Author Archive
April 30, 2026
(plenty of references to a wide rage of sexual practices, mostly between men (though not in street language), so dubious for kids and not for the sexually modest)
A e-mail ad today for a new t-shirt from the Peachy Kings shop: the SIR mesh football jersey ($40), with this pitch:
Yes SIR… we’ve got the top for you! Our new SIR mesh jersey will let everyone know who’s the boss! This top will get you all the attention this summer with its slinky sleeves, peek-a-boo mesh and slight-crop.
SIR now joins PK’s existing t-shirt labels GOOD BOY, PORN STAR, STUD, and TRASH, but with a sociolinguistic twist: sir is primarily an address term; unlike the count nouns boy, star, and stud, and the mass noun trash, it has virtually no uses as a referential common noun. In man-on-man sex, it’s used by a subordinate addressing a superordinate: a bottom to his top, a Boy to his Daddy, a sub(missive) to a dom(inant), a (sexual) slave to his master. I am Sir is used in bdsm contexts, but I am a sir ‘I am a top / Daddy / dom / master’ is decidedly odd.
(more…)
Posted in Address terms, Clothing, Context, Emoji, Figurative language, Language and the body, Language in advertising, Language of sex, Lexical semantics, Metaphor, Pragmatics, Signs and symbols, Slang | Leave a Comment »
April 30, 2026
🐅 🐅 🐅 tiger tiger tiger for ultimate April (the rabbits rush in tomorrow, bearing muguets pour le premier mai), with my response to a posting on Facebook by John McIntyre yesterday
Hail! Bright Jeremiah, hail! fill ev’ry heart!
With love of thee and thy celestial art
— adapted from Nicholas Brady’s text for Henry Purcell’s “Hail! Bright Cecilia” (Z.328)
(more…)
Posted in Marriage, Music, My life | Leave a Comment »
April 28, 2026
(about a family of vulgar slang expressions, so streams of raunchy talk about sex: totally not for kids or the sexually modest)
With apologies to the Rodgers and Hammerstein of Carousel, notes on to bust a nut ‘to ejaculate, orgasm’ and its kin, among them the verbs bust, nut, dick, and ball (plus all those bodypart nouns).
(more…)
Posted in AAVE / Black English, Conversion, Dialects, Language and the body, Language of sex, Metaphor, Nouning, Variation, Verbing | Leave a Comment »
April 27, 2026
Playing on my Apple Music when I woke this morning (4/27): the trio and chorus “They shall be as happy as they’re fair” from Act V of Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, Z. 629, with its forward-driving syncopations accompanying the repeated “happy, happy”. A wild wedding song to start the day:
They shall be as happy, happy, as they’re fair,
Love shall fill all the places of care;
And ev’ry time the Sun shall display his rising light,
It shall be to them a new Wedding day,
And when he sets a new Nuptial night.
Every day a new festive wedding day, every night a new conjugal wedding night; let’s dance!
I was profoundly happy.
(more…)
Posted in Morning names, Music, My life | Leave a Comment »
April 26, 2026
(about sexual acts, especially between men, and also about excrement as an accompaniment to sexual acts, all described in vulgar street language, so this posting is massively unsuitable for kids or the sexually modest)
Two messy situations. Anal intercourse sometimes involves the mess of excrement — feces, inadverent (oops!) or intentional (yes!) — and American gay usage has supplied vocabulary for both situations (now extended to women, as well as men, as receptive partners in anal intercourse).
This is as far as I will go using distanced, technical language; from now on, I’ll use the current street language — heavy in F-bombs and S-bombs, among other things — of my sources. This isn’t just a stylistic decision; again and again, it turns out that the distanced language is imprecise and fuzzy, while the street language comes with specific and detailed reference — just as you would expect, because the distanced language is designed to avoid embarrassing reality, while the street language needs to be clear on details that affect how we conduct our everyday lives.
(more…)
Posted in Argument structure, Language and the body, Language of sex, Lexical semantics, Semantics, Syntax | Leave a Comment »
April 25, 2026
(lots of discussion of men’s bodies in street language and similar references to sex between men, so not for kids or the sexually modest)
Stylish? Or in costume? There can be a fine line here, often crossed flagrantly — in my opinion, at any rate — in high-fashion shows. And then also in the far reaches of premium underwear for men, especially from the raunchily named Breedwell company — whose name includes the sexual verb breed ‘pedicate a man bareback (without a condom) to orgasm’.
(Translation in plain, but seriously vulgar, language: pedicate is a Latinate verb for engaging in insertive anal intercourse — fucking someone up the ass — and breed is the related slang achievement verb for bareback man-on-man sex — conveying that the fucker comes (shoots his load) in the other man’s ass.)]
(more…)
Posted in Clothing, Fashion, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Names, Portmanteaus, Underwear | Leave a Comment »
April 25, 2026
Yesterday’s (4/24) Zippy strip has our Pinhead singing the praises of everyday stationery supplies, in particular the cylinders (now usually made of plastic) used to convey rolled-up sheets of material with printing or designs on them: the telescoping plastic mailing tube:
Zippy chants for the TPMT
Four words of decreasing length (in number of syllables), in two phrases:
— the adjectival modifiers telescoping ‘which telescopes’ and plastic ‘which is made of plastic’ (4 + 2 syllables)
— and the head compound noun mailing tube ‘tube for mailing things’ (2 + 1 syllable)
Thereby achieving the effect of building to a final one-syllable bang.
(more…)
Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Poetic form, Repetition | Leave a Comment »
April 24, 2026
(some vulgar slang, but (I think) tolerable by kids and the sexually modest)
Today’s (4/24) morning name, the final line of a quatrain I learned as boy lore about 1950:
How’s your ma and how’s your pa
And how’s your sister Sue?
And while we’re on the subject,
How’s your old wazoo?
(#1) The family-wazoo rhyme; I didn’t know the quantity adverbial up the wazoo at the time, so I mistakenly took wazoo to be a variant of street slang dick / cock ‘penis’
(more…)
Posted in Deixis, Figurative language, Humor, Lexical semantics, Metonymy, My life, Poetic form, Poetry, Semantics, Taboo language and slurs | 4 Comments »
