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Sunday, June 24, 2012

What You’re Calling Your Finnish Copyeditor

I’ll be upfront about this one: You will seldom have an occasion to use this latest word of the week. However, if you love words and especially love well-crafted insults, you’ll go through the rest of your life feeling just a bit happier that this word exists.
pilkunnussija (pill-KOO-noos-EE-ja) — noun: a person with exceptional and unnecessary attention to detail; a punctilious person; a pedant.
In short, pilkunnussija names every micromanaging, nitpicking, calling-you-out-on-a-technicality asshole who’s ever made your life terrible. But why would I go out of my way to introduce a new word when English clearly has a rich vocabulary for describing dickish people? It’s what pilkunnussija literally means: “comma fucker.” And that, friends, a thing of beauty. What a creative way to capture the essence of some terrible person who lusts for the opportunity to check and re-check the minutia that no one else cares about and which likely doesn’t matter in the long run — “comma fucker.” Someone who literally gets off on commas.

Brilliant. A hearty way-to-go for all your Finns out there — and a happy thumbs-up for me, too, for I now know one thing about Finnish people.

(An aside: I actually didn’t find a clear pronunciation for this word, so I just sounded out how an English-speaker would tackle those letters. Do correct me if you know better, Finnish-fluent portion of my reader base, which maybe exists for all I know.)

Previous words of the week after the jump.

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