Here are some of the things I learned this week, in the order I’ve noted them down.

• Two concepts I learned about this week came straight from Ted Lasso, the Apple TV+ series. The first is the official name of the phenomenon where repeating a word enough causes it to temporarily lose its meaning: semantic satiation (wiki). The second is the german word Schadenfreude, which means drawing pleasure from the pain that besets others. Coincidentally, it’s also trending on Merriam-Webster for an entirely different reason.

• From reading One Piece I picked up a new Japanese expression: 臭いものに蓋 (kusai-mono-ni-futa). Its literal meaning is “to cover what stinks”. Its figurative meaning is to look the other way or hush up a problem (link).

• A snowclone is an expression template where replacing one or two words produces an infinite number of variants. Example: X is the new Y. There is even a website that tracks them!