When you don't remember a "word"

Question

What's that word?

It's happened to everyone one of us, and it happens to each and every one of us more and more frequently as time passes by.

What was that great word I read the other day?

You know there's a word but you just can't recall it. You think it has the letter "p" in it; it sounds foreign; it's really informal, maybe it was slang; you think it was an academic term, maybe a linguistic word, etc. etc.

How does one go about researching a word they don't remember but it's somewhere dormant in their brain?

Please vote to reopen the following question, which I believe is a valuable addition (is that the right word?) to the site.

Word for a cushy position awarded to a crony?

I'm struggling to recall this word. If I recall correctly, it's of French origin. My search has so far been fruitless.

Or please explain how any user, let alone a new contributor, should research a word they cannot remember.

Here's another example, in this instance the OP (a native speaker and new contributor) read the banner but was left feeling confused/bemused.

Looking for a word for "not up for discussion"

[text]

Edit: Please excuse my failure to follow the proper format. I believed that the word began with a "v" but to cite where I searched? Seemingly everywhere online. I found numerous options including "out of bounds" and "off limits" but not the one word that I knew existed. My search brought me here so clearly I'd been looking for a time.

Now, some will argue that these type of questions (SWRs) should be banned from the site altogether. But for now, they're not.

So, what solution or friendly guidance can we, as a community, offer to new contributors looking for that elusive "word" that is on the tip of their tongue?

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Fodder to chew on

General Reference = general clairvoyance?

Is it really so important in English to find a single word to express a single concept?

Is it wrong to answer the intent of the question?

Are tip of the tongue questions completely unsuitable here?

An answer by Jon Ericson, Community Manager on Stack Exchange, to
On Answering Word Requests

Answer 1

In general, I agree that there is not a great "reverse dictionary" easily available for researching this kind of question, so "lack of research" isn't necessarily a great close reason. I do think it's still very helpful when OPs with this sort of question include information like "I thought of X and looked at its synonyms, but none of those match" or "I tried googling fancy word for an easy job and didn't get anything", to help avoid false-positives and so that answerers can avoid duplicating the OP's efforts, but it's not always necessary and any vote-to-close for lack of this research probably ought to be accompanied by a comment requesting the info.

In this particular case, though, the question has at least three duplicates, one of which was asked just over a month ago, so I think it should properly be closed as a duplicate.

See

What's the Word for a Token Job?, asked May 22 2014, accepted answer by Affable Geek posted that same day:

A Sinecure is a "cushy" job that is usually given as a reward. It literally means "without care" and is a job without the cares of actual results. It is typically given for reasons of status, prestige, or patronage.

and Word meaning a job someone is installed in where they don’t do anything, asked Apr 13, 2018, accepted answer posted that day by GEdgar:

sinecure

A position requiring little or no work but giving the holder status or financial benefit.
‘political sinecures for the supporters of ministers’

source

and most recently Fake job given as appeasement?, asked October 14, 2018. It apparently hit the HNQ so its accepted answer, posted that day by Robusto, managed to gain 60 upvotes:

The word you're looking for is

sinecure noun
1. A position or office that requires little or no work but provides a salary.

TFD Online.

I don't see any particular added value in yet another "the word you are looking for is sinecure" answer. So by all means don't close this question for lack of research, but do close it as a duplicate. Every marked dupe helps increase the odds that a future searcher will find the right answer, and also gets the current OP to the right answer.

And while we're at it, let's close that October one, too, for tidiness' sake. It garnered two or three close votes, but that was after it left the HNQ and they have since aged away.

Answer 2

Stack Exchange actively discourages requests for help remembering something you have forgotten, or any other request for guesses or ideas, as opposed to answers. This is because Stack Exchange is developing the exhaustive list of correct answers to questions future visitors will need answered. Suppose a person asks “what is the word that I am trying to remember”. Even if the person is satisfied by the answer, nobody else will ever want to consult Stack Exchange to find out what word escaped that person.

The test for this type of question is: Can answer correctness be checked objectively? You know you have a problem if:

• A key criterion for answer correctness remains hidden in the mind of the asker

• To earn the the green check for the right answer, you have to guess correctly

• To vote on an answer, you have to mindread the asker

Of course it may be possible to turn such a request into a good Stack Exchange question. The asker might be willing to rewrite the question so that it is objective enough to have a clearly “right” answer no matter who is asking. This makes the question useful to future visitors, and makes it possible for experts to answer objectively and to peer review other answers as “right” or “wrong”.

Otherwise, good places to ask for help remembering a word you have forgotten:

• English Language & Usage Chat

• “Tip of My Tongue” dictionary search

• “TOMT” subreddit

Further reading

• “Let’s Play The Guessing Game – Stack Overflow Blog”

• “Real Questions Have Answers – SE Blog”

Answer 3

The answer of Andrew Leach in the 3rd link can be boiled down to show what you found. —MariLou-A

Yes, that is mostly accurate, although it should be noted that this necessitates that you try to look.

The problem is, at least in the case of the first question, that Sue F., who asked Word for Not Up For Discussion did not show us that she found anything when it was closed. The original form of the question that Sue F. provided reads entirely as follows:

I am looking for a single word that means "not up for discussion", "will not discuss this topic", a topic that is out of bounds. noun/adjective? Example, "Several months ago, our daughter made talking about her weight _______".

Everything else was edited in after summery closure by MetaEd, which he did because she did not show us that she found anything. If this was "It's fixed and now it should be reopened" that's one thing, but I interpreted this question as expressing surprise over it. Perhaps I was mistaken.

Anyway, what she did after the question was closed that lead to it being reopened makes the question an somewhat interesting case study for what could be done in the future, as do a few of the other facts regarding the case.

Here is what I wrote for your review so far MariLou-A

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Except in cases where the questioner misremembered, which would render such a question de-facto unanswerable, since the word would not actually exist if so, these questions all share something in common:

That would be that the questioner encountered the word before, and may know in what kind of circumstance that the word is likely to have been used. Perhaps the questioner does not know what circumstances the word is used in, but then again, if the questioner does not know that, I am not really sure how somebody else is supposed to do much better.

Considering these factors, questioners should have the ability to retrace their steps for the purpose of finding the exact circumstance in which they have last encountered the word. They can therefore explain to us how they have tried to do this or explain why they can not do this, and then show us that they have checked analogous sources where the word is likely to be found.

One thing somebody could do is ask around with any friends, family or acquaintances who are likely to know it, and this is what our questioner explained that she tried to do in the case of Looking for a Word for Not Up for Discussion. She claims that she found her answer independently of us by asking her 82 year old mother what the word was. If she had tried this first, then there would have never been a need to consult us about it. I do not know if that's a good thing or not since we want questions, but it is a fact to be considered.

If the questioner was unable to ask her mom directly, perhaps because her mother was out of reach, then she could shown us a quotation from a source that she believed to be likely to use the word based upon her knowledge of the word.

When Phenry expressed his consternation at people closing questions as being General Clairvoyance he assumed total ignorance of the answer and asked:

Really!? How … is the guy supposed to look up the answer when he doesn't know the name of the thing he's supposed to look up?

Although I would at least sometimes agree with this sort of rationale, it does not really apply in these cases, because the questioners claim to have at least partial knowledge of their desired answer, and if we look to the information she provided us, then we can see that Sue may have had some clues regarding what she could have used as a basis of her search. I most particularly look to the title of her question, and the fact that she was talking about subjects of discussion.

If I plug the search term "this topic is not up for discussion" into Google Books, passage I find this excerpt from The Fixer-Upper Man: Turn Mr. Maybe into Mr. Right in 5 Easy Steps by Cooper Lawrence:

"When my mother starts asking me when I'm going back to medical school, I walk away and don't see her for a period of time until she learns she can't talk to me about that every time she sees me. Now I just say, 'I love you but this topic is not up for discussion,' and she lets it go." One thing you can do is let your Fixer-Upper know that temporarily excluding someone from his life in order to get a message across is okay. Another thing is getting him to realize that you can't have a sit-down with everyone; some folks in his life will need action, not words. As Theodore says, "consequences," and now his mother has learned that there are certain topics that are verboten.

Upon reading the word, I presume her memory may have been sparked without need of further explanation. Personally, I would suppose that verboten is often collocated with "not up for discussion" as an emphatic reiteration of the sentiment.

Keep in mind that I have only derived the first revision of the question, without the extra benefit of knowing that a mother is likely to be involved, and that extra clue was not even available to us until after the question was closed. Since she decided to consult her mom, I therefore presume she had the benefit of this additional knowledge which may have been used as an additional aid to her efforts.

Now I am not insisting that somebody should have tried this exact method of finding the answer. It is just that I also do not want us pretending as if questioners are completely clueless and unable to help themselves if evidence suggests the contrary, and my goal with this example is to demonstrate that useful search terms could have been derived from the nature of the query, especially since I borrowed them from it almost word-for-word.

Moreover people should probably try to find where they encountered the word before, or at least show us that they have at least tried to find it by showing an analogous context which might have contained the word before resorting to enlisting the aid of many strangers.

Here is a possible comment I might use if I wanted to suggest this should be done.

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Welcome Sue! We have a research standard which requires that our questioners provide basic research while consulting us, mostly to avoid us giving out redundant data. Would you please mention any steps that you may have taken to remind yourself which word you want? Did you ask someone what it was, or read anything that might contain it? Knowing what you have done may even give us clues that help us to find the word, even if you can not.

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One thing I like about this comment is that it gives a reason why it is mutually beneficial for both the questioner and us to have such an effort documented, which may increase the likelihood that we will be obliged.

If the research requirement is just to show us where you looked to show you put a modicum of effort into it yourself, then that should be reasonable in my opinion. It is not unreasonable to expect somebody to take steps to at least try and remember something that he or she has forgotten before asking anybody else, since the person in the best position to do that it is the person who forgot. This applies even more-so when somebody is trying to enlist the help of a group of strangers.

Answer 4

Regarding Our Research Requirements

Despite the fact that I very much prefer the philosophy of the reading material provided, General Reference based posts are not reflective what the moderators consider to be standing policy

The standing position of the moderation staff, and the top voted answer regarding our research requirements on meta, is that all questions should require at least some amount of research irrespective of subject matter or how readily available the answer is. The following reading material helps to demonstrate this:

• The English Language & Usage Moderator Privileges Summit Chatroom Users with over 3,000 rep. discussed what the policies should be predicated on the assumption that close voting patterns set policy.

• Is It Really Helpful to Tell Users to Check a Dictionary Andrew Leach specifies that all questions require cursory research, even beyond just the dictionary ones.

• How Much Research is Needed Andrew Leach Specifies our research requirements more precisely.

• Reword General Reference to Include Research ELL (Mentions some other research relevant questions and tallies up their votes for the purposes of devising a new research closure eason) The closure reason is rephrased to imply that research is required. Andrew Leach tallies up votes from meta-questions to establish how it should be written.

• New Closure Reason: Include Research Kit Z. Fox announced that the new phrasing supplants General Reference.

• Answer General Reference Questions With A Link Anyway Matt E. Эллен explains that the "definitively answered by a single link" standard no longer applies, and provides the text of the new closure reason instead, as an explanation for why the proposal is not a good idea.

I do doubt the assertion that closure voting patterns set policy rather than being restrained by it, especially since setting policy is the role of meta votes, but even if we assume that the single highest voted answer regarding a subject on meta establishes policy, then it would still be accurate to state that it is presently the policy that is in effect is Research Required, because Andrew Leach's answer to How Much Research is Required outscores Jeff's answer to Basic Questions Are Not Not So Basic by a margin of four. Thus this type of closure comes as no surprise.

If this interpretation of policy is correct, then these questions were appropriately closed. That more questions are not closed is really the exceptionalism, but even so that has more so to do with the nature of moderators on the network and that is another subject altogether.