Hello my name is Paul, I have a PhD in physics and thanks to a random brain freeze forgot the word for photon so had to call it a “shiny crumb” in front of my colleagues
— Paul Coxon (@paulcoxon) February 18, 2019
Have you ever had a brain cramp and lost a word you really should know? Did you go sideways to describe what you meant, hoping someone could help you out? That's the subject of a great Twitter thread in response to physicist Paul Coxon's "shiny crumb." There were plenty of other examples in the responses.
During a lecture on the Mannheim Orchestra, I couldn’t remember the term “tremolo,” so I described the orchestra’s fondness for decorating passages with the “nervous chihuahua” effect.
— The Manga Critic (@manga_critic) February 19, 2019
Or a dinglehopper, for you Little Mermaid fans.
— Johanna Levene (@aftheaded) February 19, 2019
You are a poet
— Rosencrantz1984 (@rosencrantz1984) February 19, 2019
One of my cleverest and most fabulous friends at university (now PhD in neuroscience) once forgot the word for what she wanted in a restaurant and tried to explain with “like a really REALLY wet salad”.
— Wesley Mallin (@wesleymallin) February 18, 2019
Soup.
She wanted soup.
There are plenty more of these, like "horsling" and "fish museum" and "foot wrist" and "Arctic cabbage" and "plane station." Read a ton of them at Twitter. -via Metafilter, where's there's even more.