On the occasion of the death of R&B singer Billy “The Kid” Emerson, at 97, Ben Zimmer applied his lexicographical lens to a term immortalized by Emerson: “doodly-squat.” Did you know that doodly-squat is what linguists call a “vulgar minimizer” or—I love this—a “squatitive”? (Strong Language)
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Ramped up, amped up, ratchet up, gin up, up the ante: a long and poetic list of clichés. (Gift article)
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If any non-Jews out there are starting a business, I am available to consult on whether your proposed brand name means “butt” in Yiddish pic.twitter.com/SnSXBTeem2
— Dan Berger (@dnbrgr) May 22, 2023
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A couple of stories from Cellar Door, a Medium publication about language that’s my favorite recent discovery:
What is the origin of “close but no cigar”?
The wild and crazy world of cutthroat compounds like “pickpocket” and “scofflaw” (and “cutthroat”!)
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I write for Medium, too! This month I wrote about the Oscar Mayer “Frankmobile.” about “Zen” in brand names (and a lot of other stuff), about the new BlackBerry movie and how the BlackBerry got its name, and about how “effortless” took over the world. If you hit a paywall on any of these Medium stories, maybe it’s time to become a Medium member! If you use my referral link, I’ll earn a tiny commission and you’ll earn my sincere thanks.
One of many, many, many appeals to “effortlessness.” (Via Jenni Kayne)
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The baby-name statistics are here! The baby-name statistics are here! Here are two places to read the most accurate, data-driven coverage:
The Namerology blog has several posts about new trends, including the names that are unusually popular in each of the 50 states (Arkansas: Oaklynn and Waylon; Maine: Evelyn and Theodore); the newest American boys’ names (there are parents out there who’ve named their infant sons “Vandal”); and the “remarkable and intriguing” new names for girls, including “Medusa.”
Nancy’s Baby Names wrote about the top unisex baby names of 2022—names given to girls at least one-third of the time and to boys at least one-third of the time. (Top three: Parker, River, and Charlie.) Nancy also wrote about each state’s most popular names and unique names. California had 391 unique boy names and 535 unique girl names, including Ajooni, Zenith, and Tigran.
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The first ten words of the African American English Dictionary are in. (Gift article)
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Oregon’s Mount Swastika has been renamed Mount Halo—not as a tribute to angels but in honor of Chief Halito of the of the Yoncalla Kalapuya tribe. (NPR). Related: I wrote in 2021 about changes to “Squaw” place names.
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Fort Pickett in Virginia, named in 1942 for the Confederate general who led his troops into slaughter and then hightailed it to Canada to avoid being hanged as a war criminal, has been renamed Fort Barfoot, in honor of Col. Von Barfoot, who received the Medal of Honor in World War II. Other military bases named for Confederate officers are also being renamed—finally. “‘I wonder myself what took so long,’ said retired Lt. Gen. Tom Bostick, a member of The Naming Commission, charged with renaming Army bases named in honor of Confederate generals. ‘What was galling is that we would still in this day and age have names of bases that represented traitors, who fought against their country and for the purpose of slavery.’” (CBS News)
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How “Gothic” morphed over the centuries, from an adjective for “barbaric” German tribes to an architectural style to a literary form to a typeface to “goth subculture.” (Mike Pope’s Friday Words)
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Wonder how many times people walk in here and say, “Can I get a burger? Maybe a sandwich?” Just to see the eye rolls. pic.twitter.com/Xhqplmus19
— Paul Farhi (@farhip) May 15, 2023
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All about “sex pest,” a Britishism that’s making headway in the U.S. (Not One-Off Britishisms)
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“Audiobooks have become such a driving economic force in the publishing industry that they have spawned their own dedicated networks of promotion, circulation, and consecration. Audiobook rights are now a staple of book contracts, changing the terms of negotiation. Their sales are counted and listed by The New York Times. They even have their own literary prizes, the Audies and the Golden Voice Awards.” (L.A. Review of Books)
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Where did New Jersey’s Cheesequake come from? (Sesquiotic)
San Francisco has CheeseQuakes, too. Get ’em at the Ferry Building.
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Why HEATED, a newsletter about the climate crisis, isn’t calling it “natural gas” anymore.
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An open letter from a group of demographers to the Pew Research Center protesting the use of generation labels like Boomer, Generation X, and Millennial.. Why? They’re confusing and arbitrary, and they promote pseudoscience. More here (gift article). Hat tip: raojenkins. (Related: My 2020 Visual Thesaurus column about the urge to brand a generation. “It may seem reasonable and natural to us,” I wrote, “but it’s a relatively new phenomenon.”)
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“You may be skeptical about machine-written work at first, but once you see the software rearranging familiar-seeming paragraphs into different orders and changing a few words, you’ll realize it’s a suitable replacement for your favorite authors, who can now rest and starve.” – Introducing Total Crap, the first magazine written entirely by AI. (McSweeney’s)
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“Why should Mount Sinai, the site where the Torah was given, be the name of a hospital?” (Aish)
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Finally, a link that’s off brand for this blog but very on brand for me personally. I recently received a second dose of the shingles vaccine, and it knocked me out for a full week. But there’s a silver lining: A new study by scientists at Stanford found “clean, CAUSAL evidence” that the shingles vaccine prevents “a good chunk of dementia cases.” Read Pascal Geldseltzer’s Twitter thread here. (Thanks to Wardrobe Oxygen for the link.)
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