Fritinancy

September linkfest

I’ve read more books about Trump, Trumpism, and What It All Means than is probably healthy for me, but until I read Thank You for Your Servitude, by Mark Leibovich (Penguin Random House, 2022), I’d never laughed my way through a Trump book. Leibovich, a veteran Washington correspondent (New York Times, The Atlantic), focuses not on “your favorite president” but on the lickspittles and soul-sellers who sought relevance through their obeisance to him, most notably Senators Rubio (R-FL), Cruz (R-TX), and Graham (R-SC), all of whom had been loudly contemptuous about TFG  before he became the nominee and they made the bread-butter connection. Leibovich is the rare insider with an outsider’s sense of irony, and he’s a master of the snappy sentence. Here’s one example, about former Republican National Committee Reince Priebus, who became 45’s much-put-upon first chief of staff: “No matter how much Trump had roiled the Republican water, it remained Priebus’s job to carry it.”

Word of the week: Fae

“Neopronoun with a nod to folklore”: That was the 28-Across clue in the September 23, 2022, New York Times crossword, and until I completed the fill I was stumped.

I was familiar with the term neopronoun: “a category of neologistic English third-person personal pronouns beyond ‘he,’ ‘she,’ ‘they,’ ‘one,’ and ‘it,’” according to a Wikipedia entry on the topic. I’d even read Dennis Baron’s 2020 book, What’s Your Pronoun? Beyond He and She, which includes a handy chart.

Fae and faer are down at the bottom. Baron does not explain their origin or significance, so I did some more research.

ChiQin and other odd birds

I’ve written frequently about the names of vegetarian and vegan substitutes for animal-based foods: the apostrophes (Turk’y, Chick’n), the negatives (Nada Moo, Beef-less), the kree8tiv misspellings (Mylk, Krab). For more, see this post and “Phood for Thought,” my 2011 Vocabulary.com column.

Here’s a recent entry in the Name That Phood sweepstakes: ChiQin Nuggets, a new product from Quorn (“Home of Meatless”).

The protein source is fermented Fusarium venenatum, a fungus found naturally in soil.

 

This isn’t Quorn’s first foray into not-chicken; you can still find Quorn Chik’n products on Amazon and elsewhere. I haven’t found an explanation for the new name—perhaps it’s a new recipe, or maybe Quorn is doubling down on the initial letter of its corporate name, which here is pronounced identically to the /ck/ in chicken (or Chick’n). A third possibility—that the spelling is a coded message about the QAnon conspiracy—is too unappetizing to consider.*

Lest you think “Only in America!”—well, think again. Around the world, producers of plant-based products are having phun with their phood.

Last week OrenH tweeted from Jerusalem about “kmozzarella.”

Word of the week: Roevember

After the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, ending federal protections for abortion, American women showed their disapproval in many ways: by publicly protesting, by publishing opinion pieces, and by registering to vote in often unprecedented numbers. The collective impact of these actions may result in what is optimistically being called Roevember: a rejection in the November 8 state and federal election of elected officials who opposed women’s right to privacy and autonomy.

I haven’t been able to pinpoint the precise origin of “Roevember,” a portmanteau of Roe and November. The earliest usages I’ve found are from early August 2022 (let me know if you’ve found earlier examples!).

On August 1, Insider New Jersey reported on sightings of “See You in ROEvember” T-shirts at a Democratic gathering in Morris County.

“See You in Roevember” throw pillow, $29.99 at Fed Up Frannie’s

A newish sense of “cover”

The verb to cover has lots of meanings: to lay something over something else, to apply a surface layer onto something, to make a new recording of another performer’s song, to protect, to match in value, even to copulate (said of horses, usually). Over the last five years I’ve noticed an emerging sense: “to appear on the cover of a magazine.”

So far, I’ve seen cover in this sense only in fashion and celebrity journalism, with veteran style bloggers Tom and Lorenzo in the vanguard.

Here’s an example from November 2017: “Ruth Negga covers @BazaarUK”

Ruth Negga covers @BazaarUK https://t.co/VV0vdifp5Y pic.twitter.com/PXepwF51r3

— Tom and Lorenzo (@tomandlorenzo) November 3, 2017

And here’s an example from this week from Elle magazine: “Gisele Bündchen covers ELLE’s October 2022 issue.”

 

Word of the week: Duty

The word came into English in the 13th century, from Anglo-Norman dueté, a word with connections to due and debt. It retains a slightly antique air tinged by its original meanings of “reverence” and “homage” and by its sense of a monetary obligation. But for Queen Elizabeth II, who died on September 8 at 96, duty was no anachronism. It was a thread woven through her adult life, and it was the word that eulogists reached for when paying tribute to her.  “A monarch bound by duty” was the AP’s headline. On the CNN website author and professor Peter Bergen called duty “the one word that defined Elizabeth II.” “She made sacrifices to duty,” her son Charles, now King Charles III, said in a televised tribute the day after her death—a royal understatement if ever there was one.

Opening frame of a video of scenes on the theme of duty from the Netflix series The Crown.

Cheeky little messages

Here’s a trend I’ve been tracking: tiny bits of marketing copy in unexpected places—garment labels, the undersides of container lids, inside shipping boxes. What makes these messages noteworthy is their tone: either a cheeky wink or a scrap of fortune-cookie wisdom.

Here’s an example of the fortune-cookie style.

“My life is a picture of my mind”: label on a top by Flax (a brand name that is also a generic fiber name—confusing!). I have no idea what this means.

 

And here’s another.

“Let every space fulfill its true potential”: inside the package of an Elfa file cart.

 

And here’s one of the cheeky-perky messages.

“Let’s do this again sometime”: inside the wrapper of a Honey Mama’s tangerine-tahini chocolate bar (which, btw, is crazy-delicious and also crazy-expensive).