Innovative Usage Thread

[Raphael]

It used to be psyche, as in "to psych someone" (to disturb them so that they perform badly in a game). Back then I would mostly encounter it in speech rather than writing. But then people started using it online, and I guess they didn't know anymore where it came from, so they just pronunciation spelled it. You never see anyone spell it psych nowadays.

I feel so out of touch now.

[Travis B.]

I have never heard it written "sike" myself...

[Linguoboy]

I have never heard it written "sike" myself...

Whoa, is this a spontaneous innovation in the Innovative Usage Thread?

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I'm pretty sure sike is a mostly-forgotten 90's slang spelling.

[Qwynegold]

It used to be psyche, as in "to psych someone" (to disturb them so that they perform badly in a game). Back then I would mostly encounter it in speech rather than writing. But then people started using it online, and I guess they didn't know anymore where it came from, so they just pronunciation spelled it.

I learned this from my nieces when they were young, which would have been in the 1980s.

OK, I've heard it much later than that.

[Qwynegold]

Oh, I have an example from Swedish for this thread. There's a podcast I listen to, and they frequently make words of the type ADJ+ma, to mean an excess amount of something. I have not heard this anywhere else. The -ma ending comes from fetma*, meaning obesity. Here are few examples:

våtma - wetesity (excess dampness)
torrma - dryesity (meaning either mouth dryness, or the opposite of kåtma)
kåtma - hornesity (when someone is obviously very horny and it's gross)
danskma - Danishesity (when something is extremely Danish)

*Fetma is pronounced [ˈfɛtːma]. I can't find the etymology for this word, but I believe it's a loan word. However, it's not hard to see that someone might think it's derived from the Swedish word fett [ˈfɛtː].

[Raphael]

danskma - Danishesity (when something is extremely Danish)

I love that one.

[Kuchigakatai]

I'm really surprised by this conversation. I've lived here in Vancouver for nearly 15 years now and I don't recall ever hearing this sike!/psych! interjection. Let's see if the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon ends up applying to me too. Or maybe it just isn't used here.

I made a silent bet that I could beat the Baader-Meinhof bias and that I would not see this term used at all for three months, since I didn't recall ever coming across this in nearly 15 years. After which I'd triumphantly return to this thread and announce "hah! I didn't see psyche/sike at all anyway".

I just came across it in the wild 5 minutes ago, in which someone taunted someone else with "Say sike", basically saying that the other person was wrong.

Fuck. Fuck fucking fuck.

[Qwynegold]

I made a silent bet that I could beat the Baader-Meinhof bias and that I would not see this term used at all for three months, since I didn't recall ever coming across this in nearly 15 years. After which I'd triumphantly return to this thread and announce "hah! I didn't see psyche/sike at all anyway".

I just came across it in the wild 5 minutes ago, in which someone taunted someone else with "Say sike", basically saying that the other person was wrong.

Fuck. Fuck fucking fuck.

lol

[Qwynegold]

I just remembered another funny innovative usage. Well, maybe it's not that funny for you. We were staying in this family cottage, dressing up to go to a funeral. My sister asked if there's any mirror here. To which my aunt replied:

Vaan tollanen tirsutin. Ei kokovartalopeiliä.
just that.kind.of squinter / NEG-3SG whole-body-mirror-PTV
Just a squinter. Not any full body mirror.

She was referring to a wall mirror that was very small, so it was not much of use for anything. So she took a verb tirsuttaa, which means something like squint, and added the tool suffix -in.

[Moose-tache]

It feels good to know a Finn can be surprised by someone putting a suffix on something. Like an Inuit delighting in a type of snow they've never heard of.

[Qwynegold]

Lol, it was more the choice of verb and what it implied.

[Raphael]

I came across a text from the Chicago Sun-Times that calls a place with 21000 inhabitants (three zeroes at the end for a total of 5 figures) a "village". Is that standard English usage?

[Travis B.]

I came across a text from the Chicago Sun-Times that calls a place with 21000 inhabitants (three zeroes at the end for a total of 5 figures) a "village". Is that standard English usage?

Oftentimes in the US terms like "city", "village", and "town" have specific legal meanings, and furthermore oftentimes there may be multiple locales which share the same name but differ in that one may be a "city" while another may be, say, a "town" legally. Take here, where there is a City of Oconomowoc and a Town of Oconomowoc, wihch are distinct entities, and while one may generally just say "Oconomowoc" (which when unqualified tends to imply the City of Oconomowoc), when one wants to specifically refer to them, one speaks of the "City of Oconomowoc" and the "Town of Oconomowoc". And yes, there is also a Village of Oconomowoc Lake, for the record.

[Raholeun]

Dutch lacks a proper translation for 'town'. You either live in a stad 'city' or a dorp 'village' or perhaps a gehucht 'hamlet'. There are cities in the Netherland with than less a 100 inhabitants, while The Hague (550k inhabitants) is formally not a city, but a village.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

You will incidentally sometimes find a very small village or hamlet called a thorp in old literature in English, though the word is now broadly obsolete.

[zompist]

I came across a text from the Chicago Sun-Times that calls a place with 21000 inhabitants (three zeroes at the end for a total of 5 figures) a "village". Is that standard English usage?

It's normal in Illinois. I live in the Village of Oak Park, pop. 54,583. The largest "Village" in Illinois is Schaumburg, pop. 78,723. From a web page:

“It really all depends on which statute under state law the municipality incorporated under,” says David Bennett, executive director of the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus, an association of 272 area leaders who convene to collaborate and converse about the health of the metro area. Towns are municipalities that were created prior to the 1872 passing of the Cities and Villages Act, which set out standards and guidelines for incorporation. Established in 1867, Cicero happens to be the only town in the Chicago area. The distinctions between the terms city and village are more ambiguous. ... Joshua Drucker [says] “But in Illinois, there’s very little difference. The largest remaining difference is that villages must have exactly six trustees, whereas cities may have six or more aldermen.”

[foxcatdog]

Given the definition of City in the field of history as "place where specialised craftsmen reside" i don't think we have to many towns/villages left.

[Raphael]

Thank you, everyone!

[Travis B.]

Given the definition of City in the field of history as "place where specialised craftsmen reside" i don't think we have to many towns/villages left.

That is irrelevant to the present-day status of locales as cities, towns, villages, or unincorporated.