Fritinancy

November linkfest

It’s Word of the Year season, and two British dictionaries are leading the pack. Collins picked lockdown – a word we threw around here in the US but never experienced the way they did in the UK and elsewhere. (A friend of mine is literally confined to her London apartment after spending a month in France: she can’t go outdoors at all.) And Oxford Languages, publisher of the Oxford dictionaries, chose a phenomenon instead of a single word: the impact of the COVID-19 on language. “What struck the team as most distinctive in 2020 was the sheer scale and scope of change,” Katherine Connor Martin, the company’s head of product, told the New York Times’s Jennifer Schuessler. “This event was experienced globally and by its nature changed the way we express every other thing that happened this year.”

“Social distance”: sign in an Oakland produce-store window, May 2020.

December linkfest

The Namerology blog picks the defining baby names of the last decade—“The names that were not just hugely popular from 2010-19, but vastly more popular than in decades past…and future. They’re flying high, yet as the ’10s draw to a close they’re already starting to decline from their dizzying popularity peaks.”

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Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn combed his newspaper’s archives for the first mentions of products, technologies, ideas, and terms that have become part of life since late 2009. His chronological list goes from A (Angry Birds) to Y (YOLO), and includes a bunch of words and brands you read about here first, including showrooming, FOMO, trigger warning, and antifa.

December linkfest

The last linkfest of 2017! Let’s exorcise this miserable year with some amusing and edumacational links. And have yourselves a merry little Festivus.

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Drew Magary is back with the 2017 edition of his Hater’s Guide to the Williams-Sonoma catalog: “More than any reindeer parable or silly children’s rhyme, it is THIS catalog and its splendidly useless items wherein you and I can discover the TRUE meaning of Christmas, which is that it delays the pain and horrors of this shit world at least until after New Year’s.”

“You listen to me, Williams-Sonoma: There will NEVER be a fondueassaince. Ever.”

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Nearly sweary ads: the nearly Spring edition

In an election season marked by one presidential candidate’s freewheeling use of naughty language, some observers have professed to be shocked, shocked that swearing is taking place in these hallowed halls. Well, readers of this blog and of my occasional posts at Strong Language are inured to shock: you know that swears and near-swears have been ubiquitous in the language of commerce for many years now. Here are three recent examples:

Happy ’Tisgiving!

’Tis-the-Season season came early this year! Why, ’twasn’t even Halloween when Saks Fifth Avenue gave us “’tis the treating hour” in a New York Times ad .

 

 

Page A5, October 29.

The Airing of Grievances

Yes, I’m observing Festivus a few days early this year. The aluminum pole is looking handsomely unadorned (I find tinsel distracting), and I’m feeling confident about my chances in the Feats of Strength. But first, my favorite part of the Seinfeld-inspired holiday: The Airing of Grievances.

I’ll start with the most grievous of my 2012 grievances. Stick around – they get funnier and less lethal, I promise. (Past grievances: 2011, 2010, 2009.)

December Linkfest

A new language quarterly, aptly called Babel, brings linguistics to a general audience without dumbing down the subject. Published at the University of Huddersfield (UK), the magazine covers “issues relating to many different human languages” – and some non-human ones, including, in the first issue, Venusian. I’m already looking forward to the second issue, which will include an article about “the secret linguistic history of brand names.”

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At Word Routes, Ben Zimmer recaps the year in words and picks his word of the year. (Surprise – it isn’t fiscal cliff.) I published my own list earlier this week.

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Do not ask science-fiction author John Scalzi to write for free. No, really – don’t even think about it.

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In the 1920s, when TV was still in its infancy, retailers used fake television broadcasts to trick customers into entering stores. Smithsonian magazine’s Paleofuture blog explains how it was done. 

Faked TV demonstration from 1926, via Smithsonian.

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From caucus to urbane: the words that spiked each week this year in look-ups at Merriam-Webster online.

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Catalog love: Your L.L. Bean Boyfriend. He’ll “build you a table and then have sex with you on it.” (Via Girls of a Certain Age.)

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From Jen Doll at The Atlantic Wire, the best (worst) typos, mistakes, and correrctions [sic] of 2012.

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Holly Buchanan of Marketing to Women Online picks the  commercials that did the best job of marketing women in 2012. She has strict criteria:

In order to pass The Buchanan Test a commercial must do three things. It must feature women who:

1. Are outside of the home
2. Are in a role other than that of "mother"
3. Are NOT doing yoga

(For comparison, see Bechdel Test.)

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“So it looks like the New Orleans Hornets are going to change their name to become the Pelicans.” A defense of the new team name by Barry Petchesky at Deadspin. (Naughty language advisory.)

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From my favorite info-viz site, Muckety (“Mapping the paths of power and influence”): The Trump Fund for the Gutting of Red Herrings and other think tanks we’d like to see in 2013.

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I grew up in Los Angeles and always wondered why the Ralphs supermarket chain didn’t have an apostrophe in its name. Now, thanks to Los Angeles magazine, I know: the business was founded (in 1873, at Fifth and Hill streets) by George Ralphs.

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“Twitter is a machine for continual self-reinvention”: Matt Haughey on why he loves Twitter and hates Facebook.

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Something to play with while you’re waiting in line to see The Hobbit, which opens in theaters today: the hobbit name generator and the Elvish name generator. (Via @Wordnik.)

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Like it or not, the “fiscal cliff” metaphor is here to stay. Linguist George Lakoff explains why.

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“I sculpt baby names from love, from hatred, from the reality of this hellhole of a world that you’re forcing an innocent life to endure.” Bob Powers, artisanal baby namer, at McSweeney’s. Yes, he jests. Mostly. (Via Karen Wise.)

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Over at The Atlantic, sociology professor Philip Cohen asks: Why don’t parents name their daughters Mary anymore? (Also via Karen Wise.)

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From Copyranter: The best men’s underwear commercial ever.

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According to Helen Sword, author of a column for the New York Times and creator of something called the Writer’sDiet test, a “zombie noun” is any noun (proliferation, formation, indication) that “cannibalizes” a verb. Now linguistics grad student Josef Fruehwald, blogging at Val Systems, delivers an incisive counterpoint. “Ain’t nothing like exploiting the collective dysmorphia of a nation to push your quarter-baked usage decrees,” says he.

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Via the brilliant Maria Popova at Brain Pickings: Alice in Wonderland as a subway map.

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And to all a good night.

Title Nine Scores, Fouls

I had some errands nearby, so I stopped into the Title Nine store in Berkeley over the weekend to see what was new with this local brand. 

A bit of background: Title Nine was founded in 1989, taking its name from Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex to any person seeking the benefits of any federally funded education program. Title IX opened doors to girls and women who wanted to play sports in school; Title Nine sells non-technical sports gear and clothing. The company has 19 retail stores—none in malls, the website boasts—243 employees, and a manifesto.

Appropriately, there’s a lot of playful, you-go-girl energy in a Title Nine store. This poster typifies the spirit:

“You are so busted!” is very cute. The medallion touts the company’s “bravangelists”: also nice.

I actually laughed out loud at this sign displayed above the entrance to the bra department—excuse me, the “Home for Unruly Girls Support Center.”

If you don’t get the joke in “unruly girls,” see the Online Slang Dictionary.

So far, so good. By the evidence, Title Nine is a company that makes a big investment in copywriting, and that’s a good thing. The attention to words carries over into the dressing rooms—or so I thought until I encountered this sign:

 

“Have a Fit!” is fun. So are the other headings: Containment, Mind the Strap, Be Smooth, Know the Terrain, and Think Straight. Then I read the very last sentence: “The bra should lay straight.”

Aha! So Title Nine’s editorial department has an Achilles heel after all: the lay/lie fault. The bra should lie straight, if you please.

(Listen, I get that a lot of people mix up lay and lie, and in fact I tolerate “lay” for “lie” in casual speech. But I can’t condone its appearance in published prose. And that includes marketing copy: See my critiques of the Hanes Lay Flat Collar, the SpeedSleep ad, the Back2Life back-pain “solution.” This is why professional copyeditors were invented. They know this stuff. They can help.)

I picked up a fall catalog to see whether the dressing-room sign was anomalous. Nope: The error is even worse in the catalog (insert, page 7), where in addition to the lay/lie error we have a comma splice:

“The bra should lay straight, if it rides up, it’s still too loose.”

There needs to be a period—a colon would be OK, too—after “straight.”

The “lay” error persists on the website:

I leafed through the catalog to distract myself from all this lay-ola. Unfortunately, my eye fell on an even bigger boo-boo—in a name with a trademark symbol, no less:

 

Page 19, fall catalog.

I was drawn to that “Wooliscious” headline because in all the time I’ve been tracking -licious compounds—see here, here, here, and here—I’d never come across a -liscious. It looked odd, and I wondered whether it was a clumsy attempt at a portmanteau with “luscious.” Nope again: In the product copy—and on the Web—the word is spelled “Woolicious.”

I’m guessing Title Nine’s lawyers have already pitched a fit over this mistake, so I’ll leave it at that.

In my crappy photo you can just barely make out the name of this garment: “The Swacket.” It’s “more than a sweater—not quite a jacket,” the copy says. Honestly, is that the best they could come up with? Because all I can think of is the poor sacrificial fracket.

I’ll have another post about Title Nine later this week.

Room for Interpretation

It turns out that Duluth Trading Company* is not recommending Men’s Ballroom Jeans for Viennese Waltz competitions.

 

 

Indeed, any doubts you may have about exactly what sort of ballroom they’re referring to are resolved by “How do you crouch without singing soprano?”

 

“Get a pair,” indeed.

On the other hand, don’t draw any smirking conclusions from “Fire Hose®” pockets. It’s the fabric that’s tough—“tougher than an angry beaver’s teeth,” in fact.

On the other other hand…

 

(Hat tip: Namer X.)

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P.S. I wanted to title this post “Minnesota Naughty,” but it turns out that Duluth Trading company is based not in Duluth, MN, but in Belleville, WI. Foiled again.

Man Up, Transitively

The J. Crew July catalog arrived this week. It features a lot of lightweight clothing that I’m sure is delightfully wearable if you live somewhere other than San Francisco, with our blustery, foggy, 60-degrees-if-we’re-lucky “summers.”*

One such item, the Military Tunic, caught my attention not for its wardrobe potential** but for the accompanying copy. (Photo and copy shown here are from the online catalog; the print version of the copy is shorter but very similar.)

 

“Our designers took an easy cotton silhouette and manned it up with military details like camp pockets and shoulder epaulets. Pair it with skinny jeans and go-for-broke heels for a look that commands attention.”

 

Sure, “go-for-broke heels” evokes entertaining images of splints and full leg casts. But I’m more curious about manned it up.