What is the (subjectively) weirdest word in the English language?

queue

Most "Q" words are weird to start with, then just adding a bunch of silent vowels at the end doesn't make it any less so.

Thank the French for this one
- oiseau -- for when consonants are overrated. (it means bird).
- Ah the french.....alwaysbeencelebrated for it's.....excellence!
I knew an English speaking American born well off white dude that pronounced this as "kway". It was the most annoying thing that came out of his mouth besides all of the bragging and "I'm smarter than everyone" attitude.

Gerrymandering sounds like some sort of magic class.

It's from a political cartoon depicting a corrupt districting plan as a salamander.
- A plan proposed by a man named Elbridge Gerry.
I always thought it sounded like Jerry Seinfeld between takes/shoots just hanging around the set. Not doing anything. Just ignoring everything around him. He's just gerrymandering around the studio.
- Gerry meandering

pulchritudinous

such an ugly word, yet it means "beautiful"

It's so similar to "putrid"
- and "sepulchre"

Be, is, are, was, am, were, being, been... are all the same word.

Languages that conjugate every verb for every person:
Same with “go” and “went”.
- I god.
"To be" averbs, at least in romance languages usually have a bunch of different forms. "To have" usually too but English is a bit of an exception there.
- Or not to be.....
"be" is an irregular verb in all languages, so it's not unique to English. Bonus fun fact: Russian doesn't have the verb "to be".
- Not in Turkish. It is "olmak" but the actual "to be" as it is used in "I am, they were, etc." is, now unused "imek". it has become a suffix and it is completely regular. Just i + person suffix.
- Yes, and I feel like it’s even more irregular in Russian than just not existing. It’s not used in present tense as a copula, so in most cases where you would expect it in English. However it absolutely exists – быть – and is used like normal verbs in both past and future tense.
  For example: «я здесь» – “I am here” (same word order, but this sentence has no verb), but «я был здесь» – “I was here”
  And in the cases where it is used in present tense, there is a single conjugation regardless of subject: есть (in contrast to all other verbs, I assume at least, which all have distinct conjugations for 1/2/3rd person singular/plural).
  A simple example for this would probably be sentences with “there is”, affirming the existence of something, as in “there is a bathroom” – «ванная есть». Contrived example for sure but I can’t think of something better right now.
"To be" being highly irregular il a common feature of a lot of Indo-European languages. But there's worse. In Spanish, "ser" and "estar" both mean "to be", but have wildly different meanings and cannot be substituted for one another.
And it has multiple meanings. "you are sick" can mean that you're currently sick but can also mean that you're a sick person. Other languages usually differentiate the verb in those two cases

I suppose technically it's Latin, but I've always been fascinated with "syzygy".

I really only know of this word because of Scott Manley

“Rhythm” doesn’t rhyme with anything and doesn’t contain a letter that’s always a vowel.

Schism?
- Written. Ridden.
Apparently, there’s an obsolete English word “smitham” that means (or meant) “small lumps of ore random people found.” They were exempt from taxation by English nobility so large mine owners started breaking up large chunks into “smitham” to avoid taxation. Apparently, the Duke of Devonshire put a stop to that in 1760 and the word fell out of use.
So, I think rhythm still counts as weird. Noah Webster was 2 years old in 1760 and the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary doesn’t have it.
"People say the word orange doesn't rhyme with anything"
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Kfl3N9nesRg
https://genius.com/videos/Eminem-rhyming-with-orange
- https://genius.com/videos/Eminem-rhyming-with-orange
  That's not rhyme, that's assonance.
- The Etymology of Orange.
  :-D
  Orange ( Anglo-Saxon ? English language )
  Oranj. ( Slavic? European? etc language )
  Naranj. ( Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, Persian language )
  Narang. ( Hindi , Sanskrit Indic language )
  Narthangai. ( Tamil - South Indian language )
  :-D
With them?
Y is always a vowel! I don't know why they tell children it isn't.
- A vowel is the core of a syllable. Y is not always that, as in "yes" - it works as a consonant in that word.

Akimbo

It's an honest-to-goodness English word and not derived from French, Latin, Greek or anything else, like a lot of the words here. Yes, it looks like it might be from an African language, but it's a squashed form of "in keen bow" meaning "well bent" or "crooked".

I always assumed it was a loan word from Japanese. TIL.

Colonel. Why is it pronounced like kernal?

Let me introduce you to the British pronunciation of the word "lieutenant".
lieutenant (UK: /lɛfˈtɛnənt/ lef-TEN-ənt)
Counterpoint - Bureaucracy.
It used to be spelt "coronnel" in Old French and we took that pronunciation, but then we also took the updated french word "colonel" but kept the old pronunciation.
Is this universal or are there places where they pronounce it closer to its spelling?
- They pronounce it phonetically in France, which is where it came from.
I remember I was in 6th grade and the teacher made the class read a couple paragraphs of a book. She called on kids at random to read from their seat out loud for the whole class to hear, paragraph after paragraph. When it was my turn, the word "colonel" appeared, and it hadn't been said yet in the book. Now, I had heard of a ker-nal before, but I never assumed it would be spelled that way, so when I saw this word I just thought it was something else.
I got to the word and read it out loud as cahl-uh-null and needless to say there was many a snickering to be heard. Luckily I'm not easily embarrassed so it was fine, but I thought it was odd (and still do) that people generally act like this word being said this way is a given.

Pick any of them, and repeat it over and over again. It'll quickly become the weirdest word in the language, at least for a while.

This is called "semantic satiation" which are both pleasingly weird words now that I think about it...
I'm pretty sure "Purple" stops making sense faster than others. Just wtf? Pur-pull. Prrr-plll. What is wrong with people?
- In scots gaelic purple is 'purpaidh' pronounced "pur-pee" which is equally as strange imo
- look.
  look..
  look...
  look.... !
  look..... ?
  ? look ?? Is this even a real word?
Bowl
Hip.
While
Whyle
Whyull
Yull
Yul

"Though"

The first two letters don't sound like themselves, and the last three are silent. The word is 83% lies.

80% of the letters in "queue" are unnecessary.
- No, they’re demonstrating how to line up quietly.
  Side note, I was a young teen when I first saw this word and it was in reference to computer things I barely grasped and had no idea. I was asking my parents what a qwe-we was because I could not for the life of me figure out how to pronounce it. It stuck with me for years until BBC content started coming to America, then it all finally made sense.
It would be half-true if we hadn't gotten rid of a letter (the thorn, which made the"th" sound)
For a long time, they used the letter "Y" instead of "th".
That's how we have weird relationships with old English words like "You/Thou," and "The/Ye."
- “You” and “thou” come from different roots. They are not simply different orthographies like “ye” and “the”.
  https://www.etymonline.com/word/thou
  https://www.etymonline.com/word/you
The word Through is just cheating at Scrabble
-Eddie Izzard

Awkward is spelled awkwardly.

Gubernatorial

This word makes me physically angry. Why b? Why not governatorial? It is from the same word. Government, governor, etc. I know hsitorically bs and vs change places a lot, beta in Greek is pronounced veta but just pick either v or b god damn it!

Biweekly.

It means twice a week.

Or, it means once every other week.

Good luck.

This is the only word I know of whose meaning can be redefined by majority consensus.
Case in point, my workplace wanted a bi-weekly committee meeting for our team to work on stuff over a zoom call. I asked what days these meetings would be held and they all agreed "Just Thursdays". When I tried to argue that a bi-weekly meeting necessarily means that there must be two distinct dates per week, they all agreed that bi-weekly obviously means every other Thursday and that I didn't understand what the word bi-weekly meant 😒
I usually say “semiweekly” to mean twice per week. I also say “semimonthly” to mean twice per month (24 times per year) as opposed to “biweekly” (26 times per year).
The fact that American English doesn't have the word 'fortnightly' is incredibly confusing on every level.
Biweekly is every two weeks (fortnightly)
Semi-weekly is twice a week.
Same rule as bimonthly and semimonthly.

As a native speaker of language that is spelled the way its written. I can say that most of them are weird.

I would love to see a language that isn't spelled the way it's written
- https://mastodon.nu/@jdskog/113021722561159823
  I mean this.

Eye.

We take it for granted now, but I'm sure we all questioned the word at one point in our lives, the shortest word guaranteed to fool any child who is an intuitive spelling pro if they don't already know the word's spelling.

Fun anecdote, in DC the east/west streets are named A St, B St, C St, and so on. But not i street. Capital i could be confused with L Street, so all the signs are written "Eye St"
- You'd think at that point they'd just name all the streets like would be appreciated.
  Eye Street does live up to its name, it is the most interesting street.
And as soon as the young spelling pro gets "eye", throw "ewe" at them.
- Ewe, though it's spelled weird, does at least fit its context. When looking into specific gendered terms for species, someone could expect a few weird ones.
  On a side note, I find it funny how the word ewe is banned from several places because all it's ever used for is to replace the "you" in things like an F-bomb. It's like an accidental/indirect swear word.
  "Hey bro, what's a female sheep called?"
  "Oh that's easy, it's ew--" ban hammer crashes down out of nowhere
I was just thinking this, but with the word "one". And also "two"
- By all accounts, "one" should rhyme with "stone", but bear in mind that we also have "done" which is pretty close, as well as "gone" which is pretty out-there by comparison. (This suggests the compromise pronunciation of "scone" should be "scun", but on the other hand...)
  There's also that in some accents / dialects, the word "own" fills that particular pronunciation niche, necessitating an alternative pronunciation for the number.
  The theory is that a non-standard regional pronunciation is the, uh, one that caught on everywhere else.
  Fun fact about "two": It's the "w" making the vowel sound, and the "o" is silent (compare Latin "duo"). Even more strangely, it's "w" that makes the vowel sound in "who" as well! It was originally spelled "hwo" until all "hw" words were forced to conform to all the other modifiers where the h goes second. It's also hwy / why the h sounds out first in old-fashioned pronunciations of words like whip / hwip.
- And eight.

I love salubrious as it sounds like the exact opposite of what it is (health giving or healthy.)

"of"

It's just odd that you're supposed to say it like it rhymes with "love". It's also almost always with other words, so by itself it truly looks suspicious.

of

Outside North America, people say it with the O from "gone" if it's stressed.

It just sounds so wrong to have an adverb not ending in -ly.
So do you say "goodly" instead of "well"?

Kerfluffle

https://www.etymonline.com/word/kerfuffle

"Cwm"

One of a few words that use W as a vowel. (This is how the word "Pwn" works too)

I want to argue about that being technically Welsh, but I was coming in here to say foie gras and that's French as fuck so fair enough I guess.
Literally my first comment on Lemmy!
Cwtch is weirder I believe, because it not only comes from Welsh with its W as a vowel, but it comes from a Welsh word that has to use English spelling rules to be written both in Welsh ("cwtsh") and in its English borrowing; not to mention that it itself came from Middle English "couche" which of course came from Norman. It's a cute word though!
A Welshman about to traverse a steep-sided hollow at the head of a valley: "Oh baby I'm gonna cwm!"
- All I heard was "head" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Epicaricacy. We chose to use a German loanword instead.

Or words that came from fiction like cromulent and thagomizer.

niggardly

Hearing this word for the first time in the GoT audiobooks was a real surprise to say the least.

It's a little weird that syphilis and chlamydia are way more euphonic than they ought to be. They just roll off the tongue and feel so good to say.

I'm gonna throw "forecastle" out there. It's referring to a specific part/area of a ship, but it's pronounced similar to "folks-sole."

It uses apostrophes to the utmost: fo'c·'sle!
Where I'm from it sounds like "fuxle", or indeed "fucks'll".

sew

Pronounced exactly the same as sow, if you mean the right sow and not the other sow, which is spelled the same but pronounced differently.

- Right, those are the two pronunciations of sow.

Miscellaneous, no one that isn't a native English speaker knows how to pronounce that word

Acknowledge, no one that isn't a native English speaker knows how to write that word

You give too much credit to natives on writing proficiency. Neither of those are particularly hard words.
Non-native English speaker here. Disagree.
- I'm one myself and have been tested as being fully bilingual, so it doesn't come from a bad place (just to be clear that I'm not laughing at the expense of non native speakers).
- I sometimes think that native speakers are worse at spelling.
How about segue?

" sesquipedalian "

"Sphere"

That pronunciation ... like WTF ... did word inventors just figure we had totally exhausted the sound combinations that we could splice together?!

Sounds like the linguists got drunk.
"No no no no no... iss'not a ball, issa sphhhere"
That's one of the things that put me off learning Greek in the end. English has unwritten rules about which clusters of consonants can come at the start of a word; Greek not so much.

I think "once" is spelled strangely. In Spanish it's 11 and pronounced as you would expect.

In English the same string of letters is pronounced wonss. Plus the whole once twice thrice for one time two times three times is odd, though at least consistent but then no fourse or anything it just stops.

Especially when you get to the fource, fivce, or sixce time trying to teach someone how the system is flawless.

British English - lieutenant is pronounced "Lef-tennant"

"Fuck"

I think adjective is the only grammar variation it doesn't cover.

You have no fucking clue.
Edit to add the classic: George Carlin - Usage Of The Word Fuck - YouTube
Eww there's a fuck stain on my couch.
- I think that's a noun adjunct

"Kitsch" is hard to define weird. "Absquatulate" is the weirdest word I use on a semi-regular basis because it just means to leave quickly.

How about ersatz?
absquatulate means skedaddle, got it.

Most of the examples here are perfectly cromulent words.

I was just thinking "umbrella" is weird. It just seems so random.

If you think Umbrella is random what about Parasol ?
- Para-sol.
  Protection [from] sun

strengths

it breaks so many linguistic rules yet feels just fine to say

What linguistic rules does it break? 🤨
- I assume it's about the apparently enormous consonant cluster at the ends, which is very rare in English. We have consonant clusters, yes, but not usually with five at once. Although it's actually only three, since "ng" and "th" are one consonant sound each, we just write them with two letters

"Winningest"

Trump, that you?
That's a word?
- "We win the most cases" is too long for lawyer billboards, apparently.

Dyslexia - it's hard to spell even if you're not dyslexic.

Myrrh

I think thats just the sound a cat makes when it wakes up.
- Here Baby Jesus, we brought you some nice smelling stuff, pretty shiny metal, and a kitten.

Tabernacle

Tabernak!

Glossolalia

Onomatopoeia - the word for making a word for a sound

Kumquat

I dunno if it's the weirdest but "pronunciation" is pretty weird.

Why is it "pronUnciation" but "pronOUnce"?

Similarly I hate that restaurateur drops the n in restaurant
- If it consoles you, I can explain the reason for that one.
  They both come from the verb restaurer (to restore). Restaurant being the present participle in this case. In French, "ant" is equivalent to the English suffix "ing".
  And restaurateur is "one who restores".

onomatopoeia (edit) - the word should have been something akin to soundsalotlikea but no one consulted me.

noun

The formation or use of words such as buzz or murmur that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.
The property of a word of sounding like what it represents.
A word that sounds like what it represents, such as "gurgle" or "hiss".

I'm a big fan of the following weird words:

Indubitably

Discombobulated

Caveat

Flabbergasted

"fine"

because it can mean so many different things, like if you say something is fine, it's not very good, but "fine dining" is fancy and good.

Higgledy-piggledy

Antidisestablishmentarianism

Flaccid.

Indubitably

My friend used to always say this to mean "definitely". He was wrong, but it sounded sophisticated.

Omit omitted omitting omits – omission –

The * did my t go?

I feel like we will change a lot for digital reasons, especially in coming centuries.

lemmatization - in linguistics is the process of grouping together inflected forms of a word so they can be analyzed as a single item, identified by the word's lemma, or dictionary form; (eg. walk [lemma], walks, walked, walking)

Things like inflected forms and parts of speech that can not be coded easily really have no use in the future. Things like how a sentence can be "I am here." but when I must change more than one word to say "He is here." The am/is change is nonsense of no use. It is like a deep inner conflict with no solution; a prejudice or bias.

I wonder if -tion becoming prounounced like 'shun' has anything to do with how it ended up that way.
Conjugation, inflection, and declension can give more flexibility to word order or otherwise remove words. Whether or not that's /useful/ is more subjective.

Anything that shows the awful inconsistency in phonetics.

Moist

Sardoodledom

Orange, nothing rhymes with orange

Fun fact: Orange was originally "norange" misspelled. Comes from the same origin as naranja in Spanish.

Irony

I can't say for certain, but it's probably one of these.