Fritinancy

Word of the week: Boogaloo

Why is this man wearing an aloha shirt—in Nebraska, in February—while toting a big ol’ weapon inside a government building? And what does all of that have to do with the word of the week, boogaloo?

Brett Hendrix of Omaha with an AR-15 in the #Nebraska Capitol. Hendrix said he brought the gun to demonstrate the right to keep and bear arms. He opposes a gun bill that will be heard this afternoon in the #NELeg Judiciary Committee, viewable here: https://t.co/3k43sJrjfC pic.twitter.com/834lwqOK5Z

— Fred Knapp (@fredmknapp) February 21, 2020

 

Get ready for an only-in-America explanation.

On the Visual Thesaurus: All the President's ___

Last month I wrote about the henchman in a New York Daily News headline, “All the President’s Henchmen.” This week my new Visual Thesaurus column looks at the whole phrase, which is an example of a snowclone, or phrasal template. (Other well-used snowclones include “X is the new Y” and “Eskimos have N words for snow.”)

“All the president’s men” and its variations – including “All the President’s Lawyers” (a podcast), “All the President’s Mess” (a recurring feature on MSNBC), and “All the President’s Mendacity”(another Daily News headline) – trace their origins to the 1974 Woodward-Bernstein book about Nixon and Watergate. And that title was a variation on All the King’s Men (1946), the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren … which itself came from the old Humpty Dumpty rhyme, which was popularized by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass (1871) but didn’t originate there.

 

Full access to the column is restricted to subscribers for three months. Here’s an excerpt:

In The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, the renowned British folklorists Iona and Peter Opie quote one of their sources as saying the rhyme may be “one of those pieces the antiquity of which ‘is to be measured in thousands of years, or rather it is so great that it cannot be measured at all.’” There are similar rhymes in many European traditions, the Opies write, “and it seems undeniable that they are connected with the English rhyme.” …

The “Humpty Dumpty” name pre-dates the character in the rhyme. In the late 17th century, according to the OED, humpty dumpty was a drink made of ale boiled with brandy. A century later, humpty dumpty was a jocular term for “a short, dumpy, hump-shouldered person."”Because of the latter association, there has been speculation – never substantiated – that the Humpty Dumpty in the rhyme was King Richard III, who was depicted as a hunchback in Shakespeare’s play and other sources. Another faux etymology was proposed by David Daube, a British professor who wrote in a 1956 issue of The Oxford Magazine that Humpty Dumpty was a siege engine that “sat on a wall” and was used unsuccessfully in 1643, during the English Civil War. But the Opies dismissed Daube’s theory as “a spoof” and “ingenuity for ingenuity’s sake.”

Read the rest of the column (and leave a comment)!

In the Wild: Adjective Noun Is Adjective

Here’s one of the Verizon “Better Matters” ads currently papering the Montgomery BART station in San Francisco:

 

“A better network is better.”

 

“Well, of course better is better,” you may be thinking with a twinge of annoyance. (“Some copywriter got overpaid for that?”) Ah, but there’s more to the slogan than meets the eye.

November Linkfest

With 8 percent of 2015 still in the mysterious future, the first Word of the Year (WOTY) nominations have already begun. Oxford Dictionaries made history, and stirred up some controversy, by selecting an emoji – “Face with Tears of Joy” – as its, um, lexical unit of the year. (Emoji was a Fritinancy Word of the Week in January 2012.)

 

And at the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Lingua Franca blog, Allan Metcalf – he’s the executive secretary of the American Dialect Society – makes the case for basic: “the word this year to describe someone or something that fits a stereotype, especially the ‘basic white girl’.”

One X at a Time: One More Time

What is it about this particular sloganclone that accounts for its abiding popularity? I have a theory, which I divulge further down. But first, five fresh examples.

"X Just Got Y"

A familiar trope (or snowclone) in new manifestations.

 

“Disneyland Just got Merrier.” (Billboard in Oakland, California.)

 

 

“Comfort Just Got Sleek.” Jockey print ad featuring stylist Rachel Zoe (the blonde woman). Other slogans in the campaign: “Comfort Just Got Flirty,” “Comfort Just Got Glam.”

 

“Winning Just Got Closer.” One of the teaser slogans for the new Graton Resort & Casino, which opened in Rohnert Park (Sonoma County, California) November 5. Never underestimate the public’s willingness to overestimate the odds: Opening-day traffic created gridlock on US 101, and “once on city streets, many motorists ditched their cars at hotels and business parks to make their way on foot, plodding across a large field toward the hulking casino like ‘zombies’,” according to a California Highway Patrol officer quoted in a Los Angeles Times report. The doors were so mobbed that the casino opened an hour ahead of schedule. The 340,000-square-foot resort is owned by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and is open 24/7.

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More “X Just Got Y” posts: Insomnia Just Got Better, Junk Food Just Got Nervous, Tough Just Got Better.

Language-ier!

Thanks to reader Steve Hall for bringing to my attention another advertiser playing the faux-comparative/superlative game: the golf-club maker TaylorMade. A new spot, Steve writes, has been in heavy rotation during ESPN’s coverage of the 2013 Masters Golf Tournament.

 

 

I admit I don’t understand why a golf club would be called RocketBallz. (The name of another TaylorMade club, RocketBladez, makes more sense.) But that’s just one of the many, many things about golf I shall never understand. For example, who are the guys in the ad? Advertising logic tells us they are famous golfers who are instantly recognizable to fans; to this viewer, however, they’re just a bunch of bad actors in dorky outfits.

I am somewhat more clueful about the ad’s language, which riffs on the comparative suffix “-ier.” In the space of 30 seconds we’re treated to huge-ier, smash-ier, long-ier, so-sweet-ier, money-ier (that’s “money” as in “so money,” as in Swingers), nothing-on-that-ier, way-better-ier, quieter-ier, good-to-be-you-ier, and, of course, RocketBallz-ier, a play on “ballsy.”

It gets suffix-ier: TaylorMade is using the #ier hashtag to identify and, um, “socialize” the campaign. From the TaylorMade Tour blog:

To help celebrate the official Tour launch of the RBZ [RocketBallz] Stage 2 fairway woods and Rescues, every TaylorMade pro competing in this week’s WGC Cadillac Championship will be using a new special edition staff bag featuring an “IER” panel – their names, plus IER – as well as wearing hats and visors with the hashtag #IER on the front of the hats.

I’m aware of at least two other brands that have created ad campaigns built around the “-ier” suffix: Perrier and Napier. In both of those cases, the connection between the brand names and the ad copy – which used real adjectives like “riskier” and “snakier,” not invented ones – felt authentic and boosted the brands’ memorability. It’s harder to make a connection between “good-to-be-you-ier” and RocketBallz. (Commenter Steve Hall remembered the advertiser as Callaway, a TaylorMade competitor!)

Other observations:

• TaylorMade uses a clumsy “X Just Got Y” sloganclone toward the end of the spot: “Our longest just got longest-ier.” (More “X Just Got Y” examples here, here, and here.)
• The hip-hop-inspired Z-plural of RocketBallz and RocketBladez was already old news when I first wrote about it in 2006. Which means it probably still sounds edgy and “urban” to the golf crowd.

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Read my previous golf posts: “The Smaller the Ball” and “How to Name a Golf Course.”

Discover Your X

Henry Alpert of Action Copy emailed to alert me about a mini-trend in commercial calls to action: Discover your X, in which X is some non-noun pressed into nounish service.

Henry’s first example:

“Discover your Interesting.”

Zite is an app that “delivers your personal slice of the Zeitgeist.” (Yes, Zite comes from Zeitgeist.) It’s hard to tell whether interesting is capitalized because it’s meant to be a proper noun or because the proofreading was haphazard.

Henry’s second example:

“Discover your Why.”

 

 

The slogan appears on an online-education site whose name may be Start with Why (the URL), Inspire Action (the home-page headline), Why University (one of the things being sold) or Simon Sinek (the name of the developer). Honestly, the site makes it really challenging to find your What.

Elsewhere on the site we see “Learn your Why.”

And also “Share the Why,” “Clarify your Why,” and “Articulate your Hows.”

Unlike interesting, why is legitimately a noun from time to time (“the hows and whys of logo design”), as well as an adverb, a conjunction, and an interjection.

A third example of the trend appeared in my in-box earlier this week: “Find your inner fabulous!”

 

HerRoom turns underwear into a verb (I think) and fabulous into a noun.

Besides the discover/find trope and the anthimeria—the use of a word outside its customary part of speech—the theme here is personalization: it’s your why, your interesting, your inner fabulous. This is a trend of its own, one I first wrote about in 2009 (“But Enough About Me”). In 2010 I devoted a Visual Thesaurus column to the subject (“The You Decade”). Back in 2007, the late Christopher Hitchens wrote much more elegantly about it for Slate; his essay is also titled “The You Decade.” Hitchens wrote:

Perhaps global-scale problems and mass-society populism somehow necessitate this unctuous appeal to the utter specialness of the supposed individual. What you can do to stop planetary warming. How the maximum leader is on your  side. The ways in which the corporation has your  needs in mind as it makes its dispositions. The candidate who wants to hear your  views.

Almost six years later, the political is, if anything, even more personal. You may not have much influence on climate change or gun violence, but hey—you can own “interesting.” If you can find it, that is.

X Just Got ... Better?

Here’s yet another twist on a very familiar snowclone. This variation, on a billboard from the streaming service Roku, brings up some distressing associations.

 

“Insomnia Just Got Better!” Bryant and 6th streets, San Francisco.

I get it, sort of. If you’re lying awake at 3 a.m., why not make the best of a bad thing? With Roku, you can watch a movie or play a game instead of uselessly counting sheep.

Still, in the conventional “X Just Got Better” formula, “X” = “something good”: “Summer just got better,” “Beef just got better.” The advertised product or service promises to improve on an already good thing. Here “X” is bad, and all Roku can do is make it not quite as bad.

I know, I know. It’s a joke! I should lighten up! Well, sorry: for some of us, insomnia is no laughing matter. I will thank you, Roku, to delete the annoying exclamation mark and change the subject.

Oh, while I’m at it: Yes, there should be punctuation after “Keep Streaming.” It’s that old Donner Party Comma problem again.

By the way, I used to think Roku was pronounced “rock you,” but it isn’t. It’s pronounced “roh-koo,” to rhyme with “beaucoup.” According to a Wikipedia entry, the company was founded in 2002 by Anthony Wood; he named it Roku, the Japanese word for “six,” because it was the sixth company he’d launched.

Other posts in the “X Just Got Y” series here (with examples from Gorilla Glass and many other companies) and here.

Giving thanks for good names

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, here are three business names I’m grateful to know about.

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After a disaster like Hurricane Sandy, there’s usually no shortage of clothing donations. But donors often forget about one essential item: new underwear. The nonprofit organization Underwearness raises awareness about the problem and delivers new underwear to needy children. The name is a perfect blend, and the logo is strong, playful, and vibrant.

 

One quibble: I wish the slogan were something more original than the “One X at a Time” snowclone, which I’ve written about several times. (Not to mention the ambiguity of “pair” here—pair of children? Pair of underwear?)

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High-low collaborations between couture designers and mass-market retailers are old-hat by now. What’s new about Narciso Rodriguez’s recent partnership with Kohl’s is a name that’s as stylish as the clothing: DesigNation. Not only does it say “design,” “nation,” and “designation,” it visually deconstructs the logo to suggest something fresh and exciting.

 

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Among the cocoa cognoscienti of San Francisco, master chocolate-maker Michael Recchiuti is famous enough that he could have named his new dessert café after himself. Instead, he called it Chocolate Lab. Yes, there’s a whiff of science about the name, nicely supported by the logo and some of the website headings – Experiments, Antidotes, Lab Time.

But it gets better. The café’s address is 801 22nd Street – in the neighborhood called Dogpatch.

Very fetching!

Chocolate Lab puppy via DogExplorer.com.