What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.
Oh. Yeah. Epenthesis.
It's a term in linguistics for the insertion of a phonetic segment (at the surface level) that isn't phonologically present (at the deep level). Like the "p" in "hamster" or the "yu" in "nuclear."
I used to be a linguistics geek. I'm better now.
Originally I started using it as a username when I couldn't find a single other name, word, or short phrase that wasn't taken on AOL. Later I got a perverse kind of amusement out of the fact that it's a rough synonym of "insertion."
Yes, I'm still essentially a tenth grader. Tell me something I don't know.
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