...what

[ysobel]

At one point today I was relating an anecdote about badminton, but couldn’t remember the word. So I said "what's the thing that's not tennis?"

Scarily, my friend suggested badminton right away, which is good because I had forgotten "shuttlecock" also, but half remembered it, and I'm pretty sure "where you bat around a floaty rocket chicken" would have helped.

...

...yeah.

(I'm totally fascinated with both momentary-word-forgettery and the linguistic thing where "the thing that's *not* X" conveys "but is similar in some ways". Because technically everything other than tennis is "a thing that's not tennis" but only a few things can be relevantly described that way; badminton, ping pong, maybe volleyball?)

Comments

[ephemera]

Human brains are weird, aren't they? (It's like the shape of thing that is covers both keys, oyster card, and door pass...)

[fairestcat]

That linguistic thing has always fascinated me too. Also the way someone I know really well can forget a word mid-sentence and replace it with, "thingy...whatsit..." and I can know exactly what they mean even if I also can't remember the word.

Marna and I have both been on meds in the past that caused aphasia as a side-effect, and it's super-annoying but can be entertaining too. At one point one of the words Marna could never remember was "aphasia," so now we all refer to it as "aphids," because that's what she kept coming up with instead.

[pauamma]

Sounds like you're talking about implicature?

[krait]

My first thought would have been racquetball! So there's another for your Things That Are Not Tennis [but have something in common with them] list...

"Rocket chicken" is a great get-around for shuttlecock! *goes off to name something Rocket Rooster right away*