Larry Horn on ADS-L yesterday, on the slang term duds ‘clothes’:
a particularly impressive word, showing up in 15th and 16th c. slang compendia and having remained as a slang word ever since. Can’t think of any rival to its status for slangevity.
Ah, the wonderful slangevity ‘slang longevity’. No Google hits at all — we can credit Larry for the coining, I think — though Google offers sungevity, lungevity, and leangevity as possible alternatives.
From the Wikipedia entry:
Sungevity is a residential solar company that was founded in 2007 by Danny Kennedy, Andrew Birch and Alec Guettel and has offices in Berkeley and Oakland, California.
(Website here.)
The LUNGevity site tells us:
The mission of LUNGevity Foundation is to have a meaningful and immediate impact on improving lung cancer survival rates, ensure a higher quality of life for lung cancer patients, and provide a community for those impacted by lung cancer.
And then there’s the Leangevity Center in Agoura Hills CA, described here:
Leangevity, which opened in 2004 in the Kanan Village Shops, offers medically monitored weight loss programs supported by daily B12 injections. It also sells supplement bars, powders and vitamins.
It’s not all California; the LUNGevity Foundation has its headquarters in Chicago.
Meanwhile: Does a long-lasting taste have tangevity? A long-lived gorilla Kongevity? Venerable Canadian waterbirds loongevity? Sturdily masculine guys mangevity? And so on.
June 24, 2011 at 9:49 am |
Charlie Doyle on ADS-L today:
Yes, indeed, shortgevity ‘short(er) lifespan’, as applied to human beings, computer media, predictions, careers, etc. On the order of 900 raw ghits, most having to do with lifespans in different nations.
June 24, 2011 at 11:08 am |
In long -> longevity the g is softened (or whatever the proper linguistic term is). Is this also true for lung, tang, or Kong?
(Since lean, loon and man don’t have the hard g it’s more obvious how to pronounce them.)
June 24, 2011 at 1:55 pm |
When reading the words tangevity and Kongevity, I assumed that, like longevity, they have [ndʒ]—but that made me initially regard them as completely illegitimate, since their bases (tang, Kong) have [ŋ]. Only afterwards did I notice that pairs like ta[ŋ] : ta[ndʒ]evity do make sense if they’re seen as having been formed by analogy with lo[ŋ] : lo[ndʒ]evity. So I guess the real issue was that I don’t (consciously, at least) consider longevity synchronically derived from long—I’m probably too aware that the former is Latinate and the latter English in origin (though they’re ultimately related).