Fritinancy

January linkfest

The new words are here! The new words are here! Merriam-Webster has added 520 of them to its online word hoard, including coronavirus words (long hauler), identity words (BIPOC, folx), and working words (coworking, makerspace, gig worker).

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Speaking of dictionaries, lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower has compiled a new historical dictionary of science-fiction, and it’s out of this world. Read about it in Wired (Adam Rogers calls Sheidlower “a lexicographical mad scientist”) and in the New York Times (Jennifer Schuessler calls Sheidlower’s 1995 book, The F-Word, “a cheekily learned history of the notorious obscenity”).

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Word of the week: Fig

This post was going to be a short riff on a line in that Inauguration poem by Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman—the line about the vine and the fig tree, which got me thinking about figs. Mmmm, figs. But one fig led to another, and next thing you know I was way down a figgy rabbit hole from which there was no escape. Go figure.

On the Visual Thesaurus: Who needs vwls?

My latest column for the Visual Thesaurus was inspired by a tweet from trademark lawyer Alexandra J. Roberts.

“we need a trademark for our new skincare brand”
“what if we take a basic generic/descriptive term & remove all the vowels?”
“ooh like an unpronounceable secret code?! DO IT.” pic.twitter.com/o6TJ0AqaIz

— alexandra j. roberts (@lexlanham) January 3, 2021

DRMTLGY was new to me, but I’ve been tracking the no-vowels branding trend for quite a while. (See my Pinterest board We Don’t Need No STNKN VWLS. And see my posts about BHLDN and BNJMN.) I had fun researching and writing about all the ways we dispense with written vowels in English and in some other languages, notably Arabic and Hebrew.

Full access to the column is restricted to subscribers; here’s an xcrpt:

Word of the week: Shanty (or is it chantey?)

If you’re new to the earworm-y maritime-song craze that’s taken over TikTok and other social-media platforms, I invite you to read my new post for Amateur Music Network, “Why We’re Singing Sea Shanties in 2021.” If you have linguistic questions about the trend, rather than musical ones, stick around and I’ll do my best to answer them here.

To get in the mood, please enjoy the TikTok that started the trend in late December, “Soon May the Wellerman Come,” sung by Nathan Evans, a Scottish postman. Or check out one of the many Wellerman remixes. Or listen to something different: “Rollin’ Down to Old Maui,” sung by Matt Young on #shantytok.

@theboozetraveler

Just singing shanties, waiting for my laundry to cycle. #shanty #shantytok #shantytiktok

♬ original sound - Matt Young

 

Sea Songs and Shanties (Glasgow, 1974). Via AbeBooks

 

So many Mondays

In 2002, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers—now known as PwC—rebranded its consulting business. The move wasn’t entirely voluntary: The US Congress had just passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in response to the accounting scandals of the previous few years (Enron, WorldCom, et al.), and firms like PwC were feeling the heat. PwC worked with a global branding agency, Wolff Olins, and in June 2002 announced the consulting business’s new name: Monday. It was meant to suggest “a fresh start,” spokespeople said. The company planned to invest $110 million through fiscal 2003 to establish the Monday brand.

Via BBC, July 30, 2002

 

The response from the outside world was … not kind. It probably will not shock you to learn that Monday—the day of the week—isn’t popular.

“Ask someone to name their least favourite words. The chances are that ‘Monday’ will come somewhere on the list,” the Irish Times snarked. An opinion writer for IT Week called the new name “bizarre” and said it represented “spin triumphing over substance.” German observers pointed out that “Monday” suggested low quality, as in “Monday cars” assembled before workers have recovered from the weekend.

 

One of 460 “sad Monday stock photos” on Dreamstime

 

Just another case of hating new names until we don’t? We never had a chance to find out: In July 2002, IBM bought PwC’s consulting unit and renamed it, in classic IBM fashion, the IBM Consulting Group.

But something about “Monday” must have resonated in the culture at large, because 19 years later, the name is thriving. It’s attached unapologetically to swimwear, haircare products, a team-management system, and at least four unrelated brand agencies in Canada, Macedonia, the UK, and the US.

Some words for this week

Most Mondays I write here about a single word or phrase that I’ve found timely or otherwise compelling. This week—well, one word doesn’t suffice. So I’m turning over the blog to other writers whose words have cut through the chaos and helped me find my bearings. Some of these pieces may be paywalled. Support journalism.

Infamicide

On Tuesday, January 5, Rob Meyerson, creator of the How Brands Are Built website and podcast, asked on Twitter whether there’s “a word/phrase for when current events or culture ‘hijacks’ an otherwise OK brand name.” Rob cited Isis Mobile Wallet, which changed its name to Softcard in 2014 to avoid confusion with the terrorist group ISIS*; and Wix’s full-stack web development service Corvid (named for the bird species that includes crows), which had been confused with COVID-19 and which recently changed its name to Velo**. Wix released a clever video to announce the change.

 

Before the day was over, name developer Anthony Shore had come up two good ideas:

Word of the week: Intentional

Sometimes my words of the week are new to me—see respair, cottagecore, and hypodescent, to take three recent-ish examples—and sometimes they’re old words that I’ve started thinking about in new ways. Intentional (and its relatives intent, intention, intentionally, and intentionality) is one of those old-but-new words.

Two news stories in the last week got me started down this path, and then some ambient New Year’s musings pushed me down the rabbit hole.