Fritinancy

Word of the week: Chagrin

Such a lovely-sounding word; such a subtle, complex, and nearly universal emotion: “acute vexation, annoyance, or mortification, arising from disappointment, thwarting, or failure,” as the OED puts it*; “disquietude or distress of mind caused by humiliation, disappointment, or failure,” according to Merriam-Webster. It found its way into English from French in the late 17th century, and was considered “affected or frenchified” for several decades thereafter. Alexander Pope used chagrin in his 1714 narrative poem “The Rape of the Lock,” where he rhymed it with “spleen.” (Pope may have been singlehandedly responsible for rescuing chagrin from French purgatory: the OED gives two additional example sentences from his correspondence.)

I was surprised to learn that chagrin comes not from the language of moods but from the lexicon of the physical world. You may know its Anglicized form, shagreen (yes, rhymes with “spleen”), which means “rough, untanned leather … prepared from the skin of the horse, ass, etc., or of the shark, seal, etc., and frequently dyed green.” It’s also a color name.

From The Spruce, a home-and-family website: “If you're looking for a fun green paint color, consider Shagreen. This green is right on the cusp of warm and cool, with just enough softness to push it over to the cool side.”

 

How did a word for a type of leather become a word for a type of feeling?

Word of the week: Blackpilling

Will Sommer writes in his blog, Right Richter*:

After Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer announced a potential DACA deal, pro-Trump forums and Twitter lit up with mentions of “blackpilling”— the concept that the political process is useless, and that either completely dropping out of society or responding with mass violence is the answer. The idea that Trump would betray them, they said, was the ultimate blackpill.”

(Emphasis added.)

Blackpill (noun), blackpilling (gerund), and to blackpill (transitive verb) are relatively new, but since 2016 they’ve been pervasive among the so-called alt-right, whose adherents include neo-Nazis, white separatists, and the manosphere. The terms were inspired by The Matrix (1999), written by siblings Lilly and Lana Wachowski, in which the protagonist, Neo, is offered a choice of a virtual red pill or a virtual blue bill. “You take the blue pill, the story ends,” the character Morpheus tells Neo. “You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

“Red pill” – a metaphor for “reality, however harsh” – was adopted by the men’s rights movement, many of whose adherents frequent a sub-Reddit called The Red Pill. The Red Pill was also the title of a 2016 documentary about the men’s rights movement directed by Cassie Jaye.  

What “redpilling” is to the manosphere, “blackpilling” is to a segment of the alt-right: the neoreaction movement, self-styled as NRx.

June linkfest

Fox News is dropping its “Fair & Balanced” slogan, which was invented by Roger Ailes when he launched the network in 1996. Ailes died last month. “In the annals of modern advertising, ‘Fair & Balanced’ will be considered a classic,” writes Gabriel Sherman for New York. “The slogan was Ailes’s cynical genius at its most successful. While liberals mocked the tagline, it allowed Ailes to give viewers the appearance of both sides being heard, when in fact he made sure producers staged segments so that the conservative viewpoint always won. (If you haven’t read Sherman’s biography of Ailes, The Loudest Voice in the Room, I highly recommend it. Yes, it’s fair and balanced.)

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“At some point, we’ve all wondered about the incredibly strange names for paint colors,” writes Annalee Newitz in Ars Technica. “Research scientist and neural network goofball Janelle Shane took the wondering a step further. Shane decided to train a neural network to generate new paint colors, complete with appropriate names. The results are possibly the greatest work of artificial intelligence I've seen to date.” They include Bank Butt (a lavender-mauve), Grass Bat (dusty rose), Stoner Blue (grayish), and these winners:

Image via Adweek

For more on color naming through the centuries, see my Visual Thesaurus column, “Where Have All the Ordinary Color Names Gone?”

May linkfest

Should you spend $1.5 million on a domain? Almost certainly not. As A Hundred Monkeys puts it: “While your emotions should guide you in naming dogs, kids, and boats, they need to take a back seat while you mull over dropping seven figures on a domain.”

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An illustrated glossary of typography terms. (Hat tip: Glen Turpin.)

From Canva.

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September linkfest

What if business jargon were made literal and tangible? Artists Isabel + Helen take on that challenge with A Load of Jargon, an installation opening tomorrow at The Conran Shop in London’s Chelsea district. The exhibit turns five buzzwords – “thinking cap,” “big idea,” “next steps,” “easy win,” and “going viral” into visual puns. There’s a public-health imperative behind the humor, notes FastCo Design in a story about the show: “[C]orporate speak isn't just funny sounding (and fuzzy in meaning)—it actually can make you less intelligent.” (Hat tip: Silicon Valley Speak.)

“Next Steps”

A haunting yarn

I don’t knit, but that hasn’t stopped me from lurking around the Etsy shop of a German merchant called DyeForYarn. The pun, though forced, is fitting. Just take a look at the macabre names bestowed on many of the colors.

It’s Really Dead, Dead Walnut Wood, Black Hole, Gray Which Must Not Be Named. (“OOAK” stands for “one of a kind.”)

March linkfest

Tuscan chicken, Tuscan toilets, Tuscan hummus: What exactly does Tuscan mean, anyway? (The New Yorker)

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How do nouns become verbs? Why are we OK with buttering our bread or boycotting a business, but clench our teeth at impacting and efforting? (JStor Daily) More on how branding weirds language (by me).

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And 1 extra grammatical error than Original Ready Crust too. pic.twitter.com/uAT87Bw5LV

— Jonathon Owen (@ArrantPedantry) March 14, 2016

 

 

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A 12-stanza poem composed entirely from the titles of SXSW panels.

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Fashion Week: Short Takes

The Seattle boutique Totokaelo – which since 2003 has championed avant-garde Japanese and European fashion in a city better known for flannel and anoraks – recently opened a five-story, 8,400-square-foot outpost in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. “Totokaelo” may appear to be borrowed from the Chinook language, but in fact it’s a corruption of Latin words that translate to “the sky’s the limit,” a motto that applies to many of the prices. The New York Times says the name is pronounced TOH-toh-KYE-yo,

Issey Miyake dress from Totokaelo.

September Linkfest

Jeans-maker Wrangler doesn’t want you to go Wrongler.

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Canadian retailer Kit and Ace – see my post about the company name here – is adding coffee shops to its boutiques: The first Sorry Coffee opens tomorrow in Toronto. “Sorry” can mean “worthless” or “inferior,” but here it’s “an attempt to poke fun at Canadians — a winking nod to the quick-to-apologize stereotype,” co-founder J.J. Wilson told the Star. Be sure to pronounce it the Canadian way: SORE-ee.

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August Linkfest

“Gen Z” is a lazy name, says the BridgeWorks consulting firm, which wants to replace it with “GenEdge.”

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You say Zomato, I say Zulily: The Name Inspector has been wondering about the Z-substitution trend in company naming.

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The Australian bird known as the Bell Miner doesn’t mine anything, and it doesn’t feed on bell-shaped substances. Spicks & Specks explores the fascinating false etymology. (Via Language Hat.)

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A track called “Worth It” from the girl group Fifth Harmony has been the summer’s surprise hit. Sonia Saraiya traces the cultural history of the “I’m worth it” affirmation, from L’Oreal advertising onward. (Bonus link: Read my 2013 column for the Visual Thesaurus about “I’m worth it” and “You deserve a break today.”) 

 

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How do you translate a colloquial, nonliteral expression like Trainwreck—the title of the new Amy Schumer feature film—into non-English languages? IMDb has a list of global akas; Mashable has helpfully re-translated some of them. (Not included in the Mashable list: Y de repente tú (“And suddenly you”), probably the most romantically inclined of the bunch. In France, by the way, the official title is Crazy Amy—yes, in English.

 

Translation of the French Canadian title, Cas désespéré.

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Egotarian, Tinderella, ghosting, and other new words Mike Pope has recently encountered. “I apologize in advance that a lot of these terms are unpleasant,” he adds.

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Seriously, Spellcheck? 

 

(Via James Harbeck.)

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Three guys were watching HBO’s “Silicon Valley” when it occurred to them to create a dictionary of jargon used on the show. The result is Silicon Valley Dictionary, where you’ll find definitions for terms like This changes everything (“Nothing has changed. Pure marketing”) and Awesome journey (“used when a startup has failed”).

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The New Devil’s Dictionary is a jaundiced update of Ambrose Bierce’s famous 1906 lexicon. Sample definition: “war on drugs (n.): The noble enterprise of preserving the sanctity of alcoholism.”

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And speaking of alcohol: Bianca Bosker reports for the New Yorker on “the state of modern winespeak” and “the nearly decade-long crusade against overwrought and unreliable flavor descriptions.”

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More on this theme: Did you know that there is a color called Drunk-Tank Pink? From Mental Floss, 19 colors you’ve probably never heard of. (Bonus link: Read my 2011 column for the Visual Thesaurus, “Where Have All the Ordinary Color Names Gone?”

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What can you buy at a Canadian homo store? What was 7-Eleven’s original name? The lore and lingo of convenience stores, presented by Wordnik’s Angela Tung.

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Politico: Donald Trump talks like a third-grader! Language Log: Hold on just a minute there!

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And for you fans of swears and swearing, I have a new post on Strong Language about “shit happens” and its many variants.