in the abstract
briar-patch
bitch
theorylessness
kink
open problem
box
theoretics
tough nut to crack
hard nut to crack
antinomy
fissure
dialectic
broken
confuzzle
disordered
failing
confused
upset
wing and prayer
weakness
a nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat
malreasoning
tangle
theoretic
untheorized
questionable
problem
wheeze
rub
lead
inscrutable
untheoretical
paradoxling
nontheoretical
replication crisis
mooncalf
untheorizable
three-pipe problem
pathomic
crux
superwicked
doctrinaire
syndromic
Newton's flaming laser sword
gotcha
job
embarrassment
questionability
thing
blur
dubiousness
dilemmic
metatheory
pass
unsolvable
problematic
unriddleable
unexplanatory
dilemmatically
catch
flummoxing
problematize
fluster
sticking plaster
gimmick
praemunire
absurdum
disastrousness
conspiratorial
demand characteristic
conspiracy-theoretic
hit a wall
in question
Tower of Babel
half-measure
discordance
quizzical
undertheorized
snag
complex
unfathomable
baby elephant in the room
academic
negotiability
airy fairy
inexplicable
crank
glib
slick
paradoxographer
bubble
jazz
inconsistent
pat
second best
idealist
escape fire
broken
disordered
confused
upset
theoretic
untheorized
questionable
inscrutable
untheoretical
nontheoretical
untheorizable
pathomic
superwicked
doctrinaire
syndromic
blur
dilemmic
problematic
unriddleable
unexplanatory
flummoxing
conspiratorial
conspiracy-theoretic
in question
quizzical
undertheorized
unfathomable
academic
airy fairy
inexplicable
glib
slick
inconsistent
pat
dilemmatically
briar-patch
bitch
theorylessness
kink
open problem
box
theoretics
tough nut to crack
hard nut to crack
antinomy
fissure
dialectic
confuzzle
failing
wing and prayer
weakness
malreasoning
tangle
problem
wheeze
rub
lead
paradoxling
replication crisis
mooncalf
three-pipe problem
crux
gotcha
job
embarrassment
questionability
thing
dubiousness
metatheory
pass
unsolvable
catch
fluster
sticking plaster
gimmick
praemunire
absurdum
disastrousness
demand characteristic
Tower of Babel
half-measure
discordance
snag
problematic
baby elephant in the room
negotiability
crank
paradoxographer
bubble
second best
idealist
escape fire
problematize
hit a wall
complex
jazz
noun
- A difficult or confounding problem.
- An obviously gay man.
- Something unforgiving and unpleasant.
- A female dog or other canine, particularly a recent mother.
- A man considered weak, effeminate, timid or pathetic in some way
- A queen.
- Place; situation
- A complaint, especially when the complaint is unjustified.
- A woman.
- Friend.
- A despicable or disagreeable, aggressive person, usually a woman.
- A submissive person who does what others want; (prison slang) a man forced or coerced into a homoerotic relationship.
- A queen playing card, particularly the queen of spades in the card game of hearts.
verb
noun
noun
- A predicament or trap.
- A compartment or receptacle for receiving items.
- A coffin.
- The rectangle in which the batter stands.
- A small rectangular shelter.
- The vagina.
- A rectangle: an oblong or a square.
- A cylindrical casing around the axle of a wheel, a bearing, a gland, etc.
- A stringed instrument with a soundbox, especially a guitar.
- Any of various evergreen shrubs or trees of genus Buxus, especiallycommon box, European box, or boxwood (Buxus sempervirens) which is often used for making hedges and topiary.
- One of two specific regions in a promoter.
- A cuboid space; a cuboid container, often with a hinged lid.
- The driver's seat on a horse-drawn coach.
- A compartment to sit inside in an auditorium, courtroom, theatre, or other building.
- A musical instrument, especially one made from boxwood.
- A cell used for solitary confinement.
- A gym dedicated to the CrossFit exercise program.
- A compartment (as a drawer) of an item of furniture used for storage, such as a cupboard, a shelf, etc.
- A computer, or the case in which it is housed.
- A diamond-shaped flying formation consisting of four aircraft.
- Various species of Eucalyptus trees are popularly called various kinds of boxes, on the basis of the nature of their wood, bark, or appearance for example, the drooping (Eucalyptus bicolor), shiny-leaved (Eucalyptus tereticornis), black, or ironbark box trees.
- A prison cell.
- A numbered receptacle at a newspaper office for anonymous replies to advertisements; see also box number.
- A device used in electric fencing to detect whether a weapon has struck an opponent, which connects to a fencer's weapon by a spool and body wire. It uses lights and sound to notify a hit, with different coloured lights for on target and off target hits.
- Preceded by the: television.
- A hard protector for the genitals worn inside the underpants by a batsman or close fielder.
- An evergreen tree of the genus Lophostemon (for example, box scrub, Brisbane box, brush box, pink box, or Queensland box, Lophostemon confertus).
- The wood from a box tree: boxwood.
- A blow with the fist.
- A cuboid container and its contents; as much as fills such a container.
- A pattern usually performed with three balls where the movements of the balls make a boxlike shape.
- The penalty area.
- Synonym of gully (“a certain fielding position”)
verb
- To fight against (a person) in a boxing match.
- To place a value of a primitive type into a corresponding object.
- To enclose with boarding, lathing, etc., so as to conceal (for example, pipes) or to bring to a required form.
- To furnish (for example, the axle of a wheel) with a box.
- To place inside a box; to pack in one or more boxes.
- To mix two containers of paint of similar colour to ensure that the color is identical.
- To make an incision or hole in (a tree) for the purpose of procuring the sap.
- Usually followed by in: to surround and enclose in a way that restricts movement; to corner, to hem in.
- To enclose (images, text, etc.) in a box.
- To strike with the fists; to punch.
- To participate in boxing; to be a boxer.
noun
- A state of incompatibility or disagreement.
- A long, narrow crack or opening made by breaking or splitting, especially in rock or earth.
- A groove, deep furrow, elongated cleft or tear between body parts or in the substance of an organ; a sulcus.
- A break or slit in tissue usually at the junction of skin and mucous membrane.
verb
adj
- thrown into a state of disarray or confusion
- subdued or brought low in condition or status
- tamed or trained to obey
- topographically very uneven
- imperfectly spoken or written
- weakened and infirm
- destroyed financially
- out of working order (`busted' is an informal substitute for `broken')
- discontinuous
- lacking a part or parts
adj
adj
- thrown into a state of disarray or confusion
- afflicted with or marked by anxious uneasiness or trouble or grief
- used of an unexpected defeat of a team favored to win
- mildly physically distressed
- having been turned so that the bottom is no longer the bottom
noun
- an unhappy and worried mental state
- the act of disturbing the mind or body
- a physical condition in which there is a disturbance of normal functioning
- a tool used to thicken or spread metal (the end of a bar or a rivet etc.) by forging or hammering or swaging
- the act of upsetting something
- an improbable and unexpected victory
verb
noun
noun
- A complicated or confused state or condition.
- Any large type of seaweed, especially a species of Laminaria.
- An argument, conflict, dispute, or fight.
- A tangled twisted mass.
- A paired helical fragment of tau protein found in a nerve cell and associated with Alzheimer's disease.
- Any long hanging thing, even a lanky person.
- A region of the projection of a knot such that the knot crosses its perimeter exactly four times.
- An instrument consisting essentially of an iron bar to which are attached swabs, or bundles of frayed rope, or other similar substances, used to capture starfishes, sea urchins, and other similar creatures living at the bottom of the sea.
- A form of art which consists of sections filled with repetitive patterns.
verb
noun
- An ulterior scheme or plan.
- An ordinary whisper exaggerated so as to produce the hoarse sound known as the "stage whisper"; a forcible whisper with some admixture of tone.
- Something very humorous or laughable.
- A piping or whistling sound caused by difficult respiration.
- A sound that resembles a human wheezing.
verb
noun
- A difficulty or problem.
- A loan.
- An act of rubbing.
- In the game of crown green bowls, any obstacle by which a bowl is diverted from its normal course.
- Any substance designed to be applied by rubbing.
- A mixture of spices applied to meat before it is barbecued.
verb
- To scour; to burnish; to polish; to brighten; to cleanse; often with up or over.
- To hinder; to cross; to thwart.
- To move (one object) while maintaining contact with another object over some area, with pressure and friction.
- To touch the jack with the bowl.
- To be rubbed against something.
- To rub something against (a second thing).
- To spread a substance thinly over; to smear.
noun
- Hypothesis that has not been pursued
- The excess above a right angle in the angle between two consecutive cranks, as of a compound engine, on the same shaft.
- A plummet or mass of lead attached to a line, used in sounding depth at sea or (dated) to estimate velocity in knots.
- The advance of the current phase in an alternating circuit beyond that of the electromotive force producing it.
- Information obtained by a detective or police officer that allows him or her to discover further details about a crime or incident.
- Sheets or plates of lead used as a covering for roofs.
- The situation where a runner steps away from a base while waiting for the pitch to be thrown.
- In a steam engine, the width of port opening which is uncovered by the valve, for the admission or release of steam, at the instant when the piston is at end of its stroke.
- An important news story that appears on the front page of a newspaper or at the beginning of a news broadcast
- The announcement by one voice part of a theme to be repeated by the other parts.
- The act of leading or conducting; guidance; direction, course
- The action of a tooth, such as a tooth of a wheel, in impelling another tooth or a pallet.
- bullets; ammunition.
- A thin strip of type metal, used to separate lines of type in printing.
- In a barbershop quartet, the person who sings the melody, usually the second tenor
- The actor who plays the main role; lead actor.
- A lode.
- Information obtained by a news reporter about an issue or subject that allows him or her to discover more details.
- Precedence; advance position; also, the measure of precedence; the state of being ahead in a race; the highest score in a game in an incomplete game.
- The main role in a play or film; the lead role.
- A heavy, pliable, inelastic metal element, having a bright, bluish color, but easily tarnished; both malleable and ductile, though with little tenacity. It is easily fusible, forms alloys with other metals, and is an ingredient of solder and type metal. Atomic number 82, symbol Pb (from Latin plumbum).
- A mark or a short passage in one voice part, as of a canon, serving as a cue for the entrance of others.
- An insulated metallic wire for electrical devices and equipment.
- The act or right of playing first in a game or round; the card suit, or piece, so played
- The distance of haul, as from a cutting to an embankment.
- The angle between the line joining the brushes of a continuous-current dynamo and the diameter symmetrical between the poles.
- Vertical space in advance of a row or between rows of text. Also known as leading.
- The person in charge of a project or a work shift etc.
- A rope, leather strap, or similar device with which to lead an animal; a leash
- The player who throws the first two rocks for a team.
- A thin cylinder of graphite used in pencils.
- The course of a rope from end to end.
- The axial distance a screw thread travels in one revolution. It is equal to the pitch times the number of starts.
- A roof covered with lead sheets or terne plates.
- A channel of open water in an ice field.
- Potential opportunity for a sale or transaction, a potential customer.
- A teaser; a lead-in; the start of a newspaper column, telling who, what, when, where, why and how. (Sometimes spelled as lede for this usage to avoid ambiguity.)
verb
- To guide or conduct, as by accompanying, going before, showing, influencing, directing with authority, etc.; to have precedence or preeminence; to be first or chief; — used in most of the senses of the transitive verb.
- To guide or conduct in a certain course, or to a certain place or end, by making the way known; to show the way, especially by going with or going in advance of, to lead a pupil; to guide somebody somewhere or to bring somebody somewhere by means of instructions.
- To direct; to counsel; to instruct
- To conduct or direct with authority; to have direction or charge of; to command, especially a military or business unit.
- To guide or conduct oneself in, through, or along (a certain course); hence, to proceed in the way of; to follow the path or course of; to pass; to spend. Also, to cause (one) to proceed or follow in (a certain course).
- To go or to be in advance of; to precede; hence, to be foremost or chief among.
- To step off base and move towards the next base.
- To draw or direct by influence, whether good or bad; to prevail on; to induce; to entice; to allure
- To be ahead of others, e.g., in a race.
- Lead climb.
- To produce (with to).
- To guide or conduct with the hand, or by means of some physical contact connection.
- To place leads between the lines of.
- To aim in front of a moving target, in order that the shot may hit the target as it passes.
- To cover, fill, or affect with lead.
- To have the highest interim score in a game.
- To tend or reach in a certain direction, or to a certain place.
- To lead off or out, to go first; to begin.
- To live or experience (a particular way of life).
- To be more advanced in technology or business than others.
- To begin a game, round, or trick, with
adj
adj
noun
adj
noun
name
adj
noun
- A potential problem or source of trouble.
- A feature of a system or a program that works in the way it is documented but is counter-intuitive and almost invites mistake or non-function.
- An attempt to disprove or refute someone's argument, usually in a deceptive or disingenuous way.
- An instance of publicly tricking someone or exposing them to ridicule, especially by means of an elaborate deception.
- An instance of accomplishing a tricky idea or overcoming a difficult obstacle.
abbrev
- Understand you; comprehend you.
- Got you covered, got your back; when you have an advantage or responsibility over someone.
- Got you; have you; as in capture or apprehend.
- Got you back; as in after causing some form of retaliation or revenge against someone.
- Got you by surprise; exclamation indicating a successful trick or prank.
noun
- a state of difficulty that needs to be resolved
- the principal activity in your life that you do to earn money
- a specific piece of work required to be done as a duty or for a specific fee
- a workplace; as in the expression `on the job'
- an object worked on; a result produced by working
- the responsibility to do something
- the performance of a piece of work
- a damaging piece of work
- (computer science) a program application that may consist of several steps but is a single logical unit
- a crime (especially a robbery)
verb
noun
- A state of confusion; hesitation; uncertainty
- A state of discomfort arising from bashfulness or consciousness of having violated a social rule; humiliation.
- Impairment of function due to disease: respiratory embarrassment.
- A large collection of good or valuable things, especially one that exceeds requirements.
- A person or thing which is the cause of humiliation to another.
noun
- A problem, dilemma, or complicating factor.
- A public assembly or judicial council in a Germanic country.
- A unit or container, usually containing edible goods.
- Corporeal object.
- That which is considered to exist as a separate entity, object, quality or concept.
- A romantic relationship.
- Alternate form of ting.
- One's typical routine, habits, or manner. (Used in possessive constructions.)
- Used after a noun to refer dismissively to the situation surrounding the noun's referent.
- A genuine concept, entity or phenomenon; something that actually exists (often contrary to expectation or belief).
- An individual object or distinct entity.
- That which is favoured; personal preference. (Used in possessive constructions.)
- A living being or creature.
- A penis.
- Whatever can be owned.
- Girl; attractive woman.
- Clothes, possessions or equipment.
- That which matters; the crux.
- A romantic couple.
- A word, symbol, sign, or other referent that can be used to refer to any entity.
verb
noun
- The state of things; condition; predicament; impasse.
- A single movement, especially of a hand, at, over, or along anything.
- Success in an examination or similar test.
- Permission or license to pass, or to go and come.
- An intentional walk.
- The area in a restaurant kitchen where the finished dishes are passed from the chefs to the waiting staff.
- A sexual advance.
- An attempt.
- A run through a document as part of a translation, compilation or reformatting process.
- A document granting permission to pass or to go and come; a passport; a ticket permitting free transit or admission
- The act of moving the ball or puck from one player to another.
- A single passage of a tool over something, or of something over a tool.
- A passing of two trains in the same direction on a single track, when one is put into a siding to let the other overtake it.
- A channel connecting a river or body of water to the sea, for example at the mouth (delta) of a river.
- The act of overtaking; an overtaking manoeuvre.
- An opening, road, or track, available for passing; especially, one through or over some dangerous or otherwise impracticable barrier such as a mountain range; a passageway; a defile; a ford.
- A password (especially one for a restricted-access website).
- A thrust or push; an attempt to stab or strike an adversary.
- A thrust; a sally of wit.
- An act of declining to play one's turn in a game, often by saying the word "pass".
verb
- To cause to move or go; to send; to transfer from one person, place, or condition to another.
- To depart, to cease, to come to an end.
- To spend.
- To go from one person to another.
- To put through a sieve.
- To be tolerated as a substitute for something else, to "do".
- To reject; to pass up.
- To happen.
- In turn-based games, to decline to play in one's turn.
- To proceed without hindrance or opposition.
- To take a turn with (a line, gasket, etc.), as around a sail in furling, and make secure.
- To utter; to pronounce; to pledge.
- To die.
- To cause to obtain entrance, admission, or conveyance.
- In euchre, to decline to make the trump.
- To transcend; to surpass; to excel; to exceed.
- To put in circulation; to give currency to.
- To live through; to have experience of; to undergo; to suffer.
- To decline something that is offered or available.
- To move or be moved from one place to another.
- To change from one state to another (without the implication of progression).
- To continue.
- To elapse, to be spent.
- To progress from one state to another; to advance.
- To be conveyed or transferred by will, deed, or other instrument of conveyance.
- To cause to advance by stages of progress; to carry on with success through an ordeal, examination, or action; specifically, to give legal or official sanction to; to ratify; to enact; to approve as valid and just.
- To move (the ball or puck) to a teammate.
- To kick (the ball) with precision rather than at full force.
- To go by without noticing; to omit attention to; to take no note of; to disregard.
- To eliminate (something) from the body by natural processes.
- To be accepted by others as a member of a race, sex, or other group to which one does not belong or would not have originally appeared to belong; especially to be considered white although one has black ancestry, or a woman although one was assigned male at birth or vice versa.
- To make a lunge or swipe.
- To throw the ball, generally downfield, towards a teammate.
- To decline or not attempt to answer a question.
- To advance through all the steps or stages necessary to become valid or effective; to obtain the formal sanction of (a legislative body).
- To make a judgment on or upon a person or case.
- To achieve a successful outcome from.
- To go past, by, over, or through; to proceed from one side to the other of; to move past.
noun
- a drawback or difficulty that is not readily evident
- the quantity that was caught
- a person regarded as a good matrimonial prospect
- anything that is caught (especially if it is worth catching)
- a break or check in the voice (usually a sign of strong emotion)
- a restraint that checks the motion of something
- a fastener that fastens or locks a door or window
- a cooperative game in which a ball is passed back and forth
- the act of catching an object with the hands
- the act of apprehending (especially apprehending a criminal)
verb
- discover or come upon accidentally, suddenly, or unexpectedly; catch somebody doing something or in a certain state
- perceive with the senses quickly, suddenly, or momentarily
- reach with a blow or hit in a particular spot
- take hold of so as to seize or restrain or stop the motion of
- succeed in catching or seizing, especially after a chase
- to hook or entangle
- attract and fix
- capture as if by hunting, snaring, or trapping
- reach in time
- get or regain something necessary, usually quickly or briefly
- catch up with and possibly overtake
- be struck or affected by
- check oneself during an action
- hear, usually without the knowledge of the speakers
- see or watch
- cause to become accidentally or suddenly caught, ensnared, or entangled
- detect a blunder or misstep
- grasp with the mind or develop an understanding of
- come down with
- start burning
- perceive by hearing
- suffer from the receipt of
- attract; cause to be enamored
- apprehend and reproduce accurately
- take in and retain
- spread or be communicated
- be the catcher
- become aware of
- delay or hold up; prevent from proceeding on schedule or as planned
noun
- A difficulty or predicament.
- Crime, offence, wrongdoing.
- Any of a number of criminal offences incurring similar penalties to the original offence of praemunire.
- The penalty for this offence.
- The offence in English law of bringing suit in or obeying a foreign (especially papal) court or authority, thus challenging the supremacy of the Crown. The offence was created by the Statute of Praemunire 1393 (16 Richard II, chapter 5), and abolished by the Criminal Law Act 1967 (chapter 58).
- The writ charging a person with this offence, the writ of praemunire facias.
verb
noun
- A problem or difficulty with something.
- A stump or base of a branch that has been lopped off; a short branch, or a sharp or rough branch.
- A sausage.
- A tooth projecting beyond the others; a broken or decayed tooth.
- A goal.
- A misnaged, an opponent to Chassidic Judaism (more likely modern, for cultural reasons).
- A dead tree that remains standing.
- A tree, or a branch of a tree, fixed in the bottom of a river or other navigable water, and rising nearly or quite to the surface, by which boats are sometimes pierced and sunk.
- Any sharp protuberant part of an object, which may catch, scratch, or tear other objects brought into contact with it.
- A pulled thread or yarn, as in cloth.
- One of the secondary branches of an antler.
verb
- To obtain or pick up.
- To damage or sink (a vessel) by collision; said of a tree or branch fixed to the bottom of a navigable body of water and partially submerged or rising to just beneath the surface.
- To cut the snags or branches from, as the stem of a tree; to hew roughly.
- To fish by means of dragging a large hook or hooks on a line, intending to impale the body (rather than the mouth) of the target.
- To catch or tear (e.g. fabric) upon a rough surface or projection.
verb
noun
- A structure consisting of a central atom or molecule weakly connected to surrounding atoms or molecules, as for example coordination complexes in inorganic chemistry and protein complexes in biochemistry.
- A multimorphemic word, one with several parts, one with affixes.
- A problem.
- An abnormal mental condition caused by repressed emotions.
- An assemblage of related things; a collection.
- A cluster of wildfires burning in the same vicinity.
- A group of closely related species, often distinguished only with difficulty by traditional morphological methods.
- An organized cluster of thunderstorms.
- A vehement, often excessive psychological dislike or fear of a particular thing.
- A complex number.
- A collection of buildings with a common purpose, such as a university or military base.
- A network of interconnected systems.
adj
- A curve, polygon or other figure that crosses or intersects itself.
- Having the form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is (by definition) the imaginary square root of −1.
- Made up of multiple parts; composite; not simple.
- Whose range is a subset of the complex numbers.
- Whose coefficients are complex numbers; defined over the field of complex numbers.
- Not simple, easy, or straightforward; complicated.
noun
- An amateur in science or other technical subjects who persistently advocates flawed theories
- Synonym of methamphetamine.
- A twist or turn in speech; word play consisting in a change of the form or meaning of a word.
- The penis.
- A twist or turn of the mind; caprice; whim;
- An ill-tempered or nasty person.
- The act of converting power into motion, by turning a crankshaft.
- A bent piece of an axle or shaft, or an attached arm perpendicular, or nearly so, to the end of a shaft or wheel, used to impart a rotation to a wheel or other mechanical device; also used to change circular into reciprocating motion, or reciprocating into circular motion.
- a fit of temper or passion.
adj
- Full of spirit; brisk; lively; sprightly; overconfident; opinionated.
- Liable to capsize because of poorly stowed cargo or insufficient ballast.
- Sick; unwell.
- Strange, weird, odd.
verb
adj
- having only superficial plausibility
- made slick by e.g. ice or grease
- superficially impressive, but lacking depth and attention to the true complexities of a subject
- having a smooth, gleaming surface reflecting light; being of a smooth, soft and lustrous quality, resembling silk
- marked by skill in deception
verb
noun
verb
- To complicate.
- To play (jazz music).
- To destroy.
- To move (around/about) in a lively or frivolous manner; to fool around.
- To distract or pester.
- To ejaculate.
- To enliven, brighten up, make more colourful or exciting; excite
- To dance to the tunes of jazz music.
noun
- Something of excellent quality, the genuine article.
- The substance or makeup of a thing; unspecified thing(s).
- A musical art form rooted in West African cultural and musical expression and in the African American blues tradition, with diverse influences over time, commonly characterized by blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms and improvisation.
- Semen, jizz.
- Energy, excitement, excitability.
- Nonsense.
English words for 'a theoretical quandary or impasse.'
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