Times a work taught you a word

I'll share mine:

• TV Tropes itself: "subvert", "invert", "invoke", "exploit", "egregious", and "trope" itself.
• Charlotte's Web: "salutations", "radiant", "languish", and "humble".
• Futurama: "ass", "floozy", "chump", and "booze".
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: "feign", "transpire" (though I did later have to learn that the "and made everybody sad" thing was just a joke), and "lampoon".
• Antz: "damn" and "lawsuit".
• Star Trek: "prosper", "temporal", "enterprise", "anomaly", and "belay".
• Ghostbusters (1984): "paranormal"
• Asexuality Archive: "demisexual"
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: "wimpy" itself, and also "posterior".
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: "nerd"

I learned "vivid" from Warrior Cats.

I learned the word "lackadaisical" from Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. I kid you not.

How vulgar can we be? I ask because the Boondocks taught me a lot.

I learned "bastard" from South Park. My mom was very mad at me that day.

I learned "bastard," "damn," and "hell" from Inuyasha of all things.

I learned the word "mediocre" from the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Plankton". And the word "ampersand" (the term for the symbol for the word "and") from Family Guy.

Say it with me, everyone: "A-G-L-E-T! Don't forget it!"

Reading the Happy Tree Friends wiki as a kid taught me some English words, like "bald" and "fables"

Looming Gaia taught me what "bedroll" and "nocking" are, and that "sumptuous" isn't a typo

Edited by Hqami on Oct 14th 2023 at 9:44:38 PM

Add "demon" to Inuyasha too. For an anime, it sure taught me a lot of English.

Nerds candy taught me the word "nerd" though my parents told me the definition after I bought my first package.

Edited by ChicoTheParakeet on Oct 14th 2023 at 2:47:14 PM

Pokemon (specifically Battle Revolution) taught me the word "subside", and a couple of years later my kid self impressed my mother by using that word when talking about a rainstorm.

Honestly, there are too many words to list, but I learned English mostly through entertainment. First by hearing words spoken aloud in cartoons, because dubbing wasn't as common back then. Later on video games helped me become able to read in English, and understand how illogical the grammar is. This went further when I started to read fantasy literature as a teenager, beginning with the likes of R.A. Salvatore, before graduating to the doorstoppers of Tolkien and the wordplay of Pratchett. A specific obscure word I can think of is "gibbous", taught me by papa Lovecraft.

I learnt "gobstopper" from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I learned the word "errand" from an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants where he kept talking about "running errands".

Not so much one word, but Neopets is how I found out certain words are spelled differently in British English compared to American English. The exact moment that caused this revelation was a slide on the homepage related to a then-recent site plot talking about the "centre of the world". I was surprised to see what I thought was an obvious typo on the front page, until my mom informed me that's just how it's spelled over there.

The Seventh Tower: "soporific"

("Blueshrike" is Crow — Ebbitt is nicknaming him)

Artemis Fowl: "impropriety"

The Lord of the Rings: "chalcedony" and "adamant" (the mythical substance), from one of Bilbo's songs

The Edge Chronicles: "academe" (in the sense of "A senior member of the staff at an institution of higher learning"), in the title "Most High Academe"

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: "dilapidated" — one of the things Tom gets from his Fence Painting scheme is "a dilapidated old window sash".

Edited by Twiddler on Oct 15th 2023 at 4:36:48 AM

The first episode of Bob's Burgers taught me what a "child molester" was, though it genuinely took a few years for me to realize "oh, wait, so that's what Stranger Danger was really all about".

Just remembered I was one of the many children who learned "penultimate" from A Series of Unfortunate Events.

I think the first time I encountered the word "pornography" was through an episode of The Simpsons. The context didn't actually clue me in on what it is, but as a roughly 7- or 8-year-old it sounded really funny, so I kept rewinding the DVD to replay the moment where Homer said it over and over (to my dad's embarrassment).

I think I remember learning a lot of words from A Series of Unfortunate Events (and its TV series adaptation) as well - "penultimate" being one of them. Some other words I remember learning from the series were "dowager" and "pariah". (Helps that a lot of the more difficult words were defined in the typical Lemony Narrator style.)

Also, that example relating to The Simpsons is hilarious - I'm just picturing your dad sitting there like "Should... should I tell them what that means?"

Aggretsuko taught me the term "sub-par".

I learnt "gargantuan" from Pinky Dinky Doo.

"Adamant" from Pokemon, specifically Sapphire, with this being one of the Natures (a feature first introduced in Ruby/Sapphire)

A few years before that, I also remember seeing several words for the first time in Pokemon Crystal, though I can't really remember which ones at the moment

Also "ballistic markings" from Ace Attorney lmao

A few more.

• Warrior Cats: Peat moss, rogue (I pronounced it "roog"), scourge (I pronounced it "scorge", as was apparently very common for young fans), as well as the existence of animals such as voles and adders.

• Neopets: Dung, aubergine (my only exposure to the commonwealth version of "eggplant" until I got older), the British version of "biscuit", monotony, scimitar, and probably other random words from items and pet colors.

Getsuyobi no Tawawa taught me Getsuyobi mean Monday.

Speaking of Neopets, it's what made me realise "transmogrify" didn't mean "swap cats".

I feel like a lot of British works, like LittleBigPlanet, Wallace & Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep, taught me some British English when I was younger.

Shaun the Sheep in particular was what taught me that "potty" can also mean "crazy" in the UK (there was an episode called "Shaun Goes Potty" and it confused me, to say the least).