Fritinancy

Word of the Week: Pre-Drinking

Pre-drinking: “Chugging cheap alcoholic drinks before heading out to a bar, club, or sporting event.” – “ ‘Pre-drinking’ or ‘Pre-funking’ Common Among Young Alcohol Users,” Los Angeles Times, November 8, 2012. Also called pre-gaming, pre-partying, pre-loading, or frontloading.

Young drinkers’ reasons for pre-drinking include saving money, “getting in the mood,” and “facilitating contacts with potential sexual partners,” according to a new Swiss study to be published in the February 2013 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. It’s risky business, the L.A. Times reports:

Researchers found that when students drank prior to going to a bar or club, they drank more than they would otherwise. On average, pre-drinking students consumed seven drinks, and students who drank only at a bar or event consumed just over four drinks.

The researchers surveyed 183 Swiss adults, with a median age of 23, over five consecutive weeks. They used a recently developed cellphone assessment technique to collect reports. The legal drinking age in Switzerland is 16.

Florian Labhart, one of the study’s authors, was quoted by Science Daily as saying that “pre-drinking has been found in about one third of all on-premise drinking, which is a very high rate.” Pre-drinking rates in the United States may be even higher than that, according to Shannon R. Kenney, a sociology professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles who did not participate in the study. Kenney told Science Daily:

“In fact, due to U.S. legal drinking age requirements, pre-drinking may be most prevalent among underage drinkers in the U.S. … Research shows that underage drinkers may be motivated to pre-drink to achieve a ‘buzz’ or become intoxicated before going to a licensed premise where they cannot legally consume alcohol, such as a bar, club, concert, or sporting event.”

Happy new year! And if you pre-drink, please don’t pre-drive.

Year-End Roundup: The Names, Logos, Words, and Maps of 2012

Lots of late-breaking X-of-the-year news:

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Laura Wattenberg, astute observer of baby-naming trends, selected Blue Ivy as the Baby Name Wizard name of the year. The story of the name, she writes, is “all about the essence of intellectual property rules: invention, identity, exclusivity and control.”

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In a commentary for NPR’s “Fresh Air,” linguist Geoffrey Nunberg defended “Big Data,” his choice for the 2012 word of the year: “It’s responsible for a lot of our anxieties about intrusions on our privacy, whether from the government's anti-terrorist data sweeps or the ads that track us as we wander around the Web. It has even turned statistics into a sexy major.” Nunberg also talked about the political buzzwords of 2012 – right to work, entitlement, evil, and more – in a Bill Moyers Q&A.

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The Australian National Dictionary Centre’s word of the year is green-on-blue: “(used in a military context) an attack made on one’s own side by a force regarded as neutral.” It beat out qubit, fourth age, brotox, and fossil farming – none of which, I’m fairly confident, are on any US WotY lists.

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Collins Dictionary (UK) didn’t pick a single word of the year: it picked 12, from broga (yoga for men) to fiscal cliff.

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From the Wordnik blog: the best TV words of 2012, from anaphor to unwindulax, and the best language stories of 2012, from Rick Santorum’s “blah people” to the New York Times’s “offensive adjective inappropriate for family newspaper” – which wasn’t an adjective at all.

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In the New York Times, Grant Barrett’s annual roundup of the year’s notable words and expressions includes some by-now-familiar contenders – Eastwooding, 47 percent, Gangnam style – as well as some surprises, including doga (yoga with a dog), nomophobia (a Fritinancy word of the week in February), and pet shaming.

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Lynne Murphy of Separated by a Common Language picked the best American-to-British import (“wonk”) and the best UK-to-US counterpart (“bollocks”). Influencing her choice of “bollocks” was Newcastle Brown Ale’s “No Bollocks” ad campaign – used in the US but not in the UK.

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The Brand New blog identified the year’s best visual identities (logos) and the worst.

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The year in maps, from The Atlantic Cities, includes, at #5, the delightful Metrophors map of geographic X-is-the-Y-of-Z metaphors (“THE Ukraine is THE Ohio State University of European countries”). (Hat tip: Lance Knobel.)

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Coming next week: the American Dialect Society’s word-of-the-year vote. If you’re in Boston on Friday, January 5, get yourself over to the Marriott Copley Place to support your favorite words. Everyone’s welcome, and it’s a total hoot. I attended the January 2009 vote in San Francisco and wrote about it here.

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And in case you missed my earlier posts, here are my words of the year, brand names of the year, (other) names of the year, and (possibly) the name of the year.

What Is Happy?

An adjective, you say? Not so fast.

Sometimes it’s a noun.

 

Bus-stop ad for Target’s “instant happy” gift card (or “GiftCard”).

 

Sometimes it’s part of a compound verb.

 

Cover of designer Jonathan Adler's new book, 100 Ways to Happy Chic Your Life. “Happy Chic” is a Jonathan Adler trademark for bedding, candles, tableware, furniture, and other products.

 

 

And sometimes it’s a name.

Happy, one of the seven dwarfs in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Fall Guys

The calendar says winter, but it still looks like fall around here.

 

Snow Fall, a New York Times e-book.

 

 

 

Deadfall, in theaters now.

 

 

Skyfall, in theaters now.

Word of the Week: Caganer

December 2016: Updated with fresh photos.

Caganer: “A figure of a squatting defecating person, a traditional character in Catalan Christmas crèche scenes [from Catalan cagar shit].” – Collins English Dictionary. Pronounced, approximately, ka-ga-NAY, the last syllable rhyming with day.

 

Traditional Catalan caganer via Everything Catalan.

According to a Rough Guides article, the caganer emerged in the early 18th century, a period when Christmas nativity scenes “shed their elitist trappings” and “everyday farm life figures began to appear, from the cobbler pounding out horseshoes to the village woman washing clothes in the river.” And there, in a corner, was the caganer, “engaged in his own daily task”:

The typical caganer sports a red barretina, the Catalan peasant headwear, and he’s often smoking a pipe or reading the newspaper, the more pleasurably to pass the time. He has traditionally been a farmer, symbolizing the fertilization of the earth. With his pants around his ankles, he is engaged in that most primary of cycles; to eat, and then to enrich the earth with his droppings so that it will once again yield a bountiful harvest.

The first caganeras (female figurines) appeared in the 1970s. Today, Catalan nativity scenes may include caganers of political figures, famous artists, entertainers, soccer players, monarchs, and the pope.

 

Queen Elizabeth II and Barack Obama caganers via Anglophone Direct.

 

Caganer swimmer via Caganer.com.

 

Modern caganers are usually made of plastic or resin. You can also find “chocolate crappers” made of Belgian chocolate.

Via

 

In 2010, Barcelona’s Mare Magnum shopping center erected a six-meter-tall Santa caganer. (That’s 19 feet, 8 inches.) It was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest caganer.

 

Giant caganer photos by Rafael Miro, via Laughing Squid.

According to a Wikipedia entry, the caganer isn’t the only pooper at a Catalan Christmas party:

[A]nother is the Tió de Nadal, which also makes extensive use of the image of faecal matter (it is a log, i.e. tió, with a face painted on it, which, having been “fed” for several weeks, is told to defecate on Christmas Eve and “magically” produces candy for children, a candy that has supposedly come from its bowels). Other mentions of faeces and defecation are common in Catalan folklore: indeed, a popular Catalan saying for use before a meal is “menja bé, caga fort i no tinguis por a la mort!” (Eat well, shit a good deal and don't be afraid of death!).

The Wikipedia entry includes this note about the caganer tradition: “In recent years a urinating statue, or Pixaner, has also appeared, but it hasn't taken root or gained any serious popularity.”

 

Pixaner via Pinterest.

Name of the Year: Follow-Up

“My money’s on Sandy,” wrote Ben Zimmer in a comment on my Names of the Year for 2012 post, published earlier this week.

That’s probably smart money, and I’m regretting my oversight.

“Sandy” is linked to two separate 2012 disasters, both of which occurred in the last quarter of the year. The first was Hurricane Sandy (aka Superstorm Sandy, Frankenstorm Sandy, or Bride of Frankenstorm), which smashed into the East Coast in late October. “Sandy” came from a storm-name list created by the World Meteorological Organization. Since 1979, the WMO’s lists have included male and female names in alternating alphabetical order, omitting the letters Q, U, X, Y, and Z. (See the name lists for the next five years at the National Hurricane Center’s website.)

As a personal name, “Sandy” may have sounded old-fashioned to a lot of Americans. Its popularity peaked in the 1960s, when, according to the Baby Name Voyager, it ranked #167 among girls’ names. When you search “Sandra,” from which Sandy is often derived, the trend is even starker: Sandra was hugely popular in the 1940s, peaking at #6, and remained in the top 100 through the 1980s before falling steeply. The best-known “Sandy” today, other than the hurricane, may be the female lead in the Fifties-nostalgia musical Grease, played in the film version (1978) by Olivia Newton-John. Sandy can be a male nickname (Sandy Koufax, Little Orphan Annie’s dog), but it’s more often associated with a certain pert, wholesome, mid-20th-century female archetype: think of perennial Peter Pan Sandy Duncan, born in 1946.

(I found it interesting that many of the other girls’ names on the 2012 hurricane list were similarly Forties- and Fifties-ish: Betty, Patty, Debby, Joyce, Leslie. I suppose you have to reach back that far to find unambiguously girly names: today’s baby girls are likely to have androgynous or traditionally male names like Taylor, Sawyer, MacKenzie, and Maxwell. Compare anachronistically named Susie in the “lemonade-stand” Verizon Wireless commercials, played by a young actress with the trendily androgynous name Lennon.)

The other 2012 Sandy is, of course, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six adults were massacred on December 14. This Sandy is a descriptive word modifying “hook,” a geographical term for a curved spit of land.

Two devastating Sandys in two months: That’s a lot of attention on a familiar-sounding yet out-of-the-mainstream name. It could be the deciding factor in January’s Name of the Year vote in Boston.

The Airing of Grievances

Yes, I’m observing Festivus a few days early this year. The aluminum pole is looking handsomely unadorned (I find tinsel distracting), and I’m feeling confident about my chances in the Feats of Strength. But first, my favorite part of the Seinfeld-inspired holiday: The Airing of Grievances.

I’ll start with the most grievous of my 2012 grievances. Stick around – they get funnier and less lethal, I promise. (Past grievances: 2011, 2010, 2009.)

Names of the Year 2012

The American Name Society is accepting nominations for Names of the Year, with the winners to be announced at the society’s annual meeting in Boston on January 4, 2013. Anyone can play; submit your nominations no later than January 1.

Here are my own picks in the categories established by the ANS.

 

Personal Name

Blue Ivy. The daughter of Jay-Z and Beyoncé, born January 8, was destined to make headlines because of her celebrity parents. But her unusual name – “Blue” because it’s Jay-Z’s favorite color, “Ivy” for the Roman numeral IV (maybe) – also guaranteed the spotlight. In October, Jay-Z and Beyoncé failed to get trademark protection for “Blue Ivy”: a Boston events planner had beaten them to it, in 2009.

Higgs. Scientists at CERN announced in July that they’d discovered a particle that behaves like the Higgs boson, aka the “God particle.” The particle is named for Peter Higgs, professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh.

Jeremy Lin. The New York Knicks point guard had a sensational season, and his surname was turned into a string of puns, from Linsanity to Linspirational to Linderella. Ben Zimmer wrote in February about the Lin-guistics of Lin-sanity.

Kony. Joseph Kony, the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a Ugandan guerrilla group, was the subject of a documentary film, Kony 2012, released in March. The film, produced by Invisible Children, Inc., went viral; it was seen by more than 100 million viewers within a week of its release. It also inspired a critical backlash. (Jen Doll includes Kony in her “2012’s Worst Words” roundup at The Atlantic Wire.)

Malala. First name of the teenage Pakistani activist who in October was shot by the Taliban for refusing to abandon her campaign for girls’ education. She is still recovering in a hospital in Britain.

Mitt. It’s possible that only the mother of 2012 Republican presidential candidate Willard Mitt Romney ever called him by his legal first name. Romney was named for family friend J. Willard Marriott, founder of the hotel chain, and Milton “Mitt” Romney, a cousin of his father’s.

Trayvon. The fatal shooting of unarmed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin on February 26 inspired national protests and more than 2 million signatures on an online petition.

 

Trade Name

FiveThirtyEight. Nate Silver’s polling-aggregation blog takes its name from the number of electors in the U.S. electoral college. I gave my reasons for choosing this name (and nine other notable brand names of 2012) in my recent column for the Visual Thesaurus.

 

Place Name

Gangnam. Did anyone not see the “Gangnam Style” music video this year? The monster hit by Korean pop star PSY takes its name from Seoul’s Gangnam District. On Language Log, Ben Zimmer wrote about a “Gangnam Style” spoof that featured linguist/political critic Noam Chomsky.

Gaza. Site of eight turbulent days of fighting in November between the Israeli and Palestinian forces.

Literary Name

Grey. The eponymous protagonist of the publishing phenomenon Fifty Shades of Grey and its sequels. “Young entrepreneur Christian Grey” is “brilliant, beautiful, and intimidating,” with “singular erotic tastes.”  

Amy. There’s been a spate of “Amy” characters in recent novels, movies, and TV shows: The protagonist of Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel Gone Girl. Laura Dern’s character on the HBO series “Enlightened.” The baby on NBC’s “Up All Night.” Anna Chlumsky’s character on HBO’s “Veep.” The American teenager in ABC Family’s “Secret Life of American Teenager.” Mayim Bialik’s character in CBS’s  “Big Bang Theory.” Rebel Wilson’s character (actually called Fat Amy) in the 2012 movie Pitch Perfect. “Amy” hasn’t been a top-ten baby name since the 1970s, when it was ranked #2 in the United States; I’m guessing the creators of all those Amy characters were also born in the 1970s – and grew up in a sea of Amys.

Brilliant

This ad appeared in the New York Times on December 13:

 

 

 

The succinct copy is unafraid to use the other D-word, debt, to contrast absurdly overpriced diamonds with lookalike moissanite stones. “She’s forever … You’re forever” echoes the company name, itself a sly poke at the long-running slogan of the De Beers diamond cartel, “A Diamond Is Forever.” In fact, I’m kind of amazed that Forever Brilliant was able to register its name as a trademark. Well played.

For more on diamond marketing and the romantic-industrial complex, see my 2008 post, “Stones.” And read The Heartless Stone, Tom Zoellner’s account of how a “relatively common mineral” came “to signify love and eternal promises.”

Word of the Week: Gundamentalist

Gundamentalist: A person who goes beyond the language of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and takes his or her unrestricted right to bear arms as a tenet of religious or quasi-religious faith. A portmanteau of “gun” and “fundamentalist.”

Jay Heinrichs, a rhetorician and author of books and a blog about figures of speech, used gundamentalist in his response to the mass shooting of children last Friday in Newtown, Connecticut. In his post, “It’s Not a Tragedy” (“‘Tragedy’ implies an act of the gods, something terribly sad but inevitable. Instead, call it a massacre”), Heinrichs wrote:

Keep the focus on the children. This was a massacre of children. Gundamentalists will try to focus on the shooter. That allows them to make a reasonable-sounding case for school prayer: As our morals deteriorate, more sick people will do horrible things. Frame the issue around making it harder to massacre children. You can’t pray away legally acquired assault weapons and large-capacity ammo clips.

In a comment, Heinrichs defined “gundamentalists” as “gun-loving fundamentalists with an unusual interpretation of Jesus’ peace message.”

Heinrichs didn’t coin “gundamentalist”; in fact, the word has been around for more than 80 years. I found a citation in the July 31, 1926, issue of The New Yorker in the “Of All Things” column, an un-bylined collection of news items (paywalled):

Down in Texas the shouting Baptist has evolved into the shooting Baptist. Rev. J. Frank Norris has now reached the position of America’s leading gundamentalist.

(Some context: In her 2006 book Rethinking Zion: How the Print Media Placed Fundamentalism in the South, Mary Beth Swetnam Matthews identifies Edgar W. Knight, a professor of education at the University of North Carolina, as the person who pinned the “gundamentalist” nickname on Norris, a flamboyant preacher who assailed alcohol, Catholics, Communists, and “that hell-born, Bible-destroying, deity-of-Christ-denying, German rationalism known as evolution.” In July 1926, Norris shot and killed an unarmed man in his church office. He was tried for murder and acquitted on grounds of self-defense, although no gun had been found on his victim or presented as evidence in the trial.)

“Gundamentalist” lay dormant and possibly forgotten for many decades. Then, about five years ago, it began appearing again – this time in connection with groups, not individuals, and with a new shade of meaning: not necessarily a religious fundamentalist who pulls a trigger but any person who venerates guns.

In 2007, Reverend Rachel Smith, founder of the God Not Guns Initiative, wrote in “A Meditation for God Not Guns Sabbath” that “Gundamentalism” was “a spiritual problem”:

Gundamentalism is a spiritual movement without spiritual grounding. It is rooted in the sale and promotion of violence.

Gundamentalism willfully ignores the loss of nearly 30,000 lives each year to gun suicide and gun homicide. The mantra, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” is a magnificent half-truth that attempts to absolve gundamentalism of responsibility for the uniquely American epidemic of gun violence.

Smith has also written of gundamentalism:

Its adherents believe that nothing is as important as the right to own a gun. Or many guns. Or many kinds of guns.

In 2008, Washington Post religion reporter David Waters wrote about a Baptist church in Oklahoma City that planned to give away a gun at an annual youth conference. Waters concluded:

I see people who are products of our gundamentalist culture, people who drape the cross with a flag, people who believe the Second Amendment should be one of the Ten Commandments, people who seem to have more trust in guns than in God.

“Gundamentalist” has occasionally been claimed with pride by those it’s meant to shame:

Today I was called a Gundamentalist.
I think it was meant to be insulting or belittling.  The more I think about it, the more I find it charming. – We the Armed, 2009.

Oh and I love the term “gundamentalist.” I’m so stealing that. – The Truth About Guns, 2011

For more on America’s veneration of guns, see “Our Moloch,” Garry Wills’s December 15 essay in the New York Review of Books.

And for additional context, see Pro Publica’s roundup of “The Best Reporting on Guns in America,” originally published in July 2012.