Fritinancy

On the Strong Language blog: The feline profanity

I have a pair of related posts up on Strong Language (a sweary blog about swearing) that may be of interest to some of you. In them, I take a deep dive into a word whose offensiveness is variable and subjective: uttered by a presidential candidate, it caused consternation among headline writers; used as a brand name, it may run afoul of trademark laws. Yet it’s unobjectionable as a botanical or fashion modifier.

What in the world am I talking about? See for yourself in Part 1 and Part 2 of “A Feline Profanity.”

 

Word of the week: Breakfastarian

Breakfastarian: “A person who recognizes the superiority of breakfast over other meals. A person who eats only breakfast foods” (Urban Dictionary, July 20, 2013). A blend of breakfast with the Latinate suffix -arian, denoting “association with a place or thing or idea.” Compare vegetarian, fruitarian, and breatharian (and contrast omnivore, locavore, and carnivore, in which -vore comes from a Latin root meaning “to devour.”)

Tragic con

I don’t know what Konsus* means, or how or why its founders chose the name.

 

 

 

But I can tell you this: If you’re a new company looking to grow by word of mouth, it is not advisable that the word sound like “cons us.”

Related: The stars of HBO’s Silicon Valley try to figure out – from the names alone – what startups like Tubbbr and Kabbage do.

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* Maybe it sounds dandy in Norwegian, the first language of the company’s founders. But the company’s now based in Palo Alto, the site’s in English, and they’re going after Y Combinator funding, so I figure they may be receptive to a little constructive U.S. criticism.

A Zen koan from Google

This outdoor ad is composed of simple English words, 10 of which have only one syllable. And yet it’s enigmatic nearly to the point of unintelligibility.

 

“Now goes viral, then scrambles to scale. Next means everyone goes to the launch party.”

 

And pop goes the weasel?

I spotted the sign on Van Ness Avenue, near San Francisco’s Civic Center and some distance from Google headquarters (35 miles away), Pier 48 (four miles away and the site of the Google Cloud Platform Users Conference, which begins today), or any other relevant landmark. It’s a short stroll from the ad to the symphony hall and opera house, but I doubt music aficionados are in the target demographic.

Here, for the benefit of everyone who isn’t fluent in Techlish, is my attempt at decryption:

Word of the week: Thyristor

Thyristor: A A four-layered semiconductor rectifier in which the flow of current between two electrodes is triggered by a signal at a third electrode. (Source: Oxford Dictionaries.) Coined in the 1950s from thyratron, a kind of thermionic tube (from Greek thura, “gate” or “door”) and transistor. Pronounced THIGH-wrist-er.

Nearly sweary ads: the nearly Spring edition

In an election season marked by one presidential candidate’s freewheeling use of naughty language, some observers have professed to be shocked, shocked that swearing is taking place in these hallowed halls. Well, readers of this blog and of my occasional posts at Strong Language are inured to shock: you know that swears and near-swears have been ubiquitous in the language of commerce for many years now. Here are three recent examples:

March linkfest

Tuscan chicken, Tuscan toilets, Tuscan hummus: What exactly does Tuscan mean, anyway? (The New Yorker)

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How do nouns become verbs? Why are we OK with buttering our bread or boycotting a business, but clench our teeth at impacting and efforting? (JStor Daily) More on how branding weirds language (by me).

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And 1 extra grammatical error than Original Ready Crust too. pic.twitter.com/uAT87Bw5LV

— Jonathon Owen (@ArrantPedantry) March 14, 2016

 

 

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A 12-stanza poem composed entirely from the titles of SXSW panels.

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Word of the week: Abilene paradox

Abilene paradox: A false consensus: a situation in which a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the wishes of many (or all) of the group members. Also called the Abilene effect, rule by committee, and social conformity.

Name in the news: Draper James

There’s a curious little kerfuffle going on between two businesswomen whose flower-shaped logos are suspiciously similar in shape and embellishment. What makes it especially newsworthy is that one of the businesswomen is the actress Reese Witherspoon, and she’s the one being sued.

But that’s not the only thing I find interesting about Ms. Witherspoon’s retail venture, which is called Draper James, after the actress’s grandmother (Dorothea Draper) and grandfather (William James Witherspoon). For me, that name – no matter how sweetly familial – is all too reminiscent of another, much older retail chain, Draper’s & Damon’s.

Word of the week: Cache-coeur

Cache-coeur: A style of women’s blouse that crosses in front and secures at the waist or under the bust. From French (where it’s cache-cœur), meaning “hide the heart”; pronounced (roughly) cash-coor. Sometimes called surplice or simply wrap-front.

Typical cache-coeur style, via Sempre Na Moda blog.