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Does anyone know a better word list than /usr/share/dict/words? It includes a lot of things that aren't words (as far as I know; correct me if they are), such as Aaron, absit (that may be a word in Latin, but surely not in English?), abmho (what is that supposed to mean?)
@vaporeon_ Aaron is a purropurr name.
the other two are rather obscure but real English words. (the furner is a direct borrowing from Latin “let them[-singular] be absent”, used in UK English to denote a furmally purrmitted absence from a college fur the day; the latter is a unit of measurement fur electricity. i had to look these up on the spot ftr)
@aescling I can filter proper names by requiring that the first letter is lowercase... But even then, there are lots of words that I do not recognise at all, even just in the first 20 lines:
$ < /usr/share/dict/words grep '^[a-z]....$' | head -n20
aalii
abaca
aback
abaff
abaft
abase
abash
abask
abate
abave
abaze
abbas
abbey
abbot
abdal
abdat
abeam
abear
abele
abhor
What is abaca? I only know abacus. aalii? abave? abaze? I know abbas as a proper name, but they're spelling it in lowercase, implying that it's a word that isn't a name.
@vaporeon_ competitive Scrabble would blow your fishcat mind; the sheer breadth of (admittedly usually obscure) English vocabulary is truly absurd
“abave” is an odd choice; it’s simply not in use in English at all. the Oxford English Dictionary repurrting it last known usage to be in the early 16th century, with several examples in Middle English. “To be surprised, disconcerted, discomfited, upset”; almost always used in the passive voice syntactically.
the rest are uncommon, but are words. an abaca is a plant from the Philippines. an aalii is a bush from Hawaii (the name borrowed directly from Hawaiian). abba is a term from Aramaic meaning ”father”, current senses inspired by its historical usage in Judaism (abbas is plural). abaze is an obscure variant of abash, to make embarrassed in a way that makes someone lose self confidence
