Since the community likes challenges, can anyone tell me what the following word means, in any and every language applicable:

nalogy

I'm working on a new website that uses this word, and I'd hate for it to mean something crass without my knowing. Thanks!

Look it up in the OED. If it's not there it's probably not a word.

The context doesn't allow for a simple typo of "analogy?"

That only works if you have *one* nalogy. What do you do with two?


/yuk-yuk

Googling gave me a "nalogy" website, but it seems to raise more questions than answers!

Assuming it is a word, then:

'logy' is from Ancient Greek 'logos' and means speech or reckoning; while 'na' means not ever.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/na

From the above url, 'na' can also mean he/him, she/her, well!, swim!, so!, yes/is, no/not, binary question, here, direction, on, at or in among others.

Of course, you might get different results if you split the characters differently.

Logy - lacking physical or mental energy or vitality; sluggish; dull; lethargic.

Na, the chemical symbol for Sodium.

So Nalogy is a tired piece of sodium, which has probably been up all night.



pca

Great, that really had me giggling on a rather lacklustre day!

I think its a transliteration of a Russian word. Does it mean taxes or a tax. Something along those lines.

Interesting ideas to break it down into components. Linguistics; amazing stuff.

Yes, it's a shortening of "analogy". Needlessly, really. Trying to be hip and modern by leaving off vowels. And shaving syllables so it's easier to type/say (though more confusing, really).

I'm creating a website to utilize my strength of thinking up analogies. Simultaneously, it's a creative outlet, an exercise in consistent content production and overcoming startup anxiety, an ice breaker into Web 2.0, and a start to my long overdue web presence. It's a site not under construction, but "under evolution", changing as my horizons broaden and as time permits.

It's not ready for me to post a link. It will never be ready. But when it's more ready, I'll post a link. Thanks!

That would be like having a car you could only drive to and from the car factory -- er, no, wait...

Peter

Nice one. If I need a guest writer, I know who to ask.

I'm choosing between two names for the site:
DailyAnalogy.com
Dailynalogy.com - vowel-trimmed version

The latter could look stylized as DailynAlogy.com for some phoenitic emphasis.

I have both domains, so I'm not forced to drop the vowel. I'm weighing the "coolness" of dropping a letter against having to constantly explain "And leave off the second A for 'Awesome'".

What opinions do you have, or any other suggestions for more creative names? This site will evolve based on feedback and experience, so any input is welcome. Thanks!

This is going to cause a lot of confusion. When I say "a lot" I mean "most people."

Seriously, when a simple word like "Manta" (as in that big huge fish, the Manta Ray) gets confused as "Mantra" by up to at least 30 percent of customers, I think you'll have serious issues with that domain name.

If you wanted something shorter and cooler in the first place, you could try "dnalogy" - but people are still going to mess that up too. If you look at the domain, it's (unfortunately) a Geocities page about geneology where the first three letters are supposed to be "DNA"

Seems like most domains these days are already taken, or more than likely squatted. Even many nonsensical ones.

EDIT: If you act now, you can grab "dnaly.com" which is currently available. I still think a lot of people will mess it up, but it's about as short a domain as you'll find.

Agreed. Maybe it's just my old fogey eyes, but it looks dumb. I might be tempted to visit a site called dailyanalogy.com, but I wouldn't bother with dailynalogy -- I'm not interested in looking at a daily picture of your nalgene bottle collection.

I betcha that there's a dozen domains already out there with some combination of the words 'daily' and 'anal'.

Tell me I'm not the first one here to think of that.

I assumed he was being sarcastic, and was poking fun at the word from earlier in the thread...

Yup, that's why I dropped that A.

Thankfully, I have dailyanalogy.com too, so I'll just switch to that. Thanks for your input.

Perhaps a hyphen in an appropriate spot?

A hyphen indicates that the site's owners were unable to obtain the domain name without the hyphen. Unless of course you own and use both. In general, hyphens are unwanted in domain names.

Ah... I didn't realize there was hyphen-snobbery out there.

It's more to do with natural language and ambiguity rather than snobbery. When saying the name of a site (that happens to also be its domain), one won't say "hyphen" or "dash" but just the name itself. The person hearing this won't hit the correct site when they omit the hyphen. Then you'll get into situations like this...

"Visit this site, the address is 'blah blah dot com'"
"Ok, got it, thanks."
"Oh wait, that's 'blah hyphen blah dot com'"
"Ok, got it now"

When they next get to a browser, they immediately type the address without the hyphen and end up on some type of fetish site.

Tell me about it. My current employer's domain name is a seven-letter non-English word (that has nothing to do with our business), then a hyphen, then a seven-letter plural word that could just as easily be non-plural. I'm pretty sure I've had phone calls where me relating my email address took longer than the rest of the phone call.


Not, I guess, that the dash is the biggest part of the problem. But it certainly compounds the issue.

I greatly discredit websites with a dash in their name. In my mind, there's some innate weighting algorithm which judges the quality of the site by its name. Hyphens decrease cred.

Someday, hopefully soon, I'll describe this as part of my educational podcast series. First, I have to polish and launch this blog. One step at a time.