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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2402 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 12, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Anyone know of a list of words by their population-level familiarity? For instance, % Americans who know what a rollercoaster is, a snowshoe, a thermos.

@self_made_human had a great idea. The paper from which those two lists (words many women, but few men know, and vice versa), also compares words specific to the UK and to the US. Databases which you are after are available as the "supplementary material" on the page of the paper and at https://osf.io/g4xrt/.

That list is hilarious. The male words seem to be mostly technical (thermistor, teraflop), scientific (boson, piezoelectricity) or relating to fighting (howitzer, bushido). Also, the inclusion of katana, bushido and yakuza makes us look like a bunch of weebs.

Meanwhile, the female list seems to be almost entirely relating to fabric and clothing. Of the female list, the only ones I can say I knew a specific definition for were kohl and doula. The rest I could vaguely recognise as relating to fabric or can see the etymology without knowing the English meaning (voile - veil, boucle - buckle). Half the words seem to be French loanwords.

Apparently a pessary is some kind of gynocological medical device and not something religious or funereal, as I would have guessed.

I am reminded of this classic:

So I was feeling pretty good about equality. Then I decided to calculate the ‘most masculine’ and ‘most feminine’ colors. I was looking for the color names most disproportionately popular among each group; that is, the names that the most women came up with compared to the fewest men (or vice versa).

Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among women:

  • Dusty Teal
  • Blush Pink
  • Dusty Lavender
  • Butter Yellow
  • Dusky Rose

Okay, pretty flowery, certainly. Kind of an incense-bomb-set-off-in-a-Bed-Bath-&-Beyond vibe. Well, let’s take a look at the other list.

Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among men:

  • Penis
  • Gay
  • WTF
  • Dunno
  • Baige

I … that’s not my typo in #5—the only actual color in the list really is a misspelling of “beige”. And keep in mind, this is based on the number of unique people who answered the color, not the number of times they typed it. This isn’t just the effect of a couple spammers. In fact, this is after the spamfilter.

I weep for my gender.

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