Questions tagged [word-request]
This tag is for questions seeking a word that fits a meaning. Please demonstrate why you expect the word to exist in English. For example you could tell us a word that means the same in another language. Please use a bilingual dictionary and include the result of your research. Please include a sample sentence demonstrating how the word would be used. If you actually seek a phrase, or don't care, see the "phrase-request" tag.
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Do we say "the stone that goes with the balloon is dirty" or "the stone that comes with the balloon is dirty"?
A seller sells a balloon. A string is tied to the balloon at one end and to a stone at the other end. The stone is used to keep the balloon from flying up.
I bought that balloon for my daughter. When ...
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Superficial friends just act like they care about each other. What do you guys call this behavior?
They just fake smiles to each other, practice hypocrisy or just pretend to be kind or polite. Is it idiomatic to call this interactions "putting on a phony show " or "acting to be kind&...
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How best to describe a person who wants to prove you wrong with half-baked information?
For example, a person uses a word to describe something and another person believing what they know pushes to argue for a misuse of the word only to use part of the definition. This causes a the two ...
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American equivalents of "repeat on" to describe food?
repeat
verb
3 British [no object] (of food) be tasted intermittently for some time after being swallowed as a result of belching or indigestion.
‘that cucumber repeated on me for hours’
(...
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Smack someone from behind with your crotch
What is this called in English I describe the situation as follows:
When a boy goes behind a girl, front-to-back position, especially when the girl is distracted because it makes it funnier to him, ...
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Do we say "The water of the soup is yummy"?
I know this is a bowl of soup
so, the soup has liquid, vegetables and meat.
If I have to say each component of the soup seperately.
Can I say the liquid "water"? and say the vegetables &...
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What is the verb expressing that a child just wants their mom to be exclusively for them?
Now, a woman has a 5-year-old daughter and now she has just had a newborn baby. The daughter starts to get jealous of the baby because she just wants her mom to take care of her only not the baby.
...
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What is the word used to express how strong a part of the body of a person resisting to illness or germs or viruses is?
Now, whenever I drink cold water, I have a sore throat. However, my friends never have that condition. They can drink very cold water and they are fine without any problem.
Another example, when my ...
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how to say you have to pay a deposit and the deposit is equivalent to a rent of 2 months?
We often say "I have 5 years of experience" or "I have 5 years' experience" and "experience" is uncountable.
But I also see people write "I have 5-year experience&...
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Verb that means to get rid of obstacle (person or thing) or to make it disappear as if by magic (such as by staring at it or thinking about it)
I saw an example for this verb on Google Dictionary but forgot the word. As I best recall, its meaning is "to get rid of obstacle (person or thing) or to make it disappear as if by magic (such as ...
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What is a common verb we use to express one in a group tries to do things to make others in the group follow him/her?
Mary and Jen are children.
They play with each other, and Jen often says a lot and does not let Mary say much. Jen often suggests doing many things. Normally, Mary just follows what Jen asks her to do....
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A word for the thin hardpan conventional rotary cultivators create in a field?
Translating a technical book on agriculture from the German, I am looking for a word that describes the thin hardpan created by conventional rotary tillers in a field. The literal translation from the ...
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How to translate the word "college" from Italian to English?
I am Italian and I've lived for a while in the US and I heard a lot of people using the word college as a synonym of university; however in Italy the word college often refers to the place where you ...
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When you tell a joke and nobody laughs
I'm looking for an expression or a verb describing the feeling you get or the situation when you tell a joke and nobody laughs.
Oh man, last night I cracked a joke and no-one even smiled at it. I [...
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Is "policy maker" one word or two?
Is it correct to write "policy maker" in two words? It is unclear to me whether it should be written as: policy maker or policymaker or policy-maker.
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What is the phrase for when you learn that there is so many things you didn't know?
I'm trying to make a sentence and convey the meaning that ignorance is bliss but I learned that there were this many things I didn't know and then learned about the things I didn't know about but I'm ...
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Verb for splitting something into eighths
Can you complete the following with the right verb:
Half it (1/2)
Quarter it (1/4)
.......it (1/8)
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An equivalent verb/idiom for "taping pieces together with saliva"
Is there a verb or idiom for "connecting heterogeneous pieces together in a fast and careless way to build something", which would be an antonymous phrase of "careful and systematic ...
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What do you call "squeezed" fruit?
Let's say I buy some fruit like bananas or something soft and put them in a bag.
By the time I take them out of the bag, they have been spoiled because I pressed my back against the bag when I was ...
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What is the adjective that express the eyes of people who are sick or high on drug?
I suspect my children have some symptom of flu or Covid.
Their eyes are somehow spacing out or lacking vividness or liveliness like some people are high on drug.
What is the adjective that express the ...
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Can we say "The fire alarm is going off" to express the state of making sound?
We say “the fan is on” to express its current state.
and “the fan suddenly went on” to express an action.
Normally we use the simple past tense for an action because it happened.
if I say “the fan is ...
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Words referring to people who go to public places
1. -goer
2. visitor
3. attendee
4. patron
So here are four words meaning a person going to public places that I've rounded up. I think the first two words are usable for most public places, but I ...
- 219k
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Linking your sentences naturally
Below is a comment of mine in this forum:
I know "the proportion of" works in both cases, but I'm not sure if "the rate of" does. And what if I rephrase the first sentence into the ...
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Alternative to the word "notice board/collage" in this context?
I visited a local restaurant recently. They had a board on the wall, which had a collection newspaper articles(about local sport teams) pinned to it.
In my native country, we have the word notice ...
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What do you call the standing ads outside of a store?
You have the store sign, which is usually hanging outside of the store. Then you have the billboards, which are bigger and are held high with metal support.
What do you call the store ads that are ...
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decade, century, millennium, what is next?
The title of this question says it all.
Are there nouns for longer periods than a millennium ?
I mean words designating a specific number of years.
Era, age and epoch don't count as they just ...
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The word for the movement in picture
In the region I belong to there is one word for the entire process of shrouding and burial, whose English is funeral. We also use that word for even the deceased lying on the bier.
If I keep that ...
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The opposite of "wanted" [closed]
When a person is wanted everybody wants to work with him, he's popular and is always asked for. But is there an opposite for wanted, meaning a person who isn't popular at work, someone whom nobody ...
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Term for bed sheet that embraces and partially encapsulates the mattress
I went to IKEA and got me a new sheet. It's awesome on the bed because instead of being "sheety", it's got those rubber parts so one doesn't fold it under the mattress to keep it in place but rather ...
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How to say "to prepare a place for sleeping" (for example to put a sheet, blanket and pillow on the bed)?
How to say "to prepare a place for sleeping"?
I mean "to put a sheet, blanket and pillow on the surface where someone will sleep (usually it's a bed)".
For example:
The host of a ...
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Is there a verb form of ‘oblique’?
Oblique type and italic type are different font styles. Oblique type is always slanted to the right (at least according to Wikipedia). To the best of my knowledge, nowadays almost all italic types in ...
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Is there a word that can be used for both the original thing and a copy of it?
I'm writing computer program.
I have two type of objects: originals and their clones.
I need somehow describe these objects by type.
How I can call this property more concrete than just "type of ...
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What is the thin flat piece of wood that you have when you sharpen your pencil called?
When you sharpen your pencil with a pencil sharpener, you have some thin flat pieces of wood that might be in the shape of a cone.
What is that piece called?
Is it a chip?
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Price demanded and offered
A sellers demands a sum of money for the thing he sells and that is called 'price'. Question is, is the same on the side of a customer? I mean, does a customer offer a 'price' when he bargains? Is the ...
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Word for a hideout that's not for hiding
I'm writing a book in which the main character has a "hideout" in a small cave. Except, it's not for hiding. It's a place to dump tools and equipment that you'd need for a cave expedition. ...
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What are the beginning and closing template of a video?
I often see a beginning and a closing attached to a video, especially videos produced by some big brands, and such beginning and closing are the same for the same brand. It's like a template: the main ...
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Does "subsequent" only refer to the direct successor?
Oxford Learner's Dictionaries defines subsequent as happening or coming after something else but it is not very clear if it can still be used if there is another of the same thing between the two ...
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Is it called a rope?
When I hear "rope" I picture it as something like this
Do we call this a rope or a string?
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A single word for a man who is not exclusively attracted to men
In particular, I am looking for a word that encompasses all of heterosexuals, bisexuals and so on, excluding those men who are only into men.
EDIT: Two words are admissible; something like 'XYZ man' ...
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What word describes 'reconnect and continue' a previous correspondence?
I had a correspondence with an office that ended some time ago. Now I want to reconnect and continue from where I left the previous correspondence. My mind tells me the word Resurrect, i.e. ...
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A word for a person who blindly believes what is taught in school
Is there an English word for a person who blindly believes what is taught in school, information disseminated by mainstream media, what Wikipedia says, etc.? If there is such a word, I would like to ...
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what is a word for freebies given away at some events (e.g. orientation, job fair, ...)?
what is a word for freebies given away at some events (e.g. orientation, job fair, ...)? I remember there is a word whose form looks like "swag", but can't remember it.
Looks like swag is a ...
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". . . who probably confounded the word with a familiar oath" - What *is* the "familiar oath"?
(From The Wrecker by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, Chapter XVII, published 1892)
Passage 263
...That Trent, he come first, with his 'and in a bloody rag. I was
near 'em as I am to you; ...
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A word for the tracks a tractor leaves in a farm field?
I am looking for a good translation of the German word "Fahrgasse." It describes the tracks a tractor leaves on a farm field. Usually parallel and evenly distributed, these tracks are used ...
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do we call the 2 strips of a masquerade mask "laces"?
When we talk a bout mask, it could be "a medical face mask"
And "a medical face mask" has 2 ear loops, for example, "put the ear loops around your ears"
or it could be &...
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The word that describes the feeling when you're disgusted by a certain taste
Imagine that you're having a really sweet and high-fat piece of cake. At first, you can have it just fine, but after a while you get sick of its overwhelming taste. How do I describe that I am now ...
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Is there a word for the various "subevents" at an event?
Is there a general word for the "subevents" at an event of some sort? For instance, at a conference, I guess I could probably use "talk" or "presentation"; at a fair I ...
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A century-old term for a dog waste collector
I believe 100 years ago, or thereabouts, there was a term in use for men whose sole job was to collect dog or other animal droppings.
I came across this term over ten years ago and the term has evaded ...
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Is there a word describing the feeling when cold water is drank, similar to "spiciness"?
Weird question, but you see how spicy food can be described by the word “spiciness”? How can one describe the feeling when cold water is drank? Do you know any adjective which describes this best?
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What word describes the feeling of "shocked by some great things and humbled"?
What word describes the feeling of "shocked by some great things and humbled and overwhelming" ?
I vaguely remember a word which sounds like "contaminated" .
For example, one can ...
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