“The flapper movement is not a craze, but something that will stay,” the author maintained. “Many of the phrases now employed by members of this order will eventually find a way into common usage and be accepted as good English.” [more inside]
posted by timory
on Apr 10, 2011 -
83 comments
Cool Antarctica is a site dedicated to all things Antarctic. There are
pictures (
penguins),
videos (including, among much else, an old
documentary about Edmund Hillary's and Vivian Fuchs' Transantarctic Expedition),
a history section focusing on the famous explorers (e.g.
Amundsen,
Scott,
Shackleton,
Charcot and
de Gerlache) and a
fact file, which includes what may be my favorite section, an
Antarctic slang dictionary (
degomble: removing snow that's stuck to clothing before going inside -
monk-on: a term for being in a bad, usually introspective mood, "he's got a monk-on" -
poppy: alcoholic beverage that is chilled with natural Antarctic ice). All this is but a taster of what's on the website.
posted by Kattullus
on Apr 29, 2009 -
20 comments
Family Words (scroll down, p.9). Do you know what the "Ahh-hee's" are? It describes the feeling you get when you put on a bathing suit that is still damp. What about a "winterpepper?" That would be a backwards flip (opposite of somersault). "Eeksler?" The lever on an ice cube tray, so-called because of the sound it makes. Daw daw, doot-do, to-do to-do, taw taw, der der, drit-drit and hoo-hoo? All refer to the tube of cardboard inside a roll of toilet paper. Featured on NPR's
A Way With Words (full episode).
posted by vronsky
on Mar 4, 2009 -
76 comments
Every trade has a history, a culture and secrets, all most vividly expressed in the special terms used by its workers. The circus is, of course, no different
as this handy dictionary of circus slang shows. It contains entries for both American and European circuses, and has a handy list of vaudeville slang words as well. These unique words used on the carnival lot around the world demonstrate a language that defines a world of wonders, and now you can use them to impress your friends and insult your enemies!
posted by Effigy2000
on Sep 25, 2008 -
14 comments
Hundreds of 'new' words in the new edition of the Collins English Dictionary (Reuters story), also via
BBC,
AP and
the Fox Television Stations (headline with no story, surprising since its publisher is another Rupert Murdoch subsidiary... but I digress). Some are obvious: hoodie, wiki, POTUS, plasma screen; some reflect our times: Gitmo, Londonistan, extraordinary rendition, carbon footprint; some are absolutely slangy: celebutante, McMansion, muffin top, man bag, disemvowel, barbecue stopper, girlfriend experience... Also in the book: ho. And not the version Santa Claus says. The new dictionary is available
"online, on mobiles, as a desktop application or integrated with Microsoft Word" - when you buy the deadtree edition.
posted by wendell
on Jun 4, 2007 -
22 comments
Embrace the Suck. Intensive military activity creates an incubator for slang. By bringing together people from geographically diverse backgrounds, putting them into stressful circumstances, and teaching them
a new language of jargon and acronym, the armed forces create fertile ground for new idioms - many of which return home in civvies when the conflicts are over. In the
Civil War,
World War I and
World War II, in
Korea and in
Viet Nam, servicepeople created or popularized now-familiar terms like
shoddy, hotshot, cooties, tailspin, fleabag, face time, joystick, SNAFU, FUBAR, flaky, gung ho, no sweat, flame-out, and many,
many others.
Now, the
GWOT brings us
a new generation of
'milspeak'. Military columnist
Austin Bay has published an early collection of
neologisms from Gulf War II. On NPR,
Bay explains what The Suck is, how to identify a
fobbit, and why Marines look down on the attitude of
Semper I.
posted by Miko
on Mar 31, 2007 -
66 comments
Do you know your close-up con games? Some classics: the
Tip, the
Jamaican Switch, the
Wire (and its incredibly complicated cousin, the
Rag), the
Texas Twist, the
Pigeon Drop, the
Spanish Prisoner (or Nigerian Scam) and the ancient
pig-in-a-poke. Also, learn
the argot of the classic con artist, view
some videos of card scam moves and
discover some patter as well, or just see how the language of the con has been used in one of the more
famous papers in sociology.
posted by blahblahblah
on Aug 8, 2006 -
23 comments
Is your favorite
swear word losing its
potency? Stock up on some new ones with the
Swearsaurus, a "
vast array of swearing, profanity, obscenity, blasphemy, cursing, cussing, and insulting in a massive 165 languages"
posted by Quartermass
on Feb 27, 2005 -
21 comments
William Safire on "the izzle": "
And now, in the pages of The New York Times, there it is — a word modified with the ubiquitous izzle. Some clever Times copy editor, for a June article about Chrysler's new 300C sedan, created the headline, "Fo' Shizzle, That Big Bad Chrysler Really Does Sizzle". So now that the gray lady herself has been izzled from the inside, is it time for everyone to wish one last fond farewizzle and shed the shizzle? (MTV interview mentioned in the article is
here.)
posted by taz
on Sep 21, 2004 -
33 comments
Fo shizzle my nizzle! At last, the lingustic puzzle is solved, or at least attempted. Over and over. And over.
Definition - "for the sizzle" of tasty burgers on the grill. Often used by members of lower classes because they cannot taste the tasty burgers, nor enjoy the sizzle.
posted by xmutex
on May 23, 2003 -
33 comments
So this is what is means to be hip. (NY TIMES link)
What ''The Preppie Handbook'' did for whale belts and synonyms for vomiting, ''The Hipster Handbook'' accomplishes for this generation's stylistic and linguistic signs and signifiers."
According to the book, "deck" means "cool", "tassel" is a girl, "bust a moby" means to dance, and a "frado" is an ugly guy who thinks he is good looking. Being a member of said generation myself, I can honestly say that I have never
ever heard anyone speak this way. Maybe I'm just too "
ishtar". Do you think the Hipster Handbook captures today's, um,
deck kids accurately? What would your Hipster Handbook include?
posted by 4easypayments
on Feb 13, 2003 -
53 comments
They might actually be, you know, be useful. This year, a student in Nebraska won $1000 for finding the worst example of overuse of the phrase 'you know,' by an athlete who said it 30 times in a 135 second interview. But are they really that terrible? Known as discourse markers, phrases such as 'you know' and 'I mean' are
thought to be essential in conveying information in conversation and helping us understand each other. Discourse markers also exist in
many other languages and possibly even ancient languages.
posted by adrianhon
on May 15, 2002 -
25 comments
I was talking to my wife this morning about one of the kids "bombing" a test at school, and she asked me, "Is that good or bad?" I said, "Bad, of course. You know, you bomb a test, that means either flunking it or close to it." She said, "No, not any more, like 'it's the bomb' or 'we bombed that hill' on skateboards.
Bombing is a good thing." Certain words and phrases are changing their meanings. Have you found yourself
tongue-tied?
posted by JParker
on Oct 11, 2001 -
18 comments
