Fritinancy

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I’m delighted to announce that, for the third consecutive year, this blog has been nominated in the Language Professionals category of the  Bab.la/Lexiophiles Top 100 Language Blogs contest. 

Click the badge to vote.

To vote for me—what, you thought I’d endorse some other language professional’s blog?—click the badge, find “Fritinancy” in the alphabetical list, and click the box next to the name. You can vote just once in each category; the other categories are Language Learning Blogs, Language Facebook Pages, and Language Twitterers. (I seem to have missed the memo to nominate myself in that last category. Wait till next year!) The complete lists of nominees are an excellent resource for linguists, translators, and word lovers of every stripe.

Thanks to you loyal readers, this blog was voted #4 in 2009 and #10 in 2010. If you enjoy what you read here, I’d appreciate your click of support in 2011!

The virtual polls close at 11:59 p.m., German time, on Sunday, May 29. Vote now!

Fear, Loathing, and a Couple of Other Things

Chalk it up to overwork or brain stasis, but when I learned about an iPad/iPhone app named FLUD, I went completely blank. I couldn’t pronounce the name or make sense of it.

 

The all-capitals spelling means it’s an acronym, right? But what do the letters stand for? At first I thought FLUD was a play on FUD, the popular business acronym for “fear, uncertainty, and doubt.” FUD was, famously, what IBM salespeople instilled in the minds of their potential customers—because, as we know, “No one ever got fired for buying IBM.”

So maybe FLUD stood for “fear, loathing, uncertainty, and doubt”? I wished Hunter S. Thompson were still around so I could ask him.

Then I remembered one of my favorite Gary Larson cartoons.

 

Cat Fud, by Gary Larson (1985)*

CAT FLUD: for really clueless felines.

I pondered this for a while and then had a new insight. Could the FLU in FLUD mean “we’re viral and contagious”? But what about the D? Diagnosis? Deadline? Drama?

Reading FLUD’s self-description didn’t help much:

FLUD is a personalized mobile news ecosystem with a vision to empower its users to interact with each other to access, engage and broadcast content that is relevant to them.**

The company, which is based on San Diego, uses words like “sexiness,” “awesomeness,” and  “robust” on its website. “FLUD” suggested none of those things to me.

I finally got my light-bulb moment about 55 seconds into a relentlessly perky local-news clip on the FLUD homepage. I’ll cut to the Big Reveal:

The name is pronounced flood—as in “a flood of news,” I suppose.

Just one reader’s opinion, but a “flood” of news sounds like the problem, not the solution. And “FLUD” looks like one of those Awesomely Bad Military Acronyms that Wired.com is fond of mocking.

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* Gary Larson (The Far Side) has never authorized the online publication of his cartoons, so what you see here is a photo of a Far Side mug that was sold on Etsy. Here’s a view of the original cartoon panel.

** In this “news ecosystem,” it appears that copyeditors are an endangered species.

Word of the Week: Neurodiversity

Neurodiversity: “The whole of human mental or psychological neurological structures or behaviors, seen as not necessarily problematic, but as alternate, acceptable forms of human biology.” – Double-Tongued Dictionary

Neurodiversity was coined in the late 1990s by journalist Harvey Blume and autism advocate Judy Singer, possibly independently. In a short article published in the September 1998 issue of The Atlantic, Blume wrote: “Neurodiversity may be every bit as crucial for the human race as biodiversity is for life in general. Who can say what form of wiring will prove best at any given moment?” Singer, an Australian who is the self-described parent of an “aspie” (person with Aspberger’s syndrome), contributed a chapter (“Why Can’t You Be Normal for Once in Your Life?”) to a 1999 book, Disability Discourse, in which she wrote:

For me, the key significance of the “Autistic Spectrum” lies in its call for and anticipation of a politics of Neurological Diversity, or what I want to call “Neurodiversity.” The “Neurologically Different” represent a new addition to the familiar political categories of class/gender/race and will augment the insights of the social model of disability.

Growing interest in the autism spectrum has given rise to a spate of articles, blogs, and books about neurodiversity. In his 20101 book Neurodiversity, educational consultant Thomas Armstrong argues that:

[P]eople with mental health labels (including autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other brain differences), are “differently wired” than so-called normal (or “neurotypical”) individuals, and that their differences should be accommodated by society rather than being regarded as a “disease” that must be cured. 

Armstrong also calls neurodiversity “a civil rights movement proposing that individuals with mental health labels be protected against discrimination and prejudice in the same way that people of color, women, and other minorities are protected.”

A new documentary, Loving Lamposts, looks at the ways in which the autism spectrum is being redefined. In a review and Q&A with filmmaker Todd Drezner, science journalist Steve Silberman writes:

One widespread misconception about the neurodiversity movement is that it is universally opposed to all treatments for medical problems associated with these conditions, such as the development of drugs for disabling anxiety or gastrointestinal issues. But the neurodiversity community is itself diverse. Most of the advocates I know are on the spectrum themselves, and emphasize the importance of taking a variety of approaches — including making changes to public policy and the accelerated development of assistive technology such as apps for the iPad — to improve the lives of people who think differently.

May Linkfest

Ever wonder how serial killers get their nicknames? Christopher Beam writes in Slate that most nicknames originate in the tabloid media. But there are exceptions, like the Unabomber (from an FBI code name) and the Zodiac killer (self-named). Related: Jag Bhalla pointed me to this Seinfeld script from 1998 in which Kramer invents some names for a serial killer. Denogginizer?

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Speaking of nicknames, derby girls—that’s how roller-derby competitors prefer to be known—have some colorful ones: Ovary Reaction, Hell O’Kittie, Val Catraz. But although some derby names are trademarked, “the vast majority of the thousands of U.S.-based derby girls have not” pursued legal protection for their names, write Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman in the Freakonomics blog. Instead, they’ve developed a surprisingly effective system of private regulation backed by the threat of social disapproval. And if dirty looks don’t do the trick, “there’s always violence.” (I wrote about the derby girls’ Master List of names here.)

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Mafia guys have colorful nicknames, too; one defendant in the Family Secrets trial, Joseph Lombardo, had three: “the Clown,” “Lumbo,” and “Lumpy.” But, writes Andy Grimm in the Chicago Tribune, “modern mobsters are so paranoid about wiretaps and FBI surveillance that they seldom even risk using a nickname.” (Hat tip: MJF.)

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Putrescine, moronic acid, dickite, and other unusual names of molecules.

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What are the Boylston, the Cambridge, the Ainsley, and the Hamilton? They’re all names of collar styles, as defined in an essential guide for the well-dressed gentleman, “Comprehending Copious Collars.” Please note: button-down describes a collar, not any old shirt with buttons down the front. (A longtime peeve of mine.)

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Here’s a gleeful discussion of pejorative nicknames for US locales, with –tucky blends (Springtucky, Pennsyltucky, etc.) leading the list. Most creative, and new to me: San Diego is “The Dirty Waffle” (Sandy Eggo). A few I didn’t see on the list: Lost Wages, Nevada; Slo Town (San Luis Obispo); Contraceptive (Contra Costa) County, California; and San Remote (Ramon), California. (Via @Wayword.)

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For decades, ad agencies were named for their founders. Now they’re named for … other things. Read the stories behind Zaaz, Odopod, Sra. Rushmore, and a dozen other agencies in the US and elsewhere.

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In March, Indianapolis copy editor Andy Hollandbeck (@4ndyman on Twitter) began compiling a sure-to-be-massive A to Z of Editorial Peeves, beginning with “alright.” He published the “I” list this week (i.e. vs. e.g., impact, incentivize), but you’ll certainly want to read all the entries.

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Speaking of copy editors and peeves, John McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun makes the case for maintaining distinctions that matter: imply/infer, pallet/palate/pallet, discrete/discreet, reign/rein. He admits, however, that his confidence “has been shaken” on the compose/comprise issue.

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Modernist Cuisine is the six-volume, lavishly illustrated, 2,438-page set—list price $625—“that is destined to reinvent cooking,” according to its own publicity. Apparently all that lavish illustration left no room in the budget for proofreading, as this epic list of corrections and clarifications reveals. (Via Erin Brenner.)

How the Transistor Got Its Name

James Gleick sets the scene in the prologue to The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood:

As it happened, 1948 was when the Bell Telephone Laboratories announced the invention of a tiny electronic semiconductor, “an amazingly simple device” that could do anything a vacuum tube could do and more efficiently. It was a crystalline sliver, so small that a hundred would fit in the palm of a hand. In May, scientists formed a committee to come up with a name, and the committee passed out paper ballots to senior engineers in Murray Hill, New Jersey, listing some choices: semiconductor triode … iotatron … transistor (a hybrid of varistor and transconductance). Transistor won out. “It may have far-reaching significance in electronics and electrical communication,” Bell Labs declared in a press release, and for once the reality surpassed the hype.

The committee may have chosen transistor, but it wasn’t a committee-coined word: a Bell Labs engineer, John Robinson Pierce, had created it. A few months later, one of Pierce’s colleagues coined another word with “far-reaching significance”:

An invention even more profound and more fundamental [than the transistor] came in a monograph spread across seventy-nine pages of The Bell System Technical Journal in July and October. … It carried a title both simple and grand—“A Mathematical Theory of Communication”—the the message was hard to summarize. But it was a fulcrum around which the world began to turn. Like the transistor, this development also involved a neologism: the word bit, chosen in this case not by committee but by the lone author, a thirty-two-year-old named Claude Shannon. The bit now joined the inch, the pound, the quart, and the minute as a determinate quantity—a fundamental unit of measure.

But measuring what? “A unit for measuring information,” Shannon wrote, as though there were such a thing, measurable and quantifiable, as information.

How did Shannon come up with bit? Later in The Information, Gleick quotes Shannon: “The resulting units may be called binary digits, or more briefly, bits.”

I heard Gleick speak in San Francisco a couple of months ago and am finally reading his superb book. (Gleick, a former New York Times reporter and editor, is also the author of Chaos; Isaac Newton; and Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman.) Don’t be put off by the hundred pages of bibliography and endnotes, or by the occasional appearance of mathematical formulas: this is a thoroughly engaging story that combines history, biography, and philosophy. (And African talking drums.) For fans of onomastics, there’s a fascinating account of the naming challenges posed by technology. I hadn’t known, for example, that in 1919 the major telegraph companies “invited their customers to register code names for their addresses: single words of five to ten letters, required to be ‘pronounceable’—that is, ‘made up of syllables that appear in one of eight European languages.’” The New York Edison Company chose ILLUMINATE; the George Washington Hotel snagged CHERRYTREE. “It was first come, first served,” writes Gleick, “and it was a harbinger of things to come.”

Gleick, by the way, owns a very nifty domain name: around.com.

Difficult

Retail is a tough business. Small, local retail is even tougher. You want to stand out from your competition, but you don’t want to appear standoffish. Most of all, you want to build your word-of-mouth reputation.

Which is hard to do when your customers can’t pronounce your name.

The name of a store in Berkeley, California, illustrates this problem.

 

How would you pronounce Keneuoe Vivere? (Yep, that’s Boss Robot just beyond it. Good name, cool store.)

Keneuoe Vivere, which sells women’s clothing and accessories on College Avenue, is a stunning store and the closest thing to a unique retail concept that I’ve seen in the Bay Area. Customers choose from three levels of customization: off the rack (ready-to-wear), fitted (ready-to-wear with tailoring), or made-to-measure from your choice of fabric. All clothing is made in Berkeley. In the ready-to-wear clothing I saw, fabrics were exquisite and styles were beautifully constructed. Ready-to-wear prices are at the high end of moderate—higher than, say, Ann Taylor, but lower than Max Mara. The dress pictured below, from the Spring/Summer 2011 collection, costs $479.

 

Made-to-measure items can cost $1,000 and up.

Now, this is an interesting concept that could appeal to women who are frustrated by mass merchandising and can afford tailoring. It's also a concept that requires some explaining to contemporary shoppers. But as difficult as the concept is to understand, it’s easy compared to the name, which trips me up every time I try to say it.

In a bit, I’ll share the pronunciation of “Keneuoe Vivere” with you. (Don’t look for clues on the website; there aren’t any.) Right now, just know that “Keneuoe” is the single name the designer and business owner answers to. I haven’t found any explanation for “Vivere,” which is Italian for “to live” but who knows? It may mean something else entirely here.

To summarize: unusual retail concept with a hard-to-pronounce name. To me that says: This is going to be difficult.

Ho-hmm

How would you classify Bridesmaids, the “darkly hilarious comedy” that opens nationwide on Friday? Jessica Grose, an associate editor at Slate, takes a stab:

Because while Bridesmaids does share some core DNA* with bromances, particularly the ones directed, written or produced by Judd Apatow (who was also a producer of this film), it is ultimately a different—and more original—animal: Let’s call it a homance. [Emphasis added.]

Bromance—a friendship between men, or a movie about such a friendship—entered the language around 2007, if Urban Dictionary is to be believed. A rare example of a successful portmanteau word, it seamlessly merges bro (“pal,” short for “brother”) with romance and provides a label for a movie genre that comprises not only the Apatovian oeuvre but also The Hangover, Brokeback Mountain, Good Will Hunting, the Robert Downey version of Sherlock Holmes, and … well, just about every studio-produced American movie in recent memory.

Movies about female friends, however, have been sparse lately**, so I understand the urge to tag Bridesmaids with a category name. But homance? Not only does homance dispense with the R of romance, thus muddying the semantic waters, it also replaces the chummy, G-rated bro with the decidedly less family-friendly ho—which, lest we forget, is a truncation of whore. I haven’t yet seen Bridesmaids, but it’s pretty clear that this isn’t a movie about the misadventures of a gang of streetwalkers.

So why ho? Possibly because bro and ho became linked in the expression “bros before hoes”: the section of the Guy Code that dictates that male friends take precedence over wives and girlfriends. (No, I don’t know why ho is pluralized hoes.)

Comments on the Slate article—which is headlined “Homance”—home in on (sorry) the word choice and are split between “Oh no she didn’t” and “Lighten up!” A sampling:

“womance” didn’t come to mind first? really??? coulda gone with “woman” but went with “ho”? nice. classy.

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I for one have to give her some props for having enough humor and irreverance [sic] to go with “homance” in the face of the avalanche of dourness below that she must have seen coming. Btw, “womance” just sounds like Elmer Fudd, so it would barely even be a newly coined term.

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If you think having a sense of humor is defined by whether you find “ho” a hilarious word or not, you have a very, very narrow idea of what it means to have a sense of humor.

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Loved the article. Laughed at “homance.” Where [sic] everyone’s sense of humor today? Had dismissed the movie based on the previews, but now will actually go to see it!

(The last comment is from a woman.)

Me, I’d reserve homance for movies about the overheated housing market. Topping the list: The Money Pit.

For another angle on movie-genre naming, see my 2007 post about mumblecore. Also see Bechdel Test.

Hat tip: Ben Zimmer.

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* Again with the DNA!

** “Sparse lately” = virtually nonexistent for the last several decades.

Word of the Week: Deather

Deather: A person who doesn’t believe Osama bin Laden was killed in the May 1 raid on his Abbottabad hideout. Deathers fall into two camps: those who believe bin Laden had been dead for some time before the raid; and those who demand photographic “proof” of the killing.

“The Dumbest Deather Theory” is the headline on a May 2 post on New York Magazine’s Intel blog:

Yes, the deathers. They’re folks who contend that Osama bin Laden wasn’t actually killed yesterday, that the whole thing is some kind of government hoax. … Cindy Sheehan, the well-known Iraq War protester, says “you’re stupid” if you believe that bin Laden is dead. She, like some commenters we’ve seen around the Internet, think the “alleged” ocean burial of bin Laden is merely a convenient excuse for not having to produce a body. Maybe, over time, she’ll be convinced by bin Laden’s failure to refute his demise with a new audiotape.

Deather was coined in imitation of two earlier conspiracist neologisms: truther (a person who disputes the official account of the 9/11 attacks, preferring to regard them as an “inside job”) and birther (a person who claims that President Barack Obama is not a US citizen). All three terms, and the perspectives they describe, are aspects of denialism, says research scientist Jamie L. Varon, writing in a Discover magazine blog:

One would expect that there are at least two competing interests in the minds of the deathers. The first could be a desire to believe that an existing threat, that of a terrorist mastermind, has been eliminated. The second interest appears to be a desire to find fault with President Obama, regardless of the benefits that might come from his service. According to Dan Kahan, one of the thought leaders in this field, this all happens subconsciously. Therefore, the deather must undergo a series of mental operations that lead him to choose the latter in order to satisfy a desired endpoint.

Deather had a life, so to speak, before May 1. In July 2009, while the US Congress was debating health-care reform, some panicked “observers”* seized on a provision in the legislation that would cover end-of-life consultations, deeming it “the legislative equivalent of euthanasia,” according to Christopher Beam, a reporter for Slate. In a July 28 article, Beam coined “deathers” to describe such people, and MSNBC news anchor Rachel Maddow credited Beam for the coinage (which she called “kind of brilliant”) on her show two days later. By November, Maddow seemed to think she’d coined the term herself. Leslie Savan, a guest contributor for the New York Times Sunday Magazine’s “On Language” feature, quoted Maddow in a column about “the recent spate of -ers”:

“It is possible I coined deather,” Rachel Maddow of MSNBC told me recently, citing her show’s coverage of “scare tactics used in the fight against health care reform.” Maddow said: “I thought I’d shorten it, because ‘people who believe health care reform is a secret plot to kill old people’ wouldn’t work. Deather seemed like an ironically self-referential term to ostentatiously bestow.”

Savan went on to parse the meaning of the -er suffix.

Today’s -er groups are not -ists; their beliefs are not -isms or -ologies, theories of social organization like communism or fields of study like sociology. Nor are they -ites, devout followers of a domineering visionary figure, like Trotskyites, Benthamites or Thatcherites. The -ers, the caricature asserts, are not sophisticated enough for that. That is perhaps why -er words, long before truther, have been used to deride political opponents, as in tree hugger, bra burner and evildoer — not to mention the catch-alls for extremists, wingers and nutters (from wing nut).

Since the truther phenomenon, we’ve had other -ers, including the tenthers (those who believe the 10th Amendment gives states the right to nullify federal laws) and the teabaggers (followers of the conservative tea party movement). Sarah Palin’s defenders have even labeled as Trig truthers those who suspect subterfuge surrounding her last pregnancy.

Ben Zimmer also covered this earlier meaning of deather in an August 2009 Visual Thesaurus column about the lexicon of the health-care debate.

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In related news, Domain Name Wire reported last week that the deathers.com domain recently changed hands (WhoIs gives the transaction date as May 3) and now is the property of “Domain King” Rick Schwartz.

Also related: An Osama bin Laden lexicon.

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* Why are they called “observers” when they’re anything but passive onlookers? I prefer “squawkers.”

Nada Bus

Well, then, what is it?

 

Nada Bus, Inc., is based in Commerce (Los Angeles County). I found neither an explanation of the name nor a trademark filing, although I did find trademarks for Carba-Nada (reduced-carb pasta); Nada Nuff (a women’s clothing line based in Toronto); Nada-Chair (“The cure for terminal sitting”); and N.A.D.A., the National Association of Automobile Dealers, which owns the nada.com domain.

Nada Bus seems to do a lot of business ferrying passengers to Nevada casinos not featured in any of the Ocean’s movies, or even The Hangover. Judging from the web copy and the testimonials, it appears to be run and patronized by non-native English speakers. (“Nada Bus provide you the best service in the world.” “We will happy to answer for your question.”)

The company’s slogan, I’m sorry to say, is “Serving you with PASSION to make your trip memorable.” PASSION + long-distance bus trip = memorable in the worst possible way.

Still, “Nada Bus” has a certain existential allure, no?

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Photo taken during a recent stay in downtown Los Angeles.

In Others' Words

I’m busier than usual this week, so instead of blogging I’m quoting some tasty passages from other blogs.

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“Thuuz? Oh, Pleez” (The Name Inspector)

But then we have the name Thuuz. The Name Inspector is not a fan. Clearly it’s built on the bones of the words enthused, enthusiasm, and enthusiastic. So far so good–apt, if a bit pedestrian. But that syllable is pretty weird sounding. It’s really the first consonant and the vowel together that sound odd. The Name Inspector talked about this in connection with the name Thoof a while back. He quite reasonably declared that the “Thoo-” part was a bit counterintuitive in English, and then this smartypants named John commented that it was an accident of history that there is no word thoof, and The Name Inspector held his ground, and John was all “what about enthusiasm”, and The Name Inspector was like “good point but what about at the beginning of a word”, and John was all “historical linguistics blah blah”. So clearly The Name Inspector won that one.

(Note from Fritinancy: For more on Thoof, read my own 2007 post.)

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“Your Friendly Global Villain” (Johnson)

What is it about very nasty people that makes us use their first names as though they were our buddies? And why some but not others? “Osama”, “Saddam” and “Fidel” are common, yet no “Josef” or “Adolf”. No “Muammar” either, not even after he started having citizens strafed from helicopters.

First-name terms are obviously a way to diminish a feared enemy, especially in the triumph of his death or downfall. But merely being a bad hat isn't enough, it seems: he has to be extensively demonised before meriting the treatment, so maybe Libya’s mad, bad colonel just hasn't been in anyone's sights for long enough. And if a man is too evil—on the massacre-of-millions scale—then such jolly familiarity apparently becomes bad taste. Stalin was Uncle Joe once, before the truth came out.

(Note from Fritinancy: See also “What to Name the Villain.”)

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“Park Bench” (Nancy Nall)

Do you have Critical Mass in your city? Doing a little research on it the last few days, I’m amazed at the diversity of its impact. I first heard of it via Jon Carroll’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle some years back, and I gather the Bay area is where it was born. Much of cycling culture has its roots there, and Critical Mass rises out of a certain obnoxiousness born out of unpleasant encounters with cars. We can go back and forth on this and probably will, but it’s fair to say that in cities like San Francisco, or Chicago, New York and a handful of others, motorists and cyclists are the Israelis and Palestinians of transportation, and Critical Mass is a monthly intifada, a deliberate traffic jam of hundreds of cyclists moving through them on a rush-hour Friday, blowing lights, in yo face, saying, essentially, Fuck you.

(Note from Fritinancy: Jon Carroll still writes an excellent column for the Chronicle.)

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Want more reading material? Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic has linked to “Nearly 100 Fantastic Pieces of Journalism” published in 2010, from the famous and predictable—Malcolm Gladwell, Atul Gawande, Clive Thompson, Zadie Smith—to the too-good-to-be-missed (Beth Kowitt on Trader Joe’s, Mimi Swartz on the sex trade in Houston, John Gravois on the closing of the marijuana frontier in Mendocino County, Jessanne Collins on what it’s like to work for the notorious content farm Demand Media). Plus great stuff from The Awl, Planet Money, This American Life, and The San Francisco Panorama (which published just one issue). Yes, it will probably take you the rest of 2011 to read them all. Better get cracking.