Hacker News Reader

Word of the day: docent.

I rarely see this in common expression. Nice choice.

Old tech has great appeal. Scale is our size, and features forces, artifacts we can see, hear and feel easily. I can imagine that glow. Damn cool.

docent is common in Czech and Slovak.

There is also a particle "do" which means "into" and also "up/until". In Czech, the opposite of this sense is "přes", meaning "over/beyond".

So this is the basis of an old joke that "docent" means someone weighing up to 100 kg; above that they become a "přescent":

:)

Thank you. That was fun to learn.

what other word is used for the volunteers who interact with patrons at a museum?

> The title "docent" is not widely used outside the United States, with the terms "guide", "facilitator", or "educator" preferred.

Nailed it.

It is not all that widely used in the US either, in my experience anyway.

Interestingly, the same word is used at some european universities to mean roughly "associate professor".