My latest post for Strong Language, the sweary blog about swearing, is about two sweary neologisms: enshittify and enshittification. Both were coined within the last year by journalist and author Cory Doctorow, who uses them to describe the current state of certain large internet platforms and e-commerce sites.
Read more about the history and morphology of enshittify and enshittification.
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For a couple of years I’ve been participating in a food-testing program in which I receive free, full-size “better-for-you” products in exchange for posting online reviews. Some of the products are hits: loved the Haven’s Kitchen sauces and the Cleveland Kitchen kosher dill pickles! (“Kitchen” shows up a lot in these names, possibly to evoke quaint kettles simmering on a bustling homemaker’s stove.) Others are misses: The less said about those packaged “soft-baked” cookies, and those parmesan crisps with the unpleasant aftertaste, the better.
Last week I trotted over to Whole Foods to redeem a coupon for a product from yet another kitchen: Primal Kitchen Buffalo Mayo with avocado oil.
This 17-ounce squeeze bottle was free with my coupon. Regular price: about $15. Hear my primal scream.
After I’d sampled it on some steamed broccoli—probably not the typical Buffalo Mayo use case, but I was working with what I had on hand—I dutifully went to the website to post my review. Everything was going fine until I reached this question:
“How was the flavor? ☐ Good balance of Buffalo and Mayo ☐ Too spicy ☐ Not spicy enough”
So, a couple of things here.
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There are two kinds of people: those for whom the American Dialect Society’s selection of -ussy (and the related ussification) as the 2022 word of the year comes as gratifying vindication; and those who are saying WTF? or words to that effect.
I admit it: When the vote came down—no runoff required—on the evening of January 6, 2023, I was in the latter group.
2022 was, after all, the year of Dobbs, of AI, of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, of the Chinese Olympics, of the Qatari World Cup, of a major breakthrough in fusion ignition. It was the year of the January 6 hearings, for crying out loud! The 200-odd attendees at the American Dialect Society session—a large percentage of them, if the past is any guide, linguistics graduate students or recent PhDs—mostly ignored those world-historic, linguistically productive phenomena in favor of a whimsical, Extremely Online, and slightly smutty word part.
The final ADS vote, by way of Kirby Conrod’s Twitter feed. “Rizz”—also new to me!—is a clipping of “charisma.”
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Something I hadn’t counted on when I plunged into blogging and then Twitter was how online connections could turn into real-life acquaintanceships—even friendships. By now, 16-plus years after I started blogging, I’ve met a number of internet pals: writers, name developers, linguists, and editors. When one of them accomplishes something special, I’m among the first to cheer.
Today I bring you news of new books by two internet friends. Huzzah!
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Most naming advice in the popular media makes me clutch my head in despair, but this Inc. article by Minda Zetlin is different. Zetlin interviewed experienced name developers Anthony Shore and David Placek—both of whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with—and their real-world examples are smart and helpful. “Avoid names that describe your product” and “Don’t fall in love with one name” are the first tips, and yes, you’ve heard them from me, too. (h/t trademark lawyer Ed Timberlake)
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Steer clear of negative words in your business name? Not necessarily. Read about how Calamityware got its name. (And read my own post on negative names with positive impact.)
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I will probably go to my grave insisting on the distinction between lay and lie, so I got a satisfied chortle out of this table of cat tenses, from a Duolingo chat page. (Via Language Log)
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Happy Festivus, the holiday for the rest of us! The traditional Airing of Grievances seems superfluous this year: we’ve been airing and grieving for most of 2020. So let us gather quietly—and virtually—around the traditionally unadorned Festivus pole and wish for feats of strength to get us through the season.
Festivus T-shirt from Snorg Tees. Read my previous Festivus posts.
Now let’s open some link-y presents!
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This month’s book recommendation is The Plague and I, published by Betty MacDonald in 1948. The book is a lightly fictionalized account of MacDonald’s nine-month stay in a Seattle tuberculosis sanatorium in the late 1930s, when TB was known as “the white plague”; there were no effective vaccines; and treatment entailed rigorous bedrest, hearty meals, and an occasional session of artificial pneumothorax, in which gas was injected into the pleural cavity. Survival was far from certain and recovery times were long: many of MacDonald’s fellow inpatients remained at the sanatorium for years.
Sounds grim, right? Here’s the thing: it’s a hoot. MacDonald is sadly overlooked now—she died in 1958—but she was one of the foremost comic writers of her era, and The Plague and I is sharply observed, un-self-pitying, and downright chipper. (One of the chapters is titled “I’m Cold and So Is the Attitude of the Staff.”) I guarantee it will make you feel much more upbeat about our own current predicament.
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On October 11, editor and blogger Mike Pope tweeted this photo of an ad for an in-store Starbucks in a Seattle supermarket.
“YES, PSLEASE.” Photo by Sabrina
As the small print clarifies, the PSL in PSLEASE refers to Pumpkin Spice Latte, the nigh-ubiquitous autumn beverage, and not, say, to Process Specification Language, Personal Seat License, Philadelphia Sports Leagues, Phoenix Senior Living*, or the Romanian semiautomatic rifle.
Responses to the tweet fell into four categories:
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My July column for the Visual Thesaurus is a review of Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, by Gretchen McCullough, resident linguist at Wired (among her many other distinctions). If you’ve ever wondered how a period (full stop) can be passive-aggressive, or how LOL evolved into lol, or how to express ~sarcasm~ online, you will hecking* enjoy this book. I certainly did.
There’s no paywall on this column, so read and share freely! And preorder the book—authors love preorders—before its publication date, July 23.
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* Hecking comes from an internet meme called Snek. Read the book to learn more.
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(Part of my Naming 101 series.)
A couple of years ago I published a post about naming objectives: what a name should or must communicate. Naming objectives are a key element of your written naming brief, and one of the foundations on which names are developed.
There’s another important foundation: naming criteria.* If objectives are about meaning, criteria are about everything else that goes into a name: spelling, sound, legal requirements, web addresses.
Here’s a checklist for your own naming criteria:
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