Fritinancy

Word of the week: Gambit

I usually wait for at least three sightings of a phenomenon to declare a trend. But in the case of gambit, I decided that two big, unrelated occurrences within a single week were sufficient. They were certainly enough to start me scurrying down multiple rabbit holes, etymological and cultural.

July linkfest

Last week wine distributor Lot18 and MGM – producer of the Hulu streaming series The Handmaid’s Tale – announced one of the more harebrained merchandising collabs of recent years: three wines named after the show’s most prominent characters, Offred, Ofglen, and Serena Joy. It went about as badly as you might expect, and within 24 hours the wines had disappeared from the Lot18 website.

 

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

Word of the week: Belittle

An interview by New York Times culture reporter Sopan Deb with the cast of “Arrested Development” – whose fifth season debuts May 29 on Netflix – took a disturbing turn when one cast member, Jessica Walter, spoke through tears about having been bullied verbally by her co-star, Jeffrey Tambor. A third member of the cast, Jason Bateman (who plays a son of Walter and Tambor), appeared to excuse Tambor’s behavior.

Left to right: Tambor, Bateman, Walter. Tambor was fired in February from another show, “Transparent,” after being accused of sexual harassment. Source.

In defending Tambor, Bateman used the word belittle three times, each time claiming not to be belittling the charges. Here’s the second occurrence:

BATEMAN But this is a family and families, you know, have love, laughter, arguments — again, not to belittle it, but a lot of stuff happens in 15 years. I know nothing about “Transparent” but I do know a lot about “Arrested Development.” And I can say that no matter what anybody in this room has ever done — and we’ve all done a lot, with each other, for each other, against each other — I wouldn’t trade it for the world and I have zero complaints.

And the third:

BATEMAN Again, not to belittle it or excuse it or anything, but in the entertainment industry it is incredibly common to have people who are, in quotes, “difficult.”

An unexceptionable word, right? Not quite. It’s accepted today, but belittle was once, well, belittled ... despite a distinguished pedigree. The first person to use it in print appears to have been none other than Thomas Jefferson. Here’s how the Merriam-Webster blog tells the story:

Word of the week: Villanelle

“Killing Eve,” the new series created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge*, premiered earlier this month on BBC America. The show – which Vogue called “part spy drama, part serial killer thriller, part absurdist comedy” – is based on novellas by the British author Luke Jennings that are known collectively as the Villanelle series, after the codename of one of the principal characters. From a synopsis of the books:

Oxana Vorontsova, a beautiful but supremely dangerous psychopath, is sprung from a Russian prison, and reborn as the glamorous Villanelle. The price of her new existence: to be trained in the dark arts of assassination, and to kill on demand.

 

“Villanelle” is a dictionary word with a backstory, but not the one Jennings provides.

Dear, dear

According to business-etiquette experts Barbara Pachter and Will Schwalbe, starting an email with “Dear ___” will likely be perceived as “old-fashioned” or “a bit too formal.” Much safer, they tell Business Insider, to use “Hi.”

Tell that to the people coming up with titles for new or recent movies, TV series, plays, and books. For them, it’s “Dear” all the way down.

Word of the week: Suitress

The third season of “unREAL,” the Lifetime drama that’s set behind the scenes at a fictitious dating show called “Everlasting,” premiered last week. The previous two seasons were satires of the long-running not-unreal “reality” show “The Bachelor,” with a single “suitor” choosing from among a bevy of competing women. This season serves up a female protagonist – or, as the characters refer to her, a “suitress.” Played by Caitlin FitzGerald, who also portrayed Libby Masters in “Masters of Sex,” suitress Serena is presented as a Silicon Valley tech billionaire, “the female Elon Musk.”

Caitlin FitzGerald, left, as Serena, unhappily wearing a revealing gown chosen by cast regulars Shiri Appleby and Constance Zimmer.

 

But what sort of female, or feminine, is suitress?

Word of the week: Galentine's Day

When does a madeupical holiday become a genuine holiday? We can quibble over criteria, but a Hallmark home-page promotion is probably the smooch of validation.*

 

Like Chrismukkah and Festivus before it, Galentine’s Day was invented by television writers – in this case, Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, creators of “Parks and Recreation” Season 2, Episode 16, which originally aired on February 14, 2010. In the episode, our heroine, Leslie Knope  – the world’s most upbeat and energetic civil servant – invites her mother and her women friends to breakfast on February 13, the day before Valentine’s Day. It’s “ladies celebrating ladies,” Leslie (Amy Poehler) burbles.

One X at a time, again

Groundhog Day seems like an appropriate occasion to talk about “One X at a time,” the sloganclone that, like Punxsutawney Phil, keeps popping up. Year after year I point with alarm. And yet the formula thrives, in sunshine and shadow, in winter, spring, summer, and fall. I feel like such a failure.

If I had to identify the source of all this at-a-timing, I might single out “One Day at a Time,” the Norman Lear sitcom that enjoyed a robust run on network TV (1975–1984) and which last year was revived, with substantial changes – chief among them a Cuban-American family at the center of the action – for Netflix. The second season arrived last week, and a third-season renewal was announced on January 30.

 

Names of the year 2017

On January 5, at its annual meeting in Salt Lake City, the American Name Society will select its names of the year for 2017. Names of the year are those “that best illustrate, through their creation and/or use during the past 12 months, important trends in the culture of the United States and Canada.” I won’t be attending this year, but I’ve made my own list and checked it at least twice. Feel like playing? I invite you to submit your own nominations in the four official categories.