this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. No politics
    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I call them "tissues." Calling all tissue Kleenex is like my mom calling all video games Nintendo.

[–] kirkoman 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

FWIW, I just learned that escalator and kerosene started as trademarked brand names.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

insisting on calling all tissues kleenex is how the company loses the rights to the name

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My parents do say kleenices, but they're massive nerds. And linguists. Dad has bad allergies so "Did you take the kleenices out of your pockets?" was a common laundry time question. They also pluralized pizza as "pizzot".

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Fun fact! Pizza is already plural. The singular is a piz, which is where we get the English word “piece”, because pizza come pre-portioned. The word “peace” also comes from the same derivation, because it is impossible to go to war while enjoying a piz of pizza.

/s

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Kleenex is the name of the brand, not the tissues

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Brands are nouns and can (and are) thus genericized.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Kleenpodes!

Yes, I know its unrelated. I'm just trying to force in the whole octopi problem.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

According to the internet the -ex to -ices is a dead suffix for specifically latin borrowed words

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

is a dead suffix

sure, if you go with that attitude!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What if the singular of Kleenex was a Kleenek.

[–] captain_aggravated 2 points 1 month ago

Gah you fuggin beat me to it!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] kirkoman 3 points 1 month ago

I think that would be the plural of Kleenus.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

[kliːniː]

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Furthermore, it should be pronounced like it was a Greek philosopher.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Κληνίσης

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Kleenussies

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Obviously pronounces "Clean-eh-keys" right?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

As a crazy person that took 5 semesters of Latin, absolutely, but it's a battle in which I've admitted defeat, much like "as per."

If English made any sense, "matrices" would be the normal plural and pronounced with the italianized soft c. But then "indexes" is over there being irksome.

I think the correct plural here is simpler: a zero plural, i.e Kleenex. Probably because we just elide the entire word "tissues."

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Kleeneges.

Tap for spoilerrex -> reges

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Tap for spoilerLateges, googolpleges, apeges, indeges, Wesseges and Susseges, the two seges. Latin is super easy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

You must struggle with nouns like 'deer' and 'mail'.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I thought Kleenex was the plural. I use one Kleeni at a time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

What should the plural of Lego be?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago
[–] kirkoman 1 points 1 month ago
[–] otp 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What other word follows this?

[–] kirkoman 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

index -> indices matrix -> matrices codex -> codices appendix -> appendices

[–] otp 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Ah, I forgot about index and didn't know about codices.

I'll continue to use the plural "tissues", though! Lol

It's funny to me to see someone simultaneously prescriptively linguistic enough to use a Latin pluralization but not pedantic enough to use the proper non-genericized term for tissues, haha

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

In my broken mind, it has been for years!