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[–] 47 points 1 year ago (9 children)

soldier ### brush stamp man seal?

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  • [–] 62 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

    They are all seals.

    • navy seal

    • some kind of seal on a pipe

    • wood sealant

    • seal on a letter

    • seal the singer

    • seal (animal)

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  • [–] 38 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Thanks. English first language here and it went right over my head. But then the first was a soldier to me.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Same, which lead me to think the second was some sort of solder pot. So, then I thought there was some word close to soldier and solder for the third picture of the paint/stain brush that I didn't know.

    I got the three 'seals' at the bottom, though.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    British English took over for me, It was ‘obviously’;

    Soldier, bushing, varnish.

    Seal, seal, seal.

    Couldn’t work out why the top row was with the bottom row at all.

    (There are no ‘navy seals’ to us, it’s SBS - special boat service, like SAS but bad-asser, and more secret?)

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  • [–] 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The wax seal doesn't work that way - the stamp should be inverted.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    I think assuming a fuck up is a valid interpretation. Another explanation could be that stamps sometimes have a top that shows the final look and size of the stamp. I know that's not usual for a wax seal, but there's no rule saying you can't.

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  • [–] 82 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    This fails because the first one reads as "soldier" to most people, I'd say the vast majority of native English speakers would think "soldier", not that he's a Navy Seal. Especially because My first thought for a Navy Seal would be coming out of the ocean in a wet suit.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    This fails because the first one reads as “soldier” to most people

    Seems like you got hung up on that. Order shouldn't matter.

    I got the three ‘seals’ at the bottom, though.

    Same, but that made me assume the other ones have to seals as well and then the navy seal was right there.

    I think it works well as a riddle.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Why use many word when one word do trick?

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I think this might work better with 4 frames since 3 of these images show items that fall under the same definition for seal since their purpose is to prevent something from getting into/out of somewhere.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    I think the singer doesn't count either since that's someone's name which could be anything in any language. Also the navy seal is named after the animal. It's 2 frames. "Seal" the animal and "seal" the keep stuff in/out

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago

    That’s not fair though as navy seals are named after the animal.

    Also, you can use a word in different contexts, to seal wood and to seal something shut is similar actions

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    Homophones are definitely not the thing that makes English hard. By that definition, Chinese is downright impossible language.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Soldier, plug, stain, stamp, person, seal? I don't get it.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago*

    Soldier, filter?, brush, wax, “there use to be a graying tower alone on the sea, you became the light on the dark side of me”, seal.

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  • that's not English, that's pictures.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    Have you tried any form of Chinese?

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Try reading Japanese without kanji and see how rough it get with all the homophones.

    They have 3 alphabets and its called a "writing system" because of it.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    There are no alphabets in Japanese language.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Possibly an issue caused by simplified English.

    Solider, some kind of plug?, applying some kind of weather proofing, wax stamp, that guy who did a single with Adamski, seal.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    They're all seals. The bad part is that this is really only 2 different meanings. The soldier is a navy seal but that's just named after the animal. The top middle is a seal to keep oil in a machine. The concept of sealing something applies to the the oil seal, the deck sealant, and the wax seal.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Chuckles in Estonian.

    That's cute.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    3 instances of sealing. 1 OG, 1 copycat, 1 unoriginal dude. Down to 2 uses.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Monolingual native English speakers are constantly being surprised about basic universal linguistic concepts, while proceeding to think it is exceptional to the only language they are familiar with.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago
    [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Ba-ya-ya, ba-da-da-da-da-da, ba-ya-ya

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  • Soldier, orifice, varnish, wax stamp, smile, smile.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Whenever I see a seal I involuntarily start humming Killer.

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  • At least those are not contradictory. Imagine being told that someone was dusting a room. Well that is removing small particles! But if you are dusting some icing sugar on a cake, you are adding it!

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Seals. Took me a minute.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Are homonyms/homophones more common in English? As a non-native speaker, I remember the vowel shift causing more trouble at first. Also, rules for shortening/combining words can be tricky. They're/their is the obvious example. But then there's won't, where the apostrophe doesn't simply substitute a letter in two words that work independently. And it's/its is very confusing, as possessive is normally also marked with 's. Is/are is a whole new thing if your native language doesn't distinguish.

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