Vellichor is one such word, and Koenig’s site has hundreds of others, such as zenosyne (the sense that time keeps going faster), liberosis (the desire to care less about things), and sonder (the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own). The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, by John Koenig, is an ongoing collection of invented words, each representing an attempt to find a word to fit a concept for which our vocabulary is currently lacking. Vellichor is now one of my favorite words.” The recent use of the word to refer to "government by idiots" is showing fairly wide usage, and if it remains healthy it stands a good chance of joining other political insults defined in reference books soon.ĭefinition: the strange wistfulness of used bookstores Very few dictionaries have taken the step of including either of these uses of idiocracy, and the earlier one seems to be in little danger of becoming suddenly popular. This all changed in 2006, with the release of Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, a film in which a man awakens five hundred years in the future and discovers that the world is ruled by…well, by idiots. However, this use of the word (and pretty much all others for the next 350 years) referred to government by self-rule (the idio- in this word is the same one that we find in words such as idiosyncratic). It can be found as far back as 1654, in Seth Ward's Vindiciæ academiarum. Idiocracy is not a particularly new word, although it has picked up a new meaning recently. “DH's favorite word is "Idiocracy" - it defines the A.I. Update: This word was added in January 2021. Like the spurious cromulent, many of these words are not even entered in dictionaries, as they seem to only be trotted out as examples of one's extensive vocabulary.Įmbiggen, by the way, was also said to have been created for this episode, although it had already been used in an issue of Notes and Queries from 1884, meaning "to make great." Both cromulent and embiggen have been quite successful, and stand an excellent chance of one day being used in a manner that does not slyly reference the television show that they came from. One famous example is cromulent, which was coined specifically for the 1996 episode “Lisa the Iconoclast." In reference to one character’s questioning of the use of embiggen, another says “it’s a perfectly cromulent word.” Despite being a complete fabrication, the word caught on, and seems to be made for the internet-where the most popular "favorite words" are rarely used for their intended purposes. Post on It is safe to say that The Simpsons has contributed a great deal to the English language. “Are you a word geek like me? 8) So any way, my new favorite word is cromulent…It caught my attention because I'm a Conan fan, and I thought it was Crom-related. Both are available on ArXiv, a site where research that has yet to be peer-reviewed can be posted.Ĭanfield plans to present the results at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society in Los Angeles in March 2018, and he hopes that actor Jim Parsons, who plays Sheldon Cooper, or any of "The Big Bang Theory" cast members can attend "and perhaps discuss BaZnGa in the light of our findings," Canfield said.Definition: uncertain, possibly "acceptable," or "fine" The scientists wrote a lighthearted and a serious version of the study. "We admire the accuracy of the prediction of BaZnGa, but regret having fallen prey to his legendary wit BaZnGa!" Sheldon Cooper continues to be both a motivation and an enigma," the researchers wrote in the study. The same thing happened when the researchers tested it for high-temperature superconductivity, as well as a barrage of other measures. "Not so."įor instance, "We checked to see if this new compound was quasicrystalline," the researchers wrote in the study - but it wasn't.
"We were hoping that we would have a title, 'New high-temperature superconductor BaZnGa,'" Canfield said. (Image credit: Jo, Na Hyun et al./Archive 2017)īut Canfield and Jo did find an amusing flip side to their new concoction: Sheldon says "bazinga" when he's attempting to make a jest or jape, so it's almost as if Sheldon is playing a joke on them, Canfield said. The other metal sites (shown in green, cyan and blue) can contain gallium by itself (M2 site) or mixtures of gallium and zinc (M1 and M3 sites). A ball-and-stick model showing the structure of BaZnGa, with barium shown in red.
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