February linkfest

Why do so many robot names sound alike? FastCoDesign put the question to name developer Christopher Johnson, who explained that Kuri, Yui, Yobi, et al. “sound like the kind of names you might give your dog.” 

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Speaking of machines and names, Amazon’s Alexa is making life miserable for a lot of people named Alexis, Alex, and Alexa.

 

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Some good advice from Nielsen Norman Group, the user-experience people, on writing headlines, page titles, subject lines, and other “microcontent.”

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PROFANITY BREAK!

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Is shitgibbon the simian epithet of the year? After Daylin Leach, a Pennsylvania state senator, used the word in a tweet aimed at @realDonaldTrump, Ben Zimmer did some scholarly analysis for Strong Language, the sweary blog about swearing; and for Slate’s Browbeat blog.

 

 

Then the MetaFilter crowd weighed in. (Sample: “No mention of the shitgibbon’s closest primate relative, the poontangutan?”)

Linguist Gretchen McCulloch considered “the origin and constraints of shitgibbon compounds.” (She thinks douchebaboon “would actually work just fine,” but shitbaboon and shitcanoe “are both pretty bad.”)

 

 

Geoff Nunberg – you may know him as linguist Geoff Nunberg from NPR’s “Fresh Air” – waxed poetic.

@bgzimmer @stronglang @browbeat Or to summarize the story as a double dactyl: pic.twitter.com/6im5FrMcEe

— Geoffrey Nunberg (@GeoffNunberg) February 12, 2017

And The Forward’s language columnist, Aviya Kushner, surveyed the whole megillah, observing parenthetically: “Many of us, even if we aren’t senators or linguists, can use a little bit of fun right now, and why not turn to insult-making as stress relief?”

Finally, we bid adieu to the zoo and consider the shit show. Or is it shitshow?

"Shit show" and "shitshow" are neck and neck in our data, and also in the world in general. https://t.co/nFAEvStqG1

— Kory Stamper (@KoryStamper) January 30, 2017

 

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END OF PROFANITY BREAK.

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How do new drugs get those strange-sounding names? (See also my post from last September about the psoriasis drug Taltz.)

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Where does new slang comes from?

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Australia has some pretty awesome ads about dying, I'll give it that pic.twitter.com/ib2aAmOmbK

— Matt Novak (@paleofuture) February 15, 2017

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The surprising history of snowflake as a political insult. 

 

I love this. Such a sublime failure of understanding how the 'putting the X into Y' headline fórmula works. pic.twitter.com/LU2cwXkwxb

— Nick Parker (@nickparker) February 10, 2017

 

Ben Yagoda has been seeing a lot of better in advertisements, and he doesn’t feel good about it.

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There’s better, there’s worse, and then there’s Thee Worst.

“Thee Worst” is Dutch for “tea sausage.” Hat tip: @AbsP.

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“Now that a sneering, orange man-child is sinking his tiny fingers into every aspect of American life, [branding] experts believe activism will become nearly as ubiquitous in the brand world as it is on college campuses.” Let’s see what they have to say.

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HOW ALL CAPS CAME TO SIGNIFY SHOUTING.

 

 

Comments

[rootlesscosmo]

I first encountered the Double Dactyl form as the subject of New York magazine's weekly competition around 1970. As I recall the rules were:
1. First line of first quatrain must be a reduplicative phrase like "higgledy piggledy."
2. Second line of first quatrain must include at least one proper name.
3. Second line of second quatrain must consist entirely of a single word that is a double dactyl.

My (unsubmitted) entries:

Plinkety plinkety
Johann Sebastian
Labored away at his
Klavierübung.

But was his Anna so
Wohltemperierte
Trying to care for his
Numerous young?

Pocketa pocketa
Lenin and Krupskaya
Motored straight on in the
Petrograd night.

Never for them any
Undialectical
Swerves to the left or the
Menshevik right.

"Klavierübung" doesn't quite scan.