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The board · New York · Curious

Half the words on this app I have had to look up

Posted as do_not_know_the_words, 5 September 2026

Looking for
somebody who does not mind explaining the obvious
Experience
None. Three months of reading and a lot of open tabs.
Around
Manhattan, New York

Every third profile here contains a word I have to look up, and about half the time the definition I find is somebody's blog contradicting somebody else's. I have a document on my phone of terms I have collected and I am fairly sure a quarter of my definitions are wrong.

Thirty two, Manhattan, three months on the app, no experience of anything. The vocabulary problem is worse than it sounds, because it is not just that I do not know the words. It is that I cannot tell which ones are widely agreed and which ones are one person's private usage, and asking makes me sound like a tourist.

So I am asking here, in public, which feels less exposed. I would like to talk to somebody who is patient about the basics and is not going to make me feel like a project. I would rather have four long conversations over two months than meet anybody in the next fortnight.

What draws me is not any specific activity. It is the idea of an arrangement with clear expectations in it, which is either the whole point or a beginner's misunderstanding, and I genuinely do not know which.

Not looking for anyone who will use my not knowing as a way to decide things for me. Not looking for somebody who wants to send me a reading list and then a photograph. Not looking to pretend I understand something in order to keep a conversation going, which I did twice in April and will not do again.

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What to have sorted before you reply

If this one reads like your own head rather than somebody to answer, the tactics can wait. These three all happen before there is a first match to get wrong.

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