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December 10
Ollning
I happened to come across this recent article on sv-WP. The word is also on Urban Dictionary and Wiktionary .
Does this word exist in English or other languages? Or something close? Google translate on the sv-WP article suggests "woolling" or "wooling", but I don't know if that's valid. There's some logic in it, I'll say that. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:58, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
- It's from ollon, Swedish for glans penis, calqued from Latin. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:26, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, I knew that. But does a word for the act exist in for example English? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:15, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
- An English hyponym is the verb dickslap. --Lambiam 08:52, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
- That is at least related, thanks. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:58, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
- @Lambiam And thanks to you I just discovered Swaffelen. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:04, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
- An English hyponym is the verb dickslap. --Lambiam 08:52, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, I knew that. But does a word for the act exist in for example English? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:15, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
Word for definition of requiring excellence
Is there a word for this type of problem. This is an example. A company wants excellent employees. They require that all applicants have a college degree with perfect grades. As a result, all applicants come from paper mill universities where you get a perfect grade just for paying for the course. Instead of getting excellence, the company gets worse employees than before imlpementing the rule that was intended to increase excellence. In general, I'm looking for a shorter way to say: The action you are implementing to get a good outcome will instead bring about the opposite. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:12, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
- What's a word for an editorial comment disguised as a question. ←Baseball Bugs carrots→ 13:30, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
- Backfire 196.50.199.218 (talk) 13:32, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
- Perverse incentive. Card Zero (talk) 13:37, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
- Yes. I got to that from Backfire, also Unintended_consequences#Perverse_results with many more examples of the type of thing I am trying to define. I will test it on a few people, but I feel that use of the word "perverse" will make it harder to understand than easier... a perverse result in itself. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:39, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
- In general it could be an example of Goodhart's law or Campbell's law: when you make an indicator into a target, it stops being a useful target. More specifically, it could be an example of educational inflation or "credentialism", where educational degrees or credentials are used as a target that is particularly susceptible to being gamed. --Amble (talk) 17:58, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
- Another term that comes to mind (somewhat late!) is that the applicants are gaming the system, which redirects to letter and spirit of the law#Gaming the system. --142.112.149.206 (talk) 00:47, 14 December 2024 (UTC)