Fritinancy

Fun, Funner, Funnest

Here we go again.

 

 

“Get in the funnest sport there is.”

 

Ten industry partners, including the youth-sports organization USA Swimming and several swimsuit manufacturers, are collaborating on a summer-long campaign to encourage kids to join a swim club or team—in other words, to view swimming as a sport instead of a grimly utilitarian anti-drowning measure.

The campaign includes a series of promotional spots featuring kids having fun and showing off. In a column about the ads, the New York Times’s Andrew Adam Newman wrote:

The spots direct viewers to a website for the effort, SwimToday.org, and promote a hashtag that will not endear the organization to English teachers, #funnestsport.

It’s not the first time funnest (or funner, for that matter) has pushed peevers’ buttons. Back in 2008, Apple described a new iPod Touch as “the funnest iPod ever,” and “people all over the Internet freaked out,” wrote Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty. Ben Zimmer devoted a Visual Thesaurus column to funner and funnest, affirming that they are “real words,” albeit “nonstandard, colloquial, informal” ones. He provided historical perspective:

Why are reactions so strong against funner and funnest? Plain old fun has always gotten something of a bad rap: back in 1755, Samuel Johnson called it “a low cant word,” meaning that it was jargon from the underworld. Over the centuries, the reputation of fun has been rehabilitated, but only as a noun. Many usage guides still state bluntly that fun is a noun and not an adjective. But it's a plain fact that fun has increasingly been treated as an adjective by modern English speakers, even among those who object to adding the comparative and superlative suffixes.

In other words, most people today won’t protest if you say “The party was fun.” (In his new book Bad Language, which I wrote about earlier this week, Ammon Shea notes that fun began to be used as an adjective in the middle of the 19th century.) Still, “creeping ‘adjectivization’ can sometimes only go so far,” Zimmer observed:

Adding -er or -est is the most in-your-face way to flag a word as an adjective, since there’s no possible way of connecting it back to the original noun sense. That’s a bridge too far for many English speakers. But for a lot of people born in the last thirty or forty years, especially in the United States, there's nothing objectionable about funner or funnest, at least in informal usage. In another thirty or forty years, these words might even be considered acceptable in standard written English.

The argument failed to convince some of his readers. “I refuse to allow advertising to dictate the evolution of the language,” wrote one commenter. Funner is “gut-clenchingly awful,” protested another.

In the six years since that column was published, inventive comparatives and superlatives have flourished in ad copy. I’ve written about some of them: closerer and deliciouser, freshershist and Maker’s-er, goodest and funner-er. So why does funnest get singled out for special opprobrium?

@Fritinancy @andrewanewman @SwimToday #funnestsport Hmm....Why not #mostfunsport or #favoritesport. Those would trend nicely too.

— Karen Carlo (@kcarlotwentysix) July 30, 2014

OK, Karen. Fixed it.

“Which sounds the most fun to you?” Some peevers will say it’s still wrong, all wrong—that there should be a “like” after “should,” or that fun cannot, should not, must not ever be an adjective. Ammon Shea sums up the objections to fun as a noun like this: “If you try to use it adjectivally you might as well say ‘that was so enjoyment.’”

 

Something similar has been occurring, over roughly the same period of time, with stupider and stupidest. Ammon Shea devotes six pages in Bad Language to the debate over the status of stupider, which detractors insist is “not a real word.” Shea casts a rational eye. “In some cases,” he writes, “two-syllable adjectives can be modified with -er and -est, and in some cases they cannot—it depends largely on how the word ends. Those that end with a vowel, or a vowel sound (such as yellow or fancy), tend to be fine with -er and -est.”

And, he adds, “We did not used to be so worried about tacking –er and –est endings onto words. … Shakespeare was fond of inflecting adjectives in a way that would make a present-day English teacher burble, using honourablest, ancienter, eminentest, famousest, delectablest, and many such others.”

To return to the SwimToday hashtag, I vote in favor. It fits the subject: it sounds like what a kid having fun would say. (Linguists would say it’s in the appropriate register.) In fact, if I were the copywriter on that cannonball ad I’d swap out “which sounds most fun” for “which sounds funnest.” It’s just naturaler.

Besides, school’s out. Let’s relax the rules!

But even if you disagree, take heart: funnest is not evidence that the English language is headed for fiery doom. I’ll let Ammon Shea have the last word:

You can use funner and funnest, but you should bear in mind that anyone who chastises you for this use is unlikely to be interested in hearing your explanation for why it should be acceptable. These words will grate on the ears of many for some while to come. The process of an acceptable usage becoming unacceptable can be a long one, and the reverse process is true as well.

See you in the water.

Weeklier

The top half of a full-page New Yorker ad:

 

“Just like the nightly news. Only weeklier.”

 

“Last Week Tonight,” a new half-hour satirical show, premieres Sunday, April 27, at 11 p.m. on HBO. Could this be the reincarnation of “That Was the Week That Was,” only 21st-centuryer?

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More neo-comparatives (sharperer, huge-ier, mobiler, funner-er, Maker’s-er, etc.) here.

Follow-ups

Some stuff I’ve seen recently that reminds me of stuff I’ve written about previously:

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X & Y names: Tyler Doyle of A Hundred Monkeys notes the rise of “the blank-and-blank restaurant” in the Bay Area: Fish & Farm, Flour + Water, Box and Bells, Bourbon and Beef, et al. I wrote in 2010 about “X + Y restaurants,” and I have a Pinterest board of X & Y retail names (59 and counting!). 

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Heroes:  Quidsi, the parent company of a clutch of e-tailers (Diapers.com, Soap.com, Look.com, et al.), thinks very highly of its workforce and “culture.” Its employees aren’t just model citizens. They aren’t merely heroes. They’re superheroes! With … superpowers?

 

Quidsi: Latin for “what if.”

 

I wrote about “hero” worship for the Visual Thesaurus in September 2013; I published follow-ups in October 2013 and earlier this month.

By the way, for an interesting take on “our culture” as a code word to screen out older (i.e., over 30) job applicants, see “The Brutal Ageism of Tech” in the New Republic.

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Not your close relative’s X: Intacct, a “cloud accounting company,” wants you to know it ain’t no dinosaur.

 

“This ain’t your grandpa’s financial system.”

 

Earlier posts about “Not your close relative’s X” here and here.

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Super-comparatives: Harry’s—cute name for a shaving company—isn’t just sharp. Or sharper. It’s sharperer. And less expensiver. Clever branding or risky linguistic overreach?

 

Note the apostrophe on the razor handle.

All the self-consciously hip brands are doing it, of course. Here’s a promo for ABC’s “Revenge”; the tagline is “Later. Sexier. Revengier.” 

 

 

Hat tip to Ben Zimmer for the video link.

See my previous posts on closerer and deliciouser, Maker’s-er, funner-er, gooderest, creamier-er-er, mobiler, and huge-ier (et al.).

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Food portmanteaus: Taco Bell is testing a quesarito (a hybrid quesadilla/burrito), which will come as old news to Chipotle customers. The owners of a couple of Shoprite markets in New Jersey claim to have invented the donnoli (hybrid donut/cannoli).  At the Donut Fest in Chicago back in January, an NPR reporter tasted a doughscuit (“an impossible mix of doughnut-fried sweetness and crumbly biscuitness”) And the Portland, Maine, bakery Little Bigs got slapped down in its attempt to sell a cronut imitation as a crauxnut. Little Bigs asked customers to suggest a new name. The winner: C&D (for “cease and desist”).

And this just in: The New York Times reports on the cragel (croissant + bagel), the mallomac (Mallomar + macaron), the scuffin (scone + muffin), and other hybrid baked goods.

For more food mashups, see my most recent post about the “frissant.”

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Caps and consonants: Yep, still a THNG! DSPTCH sells camera straps, bags, and related accessories in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood. Or is that DGPTCH?

 

Meanwhile, Japanese retail giant Uniqlo has launched SPRZ NY, “a new global project where art and fashion meet, creating something magical.”

 

Spores? Spritz? Something Preternaturally Random and Zany? Nope, nope, nope. Surprise!

More retail vowellessness here, here, here, and here. And here’s my 2012 post about vowelless restaurant names.

Language-ier!

Thanks to reader Steve Hall for bringing to my attention another advertiser playing the faux-comparative/superlative game: the golf-club maker TaylorMade. A new spot, Steve writes, has been in heavy rotation during ESPN’s coverage of the 2013 Masters Golf Tournament.

 

 

I admit I don’t understand why a golf club would be called RocketBallz. (The name of another TaylorMade club, RocketBladez, makes more sense.) But that’s just one of the many, many things about golf I shall never understand. For example, who are the guys in the ad? Advertising logic tells us they are famous golfers who are instantly recognizable to fans; to this viewer, however, they’re just a bunch of bad actors in dorky outfits.

I am somewhat more clueful about the ad’s language, which riffs on the comparative suffix “-ier.” In the space of 30 seconds we’re treated to huge-ier, smash-ier, long-ier, so-sweet-ier, money-ier (that’s “money” as in “so money,” as in Swingers), nothing-on-that-ier, way-better-ier, quieter-ier, good-to-be-you-ier, and, of course, RocketBallz-ier, a play on “ballsy.”

It gets suffix-ier: TaylorMade is using the #ier hashtag to identify and, um, “socialize” the campaign. From the TaylorMade Tour blog:

To help celebrate the official Tour launch of the RBZ [RocketBallz] Stage 2 fairway woods and Rescues, every TaylorMade pro competing in this week’s WGC Cadillac Championship will be using a new special edition staff bag featuring an “IER” panel – their names, plus IER – as well as wearing hats and visors with the hashtag #IER on the front of the hats.

I’m aware of at least two other brands that have created ad campaigns built around the “-ier” suffix: Perrier and Napier. In both of those cases, the connection between the brand names and the ad copy – which used real adjectives like “riskier” and “snakier,” not invented ones – felt authentic and boosted the brands’ memorability. It’s harder to make a connection between “good-to-be-you-ier” and RocketBallz. (Commenter Steve Hall remembered the advertiser as Callaway, a TaylorMade competitor!)

Other observations:

• TaylorMade uses a clumsy “X Just Got Y” sloganclone toward the end of the spot: “Our longest just got longest-ier.” (More “X Just Got Y” examples here, here, and here.)
• The hip-hop-inspired Z-plural of RocketBallz and RocketBladez was already old news when I first wrote about it in 2006. Which means it probably still sounds edgy and “urban” to the golf crowd.

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Read my previous golf posts: “The Smaller the Ball” and “How to Name a Golf Course.”

Invented Comparative Watch: Mobiler

No, not someone who lives in Mobile, Alabama. It’s another spin of the faux-comparative-maker machine.

 

“The Mobile Phone Just Got Mobiler.” Ad for Delta mobile app, back cover, The Atlantic, April 2013.

 

This particular ad is the only one I’ve seen that uses word play; other ads for the mobile app use a straightforward benefit approach (and depict the QR code that’s the whole point of the pitch). It’s always a little unsettling when an advertiser code-switches within a campaign.

Previously in Invented Comparative Watch: worldwider, Maker’s-er, deliciouser, funner-er.

One Who Readers

Last week Google announced that it’s pulling the plug on Google Reader, which for years has allowed people like me to subscribe to, organize, and quickly scan dozens or even hundreds of blogs and websites with RSS feeds. “While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined,” was the summary judgment. Cue gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.

I recall going through a similar period of mourning a few years ago when Bloglines shut down. After I made the switch to Google Reader I figured I was safe, which proves how little I know about capitalism and its discontents. Now, like the rest of the loyal followers, I’m searching for a Google Reader replacement. Suggestions welcome.*

In the meantime some eager minion at Prismatic noticed my public jeremiad and solicited my business via tweet. Here’s what I saw when I clicked the link:

 

Hey there, Prismatic: You’re missing a comma after “Hey there.”

 

Prismatic isn’t what I’m looking for – I want lists and folders, not a newspaper layout – but I do admire “Readerer.” I’ve written about other -erers – funnerer, gooderer, creamier-er, closerer, Maker’s-er, dumberer, et al. – but “Readerer” is the first agentive -erer that’s caught my attention.

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* Non-iOS only, please.

Let's Have Another-er

My post earlier this week about Hipmunk’s “funner-er” ad prompted a couple of readers to contribute other examples of super-comparative coinages in advertising.

From HildebrandBurke, a new Twitter friend, I learned about KFC Australia’s recent “Goodest Get Together” promotion, an extension of the international “So Good” slogan. The agency, Ogilvy, went a little nuts inventing new words for this explanatory video:

 

 

“You simply take a good thing, emgooden it, and voilà—you’ve made it gooderer, as in ‘That’s the gooderest thing I’ve ever tasted!’”

Yeah, it’s pretty silly*, but even sillier (sillierest?) is the utter absence of brand referents. No food, no restaurants, no happy customers—what’s the deal? And why should I care?

Here in the U.S., reader Jenne reported seeing a store promotion that used the slogan “Make it creamier-er-er.” “Sadly,” Jenne wrote, “this explosion of ‘er’ did not make me remember what the product was.”

It was Kraft Natural Shredded Cheese.  

 

Now, I understand that advertisers are constantly looking for new ways to say “superlative.” And I certainly don’t have a problem with wordplay and word invention. But I’m tired of the copycatting. When Android used “funner-er” back in 2008, it got attention. Then, in 2010, a bunch of companies hopped on the bandwagon: BlackBerry used “closer-er,” Captain Morgan used “delicious-er,” and Old Spice coined “fresherer” and “freshershist” [sic!]. Last year Maker’s Mark tried to sell us on “Maker’s-er” and United Airlines flew “worldwider.” Now Hipmunk is recycling “funner-er.”

It’s getting, shall we say, tedious-er.

Sticking an -er or an -est on an adjective doesn’t tell me you’re creative. It’s no longer a way to stand out from the competition. All it says is that you’re too lazy to do some truly original thinking about what your brand means.

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* I give partial credit to “emgooden,” but it’s not as good as  “embiggen,” whose coinage is usually attributed to “Simpsons” writer Dan Greaney, who used it in a 1996 episode. In fact, the first citation for “embiggen” appeared in 1884.

Are We Having Funner-er Yet?

Something about this Hipmunk ad seemed familiar to me.

San Francisco Muni bus, May 20, 2012.

Then I remembered: Back in 2008 Google introduced its first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1. The ad for the phone was, as Ben Zimmer wrote for Language Log, “packed with jocular comparative adjectives: smarterer, connecteder, funnerer.” Ben went on:

This isn’t just an homage to Dumb and Dumberer, the even more dim-witted sequel to Dumb and Dumber. Rather, it’s being recognized by many in the techie community as a pointed jab at Apple honcho Steve Jobs, who recently enthused about “the funnest iPod ever.”

Jobs died last year, the iPod Touch website no longer includes a reference to “funnest” (it now says “It has fun written all over it”), and the G1 has evolved into the G2X. But “funner-er” lives on at Hipmunk, the San Francisco startup founded in 2010—a generation removed, in tech years, from that 2008 Android campaign.

You may be wondering about the Hipmunk name. Here’s a story about it from TechCrunch, reproduced verbatim with the usual caveat about TechCrunch’s slack writing and editing:

Like many startups in today’s Silicon Valley*, [co-founder Adam] Goldstein was struggling to find an apropo domain that was topical and more importantly, available. After dangerously flirting with (and even purchasing) domains like BouncePounce.com and Trot.me, Goldstein’s girlfriend** told him to identify a cute mammal that he could build a brand around. Hipmunk fit the bill.

You’ll notice something missing from this origin story: an explanation of how Chipmunk (I presume) became Hipmunk. I gather that Chipmunk.com wasn’t available and (“more importantly”) no one was willing to part with cash for (a) domain negotiations or (b) professional naming services. Or maybe the founders just wanted to emphasize their hipness. A follow-up question from the reporter would have been helpful.

I wrote about another super-comparative coinage—“Maker’s-er,” from Maker’s Mark—in a September 2011 post.

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* Hipmunk is in San Francisco, not Silicon Valley. Different area code, more fog, etc., etc.

** I’m sorry to keep sticking it to TechCrunch, but who was doing the dangerous flirting and purchasing—Goldstein or his girlfriend? Dangling modifiers: use at your own (and your readers’) peril.

To -er Is Human

You can’t blame Kentucky distillery Maker’s Mark for wanting to pile on the superlatives in an ad for Maker’s 46, the company’s first new bourbon in more than half a century. “Bigger, “bolder,” “spicier”—sure. But “Maker’s-er”? Er … what’s up with that?

 

Financial District, San Francisco, Sept. 10, 2011.

To me, “Maker’s-er” sounds like something you might slur to the bartender on your way to being 46ed—sorry, 86ed—from the saloon. It looks peculiar, too, because of the possessive -’s butting heads, or tails, with the comparative -er. Of course, “peculiar-looking-and-sounding” can be a good thing if it enhances memorability—or even, best of all possible worlds, becomes a meme.

The trouble is, this particular meme isn’t new or original. Like it or not, “Maker’s-er” follows a comparative-and-superlative-coining trend that’s been sputtering along for a few years. Back in 2008, Ben Zimmer wrote a Language Log post about an Android campaign that invented connecteder, smarterer, and funnerer. In July 2010 I wrote about closerer (in an ad for BlackBerry Messenger) and deliciouser (in a campaign for Captain Morgan Lime Bite). And in March of this year Ben Zimmer wrote in the Visual Thesaurus about a TV spot for the laundry detergent Gain that caused a little fuss with its use of gooder. Phrases such as “the decay of our youth” were mobilized.

Oddest of all was Old Spice’s 2010 commercial for “new fresh scents” described as fresh, fresher, freshest, and freshershist. That’s right—not “fresherest” but freshershist. You can now look it up in Urban Dictionary, which means at least a couple of people found it worth preserving. (Not so much the accompanying slogan: “Where Freshness Smells From.”)

But back to Maker’s 46, which has tinkered with the coin-a-comparative formula by appending -er to its own brand name rather than to some other adjective. (Brand names are adjectives, legally speaking.*) The new bourbon has gotten some good reviews (Alcohology: “a body matured like Sophia Loren in her late 30’s”; Drink Spirits: “builds on the excellent foundation of Maker’s Mark and represents a big step forward”); it retails for $35 to $40 for a 750ml bottle. Where, I wondered, did the name come from? The number of years it took to develop the bourbon? No. Alcoholic proof? Nope. (It’s 94, or 47 percent alcohol by volume.) The number of some rural route in Loretto, Kentucky, where Maker’s Mark is located? No again. Here with the answer is an Associated Press story about the brand’s 2010 release:

The product’s name is a tip of the cap to the brand’s barrel maker and one of its top executives, who came up with the unique idea of using seared French oak planks inside the barrel to draw out more flavors. The product’s name reflects the profile number attached to the process.

UPDATE: Thanks to commenter Nate Davis for the link to Clueless in Boston and “Makah’s Maahk.” 

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* Actually, they’re attributive modifiers. See this 2004 Language Log post by linguist Geoffrey Pullum. The gist: “Attributive modifiers are nearly always optional, so if you have dutifully used your trademarks as attributive modifiers throughout, you should find that when you leave the trademark words out, things still make sense without any change in the grammatical structure of what is said.” Hat tip: Ben Zimmer.

Curiouser and Curiouser

Advertising has always trafficked in superlatives. Now they’re getting superlativer.

A BART station ad for BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

The design of this poster is striking, but the slogan rings false. I don’t object on principle to the invented “closerer,” but “closer friends” made me jump to “loser friends” and then to the immortal “Coffee’s for closers only.”

And what’s going on in this Captain Morgan ad?

Update, September 2011: The video has been pulled down. Read about the campaign.

“Beer . . . it’s delicious,” purrs the Spanish-accented voiceover. “But could it be deliciouser?” The answer is “jess,” of course.* In the few seconds remaining, the spot also introduces “ridiculicious” and “brohemoth.” (Another spot in the series uses “brochacho,” a blend of “bro” and “muchacho.” Bro- is the man-word prefix du jour.)

Closerer? Deliciouser? Sounds like Dumb and Dumberer to me.

 

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* You could give yourself insomnia speculating why a rum brand named for a Welsh pirate is pitching Beer Helper in a comic-Spanglish accent.

Hat tip for the Captain Morgan ads to Ben Zimmer of Visual Thesaurus.

(The title of this post is borrowed, of course, from Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 2.)