Fritinancy

Word of the week: Greedflation

Read all about greedflation on my Substack newsletter! And while you’re there, check out some other recent posts: on the -pilled suffix (redpilled, blackpilled, breadpilled, glitterpilled); on Phoebe Philo (what a name!); on pastness, a new-to-me word that isn’t new at all; on Kim Kardashian’s Ultimate Nipple Bra; and on the ubiquitous, ridiculous ’tis the season, which I’m not even a little bit jolly about. 

And look: Here’s my November linkfest, now called a linkstack!

Wondering why I’ve moved over there? Here’s an explanation.

Are Americans ready for knickers?

When I, an American, think of “knickers” I generally think of something like this (and I suspect I am not an outlier):

“Men’s Knickers – Khaki Twill,” via Historical Emporium, San Jose, California (“Authentic products and old-fashioned service” since 2003).

 

Across the pond, and Down Under, they think of something more like this:

“Know your knickers!” via Kayser Lingerie, Australia. Not for men.

 

But I’ve recently learned of two women’s-underwear brands doing business in the US that are trading on the British/Aussie sense of knickers. Which leads me to wonder whether we USians are about to adopt this sense of knickers into our retail vocabularies. (Or re-adopt, as I’ll explain in a bit.)

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.

July linkfest

“Companies change their slogans and catchphrases all the time to keep themselves fresh in customers’ minds. But DiGiorno might be the only one that has kept the same catchphrase, but changed the implication.” (Eater)

*

“Sometimes I look at license plates for new prefix ideas. Sometimes I borrow from the names of cats or dogs.” How two women in Chicago create all those names for generic prescription drugs. (David Lazarus for Los Angeles Times; via MJF)*

Bullish

On a recent trip to Costco I bought a box of RXBAR protein bars, which contain several healthful ingredients, none of which, according to the package, is bullshit. Good to know!

 

 

From the RXBAR website:

Guys who are into CrossFit would never indulge in B.S.

 

As you probably know from my periodic appearances in Strong Language, the sweary blog about swearing, I’m constantly on the lookout for sweary brand names and slogans. When I saw “No B.S.” on the RXBAR box, I remembered a similarly frank promise made earlier this year by Everlane, the “radical transparency” retailer.

Undingnified

My marketing brain knows this promoted tweet from Fruit of the Loom is supposed to be festive and funny. But my civilian brain finds it baffling and a little icky.

Undings are meant to be filled with underwear, no matter what style you plan on gifting. #NeverUndingFireplace pic.twitter.com/lMsy55fZla

— Fruit of the Loom (@FruitOfTheLoom) December 19, 2016

 

Dry Humor

I promised myself I’d ignore April Fools’ Day this year, but Betabrand shattered my resolve.

Remember Betabrand? It’s the sassy San Francisco company that brought us the Vagisoft blanket, a real, year-round product I wrote about in December 2010. (Since then, Betabrand’s “VagiLab” has added unisex Vajamas and Vagisoft hoodies to the range.)

This morning, Betabrand emailed me to announce a very special new product: Adult Adult Undergarments, an “innovation in absorption couture.”

The before-and-after photos depict a grizzled, slightly seedy-looking guy wearing, stage left, a pair of gray incontinence briefs and, stage right, some va-va-voom leopard-print skivvies.

The copy displays the usual Betabrand bravado:

Gentlemen: When the forecast calls for a sizzling hot night, you want to make sure there’s 0% chance of precipitation.

So don’t settle for ordinary adult undergarments when you can slip on new Adult Adult Undergarments. Super sexy, super absorbent, and available in three come-hither styles.

• Jungle Lord: Like a big cat, you’re always on the prowl. Now get ready to mark your territory, discreetly.
• Outlaw: You’re not the kind of guy who plays by the rules, especially the rule that says you can’t urinate in your pants.
• The Dry Martini: Leave your lover shaken and stirred.

Naturally, there’s an absorption-demonstration photo. Naturally, it uses blue liquid. But not just any blue liquid.

 

 

The brand still lacks a name, so feel free to leave your suggestion in the comments. My favorite so far, for its combination of erudition and zaniness:

“Piadese” (pee at ease) after the greek urinating cherub. OR name after the iconic statue of “Menneken Pis” (urinating cherub) by Hieronymus Duquesnoy was created in commission of the city council of Brussels after an earlier 14th century example.

Elsewhere in Betabrand foolery: the first-ever Cheezburger Clothes for Cats Collection.

Note: I cannot guarantee that the Betabrand links will be operational after 11:59 p.m. (Pacific) April 1.

__

More fun with underwear here. More April Fools’ posts here, here, here, and here.

May Linkfest

Newt Gingrich—remember when he ran for president and talked about building bases on the moon?—now appears to be campaigning for Andy Rooney’s old slot on “60 Minutes.” “We’re really puzzled,” he tells his YouTube audience, a look of grave concern furrowing his brow, a familiar-looking device in his hand. “We spent weeks [!] trying to figure out whaddya call this.” This is what you and I call a cell phone or a mobile phone or a smartphone, but that doesn’t satisfy Gingrich. He’s soliciting new, more precise names for the gizmo he used to call “a handheld computer.” Commenters have been gleefully obliging; my favorite nominations are Talkie-Viewie (maybe “TV” for short?), roundcorner-camera-communicati­ons-email-apps-thingy, iMoon, and horseless telephone. (Via TechCrunch.)

Meanwhile, linguist Geoffrey Pullum, posting at Language Log, has “an inkling of what moved Gingrich to embark on his piece of burbling.” It’s all about the naïve lexical global Whorfianism, obviously.

*

I caught this a few days too late for Underwear Week but can’t resist sharing it anyway. Triumph, the Swiss bra company, last week introduced its concept bra of the year at a Tokyo press conference. The theme: “branomics,” “a playful take on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ‘three-arrow’ economic revival plan,” according to Reuters. “We hope that as the Japanese economy grows, we can also help bust sizes to get bigger,” said a Triumph spokeswoman. (Via The 3% Conference.)

Image via AdFreak. Note arrows.

*

Merriam-Webster, the dictionary company, is having a photography contest for word lovers that looks like a lot of fun. Deadline for submissions: May 26. (Via Emily Brewster.)

*

Speaking of photography, here’s a pop song dedicated to stock photo clichés: “groom on phone with angry wife,” “bearded man is looking grave,” “black and white handshake,” and many more. (Via Igor blog.)

*

And speaking of photography and contests, GeoGuessr combines street-view photos with a test of your geographical knowledge. Challenging and addictive. (Via PopeHat.)

*

Maps! I love ’em. And I especially love maps that combine geography, history, biography, and name lore, like this interactive map of San Francisco place names, developed by Noah Veltman.

*

This advice from Baby Name Wizard about overcoming naming remorse works for company and product naming, too.

*

Andris Pone of Coin Branding, in Toronto, applauds Frogbox, a “green” moving company in more than one sense. It’s a great brand story, Andris writes: “The Frogbox positioning statement, From one pad to another, exemplifies the message of ease by creating a promise (completely delivered on) that one can move from their old home to their new one with all the difficulty of a hop.”

*

Here’s a nifty infographic on how corporate logos evolve.

*

Corporate buzzword-wise, “delight” is shaping up to be the new “passion.” (Via MJF.)

*

You’ll need to subscribe to Visual Thesaurus to read Mike Pope’s excellent column, “What’s in a -Nym?”, which goes beyond antonyms and synonyms to more obscure and fascinating terms like contranym, retronym, and backronym. But of course you’re already a subscriber.

*

From Idibon, a language-data company: how to name a racehorse.

*

Finally, in honor of the return of the cicadas to the eastern U.S., here’s a reprise of my plug for Cicada-licious: Cooking and Enjoying Periodical Cicadas, the cicada cookbook produced by the University of Maryland cicadamaniacs (their term). Yes, I have a well-documented fondness for -licious names.

*

I also can’t resist an opportunity to combine entomology, etymology, and a plug for Fritinancy. As language maven Ben Zimmer—my editor at Visual Thesaurus—observed in an email to me:

I noticed that the first OED cite for “fritin(i)ancy” is from Sir Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica, talking about cicadas. (In this edition, it’s actually “fritinnitus.”) Johnson defined “fritinancy” as “the scream of an insect, as the cricket or cicada” (citing Browne) and subsequent dictionaries used similar definitions. (Johnson didn’t define “cicada,” oddly enough.)

My original post about Fritinancy cited Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), which mentioned crickets but not cicadas. The post was written before I had access to the OED online, a weak defense but the one I’m sticking with.

In other cicada news, linguist Arnold Zwicky has written about “swarmageddon” and “cicadapocalypse,” and science writer Carl Zimmer, brother of Ben, examined the remarkable life cycle of this long-lived insect. Carl Z’s editors at the Times consulted with Ben Z to come up with a pronunciation guide: “cicadas (usually pronounced sih-KAY-duhz).”

But, Ben told me, “there are plenty of people who pronounce it KAH, and many dictionaries give it as an acceptable alternate. I don’t have a good sense of the regional distribution of the two pronunciations, though.”

Perhaps Fritinancy’s readers can help.

Underwear Week: Commando

How can a brand name convey a specific benefit—in this case, underwear so smooth and sleek it’s almost like wearing no underwear at all—without resorting to descriptive terms (Vanishing Edge, Invisibles)? For one U.S. company, the solution came from Vietnam-era slang.

Commando is a brand of elastic-free women’s underwear and hosiery designed with smooth edges that don’t show under clothing. Founded in 2003 by husband-and-wife team Kerry O’Brien and Ed Biggins, the company is based in South Burlington, Vermont, far from major garment-industry capitals; products are made in the U.S. and sold at department stores and online.

 

“Commando” is an excellent example of a suggestive name—and by suggestive I mean not only the dictionary sense of “implying something slightly improper” (completely appropriate in this context) but also the trademark sense: “indirectly alluding to a quality of a product.” That’s because of commando’s metaphorical secondary meaning.

Commando first entered English in the late 18th century, a borrowing from Portuguese that originally referred to “an armed and mounted party of men” or the expedition undertaken by such a party. It wasn’t until World War II that the word referred to a single person—specifically, according to the OED, “a member of a body of picked men trained originally (in 1940) as shock troops for the repelling of the threatened German invasion of England, later for the carrying out of raids on the Continent and elsewhere.” Until 1942, “commando” was capitalized.

The underwear brand Commando isn’t about shock troops: it’s about “going commando,” a slang phrase first documented (again according to the OED) in 1974, in Current U.N.C. [University of North Carolina] Slang: “to wear no underpants (beneath one’s clothing).” “The origin of this use is obscure,” the dictionary notes; “the allusion appears to be to commandos’ reputation for action, toughness, or resourcefulness rather than to any specific practice.”

In 2005, Slate’s Explainer column attempted to get to the bottom of “go commando”:

When did the term “going commando” enter the civilian lexicon? The phrase dates back to at least the middle of the 20^th century, when Americans used it to mean “toughening up.” (That meaning persists to this day in some contexts.) The phrase’s more common connotation dates back to at least 1974, when it appeared in a source on college slang. The phrase “crotch rot" emerged during the same period: It first appeared in 1967. It's possible that “going commando” first poked its way into the public consciousness during the Vietnam War, when American special forces were spending extended periods in hot, wet jungle environments. The phrase got its big break in 1996, when Joey and Rachel went commando on an episode of Friends.

The pertinent dialogue:

Ross: Okay, now hold on. Joey, why can’t you just wear the underwear you’re wearing now?
Joey: Because, um, I’m not wearing any underwear now.
Ross: Okay, then why do you have to wear underwear tonight?
Joey: It’s a rented tux, Okay. I’m not gonna go commando in another man's fatigues.

As Joey’s line and the military history suggest, “to go commando” is traditionally associated with men; appropriating it for a women’s brand makes it that much more dramatic and memorable.

Commando is a popular trademark for many products other than underwear: I found records in the USPTO database for Commando padlocks, lubricants, auto parts, tires, coffee, beer, and jerky. I also discovered that Commando the underwear company—which to date has been a women-only brand—has filed for protection of “Commando Naked,” a men’s line.

Co-founder O’Brien says on the Commando website that the company’s products are “sometimes saucy” and “put the fun in functional.” Most of the product names, however, are descriptive: thong, high-rise panty, cami, half-slip, control brief. Nope, nary a cheekini in the lineup—although I admit the “Commando” brand name had me seeing the descriptive term tank in a new light. It’s in the “accessories” category that Commando lets its guerrilla flag fly.

The very first Commando product, in fact, was named Takeouts (“The Better Boob Job”). The “full-cup-boosting” silicone inserts—known generically as cutlets—cost $48 and are “grope tested,” it says here.

Other accessories with creative names include Low Beams (single-use nipple covers), Top Hats (reusable nipple covers), Matchsticks (double-stick tape for bra straps), Match Tips (double-stick adhesive dots), and Cleavage Cupcakes (“a perky plump-up for what nature already gave you”). The cheeky names are supported by playful copy that spins each metaphor for everything it’s worth.

By the way, Commando’s URL is WearCommando.com. Commando.com is a communications agency in Chicago. As I’ve said before, you don’t need a “pure” URL when you’ve got a plausible alternative and a strong brand story.

Bonus link: The 10 Commandments of Going Commando (“1. Thou Shalt Not Take a Yoga Class”).

__

Previously on Underwear Week:

Cheekini

True & Co. and the MILFs

Underwear startups

Ginch Gonch

Underwear Week: Ginch Gonch

It’s Day Four of Underwear Week! Grab your passport and some loose loonies: we’re headed north of the border for today’s installment.

 

 

I stumbled upon undie-maker Ginch Gonch about six months ago. The name was a complete puzzle to me, the tagline (“Live Like a Kid!”) didn’t seem to clarify the odd words, and I got no help at all from the About page:

Ginch Gonch was born from the rebellion against the dull, colorless underwear endured by most people, and has quickly become one of the fastest growing premium lifestyle brands internationally. It was the first of its kind to successfully combine humor and sexuality with funky, fashion-forward designs, and has completely reinvented the underwear industry through the unconventional ways it sets the trend for the rear end.

The styles pictured on the website have loud prints, bright colors, large “Ginch Gonch” logos, and double-entendre-ish names like “Joystick Jockey” and “Lip Reader.”

What the website doesn’t have are clues about where the company’s located, other than a Montreal area code on the Contact page. The company boasts that its products are sold “in premium department stores and exclusive boutiques” in 22 world capitals, but I’m a pretty serious shopper and I can’t recall ever seeing them.

The Interwebs came to the rescue. Ginch and gonch, it turns out, are two ways to spell Canadian slang words meaning “underwear.” Here’s a definition from the CKA (Canada Kicks Ass) website:

gotch, ginch, gonch, gitch (From Ukrainian gatky/gatsi): refers to men’s brief-style underwear, particularly those that are threadbare. Used in British Columbia and Alberta. Gitch and gotch are variants heard mostly in Saskatchwan. It is also acceptable to append ‘ies’ to any of these variants, especially when referring to the underwear of male children. eg: “Make sure you do laundry tonight, I’m going to need some clean gonch in the morning”. The term is becoming more widespread in use as a result of the rise in popularity of Vancouver-based undergarment company GinchGonch. A “gotch-pull” or “gonch-pull” is another name for a wedgie.

So—Vancouver, not Montreal? The Internet is silent on the discrepancy. But I was definitely warming to the name: it’s fun to say, relevant (if you’re from British Columbia or Alberta), and memorable.

Apparently, though, if you’re not from British Columbia or Alberta you may be as clueless as I was about ginch and its relatives. Here’s a question posted on Yahoo Answers in 2008:

Is “ginch / gonch” really Canadian slang for underwear?

“Ginch Gonch” is a Canadian underwear company, and they say their name comes from the canadian slang word(s) for underwear “ginch / gonch”
now, i'm Canadian, but i’ve never heard the term before... how common is the slang?

And the answer, seemingly from another Canadian:

Gitch and Gotch are words that i am familiar with -- both refer to underwear. I can't say anyone in my generation (born in 70s) would use the term, but we do know what it means. My parents (born in the late 40s) use the term quite often. I can't remember them using any other term for undies.

I also consulted the OED, whose entry for ginch makes no mention of Canada, underwear, or the supposed Ukrainian origin:

Etymology: Origin unknown.

slang (orig. and chiefly U.S.).

An attractive woman, esp. (freq. depreciative) one regarded as an object of sexual gratification. Also as a mass noun: such women collectively.

1934 J. D. Carr Eight of Swords ix. 98 He found himself walking away beside this lithe, bright-eyed, altogether luscious ginch in the tennis frock.

1960 Coshocton (Ohio) Tribune 5 Dec. 3/3 Flip little ginch, ain’t yuh?

1971 E. Tidyman & W. Friedkin French Connection (film script) (Electronic text) 6 A close shot of a chorus line, with lots of tits and ass and lean, long legs... Russo takes the seat on the right, eyes immediately on all that ginch.

1992 C. Nova Trombone (1992) iii. 242 Well, I guess that's Dean's last piece of ginch, isn’t it? There isn’t any romance or desperate women where he's going.

2002 J. A. Jackson Badger Games 17 You’re shaggin’ the ginch. I seen her, not a bad little piece of ass.

Well, wow. I’ve seen The French Connection and read a bit of detective fiction, but I can’t remember ever encountering ginch in this sense or any other. Please let me know in the comments if you’ve heard or used the word in any context.

Meanwhile, enjoy Ginch Gonch’s self-description:

Through its cheeky, outside-of-the box marketing campaigns and sassy names for its products, Ginch Gonch has acquired the reputation of being the brat of the industry. Ginch promotes fun, freedom of expression and diversity through its famous catch phrase “Regardless of your inches we cover you in our Ginches!”. Its “Shiny Heiny”, “Wiener Eater” and “Crotch Rocket” underwear have won the hearts and crotches of millions all over the world who embrace the Ginch Gonch Live Like a Kid! philosophy.

__

Previously on Underwear Week:

Cheekini

True & Co. and the MILFs

Underwear Startups