Fritinancy

Doozy

Ben Zimmer, executive producer of Visual Thesaurus, has noticed that Droid, the mobile device from Google and Verizon, changed its advertising. The slogan now: “A New Generation of Does.”

“Those does grow up quickly,” Ben said nostalgically.

 

Read more about “Droid Does” and weird Droidish. And check out Lawrence Yang’s illustration of the original Droid slogan, “Bare-Knuckled Bucket of Does.”

 

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Photo by Omakakii, via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons license.

Names in the Wild: Sikkens

If there’s a less appealing brand name for a line of wood stains, I haven’t heard of it.

Snapped at Mark’s Paint Mart, Oakland.

 

On the bright side, at least it’s not the name of a fast-food chain. Or a hospital. 

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Sikkens is a subsidiary of the Dutch paint and coatings company AkzoNobel. Sikkens may be a dandy name in Dutch, but it hasn’t fared well on the Atlantic crossing.

The X Community

The other day I noticed this tweet from renowned Twitter wit Bad Banana:

 

“The apathy community”: genius. (And “But whatever” ices the cake.) Because maybe you’ve noticed, as I have, that this whole community thing has gotten out of hand.

I’m not referring, of course, to the actual cracked-pavement-and-stucco community in which I dwell. Nor am I referring to “Community,” the occasionally very funny NBC series.

I’m talking about disease communities like “the HIV community,” “the diabetes community,” and “the cancer community” (and sub-communities like “the breast-cancer community”). (In the 19th century, was there a “consumption community”?) And faux communities like “the intelligence community” and “the arts community.”

This plague of communities begs to be spoofed, and Bad Banana isn’t the only one to have risen to the challenge. Also on Twitter, in May, the comic Andy Borowitz mock-announced: “Playboy’s 3-D Centerfold Creates Excitement in Masturbation Community.” (The tweet was later deleted, for reasons unknown, but not before I wrote it down.) 

Last month, a Berkeley blogger, Infospigot, ended a post about a dead deer on a city street with this rumination:

I wonder how long it will take word to spread in the carrion-eating community of the choice meal awaiting out there.

During the TV season just ended, I counted three  four snarky “communities” on “30 Rock”: “the celebrity community” (in the Valentine’s Day episode), “the pervert community” (in “Future Husband”), “the porn community,” and “the janitor community” (the last two in “Khonani”).

Pious overuse has brought us to this pass, my friends. Tony Proscio, author of In Other Words: A Please for Plain Speaking in Foundations*, defines “community” as “a corral for keeping people together in your own mind.” He continues:

[I]n phrases like “the intelligence community,” “the arts community,” or “the child-welfare community,” the word drops a deliberate scrim in front of a bunch of shadowy people whom no one is expected to identify. Most of the time, those who use such phrases really mean to say “people in these fields whom I consider important, but can’t or won’t name.” Used that way, the word falsely pretends to give information while actually blotting out important details.

I’m sure all of us in the language-blogging community will say: Hear, hear.

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* I wrote about In Other Words in a 2006 post, “Resisting the Jargon Juggernaut.”

Curiouser and Curiouser

Advertising has always trafficked in superlatives. Now they’re getting superlativer.

A BART station ad for BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

The design of this poster is striking, but the slogan rings false. I don’t object on principle to the invented “closerer,” but “closer friends” made me jump to “loser friends” and then to the immortal “Coffee’s for closers only.”

And what’s going on in this Captain Morgan ad?

Update, September 2011: The video has been pulled down. Read about the campaign.

“Beer . . . it’s delicious,” purrs the Spanish-accented voiceover. “But could it be deliciouser?” The answer is “jess,” of course.* In the few seconds remaining, the spot also introduces “ridiculicious” and “brohemoth.” (Another spot in the series uses “brochacho,” a blend of “bro” and “muchacho.” Bro- is the man-word prefix du jour.)

Closerer? Deliciouser? Sounds like Dumb and Dumberer to me.

 

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* You could give yourself insomnia speculating why a rum brand named for a Welsh pirate is pitching Beer Helper in a comic-Spanglish accent.

Hat tip for the Captain Morgan ads to Ben Zimmer of Visual Thesaurus.

(The title of this post is borrowed, of course, from Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 2.)

Word of the Week: Shoupista

Shoupista: An admirer of the work of UCLA urban-planning professor Donald Shoup. Shoup’s book, The High Cost of Free Parking, argues that parking regulations are mismanaged by planners, architects, and politicians, and that “free” parking is anything but.

San Jose resident Marc Morris spoke about Shoup and Shoupistas in a “Perspectives” editorial on KQED-FM (Bay Area public radio) earlier this month:

Shoup points out the hidden costs of parking. Land is tied up that could be better used for homes and shops, and the lost value is passed on in higher prices. When parking is free, people choose driving instead of walking or taking the bus. When spaces are full, people cruise the streets, creating congestion and pollution.

So we all suffer inconvenience and pay a price for “free” parking. But businesses and residents don't like parking meters either. What’s the solution? Here’s one: create a parking benefit district so that revenue from the meters goes directly back to improve the local community. It’s a smart, transformative idea. It worked in Pasadena, revitalizing a neglected downtown.

I want that in my neighborhood. Instead of protesting, I’ve become a Shoupista. If the price of parking is set correctly, convenient spaces will be available for the local businesses. The revenue from a parking benefit district can help pay to improve and maintain our local streets and sidewalks.

I first became acquainted with the Shoupista philosophy six or seven years ago, when Donald Shoup was a guest speaker at my monthly neighborhood-association meeting. Shoup presented a case study of Old Town Pasadena, which was transformed from dilapidated to thriving after it installed parking meters and dedicated the entire revenue stream to Old Town improvements. In his quiet way, Shoup is very convincing; I understand why one might become a Shoupista. Alas, no one in our neighborhood took up the parking-benefit-district banner. Our commercial strip did get new, nuisance-y parking meters (the kind that require you to find a central pay station, pay, get a receipt, return to your car, and place the receipt on your dashboard), but all of the money goes to the city of Oakland—which nevertheless recently laid off 10 percent of its police force because of budget woes—rather than to our shopping district.

Shoup’s book is 752 pages long and costs $53.42 on Amazon, but if that seems excessive you can read a 21-page PDF summary—yes, free.

Join the Shoupistas group on Facebook.

UPDATE: Check out "The Meter's Running," a post about parking meters at Peterman's Eye, the J. Peterman blog. Yes, that J. Peterman. The links are interesting, too.

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Image from The Expired Meter, a Chicago website that takes an anti-Shoupista somewhat different stance from Shoup's (see comment, below).

Cunning

Introducing the surprisingly non-naughty Lingus.

It doesn’t even have a tongue. 

In nubuck with latex soles, from the French shoe brand Arche, it’s an autumn must-have for milady who collects Oddly Named Shoes. Available as shown in the color “belette,” which is French for “weasel.” You could look it up.

Names in Context

Consider the business name Pubmission. If I told you nothing else about it, what would you imagine the business to be?

You might imagine something like this:

 

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That’s where my imagination went, anyway.

In fact, Pubmission has nothing to do with English taverns and 18th-century Spanish outposts. It’s a website that “digitizes the slush pile and matches writers with publishing professionals.” According to Publishing Perspectives, a news and opinion site, Pubmission is intended to be used by editors and agents—“anyone with a slush pile,” says owner Wolf Hoelscher—as well as by authors seeking publication.

So Pubmission is a portmanteau of “publication” or “publishing” and “submission,” as far as I can deduce. If you’re an author, an editor, or an agent, that meaning probably shouldered itself to the front of the line in your brain, far ahead of any associations with British pubs, Mission-style furniture, or public commissions. (Or emissions, for that matter.) You were already thinking about publishing and submissions, and “Pubmission” clicked.

My point is that context matters in naming. It can create some useful limits within which to start your name exploration. If your product or service has a niche market with a specialized vocabulary, you might consider using that vocabulary in your name to establish credibility and connection with your audience. 

For example, University of California librarians didn’t need to be told the etymology behind Melvyl, the name of UC’s online library system: They recognized the name of Melvil Dewey, father of the Dewey Decimal System. Dewey’s first name is obscure to us laypeople, but that’s OK with librarians. They probably appreciate being spoken to in a sort of code.

Now, I don’t think “Pubmission” is a great name. It has that computer-generated, one-from-column-A-one-from-column-B look. It’s forced and unnatural-sounding, and it doesn’t communicate a benefit. But to its target market, it has the virtue of conveying a valuable sliver of meaning. In context, it’s a not-too-bad name, and sometimes—at least while you’re still in beta, working out the bugs—not-too-bad can be good enough.

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Speaking of slush piles, Slush Pile Hell gives you some insight into why the submission process deserves to be digitized. Hat tip: Karen.

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Pub image from RealBeer. California missions postcard from CardCow. Hat tip for the Publishing Perspectives article to Sallie Goetsch.

How Snopes.com Got Its Name

When your best friend from high school sends you an URGENT!!! email about the postcard virus, or your Aunt Tillie tells you she’s appalled that a new Pepsi-Cola can omits the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, you know what to do: go directly to Snopes.com to confirm or debunk. (In both of these cases, the latter.)

Since 1995, a California couple, David and Barbara Mikkelson, have run Snopes.com out of their home, doing dogged research into urban legends, “common fallacies, misinformation, old wives’ tales, strange news stories, rumors, celebrity gossip, and similar items” (according to their site’s FAQ).

Why did they name the site Snopes? New York Times technology columnist David Pogue asked David Mikkelson that question for a “CBS Sunday Morning” segment. He excerpted the conversation in his Personal Tech newsletter:

David Pogue: Where does the name Snopes come from?

David Mikkelson: Snopes come [sic] from a family of characters who recur in the works of William Faulkner. He typically had different families that represented a different strata of Southern society. And the Snopes[es] were on the bottom rung of the social ladder. But none of that has anything to do with the site. It just -- I knew the name Snopes from having read William Faulkner.

It was my nom de net. And then when we started the site, it turned out to be sort of fortuitous. Because it is so short and catchy and distinctive.

In the interview, Mikkelson quickly dispenses with several common rumors: Mikey from the Life cereal commercials did not die of an exploded stomach; the Chevy Nova was not a failure in South America because “no va” means “no go”; you cannot see the Great Wall of China from space. Oh, and Barack Obama? He’s not a Muslim. Pass it on.

Read the rest of Pogue’s interview.

Read a New York Times article about Snopes.com from April 2010.

Solution the Framework!

Jesse Green of the Search Engine blog puts the value-add in bafflegab. Somewhere, I’m sure, there exists someone for whom this makes perfect sense.

As BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow says, “It’s like blank verse composed by MBAs.”

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P.S. If you did, in fact, understand that video, I suggest you drop everything and read Good Copy Bad Copy’s Words and Phrases You Should Stop Using Right Now. Adjust as needed for U.S. use.

Word of the Week: Omega Male

Omega male: The opposite of an alpha male; a follower rather than a leader. (Omega is the last letter in the Greek alphabet.)

The term comes from animal behavior, especially the behavior of wolves. In complex packs, there will be an alpha male and female and an omega male and female. According to Wolves at Our Door, a 2003 book by documentary filmmakers Jim and Jamie Dutcher, the order of a wolf pack “is constantly reinforced by displays of dominance and submission”:

Unfortunately, the omega bears the brunt of this submission. One or many of the wolves will assert themselves over the omega, who can be expected to flip over onto his back, whimpering in surrender.

The earliest citation I found for omega male (homo sapiens) is in Urban Dictionary, dated September 19, 2005.  Contributor “AbnormalBoy” submitted this definition: “Male in a group who is least likely to take the initiative and lead, due to a lack of esteem, ability or interest.”

(The term does not appear in any of the traditional dictionaries I searched, including the online OED.)

In “The End of Men,” her cover story for the July/August 2010 issue of The Atlantic, Hanna Rosen writes:

American pop culture keeps producing endless variations on the omega male, who ranks even below the beta in the wolf pack. This often-unemployed, romantically challenged loser can show up as a perpetual adolescent (in Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up or The 40-Year-Old Virgin), or a charmless misanthrope (in Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg), or a happy couch potato (in a Bud Light commercial). He can be sweet, bitter, nostalgic, or cynical, but he cannot figure out how to be a man. “We call each other ‘man,’” says Ben Stiller’s character in Greenberg, “but it’s a joke. It’s like imitating other people.”

Greenberg also inspired “Omega Males and the Women Who Hate Them,” Jessica Grose’s March 2010 story in Slate. “They’re unemployed, romantically challenged, and they’re everywhere,” reads the grammatically challenged subhead. Grose writes:

In human terms, if an executive or a warrior is an alpha male and a nice-guy middle manager like The Office's Jim Halpert is a beta male, then Greenberg and his brethren are omega males. While the alpha male wants to dominate and the beta male just wants to get by, the omega male has either opted out or, if he used to try, given up.

The omega-male phenomenon is not restricted to North America. In Japan, omega males’ counterparts are called soshokukei danshi (“herbivores”) or ojo-man (“girly men”), reports Ben Schott in his Schott’s Vocab blog. Schott cites a Times of London article in which herbivores are defined as “metrosexuals without the testosterone.”

In some quarters, omega males are praised rather than pitied. As the Omega Male website puts it:

Omega Males generally don’t belong to any cliques and have no desire to be the leader or most outstanding of a group. Omega Males have relations with people from all groups and carry a resourcefulness and cunning strength to get a job done with their own skill. This being said, an Omega Male can have great pride without it manifesting as ego gratification.

The “must-watch movie” list at this site includes just one title: The Shawshank Redemption.

Speaking of movies, the omega male is not to be confused with The Omega Man. (“The last man on earth is not . . . alone.”)