Personification | Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Archive for the ‘Personification’ Category

Counting your bots

December 12, 2023

Barbara Partee on Facebook yesterday, on the English noun AI [èáj], historically an initialism for the nominal artificial intelligence, but with a lexical life of its own, writing about:

— the new use of AI as a count [C] noun, as in these examples I heard on the NPR program 1A this morning about the use of AI bots in psychotherapy: “Would you use an AI?”, “AIs don’t have hangups, they don’t…” etc. The same conversation had the familiar [mass [M]] noun use as well: “Is there a chance that AI would be better than a trained psychotherapist?”

[Chris Waigl noted that the C usage has been common for a while in some sci-fi subgenres.]

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Posted in Beheading, Conversion, Count & mass, Grammatical categories, Metonymy, Personification | Leave a Comment »

Mitch is always DTF

March 31, 2021

(A lot about dildos and their uses, so probably not for kids or the sexually modest.)

The mail header on today’s Daily Jocks ad. DTF was new to me, but then I’m far from plugged into things — WTF I know, but DTF not, though I guessed the F is for fuck — so I had to look it up. From NOAD:

abbreviation DTF: vulgar slang down to fuck (used, typically on dating websites or apps, to indicate that a person is willing or eager to engage in sexual activity).

(Side query: how to tell when a use of fuck is narrow — a penis is inserted in a sexcavity — and when it is pragmatically broad, conveying (in the context of the moment) merely ‘engage in sexual activity’ — for which a frequent euphemism is ‘play’, which is easily understood too broadly, as covering things short of counting as sexual activity? It’s all a delicate verbal balancing act.)

Then there’s the fact that Mitch is a dildo, so it’s a bit of a stretch to talk about Mitch as always being enthusiastically ready to fuck.

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Posted in Language in advertising, Language of sex, Personification, Pragmatics | 1 Comment »

The poetry of green tea

April 25, 2014

Among the many teas sold by Tazo (from South Seattle WA) are three green teas that my daughter got for me recently, to replenish my supplies. The company is into lush, poetic descriptions of its products — quite entertaining, if you’re in the right mood.

The descriptive material comes in two parts: one part characterizes the taste of a tea, the other is copy poetically evoking a scene or feelings associated with it. Sometimes I think these are cool, but often I think they’re just funny.

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Posted in Alliteration, Complementation, Language and food, Language in advertising, Personification, Syntax | Leave a Comment »