I know there are at least a few other people that suffer from the randomly forget a word or words disease. So I figured we could post some of our best here to share. Water Laxative Spoiler: answer diuretic
i unfortunately am not very good at coming up with creative alternate names for things when i forget a word, and often just say "the thing, you know, the thingy. it things when you thing." but it is pretty funny to me when every time i ask someone who even slightly knows me if they want to watch The Thing they always respond without fail with either "what thing?" or "describe it, what's it called?".
Awning. I cannot remember that word. Except for now, curiously. A friend once called me after her colonoscopy. She was still woozy from her anesthetic and was trying to tell me about the things they found in her colon. Lots of them. You know. Things. Those little round fuzzy green things. I was verging on horrified until I kenned what she meant. Spoiler She was full of kiwifruit seeds. :D
'Thingy' or in dutch: 'dinges'. 'Stuff' is another vague word I use. Sometimes I make literal translations from Dutch to English (and vice versa): 'Overzichtelijk' - 'oversightly', but what I really meant was ... Uh... Dammit. I forgot again. :( I mean 'easily viewable in one glance', but I can't remember the word! Help? Kind of like 'organised', or 'clear'. Google translate isn't helping... Or is it really 'clear'?
concise? (i play this game with my head so much. it's weird how sometimes the trick is to unfocus your brain a little)
@boyacrossthestreet Ugh it's close, but not quite. It's like I'm getting an assignment that is really clearly explained and that I can easily comprehend, or like a room where I can see where everything fits. I guess... Comprehensible? That sounds right, I think. Or it's one of those Dutch words that encompasses a host of ideas in just one word, but requires a whole list different words in English. Like 'gezellig' - it's close to cozy, but there is not one word in the English language that comes close: it describes not just being cosy, but the feeling of being comfortable with people, the atmosphere of a place, or the atmosphere of a circle of people getting along well with each other but not necessarily knowing each other well. ...I get really frustrated at times when I speak English, as you've guessed. :p
I feel like languages that put words together to make new words are much easier than languages that just make up an entirely new word. (wait, so would kintsugi be gezellig then?) My worst days are the days when I spend a half hour explaining the word I'm looking for only to be told that that word doesn't actually exist. It's like the tip-of-the-tongue feeling combined with jamming your finger on a basketball.
Yes it would! Although I generally use it for physical things, it's also good for abstract things, like this forum. And yes, that's the absolute worst, when the word doesn't exist.
Just looked it up - close...! but not really there either. Gezellig can be used not just for companions, but also for spaces themselves. 'een gezellige huis' - a cosy/agreeable house 'een gezellige bijeenkomst' - a companionable (am I using it right?) get-together 'lekker gezellig, zeg' - this is nice. (also lekker is another frustrating word that can mean 'nice', 'tasty', 'good' etc) 'je vrienden zijn best gezellig' - your friends are good to get along with. We use it a lot in our language and it's considered the most typically Dutch word ever.
Spoiler: The colour of the big dome up there and also the big wet places. The day I forgot the words 'blue', 'sky' and 'ocean' all at the same time while trying to ask if mum had seen a particular car.
So I use the word المصدر a lot. The musdr is basically the infinitive. For whatever reason the word for infinitive in English has just kind of been dead to me since Arabic 1. I honestly struggle to think of the English word now? Like my first reaction to being asked about what form of verb aimer was in French class was to just go "AL MASDR". Followed by my not being able to think of how to describe that in English? Thankfully the professor is Lebanese though.
so "gezellig" is pretty much the same as German "gemütlich" then? I'm not really sure why English hasn't just stolen the word yet, it doesn't really have a concise equivalent.
@littlepinkbeast yeah I think so. Although gemütlich also translates to 'gemoedelijk' in Dutch, which has a slightly different nuance than gezellig - like gezellig is one tier higher/nicer than gemoedelijk, I think. (Example: gemoedelijk is what I get when I'm tipsy, gezellig is what I get when I'm drunk) @Wiwaxia here, the Dutch ambassador in Canada explains it and pronounces it (also his accent is softer than mine - my 'g's are a little too hard). Seriously, why aren't we monetising this word, we always seem to spend time explaining it. :)
Spoiler: lawn carpet grass I said it, knew it came out wrong, but didn't realize just how wrong until literally everyone at the lunch table was laughing at me.
Oh my god this reminds me of a joke that my friend told me. It is hugely inappropriate. Spoiler: the joke So a bunch of guys are at the bar and one of them is super hammered. He's got a very unique talent: if you shove something up his ass, he can tell you exactly what it is, and he starts taking bets from people that he can totally identify anything they decide to stick up there. So first they stick a shot glass in his ass. The guy's like "it's a shot glass." Then they stick a pool cue in there, the guy's like "it's a pool cue." Then they get that, that thing, you know, the thing, behind the toilet, you use it when the toilet gets clogged-- (at this point the target interjects "the plunger!") Oh, so you've played this game before, then. I thought I was so clever because guessing words right! Then as it turns out, the game was not guessing words right. I didn't get the joke for literally fifteen minutes and then suddenly had a moment of introspection in class and my face turned purple that's how hard I flushed.
