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Inherently Funny Word
An inherently funny word is a word that is humorous without context, often more for its Phonetics, phonetic structure than for its meaning. Vaudeville tradition holds that words with the sound are funny. A 2015 study at the University of Alberta suggested that the humor of certain nonsense words can be explained by whether they seem rude, and by the property of Entropy (information theory), entropy: the improbability of certain letters being used together in a word. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer posited that humor is a product of one's expectations being violated. Funny words in English Vaudeville words can be found in Neil Simon's 1972 play ''The Sunshine Boys'', in which an aging comedian gives a lesson to his nephew on comedy, saying that words with voiceless velar stop, ''k'' sounds are funny: Richard Wiseman, a professor of the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, conducted a small experiment to determine whether words with a ''k'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. The field of phonetics is traditionally divided into three sub-disciplines on questions involved such as how humans plan and execute movements to produce speech (articulatory phonetics), how various movements affect the properties of the resulting sound (acoustic phonetics) or how humans convert sound waves to linguistic information (auditory phonetics). Traditionally, the minimal linguistic unit of phonetics is the phone (phonetics), phone—a speech sound in a language which differs from the phonological unit of phoneme; the phoneme is an abstract categorization of phones and it is also defined as the smallest unit that discerns meaning between sounds in any given language. Phonetics deals with two aspects of human speech: production ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Professor Emeritus
''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some cases, the term is conferred automatically upon all persons who retire at a given rank, but in others, it remains a mark of distinguished performance (usually in the area of research) awarded selectively on retirement. It is also used when a person of distinction in a profession retires or hands over the position, enabling their former rank to be retained in their title. The term ''emeritus'' does not necessarily signify that a person has relinquished all the duties of their former position, and they may continue to exercise some of them. In descriptions of deceased professors emeriti listed at U.S. universities, the title ''emeritus'' is replaced by an indication of the years of their appointments, except in Obituary, obituaries, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Human Test Subject
Human subject research is systematic, scientific investigation that can be either interventional (a "trial") or observational (no "test article") and involves human beings as research subjects, commonly known as test subjects. Human subject research can be either medical (clinical) research or non-medical (e.g., social science) research. Systematic investigation incorporates both the collection and analysis of data in order to answer a specific question. Medical human subject research often involves analysis of biological specimens, epidemiological and behavioral studies and medical chart review studies. (A specific, and especially heavily regulated, type of medical human subject research is the "clinical trial", in which drugs, vaccines and medical devices are evaluated.) On the other hand, human subject research in the social sciences often involves surveys which consist of questions to a particular group of people. Survey methodology includes questionnaires, interviews, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Sesquipedalophobia
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Sesquipedalian
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Heterological
An autological word (or homological word) expresses a property that it also possesses. For example, the word "word" is a word, the word "English" is (in) English, the word "writable" is writable, and the word " pentasyllabic" has five syllables. The opposite, a heterological word, does not apply to itself. For example, the word "palindrome" is not a palindrome, "unwritable" is writable, and "monosyllabic" has more than one syllable. Unlike more general concepts of autology and self-reference, this particular distinction and opposition of autological and heterological words is uncommon in linguistics for describing linguistic phenomena or classes of words, but is current in logic and philosophy where it was introduced by Kurt Grelling and Leonard Nelson for describing a semantic paradox, later known as Grelling's paradox or the Grelling–Nelson paradox.Grelling and Nelson used the following definition when first publishing their paradox in 1908: "Let ''φ(M)'' be the word that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
BLUE
Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB color model, RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB color model, RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between Violet (color), violet and cyan on the optical spectrum, spectrum of visible light. The term ''blue'' generally describes colours perceived by humans observing light with a dominant wavelength that's between approximately 450 and 495 nanometres. Most blues contain a slight mixture of other colours; Azure (color), azure contains some green, while ultramarine contains some violet. The clear daytime sky and the deep sea appear blue because of an optical effect known as Rayleigh scattering#Cause of the blue colour of the sky, Rayleigh scattering. An optical effect called the Tyndall effect explains Eye color#Blue, blue eyes. Distant objects appear more blue because of another optical effect called aerial perspective. Blue has been an important colour in art and decoration since ancient t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Semantic
Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction between sense and reference. Sense is given by the ideas and concepts associated with an expression while reference is the object to which an expression points. Semantics contrasts with syntax, which studies the rules that dictate how to create grammatically correct sentences, and pragmatics, which investigates how people use language in communication. Lexical semantics is the branch of semantics that studies word meaning. It examines whether words have one or several meanings and in what lexical relations they stand to one another. Phrasal semantics studies the meaning of sentences by exploring the phenomenon of compositionality or how new meanings can be created by arranging words. Formal semantics (natural language), Formal semantics relies o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Bouba/kiki Effect
The bouba–kiki effect ( ) or takete–maluma phenomenon is a non-arbitrary mental association between certain speech sounds and certain visual shapes. The most typical research finding is that people, when presented with nonsense words, tend to associate certain ones (like ''bouba'' and ''maluma'') with a rounded shape and other ones (like ''kiki'' and ''takete'') with a spiky shape. Its discovery dates back to the 1920s, when psychologists documented experimental participants as connecting nonsense words to shapes in consistent ways. There is a strong general tendency towards the effect worldwide; it has been robustly confirmed across a majority of cultures and languages in which it has been researched, This paper examines cross-linguistic data supporting the bouba/kiki effect and explores its potential implications for understanding iconicity in language. for example including among English-speaking American university students, Tamil speakers in India, speakers of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Sound Symbolism
In linguistics, sound symbolism is the perceptual similarity between speech sounds and concept meanings. It is a form of linguistic iconicity. For example, the English word ''ding'' may sound similar to the actual sound of a bell. Linguistic sound may be perceived as similar to not only sounds, but also to other sensory properties, such as size, vision, touch, or smell, or abstract domains, such as emotion or value judgment. Such correspondence between linguistic sound and meaning may significantly affect the form of spoken languages. History Plato and the Cratylus Dialogue In '' Cratylus'', Plato has Socrates commenting on the origins and correctness of various names and words. When Hermogenes asks if he can provide another hypothesis on how signs come into being (his own is simply 'convention'), Socrates initially suggests that they fit their referents in virtue of the sounds they are made of: However, faced by an overwhelming number of counterexamples given by Hermog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Snollygoster
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Sixty-fourth Note
In music notation, a sixty-fourth note (North American), or hemidemisemiquaver or semidemisemiquaver (British), sometimes called a half-thirty-second note, is a Musical note, note played for half the duration of a thirty-second note (or demisemiquaver), hence the name. It first occurs in the late 17th century and, apart from rare occurrences of hundred twenty-eighth notes (semihemidemisemiquavers) and two hundred fifty-sixth notes (demisemihemidemisemiquavers), it is the shortest value found in musical notation. Sixty-fourth notes are notated with a filled-in oval notehead and a straight note stem with four flags. The stem is drawn to the left of the notehead going downward when the note is above or on the middle line of the musical staff, staff. When the notehead is below the middle line the stem is drawn to the right of the notehead going upward. A single 64th note is always stemmed with flags, while two or more are usually beam (music), beamed in groups. A similar, but rarely ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
