this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2025
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Start pronouncing it 'nucular', there's no bigger turn off.
RIGHT?! I'm glad I'm not the only one. It's based on the term NUCLEUS ffs.
Common misconception but it's actually based on Saint Nukulus, the guy that puts uranium in your boots if you leave them out overnight.
Did you know he was a real-life engineer in ancient Turducky?
Now, to be fair, nucleus it comes from the latin nuculus. It just that it sounds bad and feels bad to say
Yes officer, she touched my nuculus.
Noooooo my whole worldviewww
dw it's not true, you were right, "nucleus" is already latin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleus?wprov=sfla1
Oh no being told I'm right is my fetish 👀
nuculus*
🥺
Fun fact: "nuclear" ultimately comes from the Latin nucula, 'little nut'. The c and l being adjacent is the result of metathesis, similar to pronouncing "ask" as "ax".
Now go further back. Where does the latin word nucula come from?
went further back lol
Latin: Nux - nut nuculus - diminutive of nut ("little nut")
Proto-Indo-European: kneu - nut
I can't find much on where the -culus suffix originated, which seams to be the the place we would want to look if trying to tie the pronunciation of nuclear to the earliest etymological root.
-ulus according to Wiktionary:
From Proto-Italic *-elos (whence Faliscan -𐌄𐌋𐌏𐌔 (-elos)), from Proto-Indo-European *-elós, thematized from Proto-Indo-European *-lós.[1] Cognate with Proto-Germanic *-ilaz and *-ulaz, whence no longer productive English -le (as in dimple and nozzle), Dutch -el, German -el.
So the PIE for little nut would be something like *knewelós
I don’t think the nuclear engineer wants the furries to know about ‘little nut’
Stop, you're gonna make me nux!
Is that because we exist within a nut?
Or something like that, I don't know. I don't remember anything from the "the universe in a nutshell" book.
Did I ax you?