skullduggery is a weird word

you dug any skulls lately in a way that isn't associated with necromancy or graverobbing?

I like it. Somebody needs to make a character with that name.

On occasion my familiarity with a random word just spontaneously disassociates, it suddenly looks weird, and I wonder how I could ever know what it means.

someone called me uncouth

they said I had uncouth coolness which they said they meant in a good way but I didnt even know that word yet I had to confront him

It's because it has nothing to do with either skulls or digging:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skulduggery#Etymology

Also, "necromancy" is actually a similarly corrupted word, since it's original phrasing was "nigromancy", because it meant "black magic".

KJ_StErOiDs posted...

On occasion my familiarity with a random word just spontaneously disassociates, it suddenly looks weird, and I wonder how I could ever know what it means.

That usually happens when someone says a word too many times in quick succession.



XenobladeX posted...

I like it. Somebody needs to make a character with that name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Duggery_(rapper)

ParanoidObsessive posted...

That usually happens when someone says a word too many times in quick succession.

The phenomenon is called "semantic priming," and it mostly boils down to the fact that after hearing it so many times, your brain stops having to think about what the word means and is free to wander and start looking for other meaning/patterns in it (which often is hard to find because there aren't any, which is where the sense of weirdness comes from). A similar thing happens if you play a random voice clip repeatedly in quick succession, in that it starts to sound musical because your brain wanders and finds rhythmic/tonal patterns to focus on instead of having to think about the words.

Happening spontaneously, though, is just a brain fart.

It annoys me probably more than it should that "skullduggery" is now an accepted spelling, sculduggery (or, at worst, skulduggery) are really the "most correct" spellings.

darkknight109 posted...

It annoys me probably more than it should that "skullduggery" is now an accepted spelling, sculduggery (or, at worst, skulduggery) are really the "most correct" spellings.

skoldugry

Lokarin posted...

skoldugry

I had a speck of dust on my monitor, and it made it look like you'd typed "skoldgry".

So now I just want to spell it "".