Fritinancy

On the Visual Thesaurus: A Very -Ery Story

I’ve been tracking -ery names for while – see my Pinterest board – and my discovery of Sonoma Brinery sent me down a productive rabbit hole, or holery, that I’ve chronicled in my latest column for the Visual Thesaurus.

Full access to the column is restricted to subscribers; here’s an excerpt:

Nouns ending in -ery (or -erie, the French spelling) first appeared in English +around 1300 as imports from French; the oldest include bribery, sorcery, drapery (cloth or textile fabrics), venery (the practice of hunting animals), and nunnery (a convent, although in the 16th century it took on the slang meaning of brothel – that’s the meaning Shakespeare had in mind when he had Hamlet tell Ophelia, “Get thee to a nunnery”). A very few -ery nouns came from Latin, most notably mystery from mysterium.

The French originals were mostly nouns denoting a place of business – boucherie (butchery), brasserie (brewery) – or a type of action, such as tromperie (deceit) or robbery. But once -ery sailed across the Channel, it began combining in independent and very English ways. As early as 1393, English speakers attached -ery to the Old English verb cook and created cookery, “the art or practice of cooking,” a noun that still survives, although more commonly in British English than American. Another Old English verb, fish, yielded fishery, “the business or occupation of catching fish.” In the 18th century, a group of -ery nouns cropped up to describe places where animals live: piggery, rookery, swannery, cattery.

Tromperie is now spelled trumpery.

Service with a shruggie

You’ve probably seen the emoticon, a stripped-down rendering of a half-smiling skeptic.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The symbol’s official name is shruggie (or, alternatively, smugshrug). In an appreciation published in The Awl in 2014, Kyle Chayka noted that it could be used to express nihilism or “bemused resignation,” and was even “a Zen-like tool to accept the chaos of universe.”

I’m seeing the shadow of a shruggie in a new generation of ads whose dominant feature is a copy-intensive combination of insolence and indifference. The ads are aimed at digital natives – people under 35 – yet appear in traditional non-digital media: print magazines, public transit. Their grim forerunner, now 18 months old, is the Fiverr campaign, which I wrote about last year, calling it “mean spirited”; the New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino went further and called it “dystopian.” The current crop is slightly less cynical but still snarky and smug with a hint of that existential shrug.

Word of the week: Feckless

Those of you with long memories will recall that this is the second time feckless has been a Fritinancy word of the week. The first occasion was in 2012, when U.S. Senator John McCain used feckless to describe President Obama’s foreign policy.

This time around, feckless found itself in hotter water.

Image by erokism via Flickr

Bullish

On a recent trip to Costco I bought a box of RXBAR protein bars, which contain several healthful ingredients, none of which, according to the package, is bullshit. Good to know!

 

 

From the RXBAR website:

Guys who are into CrossFit would never indulge in B.S.

 

As you probably know from my periodic appearances in Strong Language, the sweary blog about swearing, I’m constantly on the lookout for sweary brand names and slogans. When I saw “No B.S.” on the RXBAR box, I remembered a similarly frank promise made earlier this year by Everlane, the “radical transparency” retailer.

New name beat: Tushy

I’ll get into the whence and wherefore of this brand name in just a bit. But before I do, an observation: It’s never a good idea to pick a name for your company and its namesake product that is also the name of a widely promoted festish-y photo site. Needless to say, the founder of HelloTushy.com (the subject of this post) didn’t ask me about Tushy.com (the fetish-y one), or I wouldn’t be writing this preamble.

To be perfectly clear, this is the Tushy we’re talking about.

Tushy: “For people who poop.”

 

And if you’re averse to crude language, you may want to stop reading right now.

Word of the week: Shithole

It’s shaping up to be a shitty year, and I’m not talking about the weather or those ridiculous sleeves on women’s clothing.

So far we’ve seen shitpost anointed the digital word of the year by the American Dialect Society, and a list of “Shitty Media Men” making headlines when Harper’s announced plans to publish a story about it. Not to mention the shitty hits of 2017, shitburger, shit show, ripshit bonkers, and shit sandwich.

All that was prologue to the latest shit-storm: the revelation, in the Washington Post, followed by other media outlets, that President Trump on Thursday had attacked protections for immigrants from what he called “shithole countries” such as Haiti and El Salvador, as well as the entire continent of Africa.

 

“In the Hole,” by Anthony Russo.

  

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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November linkfest

Dictionary.com’s word of the year for 2017 is complicit. The selection is based on the number of online lookups, which spiked in March, when SNL featured a perfume ad parody; and in April, when Ivanka Trump said she didn’t know “what it means to be complicit.”

 

 

Collins Dictionary, based in London and Glasgow, got a head start on the WOTY competition in early November, selecting fake news over runners-up such as unicorn, echo chamber, and gig economy. (Related: My November 2016 post on fake.)

Word of the week: Blue Falcon

You’ll find the story behind this week’s word, blue falcon, over at Strong Language, the sweary blog about swearing. What does blue falcon have to do with swearing? A couple of hints: It’s a bit of coded military jargon that became a Twitter hashtag after an emotional speech delivered by White House Chief of Staff (and retired Marine general) John Kelly.  

 

 

 

Read about blue falcon.

July linkfest

Linguist Arnold Zwicky examines the “ostentatious euphemism” beat the snack out of, as seen in a recent Jack Link’s ad. I’ve written about ostentatious euphemisms myself – “Ship my pants,” “Look at the booking view,” “Do you give a cup?” – and am glad to know what to call them. 

 

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A linguist walks in a Mexican restaurant in southern Arizona – several of them, in fact – and takes note of the various kinds of Spanishes on the menu, from mock to minimal to weirdly translated.

 

Eater magazine published a five-part series on bad restaurant names, from bad puns to “distressingly sexual” to “crimes against language” to “just really bad.” Start with Part 1 and follow the links at the end to read about the others.