Ooh, what are some of the ways to say 'arch enemy'?

Tell you what, we haven't done one of these in a while: let's do a poll game! Normally I do these with animal names, but eh. Today we're doing it with vengeful interpersonal statuses.

Linguistic Notes to Help You Choose:

As ever, all options were put into a random number generator to determine the order

Archelyn: Welsh got the 'arch' prefix from Greek, same as English (although it's pronounced differently); triggers a soft mutation. I suspect this one developed from the English word, though

Uwchelyn: 'uwch' - higher. It's a common prefix for this sort of thing - one of the options for 'superhero' is 'uwcharwr' (although I prefer gorarwr). It's also used for the preposition 'above'. Again, when used as a prefix it triggers a soft mutation

Gelyn pennaf: this is where the RNG is slightly working against me, because this would be better explained if 'pen-gelyn' went first, but ah well. 'Pen' means 'head', like the body part. The '-af' suffix means 'most'; for example, pwysig=important, pwysicaf=most important. So, 'pennaf' is actually like. Most head. Headest. But we use it like 'chief'. So, literally, your Most Head Enemy.

Carn-elyn: when I say 'peak', I mean 'mountain peak'. There are mountains in Wales with this in their name, e.g. Carningli in Pembrokeshire. Mountain peak enemy

Pen-gelyn: literally, your head enemy. Welsh has inherited a lot of the older Celtic cult of the head cultural points - 'pen' is Brythonic in origin, and gets used in a whole bunch of ways like this

Gelyn glas: lol okay. I could also have translated this as 'blue enemy', because in modern Welsh glas is used to mean blue; but once upon a time, before we developed a separate word for green, it meant both (like how in English 'red' was used for orange, pink and purple). Glas still gets used in literary Welsh to mean a natural green, though - the colour of nature. My guess as to why it crops up here therefore is that it's implying that nature itself designed us to be enemies. We evolved that way. We can never be anything else. You are my opposite in all things.

HA HAAAAAAAA I win again. Dramatically.

So, the option selected by Tumblr as false was carn-elyn, the mountain peak enemy, but NO you FOOLS. Wales has many mountains. Of course they are in our language in inexplicable ways. This is a 100% real term.

The second highest vote went to archelyn, and it was damned close throughout the day; there were points where it nearly went first! But it has finished in second place.

Which is irrelevant, because it's also real. Archelyn and gelyn pennaf are, between them, the two most common terms! Archelyn is the most likely first translation in a dictionary, and gelyn pennaf is the most common word used in 90s children's cartoons on S4C

So which is the impostor? Which did I invent out of whole cloth? Which was the lie...?

...

...

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UWCHELYN!!! The one in LAST PLACE!!! I am a god of subterfuge and I shall never die

Thank you all for playing ily

I gave a victorian kid some sour patch kids and he sprinkled a little bit of cocaine on it as casually as you would salt before even taking a bite

he was biting the sour patch kids?

Yeah that's how you eat them

i stick them in my mouth whole. am i the weird one or is the victorian kid the weird one? about the biting, not the cocaine. i do that part too.

Do you. At least chew them

yeah i do chew them i just dont feel a need to take a bite out of something that's already bite-sized, yknow? it's like taking a bite out of a skittle, to me. could definitely just be me though

oy where do i get more of these nectar-sweet bastards what are colored like precious stones

fuck OFF thomas

He was biting them because he’s so much littler than you. Look at him. He can’t get a whole one in his mouth. You could lose him down a drain. When you put him up a chimney, even a small chimney, you probably have to give him directions like he’s on the Swindon magic roundabout. SECOND LEFT AT THE NEXT BRICK, Thomas. NO, OTHER BRICK. NO, THE OTHER LEFT.

You shouldn’t salt your sour patch kids btw it’s bad for you

Thank you for that important addendum. Putting cocaine on them is fine though, right?

Ooh, what are some of the ways to say 'arch enemy'?

Tell you what, we haven't done one of these in a while: let's do a poll game! Normally I do these with animal names, but eh. Today we're doing it with vengeful interpersonal statuses.

Linguistic Notes to Help You Choose:

As ever, all options were put into a random number generator to determine the order

Archelyn: Welsh got the 'arch' prefix from Greek, same as English (although it's pronounced differently); triggers a soft mutation. I suspect this one developed from the English word, though

Uwchelyn: 'uwch' - higher. It's a common prefix for this sort of thing - one of the options for 'superhero' is 'uwcharwr' (although I prefer gorarwr). It's also used for the preposition 'above'. Again, when used as a prefix it triggers a soft mutation

Gelyn pennaf: this is where the RNG is slightly working against me, because this would be better explained if 'pen-gelyn' went first, but ah well. 'Pen' means 'head', like the body part. The '-af' suffix means 'most'; for example, pwysig=important, pwysicaf=most important. So, 'pennaf' is actually like. Most head. Headest. But we use it like 'chief'. So, literally, your Most Head Enemy.

Carn-elyn: when I say 'peak', I mean 'mountain peak'. There are mountains in Wales with this in their name, e.g. Carningli in Pembrokeshire. Mountain peak enemy

Pen-gelyn: literally, your head enemy. Welsh has inherited a lot of the older Celtic cult of the head cultural points - 'pen' is Brythonic in origin, and gets used in a whole bunch of ways like this

Gelyn glas: lol okay. I could also have translated this as 'blue enemy', because in modern Welsh glas is used to mean blue; but once upon a time, before we developed a separate word for green, it meant both (like how in English 'red' was used for orange, pink and purple). Glas still gets used in literary Welsh to mean a natural green, though - the colour of nature. My guess as to why it crops up here therefore is that it's implying that nature itself designed us to be enemies. We evolved that way. We can never be anything else. You are my opposite in all things.

Also please tell me where you're from, cos I hear on Tumblr that this phrase is Aussie but I'm Aussie and it doesn't sound fucking Aussie to me. Do foreigners know this? This just seems like a normal fucking sentence.

I notice none of you have told me where youre from, so first of all, disappointed

But secondly of all, what that fuck are you all talking about? Since no one said otherwise, imma assume this is common internationally and you're all just specifically not culturally engaged with your peers. No way first come blessed dressed is aussie slang. It's too normal

I'm American and I've never heard this before in my life until this moment.

i have heard this only a handful of times but I thought it was like the opposite of all the options. Like, people who show up early are vain tryhards putting in too much effort to impress others.

Have I been massively misinterpretating?

For the last time dude, my leitmotif sounds exactly like it always has. There is no symbolism for creeping corruption in there

Pedro Pascal - Jimmy Kimmel Live (March 2025)

Pedro Pascal - Jimmy Kimmel Live (March 2025)

what if it GETS her though 😥

hair silky like tofu

ass firm like another kind of tofu

#Tits moderate firm yet jiggly like a third kind of tofu

I don't know what's in the air in Brazil that makes Brazilian people genuinely batshit. We're just built different

I don't know how to explain to gringos the concept of gambiarra without making it sound like the entire country of Brazil is set to creative mode

Please try anyways, bestie ❤

So gambiarra is the art of finding solutions with what you have. The art of improv. Not always the best solution, but the solution you're capable of. I'll get some examples

These are some amazing Brazilian gambiarras

Are these the best solutions? Probably not. But the important part is that the problem is solved

white nationalists doing "retvrn" posting about Papa Roach is insane but whats really wild is them imagining southern California was somehow a white ethnostate with no hispanics 25 years ago

The last one is particularly fucking stupid/funny because AAF? Seriously? The lead singer's mother is a Mexican immigrant.

Once, there was a Japanese monk who had a little personal superstition.

Every time he travelled to a new location, he’d find some wood that grew there and make it into a staff to defend himself from any bandits or ne'er-do-wells who attacked him.

He was convinced that the staff, being more in tune with his surroundings, would serve him better in a fight. One day, he explained this to a scholarly friend, who decided to do some investigating.

The scholar started swapping the monk’s staves while he was asleep. Some days, the monk would be using a staff he thought was from where he was, but wasn’t; some days he’d believe it was from elsewhere, when in fact it was the correct staff for where he was; and some days belief and truth would match.

Interestingly, the scholar discovered that it was the monk's belief that mattered - whichever staff he was using, if he thought it matched his surroundings he’d do a little better, and if he thought it didn’t he’d do a little worse.

Of course, since then there have been many more rigorous studies, but that scholar’s treatise remains one of the most important works in shaping human understanding of the place-bo effect.

Instead of flower girls have flower Dads preceding the bride

Honour guard

Relay race

Suggested Alternatives to the One China Policy

Currently, the policy of the United States on the Taiwan question is that the US recognizes that polities on both sides of the Taiwan Strait hold that there is only one China and that Taiwan is part of China. In the current tense international climate, it may be useful to considers alternatives to that policy.

Two Chinas Policy: The United States recognizes the independence of Taiwan as a sovereign state, separate from the People's Republic of China.

Three Chinas Policy: The US recognizes Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the mainland as independent states.

Four Chinas Policy: The US recognizes Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and the mainland as independent states.

One China Policy (Retro 1978): The US switches its diplomatic recognition back from the PRC to the ROC.

One China Policy (Retro 1911): The US recognizes the Qing Dynasty as the legitimate government of China and finds some schmuck to play Emperor-in-Exile.

Many Chinas Policy: The US recognizes the sovereign independence of every Chinese province.

Too Many Chinas Policy: Hong Kong makes a perfectly fine city-state, so why not let everyone do that? The US recognizes every Chinese municipality as its own independent state.

1436506450 Chinas Policy: The US recognizes the sovereign independence of every Chinese person.

2^1436506450 Chinas Policy: The US recognizes the sovereign independence of every subset of of the set of all Chinese persons.

2^1436506450-1 Chinas Policy: Same as above, but not including the empty set, because that doesn't even make sense because it's already claimed by Germany.

Infinite Chinas Policy (Countable): The US recognizes that (1) The PRC is a China and (2) for every China c, the successor S(c) is also a China, and (3) for every China c, c != S(c).

Infinite Chinas Policy (Uncountable): The US recognizes that the set C of all Chinas is an ordered field, and that every non-empty subset of C with an upper bound in C has a least upper bound in C.

No Chinas Policy: The United States embraces mereological nihilism and recognizes only atoms and the void.