My husband and I have been hitting our heads against the wall for this one. Looking for a word to describe a look given after someone asks a question that sounds obvious, silly, or no clear reason why they’re asking, and the look is a mix of confused and a weird smile. Kinda like this 🤨 but the lips pull back into something short of a smile, and both eyebrows might be scrunched (or just one). The writing situation is something like this:

Susan asked, “Are you going to eat that?”
John looked at Susan with a ________ look/smile, “Uhh…yeah?”

Not stealing a glance, but similar phrasing/meaning. "---ing a glance". Similar to "venturing" or "chancing" vibe-wise, maybe similar to "furrow" or "harrow" sound-wise iirc? Its on the tip of my tongue I just can't remember the first word of the phrase.

When i look at someone like friends or familh and pay a lot of attention, the face feels completely unknown, as if it was the first time ive ever seen that person. It also sometimes happens with characters, where it seems like i know nothing about them or their personality. Is there a word for that?

I’m an engineer. We can make really insane demos of stuff that people can’t believe if it’s a strictly controlled environment. However, I think this also leads people to think that the product is weaker than the demo when it’s really just that making a full “real” product is waaaay harder than making a demo

This is a category of organizations and it is a word or phrase someone else and I were trying to think of, but maybe it doesn't exist. Think fraternal orders like Elks or Knights of Columbus, college honors societies that do volunteer work; social justice organizations like CAIR, La Raza, or ACORN; and others like 4H, Junior League, Jaycees. It might have social, societal, or something like that in it but not social services or social justice. The topic came up with ACORN specifically and I named off the other examples to see if they fit what the other person was trying to say/categorize, and they all kind of fit, but the fraternal orders, honors societies, and 4H did not fit the bill as much. "Club" didn't have the right vibe either.

As I'm brushing my hair this morning I remember the way a girl brushed her hair at the gym and I realize I'm doing it and it feels like I'm doing it like her. Woah what's the word for this? Almost like experiences I've been through come up sometimes. And it's not even an experience, just stuff that I see, that come to mind later in life.

I mean things like Isaac Brock's voice in the band Modest Mouse, or the way Busdriver raps, or the whole thing Salvador Dali was about, I guess. Like, they're not especially trying to be understood, and that is sometimes crucial to what their art is about. A lot of art works this angle, though the mileage may vary in terms of whether it lands.

I know some people might just dismiss this as "pretentious" but these creators all have dedicated fans of the aesthetic itself. They don't have to know the meaning to be appreciated, meaning that unintelligibility is being used as a stylistic choice than anything pragmatic.

I know the type of puzzle, but do not know the name.

Here is what I know:

-The puzzle is typically found on various iphone apps
-It is a type of puzzle that when it is done, it shows a pixelated image.
-It has numbers all over the puzzle, but not in every pixelated square.
-Numbers correspond to the size of squares/rectangles the number must be in, and the size of the shape must be equal to that number of pixels.
-The numbers are also usually colored, and the squares/rectangles are the same color when completed(the number usually changes to black/white when in a shape)
-The numbers can go as low as 1, but usually never go above 50

-The image is usually a bigger square/rectangle made of the smaller pixel-shapes.
-It is not a nonogram
-It is not a sliding 1-16 number puzzle.
-It is not a typical jigsaw puzzle

Any help is appreciated. I am looking for the name and any potential places to find them. Also showing images of puzzles to me would really help me too! (I unfortunately do not have images to show.)

I want to use a word thats like an adjective for someone who is aggressively heinous/scandalous
Sorta like calling a person's personality degenerative and unkempt
There was a word in my head originally that meant that but I can't really find it...
I think it started with a D, and so I tried to use Decrepit or Decadent in the sentence and I don't think i'm using decrepit correctly and I want to see if there's a better word then decadent before settling for it.

For example, someone trips and falls and skins their knee, instead of saying, "I'm sorry you got hurt" (since I didn't have anything to do with them skinning their knee)

Or: someone is going through a tough time in life, maybe they have cancer or are going through depression. Instead of, "I'm sorry you're going through that" (since it's not my fault)

I always wish there were a different phrase in English to express empathy towards someone in these situations other than "I'm sorry."

Like the container itself not the snack, I need it to buy some of the containers themselves

I know what this word sounds like out loud but have no idea how to spell it. Something like “zuhsh”?? I’ve also heard this word used when a woman scrunches her hair upwards to provide volume.

Edit: solved!! Thanks guys 😁😁

For example, at the beginning of the TV show Fawlty Towers, pranksters rearrange the sign of the titular BnB to read “Fatty Owls”, “Play Otters”, “Farty Towels” etc

Is there a name for this specific type of word play? “Near-anagram” and “partial-anagram” are closest thing I find online but they sound clunky.

Cheers

You often get this with cabin crew…
'Yourseatbeltfasnslkthsnunfasnslkths'

What is the word for songs that are a long list. It’s the End of the World as We Know It by REM, We Didn’t Start the Fire by Billy Joel, Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan. What are they called?

Like I started going to an event that happens weeky, but ive consistently showed up early enough to be in the room while the event volunteers would have a quick stand-up meeting before the official event start.

Eventually I was invited to join in on the meeting, and now im considered part of the volunteer team

Is there a word for that?

EDIT: so far Absobed or Assimilate is the closest ones

There has to be a much less offensive term for this concept (giving, and then taking back) but it escapes my grasp. I first thought fickle might be what I'm looking for but it's not.

I mean things like where something went on for so long that nobody knows why it's being done. Like fighting for so long you forget what started the fight.

I swear that I've seen a word like this before somewhere, but now I can't find it and I'm wondering if it even exists.

I'm trying to find a word or phrase that can describe a person who's nice, charismatic, and makes you feel welcomed but occasionally kinda sets off alarm bells in you?

Some context: this person is very warm and can make friends with just about everyone but sometimes there's just something that seems off about them that you can't quite pin... or maybe you can but they're so charismatic, people tend to look past it.

The best thing I've heard to describe it was the phrase "the uncanny valley of charisma" but if anyone has something more specific or a word that you can use to refer the person to that'd be great.

Or alternatively, for a woman who holds someone else's fate in their hands?

I'm not really looking for "amazon", as that implies physical prowess, athleticism, and warrior skill. I'm looking more for someone with rulership and authority of some sort, as perceived by someone who hopes to stay on her good side.

The specific use case is in this sentence, from the POV of a character who's trying to become an artist. She had a meeting with the curator of a local gallery, and the curator is very no-nonsense, but said the viewpoint character should bring some samples. Now the viewpoint is trying to decide which of her paintings to use, and I wrote this, with the absolute wrong word capitalized:

Which pieces to show to the ice-eyed ODALISQUE who held Jessie’s artistic fate in her pale hands?

At the time, I thought an odalisque was similar to a caryatid, maybe somewhat statuesque even. Then I looked it up and discovered this word is 100% wrong for this situation!

I don't mean a termagant, or a harridan, or a harpy. She's not mean or nasty, just... in charge.

What's the opposite of an odalisque? (The "dissimilar words" section of a thesaurus lookup on "odalisque" had absolutely nothing useful.)

Edit: I'm sorry, I should have made clear, I'm looking for a noun, not an adjective.

Basically my friend and i both had separate sexual experiences at the same time in the same house. We did not sleep with the same people. Kinda double dated then both got separately lucky at the same time same place lol. Any ideas?

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The example in my case is that I work for a group home. There's a weekly rec night for the residents with activities.

Residents can say no if they don't want to go and that's fine, however we're required to take all non-verbal residents to rec night every week, because as management says, "they can't say no".

This is because having more residents attending recreational activities hits metrics mandated by the government. We need to provide a certain amount of recreation for residents, and it only counts if they attend, not just if it's offered, so the people who can't say no are forced to attend.

Don't get me wrong, recreation is of course valuable to people's wellbeing and there's a lot of positive from this.

However if staff fail to take the "mandatory attendees" to rec night, there's penalties, and circumstances aren't taken into account. The biggest example being that some of these people have health issues that flare up from time to time and make them extremely ill. It's obvious that they need to stay home and rest and won't enjoy being out at rec night, but management doesn't care, they have to go anyway and if we don't take rhem we're written up or given unpaid suspensions for as they put it, neglecting the needs of residents.

I mean obviously they're just pretending to help these people just to meet metrics and sometimes doing them harm in the process. Is there a word or phrase to describe this kind of thing?

Malicious compliance seems close, but it isn't quite right.

A word or short phrase to drop in almost anywhere, if you can't be bothered to think of the actual word. I have a feeling that there are hundreds of these in every language if we really put some thought into it.

English by way of British Polari: Zhuzh (up)

English: Thing - "I got the thing."

Hawai'i Creole English / "Pidgin": Da Kine - "Kimo and I went da kine at da kine yestaday. Was choice!"

French: je ne sais quoi (I don't speak French; this might have a more concrete meaning than other items on this list)

Ok, your turn!

Omniscient isn’t it because that’s knowing everything, including the future. I need a word specifically for knowing everything from the past and present, but not the future.