We’ll tweet how the German word for “mansplaining” is “herrklären"
December 19, 2016 8:48 AM   Subscribe

Ah, 2016, what words can describe you? According to Merriam-Webster, the 2016 Word of the Year is "surreal". Notable too, Merriam-Webster's decision to make their Twitter feed into a "sassy" voice about language.
posted by Mr.Pointy (21 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
I usually get a little snippy about the popular use of surreal, but, holy shit, I think even the Surrealists, who were often explicitly antifascist and opposed to totalitarianism (there were movements to explicitly align Surrealism with anarchism) would say this year has been surreal. This is exactly the sort of stuff their art was created to respond to.
posted by maxsparber at 8:53 AM on December 19, 2016 [15 favorites]


I'm somehow both happy and a little disappointed to discover the decision for the M-W Twitter account to be sassy with folks is a calculated, group decision and not some rogue lone actor who is tired of people's shit.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:06 AM on December 19, 2016 [5 favorites]


Our friends at the Guardian tell us that Trump slipped under the wire with "unpresidented."
posted by OHSnap at 9:07 AM on December 19, 2016 [2 favorites]


As of December 2nd, fascism was in the lead.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:16 AM on December 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


the German word for “mansplaining” is “herrklären"

A great example of the rare portmanteau-calque.

(Herr means man and erklären means to explain.)
posted by jedicus at 9:18 AM on December 19, 2016 [23 favorites]


I know this isn't on topic per se, but I really want to share the Icelandic translation of the word "mansplain". It's "hrútskýra", which is also a portmanteau-calque, though slightly askew. The word is formed from "útskýra", explain, and "hrút-", which is an intensifying prefix most often used in "hrútleiðinlegur", which means "very boring". The prefix comes from "hrútur", which means "ram", as in the animal. It can also mean a kind of overbearing man. "Mansplaining" is then "hrútskýring", and can also be used as a noun.
posted by Kattullus at 9:25 AM on December 19, 2016 [36 favorites]


> I know this isn't on topic per se

I think it's perfectly on topic as it was briefly mentioned in the article, but your explanation goes more in depth into the etymology.
posted by noneuclidean at 9:55 AM on December 19, 2016 [2 favorites]


the German word for “mansplaining” is “herrklären"

So elegant, it's better than the original.
posted by ZipRibbons at 10:01 AM on December 19, 2016 [7 favorites]


The Beaverton: Merriam-Webster 2016 Word-of-the-Year: “Fuuuuuuuuuuck”
SPRINGFIELD, MA – The dictionary editors at Merriam-Webster have found that the most used word of 2016 was “fuuuuuuuuuuuuck”, followed closely by “Fuckfuckfuck”, “Jesus-Fucking-Christ”, and, of course, simply the word “FUCK.”
posted by Kabanos at 10:07 AM on December 19, 2016 [18 favorites]


"Surreal" won for 2016 only because an anguished grimace is not technically a word.
posted by Quindar Beep at 10:08 AM on December 19, 2016 [4 favorites]


the German word for “mansplaining” is “herrklären"

I believe I read somewhere (edit: ah, here) that the French word for 'mansplain' is mecspliquer (mec meaning 'guy', m'expliquer meaning 'to explain to me'), which is another amazing translation, although I am not 100% sure it is actually in use en France.
posted by maryr at 10:26 AM on December 19, 2016 [17 favorites]


maryr that is awesome. I hadn't heard it, but will be more than happy to adopt it. Its only drawback is that it's pronounced exactly the same as m'expliquer so you would have to make a distinct space between "mec" and "-spliquer", but that would make it even better since 'sspliquer is a kind of pronunciation-argot that derides the explanation being given.
posted by fraula at 10:59 AM on December 19, 2016 [3 favorites]


Wait, fascism was in the lead at the end of November but isn't even in the top 10 on their webpage now? Shenanigans!
posted by ckape at 11:39 AM on December 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


Herrklären has the disadvantage that it is hard to pronounce in a way that is clearly separate from 'erklären'. But as a written word it is perfect.
posted by Ashenmote at 2:07 PM on December 19, 2016


Yeah I like the French one better, but it may just be that puns in another language always seem smarter.

BTW the German word of the year is apparently "postfaktisch" (post-fact or post-factual) which does seem slightly more appropos. Although IMO they missed the opportunity to craft a compound noun that means "the vague sense that this shit-pile of a year may not be done with us yet".
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 6:56 PM on December 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


I thought the word of 2016 was "fuck2016"
posted by symbioid at 9:54 PM on December 19, 2016 [2 favorites]


Kind of shocked "gaslighting" didn't have a nod.
Nah, it never had a chance, you crazy?
posted by moonbird at 10:07 PM on December 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


I heard a while ago that Turkish has a clever word for “mansplaining”, a calque containing a pun on the word for penis or testicles; I can't find the details though.
posted by acb at 4:39 AM on December 20, 2016


As a doctrinaire Surrealist, I feel the obligation to lodge an official complaint. Too late, I know. The word "surreal" has come to be seen as synonymous with "strange" for decades. And I'm usually a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist, when it comes to linguistic change. Still, I'd like to lodge a complaint. I'm going down to the DMV today to try to find the correct form.
posted by kozad at 8:45 AM on December 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm a copy editor and all-around wordnerd, and I absolutely love the M-W twitter account. It's about time we had more fun/snark with language. (Without resorting to puns, though. That's a step too far.)
posted by BlahLaLa at 6:29 PM on December 20, 2016


Hrútskýring was voted the 2016 word of the year in Iceland. A couple of things happened.

1) It was pointed out that one way to parse it is: "Hr. Útskýring", which means "Mr. Explanation", which echoes Roger Hargreaves' Mr. Men books.

2) Due to the state broadcaster RÚV flubbing the year the word was coined, a short-lived brouhaha broke out. RÚV interviewed the coiner, novelist Hallgrímur Helgason, about how he came up with the translation of the word mansplaining. In the article, they said, not quoting him, that this coining had happened in 2012. Feminist blog Knúz looked at their archive and saw that "hrútskýring" had appeared there in fall of 2011. They wrote an article pointing out that a famous man had been given credit for something a woman did. Hallgrímur Helgason took to social media to defend his claim, and eventually the Facebook comment thread where he had suggested the translation was found. Knúz added a correction to their article. It had the makings of an almighty ruckus, but thankfully the original thread was on a website that still exists, and not something that had been eaten by the digital langoliers.
posted by Kattullus at 3:31 PM on January 9, 2017


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