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Cake day: June 4th, 2023

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  • I was going to say that’s actually a G K Chesterton quote, but it turns out it’s more complicated than that. Neil Gaiman himself said it was from Chesterton (when quoting it at the start of Coraline), but he wrote it from memory and didn’t double check, so the original is worded differently. At least, that’s how my quick googling claims the paraphrase happened. The misquote is pithier than the original so… is it now a Gaiman quote, even though it originates as an attempted Chesterton quote?

    As far as I can tell, the passage he was thinking of was:

    Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

    • G K Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles (1909)




  • “Inconvenience” would be the verb for causing an inconvenience. So in the sentence you’re going for, “inconvene” would have to be replaced with the passive “be inconvenienced” (“we’ve gotta be inconvenienced and grovel to google a bit”). I don’t believe we have a separate word for “endure an inconvenience”, although it seems like the kind of thing some languages might have a single word for. Stylistically I’d probably restructure the sentence to “we’ve gotta put up with the inconvenience” rather than just using the passive verb, but yeah.

    I think you’d most often see this verb in the stock phrase “Sorry to inconvenience you”.









  • randomsnark@lemmy.mltoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.worldHow to recognize words
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    6 months ago

    Another commenter pointed out that if you induce this through repetition it’s called semantic satiation, but the more general case is known as jamais vu. It sounds like yours isn’t caused by semantic satiation. Brains are weird and often do things like this for completely benign reasons or no reason at all. Having said that, Doctor Google (who we all know not to trust) suggests causes can include epilepsy or migraine.

    In any case, it might be worth looking into, if it’s something that’s causing difficulties for you. In general if it’s some specific medical cause a neurologist would be the relevant specialist but your primary care physician or general practitioner would be your first port of call and might be able to recommend further course of action.