Archive for the ‘Semantics’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Not knowing

May 8, 2026

Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtin in the Point / Counterpoint segment on Saturday Night Live: Jane would make some serious point, only to be dismissed by Dan with a response beginning “Jane, you ignorant slut”

This posting is about not knowing, about ignorance — but not about the ignorance of “Jane, you ignorant slut” (call this ignorant, sense a), instead the ignorance of my helper Isaac, who turned out to be ignorant of the Great Depression (call this ignorant, sense b); well, he’s Fijian and more than a generation younger than me. On the two senses, see NOAD:

adj. ignorant: [a] lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated: he was told constantly that he was ignorant and stupid. [b] [predicative] lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about a particular thing: they were ignorant of astronomy. …

Unfortunately, the odium of sense a tends to overwhelm the simple not knowing of sense b (negative associations tend to crowd out positive ones). Meanwhile, I am famously ignorant of almost everything having to do with sports, while also being famously knowledgable about a few things having to do with language.

(more…)

Posted in Ambiguity, Lexical semantics, My life | Leave a Comment »

The SIR shirt

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 »

Mess, oops or yes

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 »

How’s your old wazoo?

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 »

On the trail of polypersonalism

April 24, 2026

A report on an exchange between me and my UNC-Chapel Hill colleague Bruno Estigarribia about polypersonalism (explanation to follow). As it unfolded in e-mail between us, presented here with BE’s permission.

This is one in a series of reports on linguists musing about stuff and groping with ideas — showing people something of what we do professionally (before actual publication, if that eventually comes) and something of our passion for and commitment to this work.

(more…)

Posted in Agreement, Argument structure, Government, Guarani, Inflection, Languages, Linguists, Morphology, Semantics, Spanish, Syntax | 3 Comments »

Prodigious macrophallicity, contemptuous noblesse

April 21, 2026

(all about man-on-man sex, described in street language, so entirely unsuitable for kids or the sexually modest)

My latest gay porn DVD, ordered on sale and on spec, on the basis of Malik Delgaty’s brief appearance in a different MEN.com compendium, The Men’s Room. The DVD Malik Delgaty: The Ultimate Ride (2026), with 4 scenes: “Ass Blaster” (2020), “(The) Bootyguard” (2022), “Bussy Control” (2023), and “Hook Up Trade” (2023).

About MD, from Wikipedia:

Justin Lesage (born 29 September 2000), known professionally as Malik Delgaty, is a Canadian actor in gay pornographic films. He began working as a stripper at 18 years old in his hometown of Montreal before signing an exclusive contract with Men.com in 2020. He was the most searched-for gay pornographic actor online from 2022 to 2024 and has won three GayVN Awards.

… Delgaty identifies as straight and has stated that he “had never been attracted to men before being on camera”. He has been described as “gay-for-pay”

Justin Lesage makes his living by acting in gay porn movies as Malik Delgaty, an identity that allows him to take advantage of (1) the gifts of nature (he is a tall man — 6′ 3″ — with a big frame and a matching long — 8.5″ — and thick (cut) penis), as improved by gym workouts to achieve (2) an impressive bodybuilder’s heavy musculature, these physical advantages allied with (3) the ability to maintain a hard-on unflaggingly through extended reverential blow jobs and ass-fucking.

Two themes emerge. One is the celebration of penis size, what I’ve called macrophallicism; the other is a version of contemptuous noblesse oblige, coming for MD along with his attitude to being gay for pay (g4p).

(more…)

Posted in Figurative language, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Lexical semantics | Leave a Comment »

The sno cone

April 18, 2026

Yesterday’s (4./17) Wayno / Piraro Bizarro cartoon shows two snowmen conferring:


Left Snowman reassures Right Snowman that the frozen confection that they are eating in a cone (“fruit-flavored crushed ice” (NOAD)) is not in fact snow — that would smack of, ick, cannibalism — but instead sno, a substance that merely resembles snow (Wayno’s title for the cartoon is Faux Cone); it’s just a sno cone / sno-cone (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)

(more…)

Posted in Ambiguity, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Semantics, Semantics of compounds | 2 Comments »

Over-sensitive ambiguity alarms

April 17, 2026

As I regularly point out on this blog: if you look for it, ambiguity is everywhere; almost any expression can be understood in multiple ways, especially if you’re willing to entertain preposterous or unlikely ideas. So if you had a device that detects every possible ambiguity, it would be ringing forever and driving everyone crazy.

People typically fail to notice most of the possibilities, and then disregard the unlikely ones they do entertain (there’s evidence that most people hearing the word straw entertain, for a fleeting moment, both the interpretations ‘dried stalk of grain’ and ‘hollow tube for sucking a drink’ — even in The straw was mixed with hay and The straw was fabricated from plastic). So most ambiguity lies beneath the level of consciousness.

But some people have become accustomed to listening to and looking for details of language use — it’s one of the things they do — and so are inclined to have over-sensitive ambiguity alarms. Their ambiguity alarms are as a kind of occupational hazard. I am such a person, by profession. I have had to learn to suppress commentary on much of what I notice, because the details aren’t important for most people, though occasionally I’ll cite something that entertains me.

My friend Tim Evanson is also such a person, and since he’s a prodigious writer on Facebook, we get to see his ambiguity alarm in action. On 4/13, he citex a headline from Crain’s Cleveland Business:

CFO [is] named for Akron’s Trailhead Foundation (call this CCB)

And then quipped:

So, I have an etiquette question: Do we refer to her as “Ms. Trailhead”? Or as “Ms. Akron Trailhead”?

(more…)

Posted in Ambiguity, Extraction, Lexical semantics, Modification, Pragmatics, Syntax | 3 Comments »

Focusing on form rather than content

April 15, 2026

In today’s (Wayno / Piraro) Bizarro, a bank teller focuses on how quaint it is that a bank robber has written his demand on paper (the way they did it in old movies), while disregarding the pressing threat of the robber’s gun:


(1) A quibbling triumph of details of form over the real threat of content (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)

Faced with dreadful, uncontrollable situations, people sometimes take to fretting about some minor issue that is more easily remedied.

(more…)

Posted in Form and function, Humor, Linguistics in the comics, Mistakes, Movies and tv, Peeving | Leave a Comment »

human urinal

April 8, 2026

(a brief note about sex between men, described in street language — entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest)

The hybrid. From “The Human Urinal” episode of MEN.com’s The Men’s Room DVD (the first scene (of 5) on my recently arrived copy of the 2/26 DVD:

(more…)

Posted in Ambiguity, Clothing, Form and function, Gay porn, Language and the body, Language of sex, Language play, Lexical semantics, Semantics | Leave a Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »