Fritinancy

Word of the week: Fig

This post was going to be a short riff on a line in that Inauguration poem by Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman—the line about the vine and the fig tree, which got me thinking about figs. Mmmm, figs. But one fig led to another, and next thing you know I was way down a figgy rabbit hole from which there was no escape. Go figure.

Word of the week: Intentional

Sometimes my words of the week are new to me—see respair, cottagecore, and hypodescent, to take three recent-ish examples—and sometimes they’re old words that I’ve started thinking about in new ways. Intentional (and its relatives intent, intention, intentionally, and intentionality) is one of those old-but-new words.

Two news stories in the last week got me started down this path, and then some ambient New Year’s musings pushed me down the rabbit hole.

Word of the week: Potter’s field

You’ve probably seen the grim photos of the mass burials of unclaimed COVID-19 victims on New York City’s Hart Island. According to a New York Times article published online on April 10, the city has “drastically” increased interments on the island, “to around 24 a day, as many as it would bury there in a week before the pandemic hit.”

This week’s word (or “lexical item,” as the linguists say) comes from the lede of that story:

Since the mid-1800s, New York City’s potter’s field on Hart Island, off the coast of the Bronx, has figured in numerous epidemics affecting New York City — as a burial ground during the Spanish Flu and AIDS crisis, and a quarantine spot for yellow fever and tuberculosis victims.

It wasn’t the first time I’d encountered potter’s field, and it almost certainly wasn’t the first time I’d looked it up. I knew what it meant—a cemetery where indigent or unidentified people are buried in unmarked graves—but why potter?

“The Potter’s Field – The common trench,” by Jacob Riis, c. 1888-1898. Source: International Center for Photography

Huge

The title of Diane Ravitch’s new book about American schools, Slaying Goliath, struck me right between the eyes. Hadn’t I seen something like it very recently?

 

 

Word of the week: Macabre

The video depicts a mass shooting in a church by a lone assassin who looks very much like the grinning 45th president of the United States. It is violent, gruesome, tasteless, and obviously faked, but the adjective the New York Times editors chose for the headline above Monday’s story was none of those words. It was, instead, macabre, a word with a long, lurid, and murky history.

The organizer of the American Priority event at which the video was screened said the video was part of a “meme exhibit.”

Word of the week: Cult

When does a following become so avid, so unquestioning, so blindly loyal that it deserves to be called a cult?

That question, and that label, have spiked in recent discourse. “We’re in a strange place. It’s becoming a cultish thing, isn’t it?” U.S. Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, mused to reporters last Wednesday. He continued: “It’s not a good place for any party to have a cult-like situation as it relates to a president that happens to be purportedly of the same party.”

No, no, no, joked Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina: “You got to be organized to be a cult. ... I don’t think we’ll ever qualify as a cult.” Or maybe Graham was deflecting; after all, in May 2016 he had tweeted: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.” What a difference 13 months make.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President!

You’re keeping your promise to make America safer and more prosperous.

And unfortunately for me, you’re doing all this without losing a step in your golf game!@realDonaldTrump #TrumpBirthday pic.twitter.com/PJRa54FVAP

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) June 14, 2018

(Alternate word of the week: toady.)

 

“Cult 45” – often seen as a hashtag on social media – spoofs Colt 45, the malt liquor brand. “45” is a reference to the 45th president. Colt .45 is a firearm cartridge; Colt 45 is a 1950 western starring Randolph Scott.

 

Word of the week: Quiverfull

On January 14, David and Louise Turpin – the parents of 13 children, ages 2 to 29 – were arrested in Perris (Riverside County), California, and later charged with multiple counts of false imprisonment, child abuse, and torture. The children had been starved, beaten, chained to their beds, and permitted to bathe only once a year; they had been home-schooled (minimally), forced to memorize long passages of the Bible, and denied medical or dental care.

David Turpin’s parents told ABC News they were “surprised and shocked” by the allegations because their son and daughter-in-law are “a good Christian family.” “God called on them” to have as many children as they did, the elder Turpins said.

That statement led to speculation in some quarters that David and Louise Turpin might be adherents of a fringe Christian movement called Quiverfull.

 

Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement (2010). Kathryn Joyce is freelance journalist. Read an excerpt here.

August linkfest

Years ago, I named the world’s first “bidirectional” condom, so this story really spoke to me:

Diverse & Resilient, an LGBTQ organization in Milwaukee, decided to do something about the bland branding of free condoms. So it partnered with a local marekting agency, Cramer Krasselt, to create Naughty Bags, condoms designed by teens for teens. According to Adweek, the condoms are made “to be sex-positive, humorous, and cool” and feature “witty names like Pork Parka, Pelvic Poncho, Scuba Gear, Surge Protector and—our favorite—Papa Stopper.” Brilliant – in every sense.

Word of the week: Poplin

Poplin: A strong, lightweight, plain-woven fabric with a smooth finish, historically silk but now more commonly cotton.

Poplin weave structure, via Charles Tyrwhitt.

Word of the Week: Prayer-Shaming

Prayer-shaming: Criticism of public figures who, after a mass shooting or other tragic event, offer “thoughts and prayers” but do little or nothing to change policy.

Prayer-shaming was popularized by Emma Green, the managing editor of The Atlantic, in an article published online on December 3, one day after a shooting attack in San Bernardino, California, that left 14 people dead as well as the husband-and-wife shooters.