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Ask HN: What are some words that you learned on Hacker News?

16 points by neilyio · 30 comments · 1 min read


I'll start. "Orthogonal".

17 threads
LinuxBender

"bollard" [1] - I always called them steel poles with concrete inside, buried in the ground. Someone here corrected me and I learned something. Adding to that I never associated them with the more artistic versions as I assumed those were weaker or just for looks.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollard

krapp

Surprised no one has mentioned "thither" as often as dang uses it.

Haven't seen "yon" yet.

replwoacause

“Your pricing is too high” and I learned them in that order too

mtmail

moat

fragmede

confabulate - what LLMs do

atleastoptimal

grok

austin-cheney

Counter-intuitive

defrost

to viscerally delve into psephology .. !an AI

gadders

That "nonce" has another meaning relating to cryptography.

fuzztester

"conflating" is one that I did not know of earlier.

"drunk the kool-aid" is another, though a phrase, not a word.

"cromulent" is another

  • tomcam

    Conflate is seldom used correctly on HN. It means combine but now people use it when they mean confuse.

    • fuzztester

      Oh wow, didn't know that, thanks. Yes, I've mainly or only seen used it on HN in the sense of confuse, or mistake one thing or concept for another.

    • giantg2

      Actually, there are multiple definitions of conflate. One of these does have confuse as a synonym.

      • tomcam

        Yes. I should have been more precise and described it as a secondary definition (which has become the primary definition in recent years).

silb

bifurcate

tomcam

TFA (the fucking article)

nachox999

wastimbolo

piotrke

'churn' and 'churn rate'

perilunar

"heteroscedasticity"

nicbou

“Order of magnitude”

sturza

enshitification

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