Sealioning […] is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity ("I'm just trying to have a debate"), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter. It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate",[9] and has been likened to a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings.[10] The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki, which The Independent called "the most apt description of Twitter you'll ever see".
This is an odd-looking word that I encounter fairly frequently, especially in my publishing ventures. Since I don't understand how / why "queue" should be pronounced like "cue", which is also a variant spelling for the same word, I'm especially cautious about "queue" when I approach it. Moreover, since I'm steeped in pinyin, I'm tempted to pronounce "queue" as "chyueyue" (!). Consequently, I always have to slow down when I spell / type it: "q-u-e-u-e", which I seldom have to do with other words except "Cincinnati", which I still haven't mastered.
Other than "its / it's", "queue" is probably the most frequently misspelled word I know of, even among educated persons.
I also am somewhat perplexed why "queue" means both "line" and "tail".
The word "queue" is used to mean a line, particularly in British English, because of its etymological origins. "Queue" comes from the French word "queue," meaning "tail," which in turn comes from the Latin word "cauda," also meaning "tail". This connection to "tail" makes sense when visualizing a line of people or objects, as they often form a linear arrangement reminiscent of a tail. The term "queue" is also used in computing to refer to a data structure where items are processed in a first-in, first-out (FIFO) manner, similar to how people are served in a line.
The Weird Way Language Affects Our Sense of Time and Space The languages we speak can have a surprising impact on the way we think about the world and even how we move through it. Matt Warren and Miriam Frankel This post originally appeared on BBC Future and was published November 4, 2022. This article is republished here (getpocket, Solo) with permission.
When I first scanned this article, I thought it was so lackluster, especially on contentious waters that we had successfully navigated just a few weeks ago (see "Selected readings"), I decided not to write about it on Language Log. However, several colleagues called the article to my attention and said that it raised interesting questions, so I have gone ahead and posted on it despite my reservations.
Everybody has what I call a kǒutóuchán 口頭禪 (lit., "oral zen", i.e., "favorite expression", kind of like a mantra). Mine, in Nepali, is "bāphre bāph!"; Pinkie Wu's, in Cantonese, is "wah!"; a Harvard historian I know loves to say "precisely!"; and so forth and so on. President Trump's is "beautiful".
Temuulen Khishigsuren et al, "A computational analysis of lexical elaboration across languages", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2417304122
My post was picked up by Cody Cottier, who was doing a critique of the Khishigsuren et al. article for Scientific American. Cottier interviewed me and incorporated some of what I said to him in this review:
"Do Inuit languages really have many words for snow? The most interesting finds from our study of 616 languages", The Conversation (4/10/25); rpt. in phys.org/news (4/13/25)
Authors:
Charles Kemp Professor, School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne (PhD MIT) Ekaterina Vylomova Lecturer, Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne (The University of Melbourne, PhD/Computational Linguistics) Temuulen Khishigsuren PhD Candidate, The University of Melbourne (National University of Mongolia, M.A. in linguistics) Terry Regier Professor, Language and Cognition Lab, University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D., Computer science, UC Berkeley, 1992; frequent co-author with Paul Kay; among his most-cited work is:
"Whorf hypothesis is supported in the right visual field but not the left", Aubrey L. Gilbert; Terry Regier; Paul Kay; Richard B. Ivry. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2006)\
These two articles (The Conversation and phys.org/news) are journalistic accounts of the scientific study by Kemp, Vylomova, Khishigsuren, and Regier.
Exactly what had become ‘visualizable’ according to Heisenberg in 1927, and whence the term ‘Blurriness Relation’ in lieu of Uncertainty Principle?
As backdrop for the physics concepts and associated German vocabulary to be explored in a moment, here is a story I call “Quadrille Dance & Shotgun Wedding”:
1925. Heeding the lesson of Niels Bohr’s ill‑fated orbital theory (1913‑1918), Heisenberg is wary of developing any visual model; he wants to “get rid of the waves in any form.” Accordingly, with Max Born and Pascual Jordan, he sets forth his matrix‑mechanics formulation of quantum theory.
"Cultural Nuances in Subtitling the Religious Discourse Marker Wallah in Jordanian Drama into English." Al Salem, Mohd Nour et al. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12, no. 1 (March 6, 2025). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-04515-6.
I've lost a considerable amount of sleep over these two words, not just because they both have nine letters and look almost the same, differing only by a single consonant, but even more so because, while they both signify something bad or undesirable about the way situations unfold or how people behave toward others, they imply the opposite in the manner these odious actions are carried out, but have no obvious clues about their usage.
I love potato chips, but am not a fan of french fries, so I'm all confused when I'm in Britain where "chips" are "crisps" and "fries" are "chips"!
One reason I like potato chips is because they are salty and savory to counteract all the sweets I consume, so I keep a big box of 18 small bags of chips and Doritos, Cheetos, and Fritos on hand to rescue me from hunger pangs whenever I feel them coming on. But I dislike Pringles because they're not real.
