Fritinancy

May linkfest

On the occasion of the death of R&B singer Billy “The Kid” Emerson, at 97, Ben Zimmer applied his lexicographical lens to a term immortalized by Emerson: “doodly-squat.” Did you know that doodly-squat is what linguists call a “vulgar minimizer” or—I love this—a “squatitive”? (Strong Language)

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Ramped up, amped up, ratchet up, gin up, up the ante: a long and poetic list of clichés. (Gift article)

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If any non-Jews out there are starting a business, I am available to consult on whether your proposed brand name means “butt” in Yiddish pic.twitter.com/SnSXBTeem2

— Dan Berger (@dnbrgr) May 22, 2023

March linkfest

A link of my own to kick things off: I wrote for the Strong Language blog about a product name I was surprised (to put it mildly) to encounter in a family-owned, family-friendly grocery store in Berkeley, California.

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I also continue to publish about once a week on Medium, a platform that actually pays me! This week’s story is about Pepsi’s new logo—and the logo that preceded it, back in 2008 (friend link), which the branding agency sold with a totally bonkers presentation. If you’re not a Medium member, use this referral link to join. Yes, there’s a fee, but you’ll gain access to lots of other good writers, too. And maybe you’ll want to start publishing there yourself, and you’ll be glad you made this tiny investment.

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For more than a century, the New York Times’s nameplate included a period. Then, one day in 1961, it was gone. “Dropping the period caused much consternation and soul-searching at the Times, until finally the production manager came up with the calculation that eliminating the period would save some $600 a year in ink!” (Steven Heller for Print Magazine)

The final full stop?

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February linkfest

I’ve started listening to the “Tech Won’t Save Us” podcast, expertly hosted by Canadian tech critic Paris Marx, who’s joined each week by an expert who critically examines “the tech industry, the powerful people who helm it, and the products and services it unleashes on the world.” Separating tech from politics, says Marx, “has consequences for us all, especially the most vulnerable.” I’m looking forward to reading books by two recent guests, Malcolm Harris (Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World), and Edward Niedermeyer (Ludicrous: The Unvarnished History of Tesla Motors). Niedermeyer introduced me to the useful word autonowashing, “the practice of making unverified or misleading claims which misrepresent the appropriate level of human supervision required by a partially or semi-autonomous product, service or technology.” (More -washing compounds here.)

 

“Tech Won’t Save Us” logo tee

 

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On the Strong Language blog: Enshittification

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.

December linkfest

Happy Festivus, the holiday for the rest of us! I don’t have the traditional aluminum pole, and this year I’m sparing you my Airing of Grievances. (But you can air your own grievance on FestivusWeb.) As for the other primary tradition, I discovered this year that there’s a Feats of Strength cocktail, which sounds kind of like a hot toddy. Did you know that English toddy comes from Hindi tari, which means “palm sap”?

“Festivus-infused” maple syrup from family-owned, Vermont-based Runamok. You can buy it at REI.

Read my previous Festivus posts.

And here’s a year-end link roundup:

July linkfest

I’ve been gradually expanding my newsletter diet to include some lighter (but still substantial) fare. A few recommendations:

The Department of Salad, by Emily Nunn, is, yes, about salad and salad lore, but is also just a very chatty, very funny from an excellent writer. If you haven’t made Spicy Cherry Salad (aka Israeli Cherry Salad), you must do so immediately, before cherry season is over for good.

How Not to F*ck Up Your Face, “philosophical and practical advice for anyone who’s ever looked into a mirror,” is written by Valerie Monroe, who was the beauty editor at O magazine for almost 16 years. She’s on an extended stay in Japan right now, and I’ve been enjoying her reporting on the local scene, from Japanese toilets to “love hotels.”

The Unpublishable, by Jessica DeFino, a freelance beauty journalist. Subtitle: “The beauty industry’s least favorite newsletter.” DeFino covers topics like “how the ‘5-minute face’ became the $5,000 face” and why the words “THAT ACTUALLY WORK” are so common in beauty headlines. (It’s because most beauty products don’t work.)

“Potent, powerful skin care that works”? Probably not. (My photo; Walgreens.)

 

All three of these newsletters are published on the Substack platform, which means you can read them for free but paid subscriptions are what keeps the updates coming. 

April linkfest

This month I’ve been reading Stiffed: The Roots of Modern Male Rage, by Susan Faludi. Actually, I’ve been re-reading it; the book was originally published in 1999 with the subtitle The Betrayal of the American Man and was reissued in 2019 with a new author’s foreword that adds a Trump-era, #MeToo perspective. Faludi is a superb researcher, interviewer, and writer (and believe me, that’s a tough trifecta), and Stiffed—what a perfect title—holds up shockingly well. Faludi’s mid-1990s reporting took her to Vietnam veterans, diehard Cleveland Browns fans, an Alternatives to Violence group, laid-off defense workers, and meetings of Promise Keepers, a Christian men’s association. She investigates the post-World War II redefinition of masculinity as “something to drape over the body, not draw from inner resources” and to be “displayed, not demonstrated.” I couldn’t help reflecting on Stiffed when I read a recent New York Times roundtable discussion with eight men who described themselves as politically conservative and who repeatedly expressed a wistful longing for days gone by—the same days, some 25 years ago, that Faludi wrote about: a time of layoffs and gang violence and painful domestic rifts. Moral: Beware the nostalgia trap and the Golden Age fallacy; there never were any good old days, except for the ones that seemed good because you were a little kid and didn’t know any better. (You may also be interested in the letters to the editor about that roundtable discussion. I’ve unlocked both links so that nonsubscribers can access them.)

 

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Why A-list names often aren’t A+ clients. (Nora Trice for A Hundred Monkeys)

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Attention, all you skinflints frugal people! Here are some of my Visual Thesaurus columns that are now unlocked and available to non-subscribers: All about the -core suffix; my picks for brand names of the year for 2021; the lingo of film noir. Don’t you wish you’d read them earlier? You can—a subscription is just $19.95 a year! Give a gift to yourself, or to Mom for Mother’s Day!

On the Strong Language blog: Merkins

Today I’m at Strong Language, the sweary blog about swearing, with a post about merkin, the medieval pubic wig that still plays a role in our cultural life. Merkin was originally a nickname for a woman or girl; it’s an unrelated surname, too, and I write about that as well.

My favorite bit of research involved discovering Make a Merkin Great Again, a 2019 political art project by Diane Bush (yes, that’s her name). Here are two of the art merkins Bush created from cat fur (yes, cat fur).

Read This Merkin Life (apologies to This American Life).

The "fboys" of "FBOY Island"

Join me today if you dare at the Strong Language blog, where I wrote 1,600 words (and could have written more) about HBO Max’s new “dating” show FBOY Island and about what exactly “fboy” means. I’m keeping it clean here, but Strong Language censors nothing. 

FBOY Island: “It’s time to separate the men from the bros.”
 

June linkfest

“Controversial terms, from ‘abortion’ to ‘Zionism,’ tend to shut down dialog because they mean different things to different people.” The AllSides Red Blue Dictionary defines these hot-button terms across the political spectrum: “Until we fully understand what a term means to someone else, we don't know the issue and can't effectively communicate.”

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I’m enjoying (and learning from) the short essays Susan Orlean publishes on Medium, especially her stories about  the writing craft. Here she is on beginnings and on endings.

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After a four-month hiatus I’m back on Medium myself with some reflections on fifteen years of blogging. (And here’s your annoying-but-obligatory reminder that Medium contributors earn money from their stories only if enough people “clap” for them, and that up to 50 claps per story are allowable, nay, encouraged.)