Archive for September, 2014

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Puns and their allies

September 23, 2014

It starts with today’s Zippy, with a punning title; continues with a Discover Card tv commercial for fraud protection (or frog protection); and ends with some bilingual play involving Nadia Boulanger. There will be digressions at each stage.

The Zippy:

(#1)

The title, “Getting a Bad Feline”, puns on feeling and (with reference to the actual theme of the strip, the cat-replacement phenomenon in Dingburg) feline. Feline survivalism in the last panel (which I won’t comment on here), and, throughout, an entertaining pattern of naming from trade names (which I will).

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Posted in Language in advertising, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Names, Perception, Puns, Silliness | 1 Comment »

Ned talk

September 22, 2014

Sent earlier to Facebook friends, but now for everyone: today’s Bizarro:

A pun on TED Talks:

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, under the slogan: “Ideas Worth Spreading”. (link)

Ted and Ned are both nicknames for Edward (and both can be given as names for boys on their own). But Ted is generally seen as a strongly masculine name, while some see Ned as potentially nerdy (see Ned Flanders on The Simpsons), though of course in real life there are many exceptions. (I say this as someone with a first name that’s often associated either with nerdy/dorky characters or with villains.)

Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Names | 1 Comment »

Bad to the Bone

September 22, 2014

Today’s Zits:

Ah the young, failing to appreciate musical history!

The video, with George Thorogood and the Destroyers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7VsoxT_FUY

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Posted in Formulaic language, Language in advertising, Linguistics in the comics, Music | Leave a Comment »

Hero sandwiches

September 21, 2014

Today’s Rhymes With Orange:

Dragons eat heroes. In this case, in hero sandwiches.

hero sandwich is the New York term for a submarine sandwich, or sub, first attested in 1937; several unlikely etymologies have been suggested, but the likely source is as a relatively transparent compound — something like ‘sandwich for a hero’.

On synonyms for submarine sandwich, see 8/22/11’s “Zippy makes a sandwich”, with links to sources.

Posted in Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Puns | 2 Comments »

The cock cushion

September 21, 2014

(Annals of phallicity, gift division.)

Back on my birthday, earlier this month, Kathryn Burlingham sent me congratulations and added: “The package is in the mail”. At the time I thought this was a little joke, a kind of echo of “The check is in the mail”. But then the package arrived, with this amazing piece of stitchery (by Kathryn and her friend Nandi) in it:

 

(Photo by Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky.)

A friend (male and straight) was greatly entertained by the cushion, noting to a woman friend on his cellphone (with photo) that the design could be used for a handbag. Or, I added, a briefcase. Use your imagination.

Posted in Gender and sexuality, My life, Phallicity | 1 Comment »

Ages

September 21, 2014

On the 12th, a Facebook posting announcing that the day was Maria Muldaur’s 71st birthday. How could that have happened? Well, we age; I’m now 74. Only slightly less startling is the report in the latest Out magazine that Stevie Nicks is 66.

Back on my birthday, two comments on age: one from my grand-daughter, distinguishing between really old and just old; and one from my first male lover, now 66 (like Stevie Nicks) to my 74, an age difference that no longer seems significant.

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Posted in Lexical semantics, Music, My life | 1 Comment »

Two from Out

September 20, 2014

Yesterday, it was The Advocate; today, it’s another LPI publication, Out (or OUT) magazine, again with two pieces of interest for this blog in the latest (October 2014) issue: one on straightsplaining, one on gay bookstores.

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Posted in Books, Gender and sexuality, Language and gender, Language and sexuality, Portmanteaus, Social life, Taboo language and slurs | Leave a Comment »

Two from The Advocate

September 19, 2014

In the latest (Oct./Nov. 2014) issue of The Advocate (the glossy newsmagazine targeting an lgbt audience), two items with some linguistic interest: an ad campaign from Burger King choosing wording to frame its ads for this audience; and an instance of the first X to …, with a domain X that at first seems preposterously particular but turns out to be possibly useful after all.

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language in advertising, Semantics | 1 Comment »

lady parts

September 18, 2014

Today’s Zits:

(#1)

Jeremy and his buddy Pierce, and the slang euphemism lady parts.

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Posted in Euphemism, Language and the law, Language of sex, Linguistics in the comics, Slang | Leave a Comment »

The uses of etymology

September 18, 2014

From The Economist, 9/13/14, a letter, p. 22, from Mark Watson of Galway, Ireland:

I have lived in France for the past three months and each day I heard François Hollande in the media talking about “croissance”. I assumed he was invoking citizens to support their local bakery, until I realized he was speaking about growth. My observation is that in France croissance can happen between 10am and 12 noon, and again after 2pm but no later than 7 pm…

That is, Watson understands the noun croissance to mean something like ‘supplying croissants‘, those yummy rolls. There’s a nice etymological story here.

(more…)

Posted in Etymology, Lexical semantics | Leave a Comment »

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