Fritinancy

Word of the week: Nooch

A tweet from @Mededitor last month sent me down the vegan equivalent of a rabbit hole.

 

@Fritinancy @LouiseHarnby @stronglang @gdoslang You get the sense that FoodKick is channeling the voice of Thug Kitchen: https://t.co/vwtdYlOErT

— Mededitor (@Mededitor) April 11, 2017

I’d written about Thug Kitchen a few years ago, but I hadn’t seen TK’s new cookbook. I couldn’t resist going past “Fast As F*ck” on the book’s cover – the point of Mededitor’s tweet – to the Amazon description, which contains this sentence:

TK holds your hand and explains ingredients from chickpeas to nooch so you'll feel confident knowing exactly what the f*ck you're cooking.

Nooch? It sounded vaguely salacious, which wouldn’t be out of keeping with the TK style guide. (Chapter titles in the new cookbook include “Freshen the Fuck Up” and “Hot Box.”) But it turns out that nooch isn’t nasty or brutish, it’s just short. For nutritional yeast.

Imperfection

This headline popped up today on the home page of Uniqlo, the ubiquitous Japanese retail chain.

It links to the site’s jeans section, where the clothing is replete with rips, holes, and other “tasteful rough touches.”

Normally I’d focus on the verbing of imperfect – an example of anthimeria I hadn’t encountered previously. But as it happened I’d already been thinking about another sense of perfect: the grammatical sense. In grammar, perfect doesn't mean “impeccable”; it means “made complete” or “completely done.” 

The impetus for my musing was a tweet from @realDonaldTrump, a personal Twitter account, at 5:35 a.m. this morning:

What season is it?

Why, ’tis the ’tis-the-season season!

Name in the news: Wawa

For any other political candidate, the campaign stop would not have made headlines. But because it was this cycle’s Republican nominee, who has rarely deigned to perform the rituals of retail politics, it created a bit of a stir.

 

He would prefer not to. (Via Philly.com)

 

Happening now: Trump and his entourage make surprise visit to a Wawa gas station in PA. pic.twitter.com/1gEJZFSBgD

— Sarah McCammon NPR (@sarahmccammon) November 1, 2016

 

*TastyKake. https://t.co/UCzEk693dZ

— [RAPH]AEL (@MyNameIsRaph) November 1, 2016

The news reminded this Californian that there still are regional mysteries in this great land of ours. “Wawa” is one of them.

 

 

You say “Wawa,” I say “Baba.”

 

 

Back to (brand) school

Welcome, students! Here’s your curriculum for the semester:

 

Anthropologie

Course description: “Founded in Wayne, Pennsylvania in the autumn of 1992, Anthropologie remains a destination for women wanting a curated mix of clothing, accessories, gifts and home décor that reflects their personal style and fuels their lives' passions, from fashion to art to entertaining.”

Extra credit: Anthropologie has a charitable division called Philanthropie.

 

Checknology

Course description: “Get connected today and take control of your money like never before.”

Instructor: Central Bank, Edmond, Oklahoma.

Sad sackcloth

A blanket merchant in the Pacific Northwest is doing laudable work under a mournful moniker.

The company commissions and sells handmade blankets in a variety of materials and designs. For every blanket you purchase, the company donates a blanket to your local homeless shelter.

The name of the company: Sackcloth & Ashes.

 

A Ro by Any Other Name

I usually can come up with a theory to explain copycat names and naming trends. In the early aughts, many companies chose double-O names (Qoop, Squidoo, Doostang, ooVoo) to sound like Google. All those X + Y names (Mizzen + Main, Standard & Strange, Coral & Tusk)? They evoke Ye Olde Tymes, with the modern bonus of yielding cheap domains. Lately, we’ve seen a cluster of first-name names like Oscar and Emma, the better to blunt the cutting edge of technology.

But the explanation for one mini-trend has eluded me. Perhaps you, dear readers, can help.

Nearly sweary ads: the nearly Spring edition

In an election season marked by one presidential candidate’s freewheeling use of naughty language, some observers have professed to be shocked, shocked that swearing is taking place in these hallowed halls. Well, readers of this blog and of my occasional posts at Strong Language are inured to shock: you know that swears and near-swears have been ubiquitous in the language of commerce for many years now. Here are three recent examples:

Name in the news: Draper James

There’s a curious little kerfuffle going on between two businesswomen whose flower-shaped logos are suspiciously similar in shape and embellishment. What makes it especially newsworthy is that one of the businesswomen is the actress Reese Witherspoon, and she’s the one being sued.

But that’s not the only thing I find interesting about Ms. Witherspoon’s retail venture, which is called Draper James, after the actress’s grandmother (Dorothea Draper) and grandfather (William James Witherspoon). For me, that name – no matter how sweetly familial – is all too reminiscent of another, much older retail chain, Draper’s & Damon’s.

December Linkfest

Into the final weeks of 2015 with one final link roundup!

*

Lucy Kellaway, who writes about language and writing for the Financial Times, has created Guffipedia, “a repository for the worst jargon I’ve seen over the years.” All the devils are here: onboard more resource, flex-pon-sive, diverse hairdos, etc. ad nauseam. “The point of Guffipedia,” writes Kellaway, “is not just for you to admire the extent of my guff collection, but to help me curate it going forward, as they say in Guffish.” Good point of entry: the many Guffish euphemisms for you’re fired. (Hat tip: Molly Walker.)