Fritinancy

May Linkfest

Newt Gingrich—remember when he ran for president and talked about building bases on the moon?—now appears to be campaigning for Andy Rooney’s old slot on “60 Minutes.” “We’re really puzzled,” he tells his YouTube audience, a look of grave concern furrowing his brow, a familiar-looking device in his hand. “We spent weeks [!] trying to figure out whaddya call this.” This is what you and I call a cell phone or a mobile phone or a smartphone, but that doesn’t satisfy Gingrich. He’s soliciting new, more precise names for the gizmo he used to call “a handheld computer.” Commenters have been gleefully obliging; my favorite nominations are Talkie-Viewie (maybe “TV” for short?), roundcorner-camera-communicati­ons-email-apps-thingy, iMoon, and horseless telephone. (Via TechCrunch.)

Meanwhile, linguist Geoffrey Pullum, posting at Language Log, has “an inkling of what moved Gingrich to embark on his piece of burbling.” It’s all about the naïve lexical global Whorfianism, obviously.

*

I caught this a few days too late for Underwear Week but can’t resist sharing it anyway. Triumph, the Swiss bra company, last week introduced its concept bra of the year at a Tokyo press conference. The theme: “branomics,” “a playful take on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ‘three-arrow’ economic revival plan,” according to Reuters. “We hope that as the Japanese economy grows, we can also help bust sizes to get bigger,” said a Triumph spokeswoman. (Via The 3% Conference.)

Image via AdFreak. Note arrows.

*

Merriam-Webster, the dictionary company, is having a photography contest for word lovers that looks like a lot of fun. Deadline for submissions: May 26. (Via Emily Brewster.)

*

Speaking of photography, here’s a pop song dedicated to stock photo clichés: “groom on phone with angry wife,” “bearded man is looking grave,” “black and white handshake,” and many more. (Via Igor blog.)

*

And speaking of photography and contests, GeoGuessr combines street-view photos with a test of your geographical knowledge. Challenging and addictive. (Via PopeHat.)

*

Maps! I love ’em. And I especially love maps that combine geography, history, biography, and name lore, like this interactive map of San Francisco place names, developed by Noah Veltman.

*

This advice from Baby Name Wizard about overcoming naming remorse works for company and product naming, too.

*

Andris Pone of Coin Branding, in Toronto, applauds Frogbox, a “green” moving company in more than one sense. It’s a great brand story, Andris writes: “The Frogbox positioning statement, From one pad to another, exemplifies the message of ease by creating a promise (completely delivered on) that one can move from their old home to their new one with all the difficulty of a hop.”

*

Here’s a nifty infographic on how corporate logos evolve.

*

Corporate buzzword-wise, “delight” is shaping up to be the new “passion.” (Via MJF.)

*

You’ll need to subscribe to Visual Thesaurus to read Mike Pope’s excellent column, “What’s in a -Nym?”, which goes beyond antonyms and synonyms to more obscure and fascinating terms like contranym, retronym, and backronym. But of course you’re already a subscriber.

*

From Idibon, a language-data company: how to name a racehorse.

*

Finally, in honor of the return of the cicadas to the eastern U.S., here’s a reprise of my plug for Cicada-licious: Cooking and Enjoying Periodical Cicadas, the cicada cookbook produced by the University of Maryland cicadamaniacs (their term). Yes, I have a well-documented fondness for -licious names.

*

I also can’t resist an opportunity to combine entomology, etymology, and a plug for Fritinancy. As language maven Ben Zimmer—my editor at Visual Thesaurus—observed in an email to me:

I noticed that the first OED cite for “fritin(i)ancy” is from Sir Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica, talking about cicadas. (In this edition, it’s actually “fritinnitus.”) Johnson defined “fritinancy” as “the scream of an insect, as the cricket or cicada” (citing Browne) and subsequent dictionaries used similar definitions. (Johnson didn’t define “cicada,” oddly enough.)

My original post about Fritinancy cited Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), which mentioned crickets but not cicadas. The post was written before I had access to the OED online, a weak defense but the one I’m sticking with.

In other cicada news, linguist Arnold Zwicky has written about “swarmageddon” and “cicadapocalypse,” and science writer Carl Zimmer, brother of Ben, examined the remarkable life cycle of this long-lived insect. Carl Z’s editors at the Times consulted with Ben Z to come up with a pronunciation guide: “cicadas (usually pronounced sih-KAY-duhz).”

But, Ben told me, “there are plenty of people who pronounce it KAH, and many dictionaries give it as an acceptable alternate. I don’t have a good sense of the regional distribution of the two pronunciations, though.”

Perhaps Fritinancy’s readers can help.

On the Visual Thesaurus: Shall We Plus?

My latest column for the Visual Thesaurus, “Shall We Plus?”, looks at the evolution of “plus” from preposition, adjective, and noun into a verb. Full access to the column is restricted to subscribers; here’s a sample:

Enterprise Rent-A-Car is also positive about plussing — although “Plus Your Life,” the slogan for the “enhanced Enterprise Plus loyalty program,” is ambiguous.

The phrase makes marketing sense only if we understand “plus” to be a verb meaning “improve.” At first glance, though, it's easy to think it means “And your life.” That was Washington Post copy editor and usage-guide author Bill Walsh's mocking interpretation: he tweeted a photo of one of the “Plus Your Life” ads and commented, “If you're willing to die for Enterprise Rent-A-Car.”

Read the rest of the article, which includes more examples of verbified “plus” from marketing and – a surprise to me – government.

And also see my March 2013 post on the Sutter Health slogan “We Plus You.”

On the Visual Thesaurus: How 'Livery' Changed Its Spots

My latest column for the Visual Thesaurus looks at how a very old English word, livery, has changed meanings over the last 700 years. Livery comes from Latin liberare, to liberate, via French livere, and it originally meant an allowance of clothing or food provided by a master to his servants or animals.

My interest is in a much more recent definition of livery: the distinctive look of a vehicle or product. You may have noticed this usage in stories earlier this year about American Airlines’ first new visual identity in 45 years.

 

Photo from Chicago Tribune: “American Airlines Reveals New Logo, Livery”

Full access to the Visual Thesaurus story is restricted to subscribers (who also get to read all the other great content on the site). Here’s an excerpt:

Meanwhile, in general usage livery’s meaning gradually shifted to “a servant’s uniform,” on the one hand, and “the renting out of horses for a fee,” on the other. (Livery can also be an adjective – “having the flavor or texture of liver” – but that’s beside the point here.) Livery also acquired a metaphorical sense of “outward appearance,” as in the line in a Shakespearean sonnet: “Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now.”

That figurative sense is the one preserved nonfiguratively in American Airlines’ “logo and livery.” But the path from Bard to brand was neither straight nor swift. Unlike many examples of contemporary commercial jargon, it first cropped up in the Old World and took more than a century to cross the Atlantic.

Read the rest of the column.

On the Visual Thesaurus: XOXO for Valentine’s Day

In honor of Valentine’s Day, my new column for the Visual Thesaurus is all about XO, the abbreviation for “kiss and hug” (or is it “hug and kiss”?). A recent article in The Atlantic commented on the rise of xo (and xoxo and even xoxoxo) in women’s workplace email. My own focus is on kissy-huggy brands: xoJane, the women’s “lifestyle website” founded by Jane Pratt; XOXO wine (from Canada!), the XOXO Festival in Portland, Oregon, and many others.

XOXO: lipsticks in the March 2013 DHC skincare and cosmetics catalog.

As a Valentine’s Day gift, access is free to all (but of course you’ll want to subscribe anyway). Here’s an excerpt:

How did X and O come to represent affection? Circuitously, it seems. The OED’s earliest citation for X meaning “kiss” is from 1763, in the signature on a letter from Gilbert White, a minister: “I am with many a xxxxxxx and many a Pater noster and Ave Maria, Gil. White.” But Stephen Goranson, a researcher at Duke University, is skeptical about that citation. He noted recently on the American Dialect Society’s listserv that White’s X’s may have in fact been crosses that represented not “kisses” but “blessings.” The “kiss” interpretation evolved from the “blessing” one; “unimpeachably kiss-identified” uses of X’s, wrote Goranson, didn’t appear until the late 19^th century. (“Sealed with a kiss,” Goranson added, “is much older, but those sealings are generally direct kissing not epistolary.”)

Read the rest of the column.

And here’s a little blog bonus. Have you ever wondered why XOXO means “kisses and hugs” but OXO doesn’t? So have I. I did some research into OXO brands in the U.S. and U.K. and learned these interesting tidbits about the U.S. OXO, maker of ergonomic household tools:

• “OXO’s founder, Sam Farber, chose the name ‘OXO’ because whether it’s horizontal, vertical, upside down or backwards, it always reads ‘OXO’.”
• OXO employees are called OXOnians, which is also what students or former students at the University of Oxford (England) are called.
• People who are fanatical about OXO tools are called OXOniacs.
• OXO owns a beauty-products company called Helen of Troy. which sells products with some brand names you may have heard of, including Vitalis, Final Net, and Brut.

On the Visual Thesaurus: How to Name Anything

What exactly do name developers do, and how do they tackle a naming assignment? In my latest column for the Visual Thesaurus, I look at the naming process and share some tips for naming products and companies.

Full access is restricted to subscribers (so subscribe!). Here’s an excerpt:

Like a writing project, a naming project begins with research. What is being named — a company, a product, a feature, a program? Why was the company founded or the product invented? What does the name need to communicate — playfulness, security, speed, luxury, practicality? What's the competitive namescape — that is, what do rivals and partners call themselves? Who is the customer or audience — hospital managers, software developers, single parents, international travelers? Where will the name appear — website, magazine ads, T-shirts, trade-show booths, packaging? Will you require an Internet domain? Trademark protection?

Then define the personality of the company or brand. Big and serious, like a global cybersecurity company? Cute and friendly, like a children's clothing boutique? If the business is new, ask about the founders. Are they professors, gourmands, rock-climbers? What makes them tick and what turns them off? Do they share an interesting connection? I once was hired to name a startup whose founders were five brothers; “five,” “brother,” and “family” gave me lots of ideas for an initial round of creative work.

Read the rest of “How to Name Anything.”

Brand Names of the Year: 2012

My new column for the Visual Thesaurus is an end-of-the-year review of the notable brand names of 2012. My top-ten list includes food brands, consumer-technology brands, a numerical brand, one of those ubiquitous -ly brands, and a back-from-the-nearly-dead toy brand. Access to this column is unrestricted, so go forth and read freely!*

Tomorrow on the blog: my words of the year for 2012. I’ll report my (non-brand) names of the year sometime next week.

__

* But wouldn’t a Visual Thesaurus subscription make a swell holiday gift for your favorite linguaphile?

On the Visual Thesaurus: Disruption

In my latest column for the Visual Thesaurus, I consider disruption: the negative kind caused by natural disasters like last week’s Hurricane Sandy and the positive kind embraced by the business world, technology companies in particular.

Good news: Access to this column is unrestricted (but of course you’ll still want to subscribe – just $19.95 a year!). Here’s an excerpt:

Historically, “disruption” has been a pejorative term: a disruptive pupil would be sent to the principal’s office; stock-market disruptions may cause widespread panic. The word, which comes from Latin disrumpere, literally means “breaking apart”; dictionary synonyms include “disorder,” “confusion,” and “tumult.”

Then, in 1995, a Harvard Business School professor, Clayton M. Christensen, published an article in the Harvard Business Review called “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave.” A disruptive technology, Christensen wrote, was cheap, simple, and convenient; it threatened established (“sustaining”) companies that were focused on creating high-quality products. That article, and Christensen’s 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma, caught the attention of executives like Intel’s Andy Grove and Apple’s Steve Jobs, who saw in “disruptive innovation” both a threat and an opportunity to create new markets at the low end. “Everyone talks about disruption now,” the technology writer George Gilder told Larissa MacFarquhar for a May 2012 profile of Christensen in the New Yorker. “Clayton inserted that word in the mind of every C.E.O. in technology.”

Read the rest of the column.

Blog-only bonus! A few of the ways in which “disrupt” is disrupting out all over:

- The trademarked slogan of Havoc Energy Drink is “Disrupt the Ordinary.”

- Cellular Bioengineering, Inc., “a Hawaii-based accelerator of disruptive technologies with biomedical applications,” strives to “Invent. Disrupt. Inspire.”

- Online retailer Everlane “bypasses all the middlemen to to create beautiful designer goods at truly disruptive prices.”

Administrivia

I’m stepping away from the screen for a few days. If you leave a comment, please be patient: I’ll publish it as soon as I’m back online. Posts will resume next week.

In the meantime, I recommend that you go over to the Visual Thesaurus and read Ben Zimmer on last night’s presidential debate, in which President Obama said Mitt Romney’s economic plan was “a sketchy deal.” (No paywall on this and all other Word Routes columns.) That use of “sketchy” was “marvelously ambiguous,” writes Ben, in that it may carry the slang sense of “untrustworthy.” I’ve written about that sense of “sketchy” myself a couple of times, here and here.

And just for fun, check out the “Binders Full of Women” Tumblr that instantly materialized after Mitt Romney made that awkward comment (a misstatement, as it turned out) about his hiring practices as governor of Massachusetts.

Word of the Week: Malarkey

Malarkey: Nonsense, horsefeathers, bushwah, humbug, bunkum, rubbish, twaddle, exaggeration, lies. Originally US slang, first seen in print in 1924 in the Indiana Gazette (“The rest of the chatter is so much malarkey …”). Its origin is unknown; attempts to connect slang malarkey to the Irish surname Malarkey or to modern Greek malakia (“soft”) have proved fruitless.

Malarkey was all over the news after last Thursday’s debate between Vice President Joe Biden and his Republican challenger, Congressman Paul Ryan. Biden used the word twice: “With all due respect, that’s a bunch of malarkey” and—clarifying his characterization of Ryan’s comments as “a bunch of stuff”—“We Irish call it malarkey.”

Malarkey bumper sticker, Café Press.

Malarkey was the most looked-up word after the debate, according to Peter Sokolowski, a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster. It is the 2012 campaign’s quaint-euphemism equivalent of 2008’s cockamamie, which GOP candidate John McCain used in reference to … Joe Biden.

Malarkey T-shirt, Café Press.

 

On Friday, the Visual Thesaurus devoted a column to malarkey. “Biden certainly knows his way around a colorful Irish expression,” wrote Ben Zimmer:

The word malarkey, meaning “insincere or exaggerated talk,” originally found favor in Irish-American usage, though its exact origin remains unknown. We can likely thank a cartoonist of Irish descent, Thomas Aloysius Dorgan (“TAD” for short), for popularizing the word.

Romney-Ryan Malarkey campaign button, Café Press.

The Atlantic Wire also devoted a column to malarkey. (“Adding a ‘With all due respect’ to the phrase, [Biden] is clearly insinuating, or outright stating, that Ryan’s words are not to be taken as truth, that it’s just a bunch of hooey, right?”) At The Daily Beast, Andrew Sullivan called malarkey “literally, the word of the night.” (The “literally” was a sly reference to Biden’s repeated use of that word in his Democratic National Convention speech.) And in The Economist’s language blog, Johnson, Robert Lane Greene said he was skeptical of the Irish-origin story: “Giving English words Irish etymologies is a proud Irish and Irish-American pastime,” he wrote, adding, “Whether malarkey’s putative Irish origin is malarkey, bunkum, hokum or legitimate may be lost to history.”

Big Malarkey/Little Malarkey T-shirt, Zazzle.

 

By Friday morning the Obama campaign had embraced malarkey:

 

And a hyperkinetic gif made malarkey mesmerizing.

Although malarkey has American roots, it occasionally shows up in the UK. Helen Dunmore, a British poet and novelist, titled her recent poetry collection The Malarkey. (“You looked away just once / as you leaned on the chip-shop counter, / and forty years were gone. / You have been telling them forever / stop that malarkey in the back there!”)

In the US, malarkey has been used as a trademark, most often as an eponym (Malarkey Roofing Products, Malarkey’s restaurant). But I also found a Malarkey clothing brand, originally registered to a company called Shenanigans. Shenanigans (trickery, skulduggery, a prank, an exhibition of high spirits) is another charming and mysterious American word. It first appeared in print in 1855, in a San Francisco publication called Town Talk; the next two citations (dated 1856 and 1857) are also from California. According to Online Etymology Dictionary, the word may have come from Spanish chanada, a shortened form of charranada “trick, deceit.” Lacking corroborating evidence, though, lexicologists throw up their hands and declare shenanigans, like malarkey, to be “of uncertain origin.”

__

UPDATE:  Lucy Ferriss considers malarkey at the Chronicle of Higher Education’s  Lingua Franca blog:  “We have waded through misstatements, false claims, and fiery pants. And finally we have arrived at malarkey, which has the extra advantage of being fun to say.”

On the Visual Thesaurus: Brand Name Stories

My new column for the Visual Thesaurus tells the stories behind eight brand names, from Aspirin—yes, it used to be a trademark—to Twitter. Full access requires a subscription (still less than $20 a year!); here’s an excerpt.

IKEA. The global home-furnishings company reveals its humble roots in its name, which is an acronym. I and K are the initials of Ingvar Kamprad, the company's founder; the E stands for Elmtaryd, the farm where Kamprad grew up; and the A is for Agunnaryd, Kamprad's home village. As for the names of IKEA's products — Bestå, Poäng, Ektorp, and all the rest — there's a method to their seeming madness.

Read the rest of “From Aspirin to Twitter: Stories Behind the Brand Names.”