Words are fun

Published on Tuesday, January 15, 2013 and tagged with language. Updated on Sunday, January 28, 2024.

I’ve seen a couple of interesting posts about particularly expressive words in non-English languages and cultures lately. First 10 Essential Yiddish Words for Computer Scientists, which has the ~~brilliant bonus word farpotshket (meaning ‘broken, because someone tried to fix it’~~); then the more general The Many Emotions for which English Has No Words, including the gem pena ajena (basically the opposite of schadenfreude).

Words are fun.

Update: a friend looked in to the provenance of farpotshket, and it sadly doesn’t check out in Yiddish dictionaries.