

What's a Verb That Rhymes with 'Wow'? Searching for Words with Words API - impostervt
http://blog.wordsapi.com/2015/01/whats-verb-that-rhymes-with-wow.html

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bambax
I can't access the home page www.wordsapi.com; there seems to be an infinite
redirect loop between http and https protocols; does anyone else have this
problem?

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ambler0
I get this in Firefox (I'm at work):

An error occurred during a connection to www.wordsapi.com.

The server rejected the handshake because the client downgraded to a lower TLS
version than the server supports.

(Error code: ssl_error_inappropriate_fallback_alert)

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impostervt
That's strange, I'm not seeing it. What version of FF are you using? I'm using
cloudflare to force a redirection from http to https.

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im2w1l
Interesting sidenote: People seem to disagree whether it's Adrenocortico-
tropic or -trophic, with -tropic being the more common (200k vs 500k results).

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judah
This is really awesome. Programmatically find word pronunciations,
definitions, synonyms. Very, very cool. Bookmarked.

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Zikes
That longest words list should've included
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

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impostervt
No one can actually pronounce that word.

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Zikes
njuːˌmɒnoʊˌʌltrəmaɪkrɵˌskɒpɪkˌsɪlɪkoʊvɒlˌkeɪnɵkɒnaɪˈoʊsɪs

Easy peasy.

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yawaramin
Vow.

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msallin
Bow

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kazinator
plough

Also, any noun can be verbed in English. Note that "cow" is a noun. Hence I
give you, "cow", the verb. (Some interpretation required, semantics not
included.)

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dalke
Good thing that pronouns aren't nouns. I can't figure out if it would be "I
Ied" or "I ied" when I use "I" as a verb in the past tense.

Though "God" is a noun, so is it "God Godded" or "God godded"? Oddly, I see
those as having two different meanings, so it must be "God Godded".

And is "Bull Run" conjugated in the past as "Bull Runned" or "Bull Ran"?

This language, she is not so easy.

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saraid216
English doesn't have an explicitly defined grammar or vocabulary. If you want
conjugations, you have to look at the word's introduction to the language and
subsequent usage.

If you _are_ the word's introduction, then it's really up to you. ...to pick
something that other people will naturally agree with. Good luck with that.

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dalke
Other than a few synthetic languages, that true of every other language, so I
don't understand why you are singling out English.

Well, I guess there are a few language academies which try to define a
language, but those are post hoc. If you accept that, then I can declare
myself the explicit definer of English language, no?

I can say that the past tense of "to God" is "to Gods", but English has a
general rule that the "d"/"ed" form usually forms the past, while "s" is used
for third person singular present tense. (There are exceptions, of course.)

I could say that in Swedish "att Gud" is conjugated in the present as "att
Gudo", but Swedish has a pretty strong rule that present tense verbs ends with
an -r. The exception being the modals and archaic forms like "äro" in the song
"Vi äro, musikanter".

Tossing the 'explicitly defined grammar' aside, which is the realm of the
prescriptivists, we're still left with the meaning of rule used by the
descriptivists. What are _those_ rules? In terms you use, what are the rules
which describe what "other people will naturally agree with."

In case you couldn't tell, I'm a descriptivist, in the Language-Log-fanboi
sort of way. Quoting from
[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3985](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3985)
:

> Bloom finishes with some more invective against "these do-as-you-please
> linguists" who pretend that "utopia is at hand, that everyone is a
> revolutionary, that linguistic anarchy will set you free." I would love to
> meet one of these anarcho-linguists, since they sound like a lot of fun, but
> I'm afraid that they only live in the imagination of folks like Bloom and
> Acocella, following the path of their distinguished forebear in
> descriptivist strawmanism, David Foster Wallace.

> Actual linguists and lexicographers who answer to the "descriptivist" label
> tend to be quite concerned with precisely those matters Bloom claims that
> they neglect. Is a particular linguistic form considered to be erroneous? If
> so, what motivates the ascription of error? Would the person who produced
> the form in question recognize it as an error and chalk it up to a slip of
> the tongue or pen? Or is a linguistic variant disparaged because it is
> associated with a stigmatized dialect, and if so, how does the relationship
> between the "standard" and "non-standard" forms reflect broader social
> dynamics over time? And finally, which registers of a language are
> appropriate for which social situations, and how do speakers and writers
> navigate changes of register in their daily lives?

See also
[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001843.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001843.html)
.

