this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2025
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

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    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
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In botany, a berry is a fruit that develops from a single ovary and has multiple seeds inside. By that definition, bananas qualify as true berries. Strawberries, on the other hand, grow from a flower with multiple ovaries, making them "aggregate fruits" - not berries at all.

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[–] Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

And the word "banana" might be a very promising candidate for the word with the highest "letter a"-to-consonant-ratio in the English language. Unless there are some double-a words out there...

[–] ValiantDust@feddit.org 4 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Ara has twice as many As per consonant. Am and at have the same ratio as banana. But I'll admit that two letter words is cheating.

[–] moody@lemmings.world 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

But 'a' has an even higher ratio.

[–] ValiantDust@feddit.org 2 points 2 hours ago

Well, you got me there.

^(Actually the ratio can't be calculated, since #a/#consonants = 1/0 and you can't divide by 0 ^and ^that's ^totally ^why ^I ^didn't ^mention ^it...)

[–] Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

But is "Ara" an English word? My favorite translation page tells me that the English name of the bird is "macaw". Still a nice A-ratio, although lower than for banana! :-)

[–] ValiantDust@feddit.org 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Wikipedia says so, so it must be true!

I guess we are entering the philosophical level of "what is an English word?" now. I don't think I'm the right person to judge since I'm neither a native speaker nor a linguist. I'm fine with disqualifying ara.

[–] Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 6 hours ago

If we allow for scientific names, the winner would probably be "Aa", the name of a type of plant.
But I personally would not count them, as not part of everyday language.
I asked an AI if it could come up with other suggestions. It burned up 5000 tokens while thinking and successfully found "Alabama".
So I think banana lost its first place in any case...

[–] Witchfire@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Queue almost definitely has the highest vowel to consonant ratio (not counting words like I)

[–] cravl@slrpnk.net 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

My vote is for a name that I just made up, Aarana. It's the female form of Aaron, with all a's. 😄

[–] Hexanimo@kbin.earth 1 points 46 minutes ago

That's very close to spider in Spanish, araña.