Language update for Sept
Since Professor Polistra was already in the classroom to show a Memory Hole graph, she decided to go ahead and do a Language Update for this season. It's a very small load, but one of the words is specifically timely today.


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UM.... (in print):

This has become a perfectly reliable shibboleth for satanic monsters. In online forums or comboxes, every remark that starts with UM... is an act of violent censorship by a satanic inquisitor.

Doesn't apply to speech, where the distinction between um and er and uh is still pretty much random.

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Arteriole:

In a story on a proposed new approach to pedestrian crossings...

Council Member Candace Mumm said Elayna's story helped inspire the new proposed crosswalk ordinance. "It seems walkability is the new thing, everyone wants to be able to have more places to walk and make it safer, and make it really clear to drivers that pedestrians have the right of way at intersections," said Council Member Mumm. The proposed plans include updating crosswalks at business center, arterioles next to schools, parks and other high pedestrian traffic areas. The proposal will add a variety of painted crosswalks as well as mid-block crosswalks.

Mid-block crossings are an excellent idea. On superfast streets or highways you need a rigidly controlled stoplight for sure. On moderately busy streets it's usually better to cross in the middle of the block. Every car is traveling at a constant speed and you only need to watch two directions. At corners you have four unpredictable directions to watch, and you never know who's going to remain stopped.

But I'm not at all sure that we need to have arterioles next to schools. All that blood squirting on the street will make traction impossible.

[In fairness this was probably an uncaught autocorrect or something similar. Autocorrect dictionaries, just like old paper dictionaries, are short on engineering jargon like arterial, and long on medical terms.]

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Overhanging limbo:

From ABC news discussing latest idiocy from The Yellin Chair:

"There's a sort of 'overhanging limbo' effect in the uncertainty about where interest rates are going."

Nice accidental combination. A semantic portmanteau.

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Degraded:

Now that Obama has used this word repeatedly in the context of fighting "against" our trained and paid contractor ISIS, Obama's servile courtier fags in Satan's media are picking it up.

From local news:

"People living in a degraded mobile home park will be given more time to correct zoning problems."

Degraded was never used in this context before. This sentence might have used dilapidated or decayed, but not degraded.


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Rank but not file:

This is an odd one. All available etymology pages indicate that rank and file is an inseparable phrase, referring to the rows and columns of a military formation. Rank is side-to-side, file is front-to-back. From there, the term came to mean all common soldiers, then all commoners.

Here, in an article on snooty noble Scots fighting against Scottish independence, is a very different interpretation.

Felicia Morris, a high-flying lawyer dubbed "the Queen of the London-based Scots", was also alarmed by the prospect of an independent Scotland. "Everyone's very worried. It's being talked about incessantly at dinner parties." .... Will their 80,000-acre estates be parcelled out to crofters? Might SNP leader Alex Salmond bring in a swingeing castle tax? Will treasonous Scots cast off the Queen as their head of state? It's causing disquiet among the ranks, if not the file.

Certainly makes sense. Nobles are ranks, commoners are file. If you didn't know the proper usage, this would be the most logical way to parse the phrase. Is this an idiosyncratic interpretation by Morris, or by the article's author? Or is it a typical use among the horsy set? Can't tell.

Labels: Language update

  ¶ 4:03 AM