I hate people who use the word "boni."

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 12:34 am

You are a pretentious twat if you ever say "boni" or "bonii" instead of "bonuses."

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 12:52 am

The same thing for malus, as opposed to penalty?

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 1:07 am

Doom wrote:The same thing for malus, as opposed to penalty?

Times ten.

I'll add another to the list:

Oktopodes.

I looked up a wikipedia article about a video game and some pretentious fuck would revert it to 'oktopodes' when referring to the giant octopuses in the game.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 1:15 am

Doom wrote:The same thing for malus, as opposed to penalty?

Never seen this one.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 1:17 am

Psychic Robot wrote:
Doom wrote:The same thing for malus, as opposed to penalty?
Never seen this one.

Lucky fucker.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 1:19 am

I use bonuses and maluses. I feel that penalty should be reserved for cases in which you receive a malus for having done something wrong, much like with the word "reward". Does this make me a bad person?

Orca · Post by **Orca** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 1:27 am

I've mainly seen these from Europeans with English as their second (or later) language. It's a reasonable inference for them.

For that matter, if they manage to make it used by a number of people, it is English. It's not like we have some central authority determining what is and is not English, and it doesn't bother me the way "actioned" or other managementspeak does.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 3:39 am

"Malus" applies to apples, not penalties.

[Edit] Also, I love when people complain about things like "octopodes" and "boni" on the grounds of linguistic relativism. It's more than a little ironic. [/Edit]

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 3:54 am

CatharzGodfoot wrote:"Malus" applies to apples, not penalties.

Oh, don't I wish. Sure, a malus is also an apple. But it can mean a bad thing, just as 'bonus' can mean a good thing.

It's still pretentious to use it in English as an antonym for bonus. It's just a couple of steps short of making up some pronoun to use for stuff that isn't male or female. I've seen people use "Vi and ver" instead of "it".

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 3:57 am

Maxus wrote:
CatharzGodfoot wrote:"Malus" applies to apples, not penalties.
Oh, don't I wish. Sure, a malus is also an apple. But it can mean a bad thing, just as 'bonus' can mean a good thing.

It's still pretentious to use it in English as an antonym for bonus. It's just a couple of steps short of making up some pronoun to use for stuff that isn't male or female. I've seen people use "Vi and ver" instead of "it".

yeah, because "it" is deemed insulting. What's your point? It's english, people coin new terms and words all the time.

James Nicoll wrote:The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that the English language is as pure as a crib-house whore. It not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 4:30 am

It has to do with tone, mostly.

The person who did the Vi and Ver (and verself) was a seriously elitist fuckwad who also spent a lot of time writing extremely purple prose.

I don't mind new terms--quite the reverse--but I do get irritated when someone's sole motivation for using the unusual term is "I am so much more bohemian and elite and intelligent and better than you are" and making it clear that they aren't like the unwashed masses. The sort of person who would call an eye an 'ocular" or 'Opt" and never leave the u on upon.

For this reason, my hackles go up at the sight of that sort approach to writing.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 5:18 am

Maxus wrote:It's still pretentious to use it in English as an antonym for bonus. It's just a couple of steps short of making up some pronoun to use for stuff that isn't male or female.

"One"

For Valor · Post by **For Valor** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 5:23 am

DUUUUDE! Gonna use "vi" and "ver" now...

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 5:29 am

as far as I know, they originated on the Giant in the Playground/Oots forums as pronouns for use when talking about Varsuvius, the elf of ambiguous gender.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 10:18 am

I'm fine with octopuses or octopodes. Octopi pisses me the fuck off.

-Username17

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 10:50 am

I feel that ancient Greeks have the right to use the word oktopodes. Everyone else should use octopuses. Octopi is a hypercorrection.

And penii is just funny.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 12:45 pm

I don't have problems with people using any of those words - unless it's clear that they are not part of normal speech and thus don't quite have a handle on how they are supposed to be used. My family has regularly been accused of using words because it makes other people look stupid, but that's just the way we talk. If someone has a problem with it, they can go look it up.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 2:38 pm

Boni is a perfectly cromulent word, I don't see why you'd have a problem with it.

Wyzzard · Post by **Wyzzard** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 2:49 pm

I agree, the -i thing is annoying and pretentious.

I'm totally using "Slaads" from now on.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 2:58 pm

Wyzzard wrote:I agree, the -i thing is annoying and pretentious.

I'm totally using "Slaads" from now on.

I'm sticking with succubi, because well, succubi. Besides, Firefox accepts it as a word.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 3:20 pm

Juton wrote:Boni is a perfectly cromulent word, I don't see why you'd have a problem with it.

I like this term. I've never heard it before.

When he was a baby, my brother suffered a traumatic brain injury that resulted in difficulties processing language (reading/writing/speaking). As a result, we use a large number of cromulent words in our house, like fruck (past tense of freak), squoze (past tense of squeeze), penii/virii (the two most commonly used of the -i words), and spice/hice (plural of spouse/house).

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 7:23 pm

Cromulent was created on the Simpsons, with a meaning granted only from context.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 7:43 pm

Juton wrote:Boni is a perfectly cromulent word, I don't see why you'd have a problem with it.

It's good to see people embiggening their vocabulary!

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 7:48 pm

Doom wrote:Cromulent was created on the Simpsons, with a meaning granted only from context.

Better than cleman.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 8:41 pm

Doom wrote:Cromulent was created on the Simpsons, with a meaning granted only from context.

Yep. I had to look it up. But Urban Dictionary is pretty damned cool, and so is the word - I sent it to my mother, who agrees.

I also learned today that "disruptable" is apparently cromulent (it triggered the red spell-checker underscore of doom when I used it in another post today, so I looked it up). I had no clue that it wasn't real.