Fritinancy

Word of the Week: Attactics

Attactics: Aggressive tactics. A portmanteau of attack and tactics; in some cases a probable eggcorn.

In a November 13, 2015, post on ADS-L, the listserv of the American Dialect Society, slang expert Jonathan E. Lighter noted that “CNN speaks of Donald Trump’s ‘attactics’ against Ben Carson” in the Republican presidential campaign. I hadn’t heard the usage, so I emailed Lighter for specifics. The source, he told me, was Christopher Cuomo, co-achor of the “New Day” morning show. Cuomo, it turns out, has been staging a one-man campaign to make attactics happen on the air and on Twitter.

Happy ’Tisgiving!

’Tis-the-Season season came early this year! Why, ’twasn’t even Halloween when Saks Fifth Avenue gave us “’tis the treating hour” in a New York Times ad .

 

 

Page A5, October 29.

Word of the Week: Mastermind

Mastermind: An outstanding or commanding mind or intellect; a person with such a mind. Also: a person who plans and directs a complex and ingenious enterprise, especially a criminal operation. (Both definitions via Oxford English Dictionary online.) The original usage of mastermind – a brilliant person – first appeared in the late 17th century; the second originated in 1872, in a passage written by Anthony Trollope. The verb to mastermind first appeared in a 1923 baseball story published in the Salt Lake City Tribune: “Little Miller Huggins did a bit of masterminding himself in that stirring eighth.”

In the Wild: Adjective Noun Is Adjective

Here’s one of the Verizon “Better Matters” ads currently papering the Montgomery BART station in San Francisco:

 

“A better network is better.”

 

“Well, of course better is better,” you may be thinking with a twinge of annoyance. (“Some copywriter got overpaid for that?”) Ah, but there’s more to the slogan than meets the eye.

November Linkfest

With 8 percent of 2015 still in the mysterious future, the first Word of the Year (WOTY) nominations have already begun. Oxford Dictionaries made history, and stirred up some controversy, by selecting an emoji – “Face with Tears of Joy” – as its, um, lexical unit of the year. (Emoji was a Fritinancy Word of the Week in January 2012.)

 

And at the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Lingua Franca blog, Allan Metcalf – he’s the executive secretary of the American Dialect Society – makes the case for basic: “the word this year to describe someone or something that fits a stereotype, especially the ‘basic white girl’.”

Word of the Week: Turketta

Turketta: An invented word for “turkey prepared porchetta style.” Sometimes spelled turchetta. Porchetta – the word is the feminine diminutive of porco (pig) – is a stuffed and rolled roast of suckling pig; the dish is associated with central Italy and Sardinia.

Turketta, aka turchetta, aka turkey porchetta. Photo by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt for Serious Eats.

Who's Sorry Now?

Mars Inc., which owns candy and cat food brands – synergy! – must have figured it had a good thing going with its “Sorry, I was eating a Milky Way” campaign, which debuted back in March.

 

 

 

Hard Times

Hard can be the opposite of easy or the opposite of soft; we can solve hard problems while listening to hard rock. Or we can think long and hard about two new ad campaigns that use hard in a specific, modern way.

Word of the Week: Limerence

Limerence: “The state of being romantically infatuated or obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one’s feelings but not primarily for a sexual relationship.” (Oxford English Dictionary)

One X at a Time: One More Time

What is it about this particular sloganclone that accounts for its abiding popularity? I have a theory, which I divulge further down. But first, five fresh examples.