-ion”).

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

We've probably all said a sentence that no other person in history has ever said.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You can just look up words in the dictionary and look up the phonetic pronunciation key to refresh your memory. It pays to do this every once in a while.

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