Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Language update for June
After a long drought, Professor Polistra has a real flood of misused or new words, and most of them are related to this year's perpetual flooding.
Buffalaxing:
This has been around for several years, but Prof P just got around to noticing it. Means the practice of supplying fake English "translations" for foreign songs, based on the sounds. Some are sort of dumb, but some are pure genius. Named after Buffalax, the Youtuber who started the trend.
Fragile:
Fragile wetlands, fragile deserts, fragile old-growth forests, etc. Perfectly Orwellian. When you hear an area called fragile, this is actually a command, not a description. This area has been preserving itself quite nicely for billions of years, therefore we need to commit suicide in order to preserve it, which it will do anyway because it's been preserving itself for billions of years.
Now the word is being extended to cultures and governments that have maintained themselves for a few thousand years in Asia and Africa:
"A constant refrain from these camps is that prematurely withdrawing from either country would jeopardize what Petraeus has dubbed 'fragile and reversible' security gains."
Basically, a situation is fragile if the ruling class wants the status quo to remain exactly as it stands. If the ruling class wants something to change, it's no longer fragile. It's unacceptable.
Strangely, the "British" pronunciation /frædʒaɪl/ is starting to spread, probably by analogy with turbine and missile.
Suggest:
The verb form of racist or sexist or homophobic. The media's way of signaling to other Party members that the person making the suggestion is an Enemy Of The Party.
"Last year, [Newt] suggested U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was a racist, said Obama is best understood by his 'Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior,' and argued that placing a mosque near ground zero in New York City was akin to placing a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum."
"Today we ... add suggested questions sent to us by the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Foreign Policy Initiative."
"Southern Baptist theologian R. Albert Mohler, Jr. ... explaining why his weekend tweet suggested the Jewish congressman needed Jesus Christ."
Debanking:
New word for an old concept. Lots of people debanked in the '30s when they learned that banks were not a safe place to keep money. Now some people have been forcibly debanked, while others are sticking to cash out of distrust as in the '30s. [Much later: Here's a story about a time when I was debanking.]
Unnecessary plurals
"The Chinas and the Indias of the world are continuing to grow...." I suppose it makes some sense with China, because Red China and Taiwan are two Chinas, but I'm sure that wasn't in the mind of the news-writer.
"National Weather Service tells us the waters are well above flood stage." Do some rivers contain heavy water (D2O) and others contain ordinary water (H2O), and still others contain Sparkling Water?
"Those winds will be with us overnight." Are we talking about the four Greek wind gods, Boreas, Zephyrus, Eurus, and Notus?
Roll:
Verb reserved for the Mississippi. No other body of water rolls. Probably began with Old Man River.
"As the Mississippi River's crest rolls downstream,"
"Historic flood rolls down swollen Mississippi."
"Water rolls to lower Mississippi."
"..once the mighty Mississippi rolls on down the river.."
Sure-up:
An interesting substitution for shore up. (It's a sort of Buffalax!)
From the Poplar Bluff newspaper reporting a flood: "More showers and thunderstorms were expected in the area on Tuesday, giving crews that worked overnight to sure-up the levee no rest."
Sure-up makes sense in the context. The workers were trying to make the levee more certain and safe. Prof P suspects this may be a local hypercorrection, common in Missoura. Teachers used to steer kids from shorely to surely, and the substitution may have spread to a word where it wasn't needed.
Much later (Sep 2013): Another use of sure-up from UK Telegraph, which couldn't have been influenced by Missoura schoolteachers: "The first man sent out by Downing Street to sure up the Tory ranks was Sam Gyimah, the Prime Minister’s affable Principal Private Secretary." Calving off:
Flood report from Hamburg, Iowa. "The levee just started calving off. Four-foot pieces were calving off under the force of the torrent."
After a long drought, Professor Polistra has a real flood of misused or new words, and most of them are related to this year's perpetual flooding.
Buffalaxing:
This has been around for several years, but Prof P just got around to noticing it. Means the practice of supplying fake English "translations" for foreign songs, based on the sounds. Some are sort of dumb, but some are pure genius. Named after Buffalax, the Youtuber who started the trend.
Fragile:
Fragile wetlands, fragile deserts, fragile old-growth forests, etc. Perfectly Orwellian. When you hear an area called fragile, this is actually a command, not a description. This area has been preserving itself quite nicely for billions of years, therefore we need to commit suicide in order to preserve it, which it will do anyway because it's been preserving itself for billions of years.
Now the word is being extended to cultures and governments that have maintained themselves for a few thousand years in Asia and Africa:
"A constant refrain from these camps is that prematurely withdrawing from either country would jeopardize what Petraeus has dubbed 'fragile and reversible' security gains."
Basically, a situation is fragile if the ruling class wants the status quo to remain exactly as it stands. If the ruling class wants something to change, it's no longer fragile. It's unacceptable.
Strangely, the "British" pronunciation /frædʒaɪl/ is starting to spread, probably by analogy with turbine and missile.
Suggest:
The verb form of racist or sexist or homophobic. The media's way of signaling to other Party members that the person making the suggestion is an Enemy Of The Party.
"Last year, [Newt] suggested U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was a racist, said Obama is best understood by his 'Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior,' and argued that placing a mosque near ground zero in New York City was akin to placing a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum."
"Today we ... add suggested questions sent to us by the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Foreign Policy Initiative."
"Southern Baptist theologian R. Albert Mohler, Jr. ... explaining why his weekend tweet suggested the Jewish congressman needed Jesus Christ."
Debanking:
New word for an old concept. Lots of people debanked in the '30s when they learned that banks were not a safe place to keep money. Now some people have been forcibly debanked, while others are sticking to cash out of distrust as in the '30s. [Much later: Here's a story about a time when I was debanking.]
Unnecessary plurals
"The Chinas and the Indias of the world are continuing to grow...." I suppose it makes some sense with China, because Red China and Taiwan are two Chinas, but I'm sure that wasn't in the mind of the news-writer.
"National Weather Service tells us the waters are well above flood stage." Do some rivers contain heavy water (D2O) and others contain ordinary water (H2O), and still others contain Sparkling Water?
"Those winds will be with us overnight." Are we talking about the four Greek wind gods, Boreas, Zephyrus, Eurus, and Notus?
Roll:
Verb reserved for the Mississippi. No other body of water rolls. Probably began with Old Man River.
"As the Mississippi River's crest rolls downstream,"
"Historic flood rolls down swollen Mississippi."
"Water rolls to lower Mississippi."
"..once the mighty Mississippi rolls on down the river.."
Sure-up:
An interesting substitution for shore up. (It's a sort of Buffalax!)
From the Poplar Bluff newspaper reporting a flood: "More showers and thunderstorms were expected in the area on Tuesday, giving crews that worked overnight to sure-up the levee no rest."
Sure-up makes sense in the context. The workers were trying to make the levee more certain and safe. Prof P suspects this may be a local hypercorrection, common in Missoura. Teachers used to steer kids from shorely to surely, and the substitution may have spread to a word where it wasn't needed.
Much later (Sep 2013): Another use of sure-up from UK Telegraph, which couldn't have been influenced by Missoura schoolteachers: "The first man sent out by Downing Street to sure up the Tory ranks was Sam Gyimah, the Prime Minister’s affable Principal Private Secretary." Calving off:
Flood report from Hamburg, Iowa. "The levee just started calving off. Four-foot pieces were calving off under the force of the torrent."
Labels: Language update
¶ 5:06 AM
