Fritinancy

The Whom Front

I’m so used to seeing whom (and whomever) used incorrectly that this correct usage – in a newspaper ad! – actually startled me.

American Technion Society, Page A19, New York Times, Nov. 30, 2012

The woman in the photo may appear to be thanking a sky deity, but the copy provides a different answer to the headline’s question: “Thank the Technion.”

The grammatical correctness of “Whom Do We Thank for Iron Dome?” is unimpeachable: whom is the object of thank. But I can’t help thinking it’s a little too correct — stilted, even – given the context.

Iron Dome, in case you haven’t been following the latest Israeli-Palestinian troubles (and who could blame you for tuning out?), is the defensive anti-missile system developed in large part by graduates of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, with American backing. According to the American Technion Society’s website, Iron Dome “saved countless lives on both sides” in the recent Israel-Gaza conflict. (The James Bond-ish name “Iron Dome” is a beefed-up translation of the Hebrew kipat barzel, or “iron cap”; kipa can also mean “yarmulke.” The English term carries echoes, intentionally or not, of Dome of the Rock, the Muslim shrine in Jerusalem.)

Iron Dome performed better than expected, according to Israeli defense spokesmen, but it’s expensive: each Iron Dome missile costs $50,000. And the rockets it’s designed to intercept, writes Dan Ephron in The Daily Beast, “are manufactured in Gaza at a fraction of the price—sometimes for just a few hundred dollars.”

And while “countless lives” may have been saved, many other lives were lost. Advanced technology or no, war is still hell.

Which is why, even though I acknowledge the correctness of whom in the ad, I think it’s lipstick on a pig. I’d have recast the headline to avoid fussy points of grammar. And while I was at it, I’d have changed the question to a declarative statement.

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Additional reading: Is whom obsolete?

Fashion Word Watch: Smoking Slipper

I follow shoe trends pretty closely, for personal and professional reasons, and I’ve read a fair amount about shoe history. I know that since the beginning of time there have been only a finite number of shoe styles; all the rest is variation. (Even the briefly ballyhooed flatforms of Spring/Summer 2011 were just catchily rebranded Renaissance chopines.)

Which is why, when I started seeing references to something called “smoking slippers” a little over a year ago, I was more skeptical than surprised. I recognized the shoe style; it was the name that was completely new to me.

 

Yes/No smoking slippers from Stubbs & Wootton.

The earliest reference I could find to “smoking slippers” was in a March 28, 2011, WWD Footwear News article that declared smoking slippers to be a “must buy”:

The message for fall is about leisure and luxury, as the classic smoking slipper returns in rich velvet and suede, with quirky embellishments such as embroidery and rhinestones.

In July 2011 the ShopBop blog echoed the imperative in that very special dialect of English known as Fashionspeak. The smoking slipper is a “best bet” for fall, said ShopBop:

It comes with fashion’s return to the leisure class, and thanks to the industry’s obsession with androgyny, ladies are wearing the footwear once reserved for cigar-puffing, scotch-swilling men in velvet jackets.

I believe we’re meant to picture Hugh Hefner.

Image from ShopBop blog.

Smoking slippers circa 2011 were made of soft fabrics or plush leathers such as suede and haircalf. They looked casual yet luxurious, and definitely more covered-up than fashion’s previous footwear “obsession,” the ultrafeminine, barely there ballet flat.

You’ll notice that these smoking slippers share a distinctive profile: a raised vamp with a slight notch where it meets the side of the shoe. In standard footwear parlance, that qualifies them as Venetian loafers.

Now, that was a term I was familiar with. Venetian loafers have been a standard men’s style for years (see Robert Zur, John Varvatos, and Prada). Lands’ End uses “Venetian” to describe its women’s versions, too. It’s unclear why Venice is implicated; I once read something about the raised/notched vamp resembling the prow of a Venetian barque, but I’ve since been unable to find that reference. (“Loafer” to describe a shoe style has nothing to do with laziness, by the way: the word comes from German läufer, meaning “runner.” And “slipper,” at least in the US, usually means “house slipper.”)

“Smoking slipper” wasn’t the only name invented for this new/old style. Throughout the autumn and winter of 2011 I saw almost equal numbers of references to “smoking flat” and “slipper flat.” They all referred to the essentially the same thing.

Just as the name was solidifying, in the summer and fall of 2012, the criteria for “smoking slipper” began to relax. The style suddenly seemed to be everywhere, including on discount sites, and it covered a lot of fashion ground.

 

“Smoking slippers” on sale earlier this week at Neiman Marcus Last Call. All except the shoe at far right share that raised/notched vamp. The snake-print shoe is more accurately called a piped plain-toe loafer.

Soft, slipperlike materials, yes – but also leathers suitable for venturing outdoors, not to mention biker-chick embellishments.

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal’s fashion reporter, Christina Binkley, called smoking slippers “power flats”:

A big look for upcoming seasons: smoking slippers, which begin where Cary Grant left off, puffing on a cigar before the fireplace. While the traditional velvet of smoking slippers might be too soft for power shoes, Stuart Weitzman and Elizabeth & James have them in sturdier materials such as patent, tweed and snakeskin. The look is wholly modern and fashion–forward.

There’s that cigar again! Clearly, there’s some connection between tobacco and these shoes. But what?

Well, there’s the smoking jacket, defined in the 1850s by The Gentleman’s Magazine of London as a “kind of short robe de chambre, of velvet, cashmere, plush, merino or printed flannel, lined with bright colours, ornamented with brandenbourgs, olives or large buttons.”

A. Sulka & Co. smoking jacket (1950) via Antique & Vintage Dress Gallery.

One can picture hard-soled, soft-uppered slippers, perhaps with a monogram or family crest, accompanying such a garment. Try as I might, though, I could not find any historical references to “smoking slippers.”

The association of “smoking slippers” with women’s fashion  may have more to do with the French couturier Yves Saint Laurent, who in 1966 introduced a women’s tuxedo he called “Le Smoking.” According to a Wikipedia entry, “In French and many other languages, the anglicism smoking is a generic colloquialism referring to any kind of tuxedo/black tie clothing.”

And today’s “smoking slippers” do resemble an item of men’s formalwear.

It’s called an opera pump. (Photo via SFGate; shoes available at Saks.)

X Just Got ... Better?

Here’s yet another twist on a very familiar snowclone. This variation, on a billboard from the streaming service Roku, brings up some distressing associations.

 

“Insomnia Just Got Better!” Bryant and 6th streets, San Francisco.

I get it, sort of. If you’re lying awake at 3 a.m., why not make the best of a bad thing? With Roku, you can watch a movie or play a game instead of uselessly counting sheep.

Still, in the conventional “X Just Got Better” formula, “X” = “something good”: “Summer just got better,” “Beef just got better.” The advertised product or service promises to improve on an already good thing. Here “X” is bad, and all Roku can do is make it not quite as bad.

I know, I know. It’s a joke! I should lighten up! Well, sorry: for some of us, insomnia is no laughing matter. I will thank you, Roku, to delete the annoying exclamation mark and change the subject.

Oh, while I’m at it: Yes, there should be punctuation after “Keep Streaming.” It’s that old Donner Party Comma problem again.

By the way, I used to think Roku was pronounced “rock you,” but it isn’t. It’s pronounced “roh-koo,” to rhyme with “beaucoup.” According to a Wikipedia entry, the company was founded in 2002 by Anthony Wood; he named it Roku, the Japanese word for “six,” because it was the sixth company he’d launched.

Other posts in the “X Just Got Y” series here (with examples from Gorilla Glass and many other companies) and here.

Let's Noun!

As we all know, verbing weirds language. And, like it or not, it’s everywhere. (See showrooming, subtexting, “Let’s Tonic,” et al.) But nouning – turning a modifier into a noun – is also increasingly popular in commerce, and it’s also changing our perceptions about what language “should” be.

Take “funness,” which Apple has been using for several months in its iPod Touch marketing. As Ben Zimmer has noted in columns for the Boston Globe and Word Routes, now that “fun” has successfully shifted from noun to adjective, you have to add “-ness” to turn it back into a noun.

But other brands aren’t even bothering with nounifying suffixes. Instead, they’re simply putting adjectives to work as nouns.

Here are nine recent examples of nouning in brand slogans. In each case, the advertiser could have made a conventionally nounish choice (“Welcome to possibility,” “The future of awesomeness”) but instead grabbed our attention, for better or worse, with a functional shift, also known as anthimeria.

 

Word of the Week: Nones

Nones: A term used by religion scholars and pollsters to describe Americans unaffiliated with any religion – people who respond “none of the above” in a survey about religious preference.

Image source: Secular.org.

 

The recent presidential election revealed the rising influence of “nones” in public life, according to a New York Times story published November 10 (“Christian Conservatives Failed to Sway Voters on Issues”):

The election results are just one indication of larger trends in American religion that Christian conservatives are still digesting, political analysts say. Americans who have no religious affiliation — pollsters call them the “nones” — are now about one-fifth of the population over all, according to a study released last month by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

 

Chart source: “Nones on the Rise,” Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Among the findings of the Pew study:

The growth in the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans – sometimes called the rise of the “nones” – is largely driven by generational replacement, the gradual supplanting of older generations by newer ones. A third of adults under 30 have no religious affiliation (32%), compared with just one-in-ten who are 65 and older (9%). And young adults today are much more likely to be unaffiliated than previous generations were at a similar stage in their lives.

According to the Pew study, the religiously unaffiliated are “about twice as likely to describe themselves as political liberals than as conservatives, and solid majorities support legal abortion (72%) and same-sex marriage (73%). In the last five years, the unaffiliated have risen from 17% to 24% of all registered voters who are Democrats or lean Democratic.”

That Word

Alas, it does not mean what they think it means.

 

 

Alas: An expression of grief, compassion, or alarm; also used to express sorrow, regret, or apprehension of danger or evil.

I think what the copywriter may have been searching for was voilà! or aha! or presto! Alas, we’ll never know.

Now that my holiday jolliness has curdled, I may as well unload a few more complaints:

1. Why is she getting dressed the night before the party?

2. Enough with the ’twas-the-night-ing – and all the other rusty holiday clichés. (The subject line on this particular email, I’m sorry to say, was “’Tis the Season for Super Duper Shaping.” No, ’tain’t.)

3. If you’re going to parody a well-known poem*, you must at a minimum get the rhyme and meter right. “Snug” does not rhyme with “glove.”

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Previously in That Word: Sophistry, servile, infamous, arriviste, bupkus, unrequited.

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* Tip: Don’t.

Just Fish (Except for the Turkey)

Just Fish may have seemed like a swell name when this Newark, New Jersey, restaurant served just, you know, fish. It sounds fishy when the menu features fowl.

Just Fish Café.

And it’s not just the Thanksgiving special: the regular menu includes “wingss” [sic].

Bonus tip to the proprietor/do-it-yourself copywriter: It is not necessary to Capitalize Every Word In Your About-Us Copy. In fact, it is A Very Bad Idea.

Hat tip to Jeff Jarvis, who posted the photo and tweeted, “If turkeys could swim…”

Read my May 2012 post on self-limiting names, “Just: Don’t Do It.”

Giving thanks for good names

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, here are three business names I’m grateful to know about.

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After a disaster like Hurricane Sandy, there’s usually no shortage of clothing donations. But donors often forget about one essential item: new underwear. The nonprofit organization Underwearness raises awareness about the problem and delivers new underwear to needy children. The name is a perfect blend, and the logo is strong, playful, and vibrant.

 

One quibble: I wish the slogan were something more original than the “One X at a Time” snowclone, which I’ve written about several times. (Not to mention the ambiguity of “pair” here—pair of children? Pair of underwear?)

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High-low collaborations between couture designers and mass-market retailers are old-hat by now. What’s new about Narciso Rodriguez’s recent partnership with Kohl’s is a name that’s as stylish as the clothing: DesigNation. Not only does it say “design,” “nation,” and “designation,” it visually deconstructs the logo to suggest something fresh and exciting.

 

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Among the cocoa cognoscienti of San Francisco, master chocolate-maker Michael Recchiuti is famous enough that he could have named his new dessert café after himself. Instead, he called it Chocolate Lab. Yes, there’s a whiff of science about the name, nicely supported by the logo and some of the website headings – Experiments, Antidotes, Lab Time.

But it gets better. The café’s address is 801 22nd Street – in the neighborhood called Dogpatch.

Very fetching!

Chocolate Lab puppy via DogExplorer.com.

Veggieducken

Attention, thoughtful Thanksgiving cooks! This year, don’t make your vegetarian guests endure a wan simulacrum of the big bird (yes, I’m looking at you, Tofurky®). Instead, serve them a true pièce de résistance: the veggieducken, a k a “vegetarian turducken.”

Photo via NPR Weekend Edition.

Turducken, you will recall, is chicken stuffed in duck stuffed in turkey. Veggieducken does not, paradoxically, contain ducken, or even tofu ducken. (Tofucken®?) Rather, it consists of a two-foot-long banana squash artistically stuffed with onions, leeks, sweet potatoes, red bell pepper, breadcrumbs, and herbs. Its alternate name – equally portmanteau-y, somewhat harder to pronounce, but more technically accurate – is squashleekotato roast. The dish was developed by Dan Pashman, host of The Sporkful blog and podcast. (Motto: “It’s not for foodies, it’s for eaters.”)

I’m of the “life’s too short to stuff a mushroom” school, so I’m not going to be making veggieducken this year, or any other year. (But if you want to make it, I’ll happily eat it.) I’m interested in veggieducken because of how the word was constructed. The fact that it references “turducken” is evidence of how far the latter word has come since it first appeared in print in 1982, courtesy of chef Paul Prudhomme. (Prudhomme’s Magic Seasoning Blends company registered the Turducken trademark in 1986. Yes, we should be capitalizing the word.) Not only is turducken well accepted, if only as an aspiration or a joke*, but with the advent of veggieducken we see -ducken evolving into a bound morpheme. Linguists sometimes call bound morphemes cran-morphs, from the cran- in cranberry that now attaches itself to brand names like Cran-Apple. Other familiar cran-morphs include burger and -licious.

In short: The -ducken in veggieducken has nothing to do with duck + chicken; it now communicates the more general idea of “elaborately stuffed/nested food.”

From @lynneguist.

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Related Thanksgiving word lore:

Turbaconducken.

Cherpumple.

Cranpagne.

Edward Gelsthorpe, father of the cran-morph.

How Butterball got its name.

Fooburkey, crankeywich, self-gravification, and other winners of Wordnik’s turducken-word contest.

And for readers far more motivated than I, a veggieducken video tutorial.

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* There’s that problematic “turd” syllable, for starters.

Word of the Week: Prepper

Prepper: A person who is actively preparing for large-scale emergencies such as natural disasters and the breakdown of the social and political order. A more moderate and positive-sounding synonym for “survivalist.”

Preppers have been featured in at least two national newspapers in the last week. “For Preppers, Every Day Could Be Doomsday,” was published November 17 in USA Today:

The number of preppers is unknown, but a poll done for National Geographic Channel in September indicated that 28% of Americans knew one. Preppers meet-up networks are proliferating on social networks. Doomsday Preppers is the network's most-watched series[.]

An article in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, “How to Survive Societal Collapse in Suburbia,” focused on the mainstreaming of the survivalist movement. The article includes a photograph of Ron Douglas, his wife, and their six children, surrounded by a year’s worth of disaster-preparedness supplies. The reporter, Keith O’Brien, accompanied Ron Douglas to a Starbucks near Denver:

Many so-called survivalists would take pride in keeping far away from places that sell espresso drinks. But Douglas, a 38-year-old entrepreneur and founder of one of the largest preparedness expos in the country, isn’t your typical prepper.

The modern-day prepper movement has its origins in the Cold War, when American families were encouraged to stock personal fallout shelters for an expected nuclear attack. The movement, which has waxed and waned over the years, got a big boost in the late 1990s amid (groundless) fears about a Y2K computer bug. The preparedness industry is thriving again, reports Keith O’Brien, spurred by the 9/11 attacks, Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and even the Mayan calendar. A subspecies of preppers believes that the presidency of Barack Obama (almost always referred to as Barack Hussein Obama or BHO) is a sign of the apocalypse.

The prepper movement has its own jargon, which is heavy on acronyms. One of the most popular terms is TEOTWAWKI, which stands for “the end of the world as we know it” and is pronounced tee-ought-wah-kee. (A Y2K glossary, still online, defines it as “shorthand for a predicted calamity involving the breakdown of society, whether due to Y2K or any other perceived threat.” The term was borrowed from the title of the 1987 song by R.E.M.)

The very extensive glossary on SurvivalBlog (“The daily web blog for prepared individuals living in uncertain times”) includes this basic prepper vocabulary:

BOB: Bug-Out Bag (a survival kit for leaving in a hurry)

G.O.O.D. kit: Get Out of Dodge Kit, synonymous with BOB.

Group therapy: Full automatic fire.

MASCAL: Mass casualty.

PPPPPPP: Prior Poor Planning Produces Pitifully Poor Performance.

SMUG: Seriousness, Manageability, Urgency, and Growth (scales for evaluating disasters)

SS&S: Shoot, Shovel, and Shut up – a philosophy about feral dogs.

Also in circulation: WTSHTF (“when the shit hits the fan”).

Watch clips from Doomsday Preppers on the National Geographic Channel’s website. Or be a doomsday denier like The Onion: