r/MeaningofLiff

53 archived posts · Mar 2013 – Dec 2025

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The Meaning of Liff

r/MeaningofLiff

"The Meaning Of Liff is a dictionary of things that you know that don't have names."

Created Mar 29, 2013

170Members (last snapshot)

53Archived posts

"In Life, there are many hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all know and recognize, but for which no words exist. On the other hand, the world is littererd with thousands of spare words which spend their time doing nothing but loafing about on signposts pointing at places. Our job, as we see it, is to get these words down off the signposts and into the mouths of babes and sucklings and so on, where they can start earning their keep in everyday conversation and make a more positive contribution to society." - Douglas Adams, John Lloyd

Rules for submitting:

Words should be based on place names.
If you are creating a word, please start your submission with [DEF].
If you are searching for a word, please start your submission with [REQ].
If you have a source for a word, link it!
Please try to avoid using Urban Dictionary.

For more general word-creating, see r/neology

If your post is not appearing, please message the moderators.

"In the 80's Douglas Adams and John Lloyd hit upon the idea that there were items, situations, concepts and other things that didn't have a handy word to describe them. Similarly there were lots of words that did nothing except hang around on signs pointing at places. What if the two were put together? So The Meaning Of Liff is a dictionary of things that you know that don't have names. Why its being talked about recently I couldn't say. It deserves to be talked about though because its a beautiful piece of british surrealist nonsense. I wouldn't read it on public transport though. Unless you don't mind people looking at you while you snort at it." - disco54

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