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My Freakish Talent

2014-05-23 · explainer · Hank · 3:50 · watch on YouTube

Topic: History & curiosities · mode: Curiosity & trivia · tags: civic or action cta, recurring series

Hank presents talking as his remarkable, unnoticed skill and tours the oddities of words: words for words, self-contradicting words, self-describing (autological) words and the heterological paradox; he then asks viewers to fill out the 2014 Nerdfighteria Census.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Hank's 'remarkable skill' reveal: talking, a miracle

  • ★★ Hank presents talking as a remarkable skill, a lifetime's work needing intricate muscle control, that only one of every 8.7 million species on Earth can do. (playful) — 00:00:12
  • ★★★ Talking is a miracle, Hank says: noises from his mouth get people to meet him somewhere; it is kind of a miracle we don't notice how remarkable this ability is. — 00:00:33

00:00:33 — Words for everything, words for words, and words that mean their own opposite (inflammable, sanguine)

  • ★★ We have words for everything, Hank says, pointing out the parts of a book (paper, cardstock, embossed cover, spine, blurbs), and words for words: parts of speech, synonyms and antonyms. (playful) — 00:00:38
  • ★★ Some words mean the opposite of themselves, Hank says: inflammable means both very easy and very hard to catch on fire; sanguine means both cheerful and bloodthirsty. — 00:01:16 · inflammable, sanguine
    • check: both very easy to catch on fire and very hard to catch on fire — doubtful

00:01:28 — A word for when there is no word; self-describing words; autological and the heterological paradox

  • ★★ There is a word for words that mean their own opposite, and even a word for when there isn't a word for a thing, so unusual a situation that most people don't know the word exists. (playful) — 00:01:28
  • ★ There is a word for the best possible word to use in any situation, so the best word to describe the best possible word describes itself. (playful) — 00:01:47
  • ★★★ Words that describe themselves ('noun', 'magniloquent', 'polysyllabic', 'unhyphenated', 'coined') are called autological, and 'autological' is itself autological. — 00:01:55 · autological
  • ★★ The hard part, Hank says: autological's antonym heterological cannot consistently be said to describe itself or not; luckily there is a word for that too. (playful) — 00:02:21 · heterological, autological

00:02:48 — Nerdfighteria Census 2014; newsletter and Nerdfighter events list at nerdfighteria.com

  • ★★★ Hank recalls that last year (2013) he and John ran a census of Nerdfighteria to know the community and let it know itself; it helps decide focus, tour stops and new shows, with the goal of making Nerdfighteria better. — 00:02:48 · Nerdfighteria, John Green
  • ★★★ Hank asks viewers with time (it takes 10 to 30 minutes, with real questions) to fill out the census via the description link; it will make the community better. — 00:03:03
  • ★★ Hank points viewers to nerdfighteria.com to sign up for a weekly newsletter and to find a list of Nerdfighter events around the world. — 00:03:18 · nerdfighters.com

00:03:30 — Thanks, sign-off and word-tangle bloopers

Humor (significant)

  • Hank builds up a lifelong, mesmerizing skill needing muscle control that only one in 8.7 million species has. — 00:00:24

    “Talking.”

  • Noises come out of his mouth, he directs them at people, and the miraculous result is… — 00:00:30

    “And then the people are like "Yeah I'll meet you at Buffalo Wild Wings at 7."”

  • Naming objects around him to show we have words for everything, Hank holds up a stitched-together toy. — 00:00:57

    “This is a llama head stitched to the body of an elephant theres a word for that.”

  • Hank ties himself in knots over whether 'heterological' describes itself, then groans. — 00:02:39

    “Luckily, we got a word for that too.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: autological · heterological · Nerdfighteria Census

Also: contronym · Grelling–Nelson paradox · inflammable · lexical gap · nerdfighters.com · sanguine

Also centred on Nerdfighteria Census: New Channels, New Songs, and Just Plain News · Nerdfighteria Census 2014 Results! · Corndog Ghost Attack, Book Towers, and Census · The Cold War of Nerdfighteria · Sleep Paralysis, Double-Pregnancy, and The 2016 Census · The Bizarro History of Black Friday: (AND 2017 CENSUS!)

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