Archive for March, 2016

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The invasive starling

March 24, 2016

Yesterday’s Rhymes With Orange::

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Two things here. One, the fact that English has both riffle through and rifle through, with different histories, but with very similar pronunciations (riffle with /ɪ/, rifle with /aj/) and very similar meanings. But both endure. In the case of the cartoon, I would have said riffle, but it all turns on the starling’s intentions in going through that underwear drawer.

And two, how we are to understand invasive. And that takes us into a great morass of uses for this word and for the word alien, the starling being an alien species in North America, in the technical sense that it is not a species native to the continent, but was introduced from abroad.

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Posted in Errors, Language and animals, Language and plants, Linguistics in the comics | 1 Comment »

Orifices for talk

March 24, 2016

Today’s Dilbert has the pointy-headed boss talking to Dilbert about listening to his gut instincts:

The covert punch line is prefigured in the first panel, with the word analysis. Then in the third panel, Dilbert (recognizing that his boss’s gut instinct can’t literally be telling him anything, since it can’t literally speak) slyly suggests, via his question, that his boss’s gut is figuratively speaking through an orifice closer than his mouth, namely his anus — that is, that the boss is, as we say in vulgar slang, talking out of his ass.

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Posted in Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Slang, Taboo language and slurs | Leave a Comment »

From the Zwicky diaspora: spinning and trimming in Denver

March 24, 2016

Thanks to Google Alert, a pointer to a story in Westword (Denver News and Events) yesterday, “One Track, One Trim at a Time: DJ and Stylist L.A. Zwicky Promotes Self-Expression” by Bree Davies:

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Lauren Zwicky, mixing

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Names, Zwickys | Leave a Comment »

Play with Obi Wan Kenobi

March 23, 2016

Today on Pinterest, a couple of plays on the name Obi Wan Kenobi (of Star Wars fame): a Latino variant and a food variant. May the silliness be with you!

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Juan with his lightsaber

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Obi Wan Cannoli

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Posted in Language and food, Language play, Slogans | 1 Comment »

Annals of verbing: to long-press

March 23, 2016

Benjamin Barrett, back on the 21st, posting to ADS-L:

Apple has just released iOS 9.3, which includes the verb to long-press:

Show thumbnails instead of large images and attachments by long-pressing on any image or attachment in a note

Long-press on an Evernote Export file to import its contents into Notes

We first get the nominal long press as a specialized technical term in the mobile phone industry; there’s evidence (see below) that this goes back at least to 2004. I don’t follow this literature, but Barrett’s is the first report of a verbing so far.

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Posted in Verbing | 2 Comments »

Klimt Eastwood

March 23, 2016

Posted recently on Facebook, this visual mashup of Gustav Klimt (Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907) and Clint Eastwood (as the Man With No Name):

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Note the name, a kind of portmanteau of Klimt and Clint Eastwood.

lvcyd is a handle for the creator’s artist name, “Lucyd Yeah”; see her comment

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Posted in Art, Movies and tv, Portmanteaus | 1 Comment »

The dubious commercial names files

March 22, 2016

Following on my posting earlier today on “Dubious commercial names” (about Hand Job Nails & Spa on Castro St. in San Fracisco, whose name might be dubious but was transparently intended as a winking double entendre), two Facebook comments with other commercial names that are sexually suggestive:

from Mike McKinley: I have a niece who does “Brazilans.” I told her she should open a salon and call it “The Muff Dive.”

from Christopher Walker: Years ago I clipped a brief item from the newspaper that the Secretary of State in Illinois had refused incorporation papers to a prospective business to be called the Eat It Raw Discotheque

And then back to three earlier postings on this blog with dubious commercial names, ranging from the flagrantly transgressive to the winkingly suggestive to the possibly innocent in intent.

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Posted in Language and the body, Language of advertising, Language of sex, Slang | 1 Comment »

Annals of dubious commercial names

March 22, 2016

Found yesterday, in a search for something quite different, a notice for a spa named Hand Job, 565 Castro St. (between 19th & 18th), SF. Yes, provocatively named, right there in the Castro:

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This is primarily a mani/pedi (or mani pedi or mani-pedi) place, offering manicures and pedicures, but with other services as well — including massage, but only therapeutic massages, not the sexual massage that might be suggested by the use of hand job ‘manual masturbation’.

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Posted in Double entendres, Language of advertising, Language of sex, Names | Leave a Comment »

Annals of naming (and lexical semantics and libfixes)

March 22, 2016

Today’s Zippy wanders across a surreal landscape, with at least two items of linguistic interest: the name of the character Premium Cruiseline (with its modifying noun premium) and the form poodle-napping (with the libfix -nap):

These ingredients, in order:

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Posted in Language of advertising, Lexical semantics, Libfixes, Linguistics in the comics, Names | Leave a Comment »

Air tickle

March 21, 2016

Today’s One Big Happy turns on two interpretations of the same gesture, intended by Avis as an air quote (two fingers on each hand) pointedly framing the word mature as euphemistic, but seen by Ruthie as a threat to tickle her with those same four fingers:

Air quotes I’m long familiar with, but tickle sign (as used here; there is an ASL sign for TICKLE, of course) or tickle gesture I’m not, though they seem clear enough.

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Posted in Ambiguity, Gesture, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

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