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notable labiodentals


  • E/N site (n.): An "Everything/Nothing" site. (As in, "means everything to the person who's writing it, and nothing to everyone else".) The 90s word for blog.

  • Greek life (US n.): Amusing Ivy League slang for the frat / sorority system. Gives rise to excellent shite like this:
    ...After nearly three decades of operating in the shadows, the Greek organizations could find themselves under the University's regulatory oversight or banished altogether, President Tilghman said May 5.

    "At the moment I am keeping an open mind about all options," including retaining the University's existing policy of non-recognition, Tilghman said in an e-mail to PAW. One way to ban Greek life, she said, would be to require matriculating students to pledge not to join fraternities or sororities...

  • decompensation (medical n.): a system's eventual failure (after adapting to a disorder). Something Greek about it.

  • cadastral (n.): by taxable value; used exclusively for official maps. Wolfish.

  • usufructuary (n.): the holder of a usufruct, a legal right to gain from another person's property; they have the right to use (usus) the property and enjoy its fruits (fructus). I love this, it's like a five-year-old's version of Latin.

  • empennage (n.): Aeroplane tail assembly.

  • Quack Miranda (US adj.): The stock text that bogus alternative medicine and health foods to duck legal responsibility for their passive espionage against medicine and dietetics, a la the mandatory Miranda rights:
    These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

  • data turking: generating labelled data via a low-pay artificial artificial intelligence platform.

  • WAR file (n.): Web application ARchive. A Java thing. (I came across `server.war` at work.)

  • ATR (corporate abstract n.): authority to recruit

  • strats (corporate adj.): quant development. Originally a Goldman Sachs term, copied fast. Original contraction isn't defined anywhere, but "strategies".

  • quantoid (adj.): pejorative term for 'quantitative' among (innumerate?) sociologists.
    Also 2) The side of a linear differential equation which is faced by a zero.

See also this list of words Nabokov dug up or invented.


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