Journalist Alex Wagner on MS NOW a little while ago:
We are so beclowning ourselves
(The intensive Gen-X so is just a bonus; AW was born in 1977, and Gen-X is roughly 1965 through 1980)
That’s beclown ‘make a fool of’ (perhaps clumsily). With a modest number of cites to be found, but uncommon enough to strike many hearers as a colorful coinage.
This morning, I went to get a bunch of lab tests done at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (for a nephrologist consultation tomorrow) and discovered that a lot of the phlebotomists recognized me, greeted me enthusiastically by name, and asked about my life since they had last seen me. The thing is, I’m really visible (well, I also remember them, and facts about their lives too; they’re interesting people, and the question “How did you end up working here?”, while they are drawing my blood, elicits some extraordinary stories). Almost always wearing stunningly gay clothes (today, rainbow-flag track shorts and a honking big rainbow-colored DEI t-shirt).
(#1) The DEI shirt
The PAMF staff find these clothes cheering, which is indeed one of the things they’re for.
This makes me happy.
(high sexual content, not for kids or the sexually modest)
Lexicographic notes from Young America, heard on Facebook reels from bros in their 20s discussing sexual matters in a mostly bantering way: the verb to collab. Collected this morning (6/4), one bro to another:
When I collabed with Pepe, I was doing something I’d never done before … we were tossing each other’s salad
(to toss someone’s salad ‘to rim someone’ — verb rim-2: [with object] vulgar slang lick or suck the anus of (someone) as a means of sexual stimulation (NOAD) — seems to be a recent slang idiom: in Urban Dictionary in this century, but not my other sources)
🐅 🐅 🐅 tiger tiger tiger for ultimate April; tomorrow the rabbit operatives of the revitalized Industrial Workers of the World will smash the tiger lackeys serving the corrupt octopus of big business and government; the Wobblies will, of course, dance onto the scene, tossing flowers to the audience (public service warning: do not eat the muguets; they are beautiful and sweet-selling, but toxic)
Previously on this blog. In yesterday’s “hoozamaflazamadoozamajillions 1”, a Lynn Johnston For Better or For Worse strip, (re)published on 6/19/24:
(#1) There are three linguistic things going on in this cartoon: the ambiguity of the verb count; the invented –illions words; and the thing [my correspondent Masayoshi Yamada] was puzzled by, the gigantic “nonsense nonce coinage” (as he put it) hoozamaflazamadoozama modifying jillions
Yesterday, things 1 and 2; today, thing 3.
Heard on MSNBC on 1/9, a reporter on scene at the Palisades wildfire in Los Angeles, noting that looterers had become a problem — using, not the agent noun looter, based on the established verb loot, but the agent noun looterer, based on the innovative verb looter (a verbing of the noun looter). A looterer is someone engaged in lootering, which is a kind of looting.
The question is why the reporter went for the elaborate innovative noun looterer rather than the simpler established noun looter. In the context, it was clearly not a mistake, and the reporter repeated it. And then it turns out that the usage wasn’t her invention on the spot; the verb looter and its derived agent noun looterer are attested from others. Even with reference to the Los Angeles fires; from the iHeart podcasts about the fires:
2 days ago — That’s just the estimate. Speaker 2 (00:43): So the Los Angeles Police arrested a possible arson suspect … twenty looterers have been arrested
I’ve been sleeping most of my days away, not happily, so not advancing on raunchy appetizer boards and the like. Thanks to Hana Filip, reporting on Google Translate, for today’s Mary, Queen of Scots Not Dead Yet posting.
Today on Facebook, from Hana:
Discussion (somewhat edited):
(more…)
It’s Midsummer Eve, the day before St. John’s Day and Midsummer Night, on which we can dream about reveling with the fairies. High summer, fiercely hot — I’ve been poleaxed by the heat for several days and trying to write this before today’s shimmer fells me once again — and Stanford (the edge of which is, like, six blocks from the Palo Alto house I’m writing this in) is in day 3 of a PG&E power outage crisis (my electric power is supplied by Palo Alto Utilities, which has so far coped with the heat demands and the occasional small fire, though it all seems distressingly tenuous to me).
Stanford has shut down everything it could and told staff and faculty to stay away if at all possible. But there are all those students in university housing, which is without power for cooling, for lighting, for charging electronic equipment, for opening (keycard-controlled) doors. For them, the university has provided places — spaces or areas — that have emergency power sources and can provide temporary relief in the form of cooling, lighting, and charging. What to call such places?
Stanford’s solution was expressions using the noun respite — respite space, respite area, area of respite — which were new turns of phrase for me, though they probably have a history I’m ignorant of. They have the advantage of being general (cooling station, which has been used in other public heat-crisis emergencies, covers only one of the students’ needs), but not so general that it’s uninformative (as, say, emergency area would be), and not, at least yet, associated specifically with the excretion of bodily wastes (as expressions with the nouns rest, comfort, and relief have become). (Not that excretion is irrelevant in a power outage; the lighting supplied in respite areas lets people see what they’re doing in bathrooms / toilets there, and that’s a very good thing. Meanwhile, back at the dark stifling dorms: flashlights.)
Today’s morning name: South Cackalacky, mildly derogatory slang for South Carolina (suggesting crudeness, rusticity, and remoteness: the boondocks). And Cackalacky, for the Carolinas taken together, with the same associations. (Sorry, Charleston, Charlotte, and Research Triangle.)
Then, of course, such associations can be inverted, to connote local pride, down-hominess, and the like. As has happened in this case.
(Sex toys and all they bring with them, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)
Today, a leek (for St. David’s Day, March 1st), but yesterday (the intercalary day February 29th) a leap.
The mail arrives and wow! (you exclaim) there’s a Leap Day flash sale at the Guy Gear Store, just for today! You have visions of well-designed equipment for hunting, fishing, and camping; cool bikes; hot athletic shoes; t-shirts for teams, bands, and plain ol’ aggression; tools Craftsman never dreamed of; electronics to rule the world of the future; and all that good guy stuff.
And then you examine the ad in detail:
(#1) Quick! Identify the three sale items in the ad; the model’s shapely buttocks are not actually on offer
Probaby not your father’s idea of guy gear.
