Fritinancy

Huge

The title of Diane Ravitch’s new book about American schools, Slaying Goliath, struck me right between the eyes. Hadn’t I seen something like it very recently?

 

 

Word of the week: Farmageddon

It’s a book! It’s a movie! It’s a brewery! (Two breweries, actually.) It’s an impending economic catastrophe, or maybe two catastrophes!

I spotted the economic-disaster farmageddon, a portmanteau of farm and Armageddon, in a tweet-reply to short-term Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci.

What gain? He's s failure by virtually all standards. We're in a manufacturing recession; and tariff infuced Farmageddon

— Jossy (@Unitedshashe) August 12, 2019

 

May linkfest

How to name a cocktail (and an etymology of cocktail). (Dictionary.com)

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From abactor to zythepsarist: a glossary of old occupations. (Family Researcher, via Suzanne Mantell)

A schrimpschonger was a craftsman who made scrimshaw items from the teeth of marine animals. (Photo source)

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January linkfest

You’re probably heard of babies named after brands: Porsche, Chanel, Armani, and, lest we forget, Tiffany. Now the Baby Name Wizard blog tells us about three baby names from the 1980s and 1990s that were inspired by TV advertising.

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On the other hand, you could name your offspring after a tech company or product. You wouldn’t be alone. (CNBC)

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It’s the last call for words of the year for 2018: Lynne Murphy pronounces “MSM” the US-to-UK WotY and “whilst” its UK-to-US equivalent. (I may have had something to do with the latter selection.) Over at his Not One-Off Britishisms blog, Ben Yagoda takes the measure of whilst.

What's your daddy?

Polldaddy is dead; long live Crowdsignal, its successor in the platform-agnostic poll- and survey-creation business. The service, which is owned by Wordpress, was silent on the reason for the recent name change, leaving us to wonder: Was daddy too patriarchal? Was the name likely to be confused with the unrelated GoDaddy*, the internet-domain registrar?

As long as we’re asking questions, what accounts for the plethora of DADDY brand names? There are 757 DADDY registrations in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database, from FROG DADDY (“men’s and women’s wearing apparel”) and CAT DADDY (“beds for household pets”) to THE SOUP DADDY (“soups, stews”), THE CANDLE DADDY (“candles”), TACO DADDY (“catering”), UNDERWEAR DADDY (“socks”), CHOCOLATE DADDY (“sunglasses”), WOLF DADDY (“reality-based television program”), and ICE DADDY (“electric air deodorizers for refrigerators”). Nearly a third of the registrations have been filed in the last two years. What accounts for the trend?

June linkfest

“The use of rainbows as logo design elements has fallen back almost to its pre-1970s level, while the use of rainbow colors in logos has taken off.” (Emblemetric)

Image via Emblemetric

 

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Remember tronc, possibly the worst corporate name ever? You can forget it now. (The Verge)

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After 27 years, Greece has finally agreed to the formal name of its northern neighbor, the Republic of North Macedonia. (BBC)

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This ad for Texas Congressional candidate Mary Jennings “MJ” Hegar sets a new standard for political advertising: It’s well written, brilliantly edited, and engaging.

Bullish

On a recent trip to Costco I bought a box of RXBAR protein bars, which contain several healthful ingredients, none of which, according to the package, is bullshit. Good to know!

 

 

From the RXBAR website:

Guys who are into CrossFit would never indulge in B.S.

 

As you probably know from my periodic appearances in Strong Language, the sweary blog about swearing, I’m constantly on the lookout for sweary brand names and slogans. When I saw “No B.S.” on the RXBAR box, I remembered a similarly frank promise made earlier this year by Everlane, the “radical transparency” retailer.

Word of the week: Blackacre

In U.S. and Canadian law, there’s a long-established* practice of using “Jane Doe” or “John Doe” to refer to a person whose name is unknown or must be withheld. Placeholder names like these are called kadigans, and it turns out there are legal kadigans for parcels of real property as well. The primary such placeholder name is Blackacre; if two parcels of property are being compared, the second is usually called Whiteacre. 

This is where I confess that while I’d known about Jane and John Doe for a long time, I first encountered “Blackacre” less than a week ago, by way of a clever tweet from Kathryn Rubino, an editor at the Above the Law blog.

Blackacre-ish #nameacivillawTVshow

— Kathryn Rubino (@Kathryn1) November 2, 2017

(Fans of legal puns can find more like this on Kathryn’s Twitter timeline.)

October linkfest

Fictional African countries are in the news these days thanks to the U.S. commander-in-chief’s name-checking “Nambia” and anticipation building for the Black Panther movie. (Marvel Comics fans will recall that the Black Panther hails from the land of Wakanda.) Naturally, there’s a Wikipedia entry on fictional African countries – updated to include Nambia. And here’s Marvel’s Black Panther wiki, which includes the Wakandan map and flag.

 

 

October linkfest

The origins of cinema terms like blockbuster, cliffhanger, and McGuffin. (Oxford Dictionaries blog)

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Test your knowledge of advertising slogans. (Mental Floss)

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The return of Spy magazine – the great satirical publication of the 1980s and 1990s – as an Esquire pop-up, and not a moment too soon.

 

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After the second presidential debate on October 9:

"Unproud," top lookup @MerriamWebster, goes back to 1500s, but has never before been applied to Twitter follower counts. #makinghistory

— Kory Stamper (@KoryStamper) October 10, 2016

 

Naming a company? Don’t worry about snagging a dot-com domain. (A Hundred Monkeys)

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What if you lose the right to your company name … and the name is your own? When it happened to fashion designer Kate Spade, she changed not only the brand name but her own. (The Fashion Law, via Catchword)

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“What it is about the name ‘Trump’ that sells, and would it sell if it were changed a bit” – to, say, “Thwimp”? (Sound symbolism from linguist George Lakoff for Alternet)

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Meflection, merkining, cookie-grubbing, and other neologisms for the Trumpian Era. (Lili Loofbourow for The Week)

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The strange case – as in legal case – of the Hasbro toy hamster named Harris Faulkner and the Fox News anchor named Harris Faulkner: “either a really weird coincidence or some very niche cross-marketing on Hasbro’s part.” (Consumerist)

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Green’s Dictionary of Slang – “quite simply the best historical dictionary of English slang there is, ever has been […] or is ever likely to be” – is at last online. You can browse headwords gratis; full access is an exceptionally reasonable $60 a year. Read Ben Zimmer’s post for Language Log; read Stan Carey’s review.

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I love the OED entry for owsell. How did such a useful word become obsolete? pic.twitter.com/1VeSIXA3es

— Simon Horobin (@SCPHorobin) October 7, 2016

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Sixteen “amazing” beer names from the 2016 Great American Beer Festival, as ranked by Porch Drinking (not to be confused with the Porch of the item below). (Via @OurBoldHero)

 

Trump Hands IPA from Cannonball Creek Brewing Company: “light bodied and finishes dry with a moderate hops bitterness.”

 

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British swear words ranked in order of offensiveness. (The Independent)

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Thirteen Seattle entrepreneurs tell the stories behind their brand names, including Tune, Socrata, and Porch. (Geekwire)