Fritinancy

The Wind Beneath My Wings

Time for another episode of Slang Terms for Unwanted Body Features! (Need to review? Go here.) This week the term is "bingo wings," which I encountered for the first time in this blog post over at The Thoughtful Dresser. None of the commenters expressed puzzlement over the usage, so perhaps I'm late to the party. Here's the Wikipedia definition, which (shock!) is not notable for its objectivity:

Bingo wings is a slang term used to describe the build-up of fat and or flaccid muscle that hangs from the underside of the upper arms. It occurs most frequently in elderly ladies and overweight people. The problem may also occur after significant weight loss, with flaps of loose skin remaining. The term apparently originated from the bingo hall custom of raising one's arm aloft and bellowing "House!". This ties in due to bingo long being the entertainment of choice for large numbers of elderly ladies, especially in the United Kingdom.

Especially in the United Kingdom? Wow, that's really news to me. Who knew bingo was so big over there? On the other hand, are we even talking about the same bingo? Here's what I'm talking about:

I'm picturing multiple gridded cards, randomly selected balls, a caller ("B-54! G-16!"), and an array of lucky fetish objects lined up in front of each player's playing area.

But in my version of bingo--the Las Vegas version, the Reno version, the church-fundraiser version--nobody bellows "House!" The only word to bellow is, of course, "Bingo!"*

So maybe the UK bingo is this game, also known as housie or housey:

This looks scarily like the inscrutable Sudoku to me, so I'm just going to tiptoe away.

There's also a card game called bingo. News to me, but my card-playing expertise reached its peak with Go Fish.

Back to the wings. It's not as though I've never seen the phenomenon or heard it described--just not in this very evocative way. I've heard "underarm flaps," which is accurate if a bit pedestrian. And I've heard "bat wings," which sounds so much uglier and less jovial than "bingo wings." Besides, "bingo wings" has that charming little internal rhyme that makes the condition seem almost cute.

Not to a plastic surgeon, though. If you're unhappy with your bingo wings, you may want to consult someone like this for a "procedure"--a brachioplasty, to use the term of art.

Hey, he'll probably do a FUPA-plasty, too.

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* "Bingo" is also a term in Scrabble: it's a play in which all seven tiles are used, earning the player a bonus of 50 points. I never knew this until I started playing computer Scrabble.

She's No Lady

As we were saying, "son-of-a-bitch" and "asshole" offer piquant alternatives for dissing the (male) jerks in your life. But what do you call the females of the species? There's "bitch," of course (or bee-yotch, if you want to be coy/trendy/censor-dodging), but for pure malevolence and shock value, you just can't beat the C-word.

Sarah Et Cetera takes it from here:

Men spend a lot of time insulting one another by belittling their pensises, and lobbing genital-based insults at one another. But when a man calls a woman a cunt? Oh, he’s in big trouble. Equality, though, involves not a little sexual harassment.

And a little further down (oh, behave):

What’s most interesting is that this word has increased in vulgarity and obscenity ranking over the years, opposite the paths most words follow. It’s known as vulgar since the 15th century, but has only been considered obscene since the 17th.

I've become inured to almost every English-language expletive, but I admit that cunt still shocks and disturbs me. You'd think it would be a more amiable word: it has that guaranteed-for-a-laugh K sound and it sort of resembles cute. But while son-of-a-bitch and asshole can be uttered with near-affection--and "Son-of-a-bitch!" often serves as an expression of mere surprise--cunt carries overtones of misogynistic rage. (Unless I've missed some new slang trend. After all, some girls and women now use ho as a friendly greeting, BFF to BFF.)

Of course, there's also the strictly anatomical, non-accusatory cunt, which is what Sarah Et Cetera is mostly interested in: "an earthy, fast way to refer to a vagina that doesn’t involve a lot of rococo language about petals around a miracle."

Hey, almost anything's better than va-jay-jay.*

(Hat tip: Editrix.)

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* Lately, I've been partial to chocha.

Below the Belt

It seems to me that as the concept of "appropriate attire" vanishes from the public sphere--pajamas in the supermarket? why not, dude?--and the evidence of excessive caloric intake is ever more visible, our language for describing shameless bodily displays is becoming correspondingly more inventive, elaborate, and body-part-specific. I am naturally thinking of cameltoe (a k a "the other cleavage"), a startlingly apt and vivid metaphor, especially considering that its users are unlikely to be Bedouins or zookeepers. Then there's muffin-top (a k a "belly roll"), which seems to have originated in an Australian sitcom, "Kath and Kim"; it was named Australia's word of the year for 2006 and is now almost as international as "OK."

New to me, but well known to the cool kids for some time now, is FUPA, which I first encountered earlier this week in Kersten's comment on a You Look Fab post. It's an acronym, which allows for some definitional flexibility. Acronym Finder defines it as "Fat Upper Pelvic Area," while the most popular definition on Urban Dictionary is "Fat Upper Pubic Area." Both interpretations suggest gender neutrality. However, the group singing "The FUPA Song" (watch the YouTube video) assigns an unequivocally feminine meaning to the "P" in FUPA. (Read the comments for some alternate glosses.)

If you're still wondering what on earth I'm talking about, you can check out the photos at FUPA Hunter, but don't say I didn't warn you. This is raw, in-your-FUPA documentation. This is muffin-top on steroids, inhuman growth hormones, and a side of fries.

Euphemism Watch: "Post-Kinetic Development"

Listening in a desultory fashion to today's Congressional testimony of senior Iraq commander General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, I caught this phrase, uttered by Crocker in  his prepared remarks in apparent reference to stuff that's rising from the rubble:

"post-kinetic development"

Best of Both Worlds caught it, too.

Here's the full quote, from the Wake Up America blog:

As Iraq is now earning the financial resources it needs for bricks and mortar construction through oil production and export, our primary focus has shifted to capacity development and an emphasis on local and post-kinetic development through our network of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and ministerial advisors.

It's not the first time Crocker has demonstrated a predilection for "post-kinetic." Last September,  Newsweek.com writer Weston Kosova caught Crocker referring to bombed-out Iraqi towns as "post-kinetic environments." That "show-stopping war euphemism" (Kosova's words) has been enshrined in Double-Tongued Dictionary.

Kinetic means "of, pertaining to, or relating to motion" or "active, dyanmic, full of energy." In its new (post-modern?) context, post-kinetic has a clinical ring that makes the Iraq fiasco sound like particle physics. Or, alternately, like an experimental dance troupe: "Choreographer Paxton Glissade dispenses with the conventions of movement, preferring instead to place his artists in positions of post-kinetic ennui."

Well, you know what they say. Kinesis is hell.

More on military lingo here and here.

Dead Language

Admirers of vivid vernacular will want to speed forthwith to Dead & Buried, an alphabetized list of 213 euphemisms for death and dying. I'd known that many such euphemisms come to us via the hangman (kick the bucket, kick the can, dance on air, etc.), but who'd have guessed that restaurant chefs were such connoisseurs of the macabre? A sampling:

Basting the formaldehyde turkey

Donating the liver paté

Fettucine al dead-o

Has reservations at the Chateau Eternity

Just Add Maggots

Marinating in soil and worms

Promoted to Subterranean Truffle Inspector

Put in the crisper

Sleeping with the quiches

From non-culinary sources, I also rather like "retroactive abortion" and--ascribed to technical writers--"moved into upper management."

I discovered this trove via You Don't Say, the blog of Baltimore Sun assistant managing editor John McIntyre. McIntyre writes that he's puzzled about the origin of buying the farm; here's the story I remember hearing about that venerable euphemism:

A country boy, the son of tenant farmers, is drafted into the army. (Remember the draft? But I digress.) Slogging through basic training, he tells his bunkmates, "When I get home, I'm gonna buy me a farm." He gets orders to ship overseas; aboard the aircraft carrier, he says at every opportunity, "When I get home, I'm gonna buy me a farm." He's immediately sent into combat. Running through enemy fire, he shouts to his buddies, "Man, if I get through this, I'm gonna buy me farm." Suddenly he trips on a land mine and--boom! He's killed instantly. That evening, the members of his platoon pause to remember their fallen comrade. "Well," one of them says, "I guess he finally bought the farm."

More on buy the farm from WorldWide Words.

Whatchamacallit Is Hell

When does Iraq's "sectarian violence" become "civil war"? When is it just--as the White House likes to say--"a new phase"?

Slate.com blog reporter Christopher Beam reports on this war of words being conducted in the mainstream media and the blogosphere. Some of it is decidedly uncivil, like this snipe by Boston Herald columnist and conservative blogger Jules Crittenden, who, Beam says, "calls the announcement 'essentially meaningless. Like pointing out that the war in Iraq has now lasted longer than World War II. Like making headlines out of the war dead in increments of 500.' He also digs in to the motives behind the phrase: "NBC's unilateral declaration of Iraq as a civil war follows … is intended to support the idea that we don't belong there."

Meanwhile, Beam says, The Huffington Post has a clip from The Daily Show in which Jon Stewart and John Oliver offer alternatives such as "faith-based melee" and "internal sovereignty challenge."

And over at The Borowitz Report, comedian Andy Borowitz delivers a "Euphemism Shocker":

President George W. Bush said today that he would not allow a civil war in Iraq to erupt on his watch, and said that in order to prevent that from happening the United States would aggressively search for new synonyms for the phrase "civil war."

In order to seek out the most sanitized alternatives to that phrase, the president announced that he was launching an ambitious new mission called Operation Noble Euphemism.

Borowitz deadpans that White House spokesman Tony Snow announced that "the United States is committed to finding a lasting euphemism for civil war in Iraq."

And he adds: "Mr. Snow refused to say which if any euphemisms were under consideration, but did say that the White House had already ruled out 'Shiitepalooza."

Hey, nameigos--let's enlist. I'll ante up with:

Differently Abled Peace

Fray-for-All

The Troubles

A Bit of a Row

Haters' Quarrel

More euphemism follies at Slate: Deadline for the latest contest is tomorrow, Nov. 30. The subject this month is what Shakespeare called "making the beast with two backs." In other words, make love, not war. In a manner of speaking.

Perish: The Thought

Tune in to this Slate.com podcast to hear the results of the latest euphemisms contest, which asked for alternative ways to say "s/he's dead." Such a festive way to get into the Halloween spirit!

Some highlights:

• "Taking a dirt nap."
• "Going where the old people go after Florida."
• "Discharged to the eighth floor" (said by medical staff in a seven-story hospital)
• "Eating the grass by the root" (a translation of a French expression)

And the winner: "Gone to the other side of the mirror," a lovely and--dare I say it?--haunting image on which to fade away.

If You Can't Say Something Nasty

Our Victorian forebears referred to legs as "limbs" and to chicken breasts as "white meat." Today we're forthright about anatomy but squeamish about new no-no's like money and stupidity.

Slate's Andy Bowers has been having some fun with the new euphemisms in a monthly podcast inaugurated in July. He's joined by Barbara Wallraff, author of monthly language columns for The Atlantic Monthly in which, among other things, she invites readers to invent new words for familiar but as-yet-unnamed phenomena.

The most recent Slate challenge was corporate euphemisms, and readers chimed in with the zeal of the underpaid, the overworked, and the recently rightsized. Listen to the results here. Some of my favorites:

• "We are unable to operationalize your request." Translation: "No." (For more on "operationalize," see the second half of William Safire's On Language column in last Sunday's New York Times.)
• "Liberating captive assets." Translation: stealing office supplies.
• "PEBKAC," an initialization of "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair." Translation: "We have met the problem and it is you."
• "On eternity leave." Translation: fired. (As Wallraff explains, "fired" is itself a euphemism derived from "fired out of a cannon.")

Next month's topic: synonyms for death. Send entries by September 30 to podcast@wordcourt.com. And don't bother recycling the Monty Python dead parrot sketch; Wallraff knows all about it. In fact, she gives a spirited recital on this month's podcast.