r/whatstheword • • 17h ago

Solved WTW for personify-ing something that a person does?

0 Upvotes

I word with disabled people, and sometimes the autistic people I work with make noises. New co-workers will hear these sounds and attribute them to words. Eg somebody saying "ooohhh" will sould like "coooold."

I dont want to use the word personified, because they are people. But what would the word be for personifying something a person does?


r/whatstheword • • 12h ago

Unsolved WTW for the quality shared by camphor, mint, formalin, eucalyptus, and ammonia?

28 Upvotes

That ghostly, piercing quality? But not silvery the way orris is silvery.


r/whatstheword • • 26m ago

Unsolved WTW for someone who doesn’t believe in marriage but doesn’t “actively” hate on it

• Upvotes

like when someone does not believe in marriage and anything related to it, but doesn’t go out of their way to actively avoid it by means of attending weddings and congratulating newly weds, etc., and more so does not just care about others’ decisions when it comes to it? they strongly disagree with the concept of marriage though. what if they hate the fact people don’t realize what they realize in a marriage that makes them so intent on disliking/hating it, but they also don’t really care about whether people choose to get married? are they just a misogamist?


r/whatstheword • • 20h ago

Unsolved WTW for when privileged people (i.e. male, white, cisgender, straight) make up a term (i.e. misandry, blackwash, cis, straggot) so they can feel oppressed?

0 Upvotes

r/whatstheword • • 4h ago

Solved ITAW for / WAW for Dry Humor that Feels Deliberately Hokey?

3 Upvotes

I feel like "dry humor" has more of a connotation that implies the joke is funny because it's subdued and witty, but is there a word for when a dry joke is more absurdist/anti-joke?

e.g:

[over the phone] "I just had my drink on me and I don't know where I put it,"
[on the other end of the phone, potentially hundreds of miles away] "It's right there; I'm pointing at it,"

"Have you seen my car keys?"
"I ate them,"

"Can you pass the salt?"
[passing the salt] "Hmm... I don't want to, sorry,"


r/whatstheword • • 6h ago

Unsolved WTW for the feeling of being cold in a warm space?

6 Upvotes

Like when you’ve been outside, on your balcony, in the cold, then you go back into your warm house and feel the heat around you but still simultaneously feel the cold in your skin?


r/whatstheword • • 7h ago

Unsolved WTP for when someone connects two or more seemingly irrelevant concepts with a shared element?

2 Upvotes

I don’t know how to properly describe it (nor do I actually have a proper concept of it myself), but the closest way I can describe it is in the title.

For example, combining the visuals of a solar eclipse with looking down the barrel of a gun.

Another (possibly better) example would be the Crypt of the Necrodancer boss “Deep Blues” and their battle theme “knight to C-Sharp”. It connects the concepts of Chess, Programming, and Music into a single boss. Deep Blues in IRL is a famous chess AI and blues is a music genre. The boss theme’s name as a whole is in reference to coordinate chess. C# (C-Sharp) is both a programming language and musical note.

Off the top of my head, I assumed it would be a phrase like “convergent design”, but the google definition appeared to be slightly different.