this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
89 points (95.9% liked)

Ask Lemmy

32494 readers
1742 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I mean, what's something you can do that people are like, "really? You know how to do that?"

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] Mothra@mander.xyz 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I remember this teacher in particular who was explaining something and said "dissipate". He paused and picked me out of the group, for no apparent reason, and asked if I knew what dissipate meant. I said yes. So he asked me to explain, which I did, and he looked surprised and said something like "you're on fire" or similar and carried on.

That particular example stuck with me because of his condescending tone and for pointing the spotlight to me gratuitously, but I've had many, less memorable ones. It's not the words that I remember after a while, but that they presume I don't understand the meaning of a word apparently unusual for them. "Melancholy" and "quotidian" come to mind too.

On the same vein, I also surprise English speakers when reading, writing and understanding scientific names. Not all of course, but many are descriptive of the creature they refer to if you know a latin language. What's often a mouthful of nonsense for native English speakers can sometimes be meaningful to me.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago

Ah ok. Makes sense.
Thanks for responding :)