Fritinancy

Follow-Ups

New sightings in categories I’ve written about previously:

*

“Plus.”

Edward Banatt (@ArmaVirumque) recently tweeted a photo of a verbified “plus” he’d seen in the wild:

The menu is from the fast-casual restaurant chain Chili’s, which uses “Plus Up Your Steak” throughout the franchise.

Commercial verbifying of “plus” began at least 70 years ago with Walt Disney; “plus up” has a specific, non-Chili’s meaning in governmental budget negotiations. Read more.

*

“Hero.”

Camera company GoPro has been advertising its new Hero3 models. (I’d missed the Hero1 and Hero2, which may not have been promoted as aggressively.) The company’s tagline is “Be a Hero,” which is slightly awkward. (“I am a camera”?) Tip: Never use your product name generically.

The Einstein Noah Restaurant Group, maker of Noah’s bagels, exhorts customers to “Be the Office Hero”:

 

Also spotted: TradeHero, a stock-trading app; and the unrelated Screenhero, “an app that turns any Mac or PC into a completely collaborative environment,” according to a TechCrunch report.

Read more about “hero” worship in branding.

*

Comparatives.

You know about Dumberer. Now there’s Smarterer: “over 900 crowdsourced assessments tests to help thousands of recruiters and job seekers around the world quantify any skill in minutes.”

More neo-comparatives here, here, here, here, and here.

*

“Zen.”

I recently encountered the term “annoyvation,” one of whose definitions is “an innovation born of a small annoyance.” TicketZen fits into this category. As its home page puts it, “Parking tickets suck. Paying them doesn’t have to.” (Good idea, fuzzy syntax, what with those confusing -ings.)

For more on the Zen of brand naming, see my Pinterest board and “Zen and the Art of Startup Naming” in Bloomberg Businessweek, in which I’m quoted.

*

“ -Licious.”

Jessica wrote in her Beauty Marks blog about Samplicio.us (“Simply Better Surveys”). Mr. Verb wrote about “the hilariously named” Englicious, which “aims to be a complete online resource for teaching English grammar in UK secondary schools.” And scientist/educator Marc D. Hauser’s new book about human cruelty is called Evilicious.

More -licious names here (and follow the link in that post for still more -liciousness).

*

Dictionary definitions.

Last week I received an email from Democrats.org with the gratuitously syllabified “com•pro•mise (v.)” in the subject line.

 

And yet in both the featured quote and the call to action “compromise” is a noun.

 

 

 

Read more about dictionary definitions in advertising and branding in my Visual Thesaurus column “Branding by Definition.”

In the Wild: Slushify

Spotted at Bed Bath & Beyond: a new -ify coinage.

I believe this design template is called Everything But the Unicorn.

 

The product’s name is Slushy Magic – the package contains “magic cubes” (filled with saline solution or gel, possibly) and a “Slushy Magic Cup” – but the stated benefit is slushification. Can you slushify your Zenify? Why, yes, you can!

But wait, the suffixifying fun has just started! As the Slushy Magic product video says, “It’s slush-a-licious!”

If you think that’s over-the-top, read this loopy Amazon review:

Upon discovering this vast beauty located in a not-so-local WalGreens, my happiness meter jumped from “Oh gawd, I need tampons” to “HULLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SLUSHIES” (no I did not forget my lady things, I just happened to possibly mistakenly pick up cotton balls and twine). Of course, being the impatient person I am, I immediately ripped open that beautiful cyan blue box, with the happy children on the front, their precious cherub faces, gleaming at me with their cheery smiles as if to say, “Come to my slushy fountain, drink upon the abrosia [sic] of the Gods!”. In my exuberance, I did happen to endure the brutal, stabbing wound of a papercut, and some may or may not have gotten on the cup. It is alright, we all need more iron in our diets. Joyfully, I threw the saline-filled-whatevers into the freezer in wait for my delicious slushy shakin’ morning!

Take it from me: She’s just getting warmed up.

Somewhat related: Robert Lane Greene on the nounification of adjectives.

Bonus vocabulary fun: The OED says slush (“partially melted snow or ice; soft mud; food of a watery consistency; rubbishy discourse or literature”) is of “doubtful” origin. Slush fund (“a fund used to buy luxuries or to bribe”) originated in the 1830s in the U.S. Navy. The drink known as slushy goes by many other names, including Hawaiian ice, shave(d) ice, snow cone, and snowball. And that’s just in the U.S.; see this Wikipedia entry for slushy synonyms around the world.

May Linkfest

Newt Gingrich—remember when he ran for president and talked about building bases on the moon?—now appears to be campaigning for Andy Rooney’s old slot on “60 Minutes.” “We’re really puzzled,” he tells his YouTube audience, a look of grave concern furrowing his brow, a familiar-looking device in his hand. “We spent weeks [!] trying to figure out whaddya call this.” This is what you and I call a cell phone or a mobile phone or a smartphone, but that doesn’t satisfy Gingrich. He’s soliciting new, more precise names for the gizmo he used to call “a handheld computer.” Commenters have been gleefully obliging; my favorite nominations are Talkie-Viewie (maybe “TV” for short?), roundcorner-camera-communicati­ons-email-apps-thingy, iMoon, and horseless telephone. (Via TechCrunch.)

Meanwhile, linguist Geoffrey Pullum, posting at Language Log, has “an inkling of what moved Gingrich to embark on his piece of burbling.” It’s all about the naïve lexical global Whorfianism, obviously.

*

I caught this a few days too late for Underwear Week but can’t resist sharing it anyway. Triumph, the Swiss bra company, last week introduced its concept bra of the year at a Tokyo press conference. The theme: “branomics,” “a playful take on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ‘three-arrow’ economic revival plan,” according to Reuters. “We hope that as the Japanese economy grows, we can also help bust sizes to get bigger,” said a Triumph spokeswoman. (Via The 3% Conference.)

Image via AdFreak. Note arrows.

*

Merriam-Webster, the dictionary company, is having a photography contest for word lovers that looks like a lot of fun. Deadline for submissions: May 26. (Via Emily Brewster.)

*

Speaking of photography, here’s a pop song dedicated to stock photo clichés: “groom on phone with angry wife,” “bearded man is looking grave,” “black and white handshake,” and many more. (Via Igor blog.)

*

And speaking of photography and contests, GeoGuessr combines street-view photos with a test of your geographical knowledge. Challenging and addictive. (Via PopeHat.)

*

Maps! I love ’em. And I especially love maps that combine geography, history, biography, and name lore, like this interactive map of San Francisco place names, developed by Noah Veltman.

*

This advice from Baby Name Wizard about overcoming naming remorse works for company and product naming, too.

*

Andris Pone of Coin Branding, in Toronto, applauds Frogbox, a “green” moving company in more than one sense. It’s a great brand story, Andris writes: “The Frogbox positioning statement, From one pad to another, exemplifies the message of ease by creating a promise (completely delivered on) that one can move from their old home to their new one with all the difficulty of a hop.”

*

Here’s a nifty infographic on how corporate logos evolve.

*

Corporate buzzword-wise, “delight” is shaping up to be the new “passion.” (Via MJF.)

*

You’ll need to subscribe to Visual Thesaurus to read Mike Pope’s excellent column, “What’s in a -Nym?”, which goes beyond antonyms and synonyms to more obscure and fascinating terms like contranym, retronym, and backronym. But of course you’re already a subscriber.

*

From Idibon, a language-data company: how to name a racehorse.

*

Finally, in honor of the return of the cicadas to the eastern U.S., here’s a reprise of my plug for Cicada-licious: Cooking and Enjoying Periodical Cicadas, the cicada cookbook produced by the University of Maryland cicadamaniacs (their term). Yes, I have a well-documented fondness for -licious names.

*

I also can’t resist an opportunity to combine entomology, etymology, and a plug for Fritinancy. As language maven Ben Zimmer—my editor at Visual Thesaurus—observed in an email to me:

I noticed that the first OED cite for “fritin(i)ancy” is from Sir Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica, talking about cicadas. (In this edition, it’s actually “fritinnitus.”) Johnson defined “fritinancy” as “the scream of an insect, as the cricket or cicada” (citing Browne) and subsequent dictionaries used similar definitions. (Johnson didn’t define “cicada,” oddly enough.)

My original post about Fritinancy cited Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), which mentioned crickets but not cicadas. The post was written before I had access to the OED online, a weak defense but the one I’m sticking with.

In other cicada news, linguist Arnold Zwicky has written about “swarmageddon” and “cicadapocalypse,” and science writer Carl Zimmer, brother of Ben, examined the remarkable life cycle of this long-lived insect. Carl Z’s editors at the Times consulted with Ben Z to come up with a pronunciation guide: “cicadas (usually pronounced sih-KAY-duhz).”

But, Ben told me, “there are plenty of people who pronounce it KAH, and many dictionaries give it as an acceptable alternate. I don’t have a good sense of the regional distribution of the two pronunciations, though.”

Perhaps Fritinancy’s readers can help.

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.

Names in the Wild: Balboa Island

While I was in Southern California last week I made a day trip to Balboa Island, a little piece of paradise by the Pacific. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid, and a lot had changed.

 

 

Sinfulicious sets the bar for “sinful” pretty low: “Over 200 yummy scents to choose from!” On the plus side of the ledger: another -licious name! And they claim to have a mixologist on the premises. (For lotions and potions, not for cocktails.)

The island is full of boutiques that sell resort-y clothing and tchotchkes, like this one.

 

 

So nice they named it twice—or more. Is it Etc. Etc., Etc. Etc. Etc., Etcetera Etc., or Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. (as depicted)? All I can say for sure is that it reminded me of Yul Brynner in The King and I.

 

 

A couple of stores are, literally, frozen in time. The Original Frozen Banana, which has been on the island since 1945, may have been the inspiration for Bluth’s Original Frozen Banana on “Arrested Development.”

As we know, there’s always money in the banana stand.

Close-up of the running-bananas awning:

 

A competitor, Dad’s Original Frozen Banana, coexists just down the street. So much originality!

I liked the window sign.

I recommend the Balboa Bar dipped in chopped almonds.

Hey, Mister!

For your frittering pleasure: a Flickr set of “weird advertising characters” that’s a nostalgiafest, a kitschapalooza, and a bizarrorama. Step right up and see the seppuku-ing pig, the martini-sipping pink poodle, the shockingly un-PC Frito Bandito, the Doggie Diner doggie, the Chicken of the Sea mermaid, and much, much more.

Including, I’m happy to report, a trove of “mister” names and mascots.

 

Mr. Sketch water color markers. Credit: Waffle Whiffer. (Read my Visual Thesaurus column about other “sketch” trademarks!)

 

Mr. Chicken Plank. No idea what he was selling, but he had a companion called Miss Fish Fillet. Credit: Waffle Whiffer.

 

Mister Provolone, an Italian brand. Do you suppose he’s met Mister Baby? Credit: Zellaby.

 

Mr. Blobby marshmallows, a UK brand from the 1990s. They’re blobbilicious! Credit: Jason Liebig.

 

 

You could get blintzes at Mr. Perky’s! Tray liner, c. 1960s. Credit: Poptartsbox

Mr. Melon watermelon candy. Credit: Wafflewhiffer.

 

Mr. Contac, pill-head. Via Pinterest.

 

There’s also a quite charming but non-downloadable Mr. Pickle photo. And in the non-mister category, I’m awfully fond of Pump ’n’ Munch.

Via AdFreak.

Now with Even More Licious!

A couple of years ago I wrote a longish post about brand names and taglines built on -licious (Fergalicious, Picklelicious, Eco-licious, etc., etc.). I’d thought the trend was tapering off until I saw this new product:

Via The Impulsive Buy.

Jeff, who reviewed Wildlicious Wild! Fruit Fusion Pop-Tarts for The Impulsive Buy, says the name led him to expect the taste “to rival the KY Jelly Fire and Ice.” (I think Jeff meant Trojan Fire and Ice.) No luck: it’s just “a bit tart and not overly sweet.”

By the time a naming trend reaches a mass marketer like Kellogg’s, it’s safe to assume that it’s as good as dead. Or even deadlicious—which turns out to be the name of a blog devoted to “handmade rock ’n’ roll patisseries to die for.” “Patisseries” notwithstanding, don’t go there expecting pastry, or even Pop-Tarts.

Sandaliciousfication!

The -licious that bloom in the spring, tra-la!

Stealth-snapped at DSW on Powell Street in San Francisco, where a roving employee unsmilingly informed me I couldn't take photos. (Hah! Too late.)

Meanwhile, just a jalapeño's throw away, Chipotle Mexican Grill was creating some fanciful vocabulary of its own:

Jerseylicious

There's a new -licious* in town—"Jerseylicious," the "comedy docu-soap" that debuts tonight on the Style Network. New York Times television critic Neil Genzlinger calls the show "witless," and he doesn't spare the title:

Every state has its lowbrow elements; the Style folks should have made an effort to mask their lack of originality by trying a different state. “Texcessive,” perhaps. “Arizonerous.” “Illinoispollution.” “Alabimbos.” “Colora-doh!”

Why stop there? How about "Alaskanks," "Oregoniffs," "Floriduh," or "Pennsyl-you're-so-vania"?

And, naturally, "Idaho."

Let the record show that "Californication" has already been claimed.

__

More -liciousness here.

Linklicious Friday

Information and amusement for the weekend:

Manolo the Shoeblogger contemplates a pair of Burberry Tonal Check Perspex sandals and asks plaintively:

What does it mean? Tonal…Check…Perspex? It sounds less like something you would wear on your feets and more like the DARPA super secret squirrel project.

(N.B.: Perspex is a hard transparent plastic. And now it is I who must ask the rhetorical question: Four hundred ninety-five dollars for plastic shoes?) 

*

Let's get meta, shall we? This is the title of a typical incendiary blog post. Be sure to read the comments. (Via Kottke.)

*

Weirdest political-campaign commercial ever? Pretty sure it's this one for U.S. Senate candidate Carly "Carlyfornia" Fiorina, whose scandal-tainted tenure as HP's CEO is most charitably described as "tumultuous." The ... thing ... at 2:26 has caused the spot to be dubbed "Demon Sheep." And what's with the New Jersey-inflected voiceover? 

*

Super Bowl® bloggage: Trademark lawyer Martin Schwimmer writes in the Huffington Post about "Who Dat?", the New Orleans Saints, and the NFL, which sent out cease-and-desist letters "asserting ownership by the Saints by, among other trademarks, Who Dat." (The Saints, in case you hadn't heard, are playing in the Big Game® on Sunday.) Big mistake, Schwimmer writes:

 Seemingly every elected official in New Orleans defended the shirt sellers culminating with Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) (yes, that Senator Vitter) who wrote the NFL to indicate that he was printing up his own "Who Dat say we can't print WHO Dat" shirts.

Practice pointer: try to avoid situations where an alleged patron of prostitutes can take a holier-than-thou stance with regard to your client.

*

Sports fan or not, have a good weekend. Or, as linguist Arnold Zwicky writes, a chillaxious one.  "Chillaxious" is my new favorite word.