Today’s Zits:
There’s a lot of fun in there — I’m fond of Michisota, in particular, and the idea that Pierce’s fake ID has him as female — but here I’m looking at the rhyming slang idiom commit to the bit, which was new to me (hey, I’m an old man). From context, it seems to convey something like ’embrace whole-heartedly’. But I’d welcome comments from native speakers.
(The title provides a warning for the sensitive.)
On the 11th on Facebook, Greg Parkinson commented on steroid-induced gynecomastia, with this image:
Tom Kirkland followed up with:
What surprises me is … how large the fan base for bitchtits [is].
(introducing the slang bitchtits for gynecomastia; bitchtits would be doubly unsuitable for the New York Times, which treats both parts of the compound as taboo, unacceptable in print; also note the syntax).
Yesterday Mark Liberman posted on this Doonesbury cartoon:
Rich in material. The main thing I want to note (as Mark did) is a sense development in the slang verb rock, from an older sense, around at least since 1990 (‘impact strongly’), to a newer sense, the one in the cartoon, around since at least 2007 (‘wear or display conspicuously or proudly’); this is a change from a more objective sense to a more subjective one, such as Elizabeth Traugott has repeatedly discussed.
Today’s Pearls Before Swine:
Once agan, Pig falls foul of the Comic Book Censor. This time, it’s over the expression flip s.o. the bird, understood literally (as Pig intends) or as a reference to a rude gesture, giving someone the finger (which comes up here every so often).
A Roz Chast cartoon:
Generational differences. Slang. An inadvertent pun.
(Original lead from Jonathan Lighter on ADS-L. This image via Ben Zimmer.)
An recent exchange on Facebook (about Gertrude Stein) led to musings on the drug noun hash, which at least historically is a shortening of hashish. One participant noted that these days you don’t see a lot of mentions of hashish, and I remarked that for some people hash was usable as another synonym (among many) for marijuana / cannabis, similar to pot. I was comfortable with that, but not everyone was.
It starts with tlhe clipping amaze for amazing and then goes on to the playful extension amazeballs (or amaze balls). Then both of these can be modified by the slang clipping totes (for totally). And another slang intensive modifier, def, can be added to the mix, giving things like the slogan on this tea towel:
(#1)
Two recent news stories on word use, one from a South London school and one from Malaysia.
