WTF Fun Fact 13059 – The Minionese “Language”

Have you seen “Minions,” “Despicable Me,” or “Despicable Me 2”? If so, you may have heard the Minion characters speaking their own language. All Minions are voiced by Pierre Coffin, who also created the language called Minionese.

Minionese and other made-up languages

From Klingon to Elvish, storytellers have been making up their own languages for years. And some fans have ever learned how to speak them.

According to the Motion Picture Association, Minionese is “the lexical version of a hearty stew, made up of words from multiple languages, expressed not only vocally, but through the Minions’ physical comedy. While the creation of Minionese makes narrative sense now that the Minions have a rich backstory…Coffin’s goal was for the audience to understand Minionese without actually knowing the exact verbiage through the Minions huge range of vocal melodies and inflections, as well as their physical actions.”

It takes an interesting mind to create such a dynamic method of communication!

Creating language

Coffin’s first task was creating a backstory for Minions Kevin, Stuart, and Bob. The characters are part of a nomadic tribe in search of a master. In the course of their journey, they’ve taken on bits of different languages they’ve come across. In fact, there are elements of Egyptian, French, and even Transylvanian.

But each character’s intonation means a lot to the language as well. All three Minions have different ways of vocalizing.

According to Coffin:

“You don’t understand their words, you don’t understand their grammar, but you do understand when they’re in a position of conflict, if they’re sad or if they’re happy.”

He actually started building the language while watching silent films. That helped him understand how visual communication would play an integral role in having characters speak something no one had ever heard (but needed to understand if they were going to follow the plot).

When Coffin gets stuck on a line of Minion dialog, he just turns to other languages:

“Every time I got stuck in a sequence or in a shot where I need to express something, I have my Indian or Chinese menu handy. I also know a little bit of Spanish, Italian, Indonesian and Japanese. So I have all these sources of inspiration for their words. I just pick one that doesn’t express something by the meaning, but rather the melody of the words.”  WTF fun facts

Source: “Here’s How They Created Minionese, the Language of the Minions” — Motion Picture Association

WTF Fun Fact 13027 – Computer Mouse Measured in Mickeys

A good computer mouse will move across pixels quickly and without requiring too many clicks of the bottom wheel (or centimeters across the mouse pad if you’re using a mouse with a sensor). The unit of measurement used for a computer mouse is called a Mickey. The devices may be measured in Mickeys per second or Mickeys per centimeter, for example.

Measured in Mickeys

Mickeys are also used to measure the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal speed at which a cursor can travel over pixels on a computer screen.

Presumably, this unit of measurement is a cute way to summon to mind the Disney character Mickey Mouse. However, Disney has a tight hold on the copyright for their creations, so you won’t see a deliberate reference to the Mouse himself on your equipment.

Other quirky units of measurement

According to Mental Floss (cited below), a Mickey isn’t the only unofficial unit of measurement with personality.

For example: “If a light-year is the distance traveled by light in one year (i.e. approximately 6 trillion miles), then a beard-second is the length that a beard hair grows in one second—or, according to Google’s unit converter, 5 nanometers.”

And “One sydharb is equivalent to 500,000,000,000 liters, namely the approximate volume of Sydney Harbor.” But why is this useful? “Well, just like using the relative sizes of countries or regions to compare one against another (as in “Brazil is the same size as five Alaskas”), the volume of Sydney Harbor can be used to give context to otherwise incomprehensibly vast quantities like the annual water consumption of a city or country, the size or impact of a flood, and the capacities of lakes and dams.  In comparison, it takes two full days (49 hours to be precise) for 1 sydharb of water to flow over Niagara Falls.”  WTF fun facts

Source: “10 Ridiculously Precise Units of Measurement” — Mental Floss

WTF Fun Fact 12994 – The First Use of OMG

Have you typed or texted OMG in surprise? While you may feel a bit too old and mature for that, it might surprise you to know it’s not a millennial phenomenon – at least not originally. The first use of OMG to mean “oh my God” was in 1917.

Who was the first person to use OMG?

According to Smithsonian Magazine (cited below), Lord John Fisher was a British Navy Admiral “who began World War I as First Sea Lord but resigned in 1915” first used the abbreviation in a letter to none other than Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

The 1917 letter reads:

My Dear Winston,

I am here for a few days longer before rejoining my “Wise men” at Victory House-

“The World forgetting,
By the World forgot!”

but some Headlines in the newspapers have utterly upset me! Terrible!!
“The German Fleet to assist the Land operations in the Baltic.
“Landing the German Army South of Reval.”
We are five times stronger at Sea than our enemies and here is a small Fleet that we could gobble up in a few minutes playing the great vital Sea part of landing an Army in the enemy’s rear and probably capturing the Russian Capital by Sea!
This is “Holding the ring” with a vengeance!
Are we really incapable of a big Enterprise?
I hear that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis: — O.M.G (Oh! My! God!)– Shower it on the Admiralty.

Yours,
Fisher
9/9/17

The first use of OMG was one of utter surprise, which seems fitting! But let’s not overlook the hilarious phrase “Shower it on the Admiralty” either – that one has to come in handy at some point, right?

 WTF fun facts

Source: “The First Use of OMG Was in a 1917 Letter to Winston Churchill” — Smithsonian Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12971 – Tsundoku

Do you love books? Do you buy them to display in your home? Plenty of us do! But do you actually read them all? Probably not. In this case, you may be interested to know there’s a word for that – at least a Japanese one. Tsundoku is a person who engages in collecting a lot of unread books.

But it’s not an insult. Book lovers just really like to be around books!

Does this sound like you?

The BBC (cited below) interviewed Prof Andrew Gerstle from the University of London about the phenomenon and the roots of the word in 2018.

“He explained to the BBC the term might be older than you think – it can be found in print as early as 1879, meaning it was likely in use before that. The word ‘doku’ can be used as a verb to mean ‘reading.; According to Prof Gerstle, the ‘tsun’ in ‘tsundoku’ originates in ‘tsumu’ – a word meaning ‘to pile up.'” (Like a tsunami of books?!)

The literal meaning of “tsundoku” is buying reading material and piling it up.

The first use of the phrase has been traced to a piece of satirical writing by writer Mori Senzo from 1870, who described a teacher who had lots of books he didn’t read.

“Curing” Tsundoku

Just because there’s a word for it doesn’t mean it’s problematic behavior. Books can be great conversation starters even when they’re sitting on shelves. They even serve as great decor.

Of course, spending money on something that goes unused can spell trouble for some people.

If you’re interested in “curing” yourself of this habit, you can always limit yourself to books that you’re immediately interested in reading, limit the amount of time a book sits in a pile before you read it or give it away, or give yourself a specific number of books you’re allowed to buy in a given period of time. And if you simply don’t have the space, you can always donate your books to someone else with tsundoku.  WTF fun facts

Source: “Tsundoku: The art of buying books and never reading them” — BBC

WTF Fun Fact 12956 – Witzelsucht, a Joke Addiction

Have you ever met anyone who couldn’t stop telling jokes, even if no one else found them funny? Maybe they had Witzelsucht.

What’s a joke addict?

In 2016, neuroscientists Elias Granadillo and Mario Mendez published a paper titled “Pathological Joking or Witzelsucht Revisited” in The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences that described two patients with damage to their brains suffering from joke addiction.

They explained that “impaired humor integration from right lateral frontal injury and disinhibition from orbitofrontal damage results in disinhibited humor.” Two men were used as an example.

Compulsive jokesters

According to Discover Magazine:

“Patient #1 was a 69-year-old right-handed man presented for a neuropsychiatric evaluation because of a 5-year history of compulsive joking… On interview, the patient reported feeling generally joyful, but his compulsive need to make jokes and create humor had become an issue of contention with his wife. He would  wake her up in the middle of the night bursting out in laughter, just to tell her about the jokes he had come up with. At the request of his wife, he started writing down these jokes as a way to avoid waking her. As a result, he brought to our office approximately 50 pages filled with his jokes.

“Patient #2 was a 57-year old man, who had become “a jokester”, a transformation that had occurred gradually, over a three period. At the same time, the man became excessively forward and disinhibited, making inappropriate actions and remarks. He eventually lost his job after asking “Who the hell chose this God-awful place?” The patient constantly told jokes and couldn’t stop laughing at them. However, he did not seem to find other people’s jokes funny at all.”

Diagnosis: Witzelsucht

Apparently, both men displayed signs of something called Witzelsucht, “a German term literally meaning ‘joke addiction.'”

“Several cases have been reported in the neurological literature, often associated with damage to the right hemisphere of the brain. Witzelsucht should be distinguished from ‘pathological laughter‘, in which patients start laughing ‘out of the blue’ and the laughter is incongruent with their “mood and emotional experience.” In Witzelsucht, the laughter is genuine: patients really do find their own jokes funny, although they often fail to appreciate those of others.”  WTF fun facts

Source: “‘Joke Addiction’ As A Neurological Symptom” — Discover Magazine

WTF Fun Fact 12950 – Anatidaephobia

Anatidaephobia is the fear of being watched by ducks. And despite this existing as a fun fact for decades, it may not actually be a real thing. If it is, it originated in an awfully strange place for a real phobia.

Who’s afraid of a duck?

Ducks are probably only watching you if you get too close to them or their nests. But we don’t want to downplay phobias, because they’re very real and produce real physical symptoms. So, could someone fear that a duck is watching them? Sure.

The question is whether this fear rises to the level of anatidaephobia. That’s less likely since the word was coined by Gary Larson in his comic The Far Side. The idea of this particular phobia is a hoax.

Phobias and anatidaephobia

Phobias spawn feelings of intense fear and worry about object or situations. While there’s no formal duck phobia, the idea of anatidaephobia comes from the Greek word “anatidae,” meaning “swan, ducks, or geese,” and “phobos,” meaning “fear.”

According to PsychCentral (cited below, and which does eventually get around to the point of mentioning it’s a hoax): “People who experience this phobia may not necessarily be worried that a duck might attack them. Instead, their fear centers around the idea that somewhere, a duck could be watching them — constantly.”

However, while “Anatidaephobia may seem like it could be a credible phobia, the fear of being constantly watched by a duck is actually a fictional phobia created for entertainment.”

In other words, you won’t find a fear of ducks in the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5), though you will find diagnostic criteria for “Specific Phobia: Animal type.”

That doesn’t mean a fear of birds, in general, is fake though. “Ornithophobia, or the fear of birds, is an animal type of specific phobia. Some people with this type of phobia may fear all birds or just a specific type of bird, such as a duck. Although anatidaephobia may not be real, the fear of ducks is a very real phobia.”

In the end, PsychCentral explains that: “Anatidaephobia can be traced back to Gary Larson, creator of the ‘The Far Side’ comic. Larson’s cartoon comic depicted a paranoid office worker with the caption, ‘Anatidaephobia: The fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you.’ The comic showed a duck looking out a window from another building behind the office. The point of Larson’s cartoon was to illustrate that any object can be a source of fear. Since the fictional phobia debuted in 1988, anatidaephobia has gained popularity. This has led to the internet questioning the phobia’s veracity. While anatidaephobia is indeed a hoax and not a real phobia, fears and phobias are no laughing matter. Phobias can have serious affects on a person’s daily life.”  WTF fun facts

Source: “Fear of Ducks Watching You: Is Anatidaephobia a Real Condition?” — PsychCentral

WTF Fun Fact 12949 – 200 Invented Languages

Writers and linguists have created over 200 entirely new languages over the millennia for use in literature, films, games, comic books, television shows, etc.

According to TranslationDirectory.com (cited below), here is a list:

Literature

  • Adunaic from J. R. R. Tolkien’s works
  • Aklo, Tsath-yo, and R’lyehian are ancient and obscure languages in the works of H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and others. Aklo is considered by some writers to be the written language of the Serpent People
  • Amtorian, spoken in some cultures on the planet Venus in Pirates of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs and several sequels. Judged by critic Fredrik Ekman to have “a highly inventive morphology but a far less interesting syntax.”
  • Ancient Language in the Inheritance Trilogy by Christopher Paolini (although this is considered to be a cipher of English by many)
  • Angley, Unglish and Ingliss – three languages spoken respectively at Western Europe, North America and the Pacific in the 29th Century world of Poul Anderson’s “Orion Shall Rise”. All derived from present-day English, the three are mutually unintelligible, following 800 years of separate development after a 21st century nuclear war and the extensive absorption of words and grammatical forms from French in the first case, Russian, Chinese and Mongolian in the second, and Polynesian in the third.
  • Anglic, the dominant languague of the declining Galactic empire depicted in Poul Anderson’s Dominic Flandry series, is descended from present-day English but so changed that only professional historians or linguists can understand English texts.
  • Anglo-French, in the alternate history world of the Lord Darcy stories by Randall Garrett – where England and France were permanently united into a single kingdom by Richard the Lionheart and their languages consequently merged.
  • asa’pili (“world language”), in bolo’bolo, by Swiss author P.M..
  • Atreides battle, in Dune by Frank Herbert
  • Babel-17, in Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany
  • Baronh, language of Abh in Seikai no Monsho (Crest of the Stars) and others, by Morioka Hiroyuki
  • Black Speech – language of Mordor in The Lord of the Rings
  • Bokonon – language of the Bokononism religion in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle”
  • Chakobsa, a language used in the Dune novels by Frank Herbert
  • Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini appears to be written in a constructed language which is presumably the language of the alien civilization the book describes
  • Common The language spoken in a wide variety of fantasy fiction, particularly Dungeons and Dragons.
  • D’Haran The ancient, dead language of pre-Great War New World (D’Hara, Midlands, and Westland) in Terry Goodkind’s “Sword of Truth” series.
  • Drac, language of the alien species in Barry B. Longyear’s Enemy Mine and The Enemy Papers
  • Kad’k, the language of the Dwarfs in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld
  • Earthsea books (by Ursula K. Le Guin)
  • Language of the Making – the basis of all magic, spoken by Dragons as their native tongue and learned with considerable effort by human mages
  • Hardic – linguistically descended from the above
  • Osskilian, and Kargish – a different family of languages, distantly related
  • Elemeno, language of two sisters in Caucasia by Danzy Senna.
  • Fremen, language of the native people of Arrakis, in Dune and other novels by Frank Herbert
  • Galactic Standard Speech in Asimov’ “Foundation series”. Inhabitants of the planet Fomalhaut speak “an extreme dialect” of it.
  • Galacticspeak from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
  • Gobbledygook, the language of goblins, in the Harry Potter series. Noted speakers include Albus Dumbledore and Barty Crouch.
  • Glide, created by Diana Reed Slattery, used by the Death Dancers of The Maze Game
  • Groilish, spoken by giants in Giants and the Joneses by Julia Donaldson.
  • High Speech of Gilead from Stephen King’s The Dark Tower (series)
  • Ilythiiri, the language of drow elves in Forgotten Realms setting. [2]
  • Kesh, in Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel Always Coming Home
  • Krakish, in Guardians of Ga’Hoole by Kathryn Lasky
  • Láadan (ldn), in Suzette Haden Elgin’s science fiction novel Native Tongue and sequels
  • Lapine, in Watership Down by Richard Adams
  • Lilliputian from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Further samples of the language are provided in T. H. White’s Mistress Masham’s Repose. In Gulliver’s Travels, other fictional languages, spoken in other places Gulliver visits, are also presented, e.g. Brobdingnagian, Laputan, Balbinarbian and Houyhnhnm languages.
  • Mando’a, created by Karen Traviss, used by the Mandalorians in the Star Wars Republic Commando novels Hard Contact and Triple Zero
  • Mangani in the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs
  • Marain, in The Culture novels of Iain M. Banks
  • The languages of Middle-earth (most notably Sindarin (sjn), Quenya (qya) and Khuzdul) by J. R. R. Tolkien, partly published in The Lord of the Rings, and posthumously discussed in The History of Middle-earth and other publications.
  • Molvanian from Molvania, A Land Untouched By Modern Dentistry
  • Nadsat slang, in A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
  • Newspeak, in Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (fictional constructed language)
  • The “Nautilus Language”, spoken on board Jules Verne’s famous fictional submarine, in token of crew members having completely renounced their former homelands and backgrounds. Every morning, after scanning the horizon with his binoculars, Nemo’s second-in-command says: “Nautron respoc lorni virch”. The meaning of these words is never clarified, but their construction seems to indicate that the “Nautilus Language” (its actual name is not given) is based on European languages.
  • Old Solar, in Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis
  • The Old Tongue from Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series
  • Paluldonian in a Tarzan novel, Tarzan the Terrible, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Used by the inhabitants of the realm of Pal-ul-don in Africa, separated from the outside world by impenetrable marshes.
  • Parseltongue, the language of snakes, in the Harry Potter series. The ability of humans to speak it is considered a magic ability.
  • Pennsylvanisch, from Michael Flynn’s The Forest of Time
  • Pravic and Iotic, in The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Ptydepe, from Václav Havel’s play The Memorandum
  • Quintaglio from Robert J. Sawyer’s Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy
  • Quenya from J. R. R. Tolkien’s works.
  • Qwghlmian from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle
  • Rihannsu, spoken by the Rihannsu (Romulans) in the Star Trek novels of Diane Duane
  • Spocanian, in Rolandt Tweehuysen’s fictional country Spocania
  • Stark (short for Star Common), a common interstellar English-based language from Orson Scott Card’s Ender series
  • Starsza Mowa from Andrzej Sapkowski’s Hexer saga
  • Troll language from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld
  • Utopian language, appearing in a poem by Petrus Gilles accompanying Thomas More’s Utopia
  • Whitmanite, spoken by members of a radical Anarchist-Pacifist cult of the same name in Robert Heinlein’ The Puppet Masters. “Allucquere” is a female given name in Whitmanite.
  • Zaum, poetic tongue elaborated by Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchonykh, and other Russian Futurists as a “transrational” and “most universal” language “of songs, incantations, and curses”.

Comic books

  • Bordurian in some of Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin, mostly in The Calculus Affair
  • Interlac, the universal language spoken in the 30th century in the Legion of Super Heroes comics
  • Kryptonese, or Kryptonian, the language of Superman’s home planet of Krypton
  • Syldavian, in some of Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin, mostly in King Ottokar’s Sceptre
  • Movies and television
  • Two kinds of alien language, termed “Alienese” and “Beta Crypt 3” appear quite frequently in background sight gags in Futurama.
  • Ancient in the Stargate universe (i.e. Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis) is the language of the Ancients, the builders of the Stargates; it is similar in pronunciation to Medieval Latin. The Athosians say prayers in Ancient.
  • Atlantean created by Marc Okrand for the film Atlantis: The Lost Empire
  • Cityspeak, a “mishmash of Japanese, Spanish, German,” plus Hungarian and French, spoken on the street of overcrowded and multi-lingual Los Angeles of 2019 in Blade Runner. Similarly, used in many cyberpunk genre role playing games.
  • The Divine Language is a language invented by director Luc Besson and actress Milla Jovovich for the 1997 movie The Fifth Element.
  • Enchanta, in the Encantadia and Etheria television series in the Philippines, created by the head writer Suzette Doctolero
  • Gelfling, spoken in Jim Henson’s fantasy epic The Dark Crystal
  • Goa’uld, the galactic lingua franca from Stargate SG-1, supposedly influenced Ancient Egyptian
  • Huttese, language of both alien species and people in some of George Lucas’s Star Wars films
  • Irken, in Invader Zim, by Jhonen Vasquez, et al.
  • Klingon (tlh), in the Star Trek movie and television series, created by Marc Okrand
  • Krakozhian from The Terminal
  • Ku, a fictional African language in the movie The Interpreter (2005)
  • Linguacode, a universal language code sometimes used by the United Federation of Planets in the Star Trek television series.
  • Marklar, spoken by the people of Marklar in a South Park episode.
  • Minbari from Babylon 5, three related languages used together, corresponding to the areas of expertise of the three societal castes.
  • Nadsat, the fictional language spoken by Alex and his friends in Clockwork Orange
  • Nellish, a personal language from the main character of Nell
  • Paku from Land of the Lost
  • PortuGreek, the trade language featured in Waterworld
  • The pseudo-Spanish/Greek/Arabic language of Republica, as used in the fictional Chanel 9 program within the British comedy sketch show the The Fast Show
  • Quenya (qya) and Sindarin (sjn), the two Elven languages, spoken in the Lord of the Rings movies.
  • Slovetzian, the fictional Slavic language of Slovetzia in the movie The Beautician and the Beast
  • The Star Wars series features several fictional languages.
  • Tenctonese from the Alien Nation movie and television series, created by Van Ling and Kenneth Johnson
  • Unas in Stargate SG-1, supposedly the first hosts of the Goa’uld
  • Ulam, language spoken by the prehistoric humans in Anthony Burgess’ movie Quest for Fire, created by melting roots of European languages.
  • Vampire language used in the movie Blade.
  • Vulcan language from Star Trek
  • Unnamed languages
  • In the Janissaries series of science-fiction novels by Jerry Pournelle, the human natives of the planet Tran speak a language apparently derived from Mycenaean. A form of Latin is also spoken in an empire resembling ancient Rome’s, but only by scholars.
  • Riddley Walker, a 1980 novel by Russell Hoban, set in a post-apocalyptic future, is written entirely in a “devolved” form of English.
  • Writer/director Luc Besson invented a Divine Language for Milla Jovovich’s character “Leeloo” to speak in the film The Fifth Element.
  • Music
  • Gulevache: fictional Romance Language of the kingdom of Gulevandia on the bilingual opera Cardoso en Gulevandia by the comedy group Les Luthiers
  • Kobaian, the language used by 70’s French rock group Magma.
  • Vonlenska, sometimes known as “Hopelandic”, the language sung by Jón Þór Birgisson of the Icelandic band “Sigur Rós” on many of their songs.
  • Loxian, featured on the Enya album Amarantine.
  • Unnamed language by Yves Barbieux, used in his song “Sanomi” and performed by the Belgian group Urban Trad in the Eurovision Song contest in 2003.
  • Mohelmot, a forbidden language used by The Residents on the album The Big Bubble: Part Four of the Mole Trilogy.
  • Unnamed language by Emmanuelle Orange, used in her song Pialoushka and performed by Montreal band Eden106.
  • Unnamed language featured in the chorus of 2NU’s 1991 track This is Ponderous.
  • Unnamed language featured in the soundtrack to the film 1492: Conquest of Paradise by Vangelis.

 WTF fun facts

Source: “List of constructed languages” — TranslationDirectory.com

WTF Fun Fact 12893 – Scottish Words for Snow

The Scottish are really giving the Inuit a run for their money when it comes to piling up snow-related words. A few years ago, academics reported that they had found over 400 Scottish words for snow – 421, to be exact.

Why are there so many words for snow?

If you live in a snowy place, you know that there are different kinds of snow – wet snow, powdery snow, heavy snow, snow that makes good snowmen, lake effect snow, etc.

After spending years working through historical documents written in the Scots language, it turns out the people of Scotland really got descriptive! Academics at the University of Glasgow organized the Historical Thesaurus of Scots into some interesting categories, including (but not limited to):

  • types of snow
  • actions that involve throwing snow
  • pre-snow weather conditions
  • snowstorms
  • snow accessories
  • snow words related to sheep

What are some Scottish words for snow?

According to the BBC (cited below), the words that will go into the thesaurus include:

  • snaw – snow (viewed either as falling flakes, or as the layer of these formed on the ground)
  • feefle – to swirl
  • flindrikin – a slight snow shower
  • sneesl – to begin to rain or snow
  • snaw-pouther – fine driving snow
  • spitters – small drops or flakes of wind-driven rain or snow
  • unbrak – the beginning of a thaw
  • skelf – a large snowflake

But our favorites are “Katty-clean-doors,” which is a child’s name for snow, and “smirr,” which refers to a fine rain, drizzle, or of sleet or snow.”

The Scots thesaurus

Of course, we all have lots of words that mean roughly the same thing – there are thesauruses for nearly every language. But we’re still impressed by just how diverse the Scots language is.

The Scots thesaurus also includes a category on sport and believe it or not, the game of marbles has the most words associated with it at 369.  WTF fun facts

Source: “Scots ‘have 421 words for snow” — BBC

WTF Fun Fact 12817 – The Nurdle

The word nurdle is used in a few different ways. But today we’re going to look at its use to describe the squirt of toothpaste that you squeeze out onto your toothbrush.

How did “nurdle” come to be?

According to “verbal branding pro” Nancy Friedman’s blog Fritinancy (cited below): “The word, of unknown origin but possibly related to nodule, was reportedly coined by the American Dental Association in the 1990s to educate the public about proper brushing technique. The word is spelled “nerdle” in an August 19, 1996, St. Louis Post-Dispatch article quoted in Double-Tongued Dictionary, but the spelling has since been standardized as ‘nurdle.'”

But the word really came to the fore in 2011 when GlaxoSmithKline (which makes Aquafresh “Triple Protection” toothpaste) and Procter & Gamble (which makes Colgate) reached a settlement over its use in their marketing campaigns, with specific reference to the tri-colored nurdle that’s depicted on their boxes.

Both companies have invested money in the depiction and use of the word. Aquafresh used to have a site for children called Nurdle World, and Aquafresh ran a site called The Nurdle Shmurdle – though both have been taken down.

Other uses of the word

Friedman’s blog also describes another use of the word: “Nurdle is also used in the plastics industry to describe pea-size plastic resin pellets. When released from inland factories, the pellets often make their way into coastal waterways and even the deeper oceans, where they pose an ongoing threat to marine animals that mistake the pellets for food. According to a 2001 study of Orange County (California) beaches, nurdles made up 98 percent of ocean debris. See, for example, this 2007 article about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”

We’ll be honest. We’ve never heard of a nurdle, and the blob on our toothbrush doesn’t look nearly as nice and nurdle-y as the one depicted on any toothpaste box. Still, we’ll never be able to brush our teeth without thinking of a nurdle again.  WTF fun facts

Source: “Word of the Week: Nurdle” — Fritinancy