What's the weirdest word or turn of phrase you've used recently? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago by Volkditty@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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Inspired by something I said last night when complaining about an achievement at work and the only way I could think to describe it was "pure frippery."

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[-] Canadian_Cabinet@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 week ago

Last week a coworker described a restaurant as being "kitty-corner" from our office. Took me forever to figure out what they meant

[-] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I occasionally hear "catty-corner" too.

[-] LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 6 days ago

I was always under the impression that was a similar expression to 'dog-eared', i.e. a bit beaten up. But maybe I'm conflating it with another phrase

[-] Wolf314159@startrek.website 2 points 5 days ago

Dog-eared means that a corner got folded down (making a diagonal) on a page as a bookmark. A dog-eared book isn't necessarily beat-up beyond the damage to the corners of pages. Catty-cornered or kitty-cornered is adjacent to something on the diagonal, i.e. not orthogonally next to it like up, down, left, or right. So there is an argument to be made for a loose (coincidental) connection between those ideas, but I don't think they come from the same roots.

[-] Classy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 days ago

I'm my area it's said "caddy corner", or you might hear the random old euphemistic "caddy-wampus" which means either "diagonal to reference position" or "all fucked up!"

this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024

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