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This week, it's the language of politics. Martha and Grant discuss two handy terms describing politicians: far center and snollygoster. Also, a presidential word puzzle, false friends, spendthrifts, and a long list of 17th-century insults. So listen up, all you flouting milksops, blockish grutnols, and slubberdegullions!
This episode first broadcast February 20, 2010. Listen here:
Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB).
To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program.
Grant explains the meaning of the new slang term "far center," and Martha tries to revive an antiquated term meaning "a corrupt politician," snollygoster.
Careful about how you spend your money? Then you're said to be "thrifty." So why is someone who isn't frugal called a spendthrift?
Pommy is an often derogatory nickname used by Australians for the English. Does it come from an acronym for either "Prisoner of Mother England" or "Prisoner of Her Majesty"? The more likely story has to do with sunburn and pomegranates.
An older woman with a knack for finding older men to date? That's what you call someone with excellent graydar.
Speaking of politics, Quiz Guy Greg Pliska presents a puzzle featuring the names of U.S. presidents.
Beware of false friends, those words that don't translate the way you'd expect. For example, the word "gift" in German means "poison," and the Spanish word "tuna" means "the fruit of the prickly pear cactus." These tricky lookalikes are also called faux amis.
A North Carolina woman says when she told her friend she had a TL for her, the friend had no idea what she was talking about. She learns that the term is a shortened form of a secondhand compliment also known as a trade-last or last-go-trade.
Is the term "refer back" redundant?
Martha reports that listeners have been trying to help a caller remember a word for "someone who's exceptionally good at packing things in a confined space." She thinks she's found a winner: stevedore.
To keep something at bay means to maintain a safe distance from it. But does this expression derive from an old practice of using bay leaves to ward off pestilence?
A Tallahassee caller wonders about the name for terms that are capitalized in the middle, like MasterCard and FedEx. Grant explains that they're commonly called CamelCase, not to be confused with Studly Caps.
Grant shares some slang he's found while exploring the game of Skee-Ball, including to hit the hundo.
The hosts and a listener in Grand Rapids, Michigan, trade some 17th-century insults. For more, check out these references: Gargantua and George Albert Nicholson's English Words With Native Roots And With Greek, Latin, Or Romance Suffixes.
Graydar, huh?
You mentioned that it's a word formed by taking the '-DAR' off of 'RADAR' and is generally used to connote finding anything. Gaydar, graydar…would Darth Va-DAR find evil overlords? But I digress.
What is the term for doing that? The word RADAR is an acronym, and the '-DAR' "suffix" doesn't MEAN anything, but people split it off and use it AS a suffix to mean something anyway.
Same thing with '-palooza' and '-rama.' So I can have a Feedback-a-Palooza on a podcast where they devote one episode out of every few just to deal with feedback from listeners. Or a Geek-o-Rama which is where a LOT of geeks gather together at one time. (I'm not sure where the '-rama' came from, but I'm pretty sure 'lollapalooza' is where we get the '-palooza' one.)
Or "marathon" which was originally a place name, and they've now taken the '-thon' off the end and use it to mean anything that goes on for a long time. Sale-A-Thon, read-a-thon, telethon, movie-thon. (Talk about going on for a long time!)
Or how about '-teria.' From the online etymology dictionary, I learned that '-teria' originally meant "a place where work is done," but that after it got spliced with 'cafe' into 'cafeteria,' the suffix '-teria' now means more along the lines of 'serve yourself' or where there is an implication of a large number of selections. For instance, I've heard my friends refer to the liquor store as a "booze-a-teria."
And finally, the '-holic' was ripped unceremoniously off the end of 'alcoholic' and now is used to mean 'addicted to,' even though the 'hol' part was just the end of the word 'alcohol' and the 'ic' was an adjectivizing (is that a word?) suffix. Chocoholic, sexaholic, carbaholic, and sleepaholic are all words I've heard that use it.
So…what do we CALL this…thing? Where you separate part of a word that isn't a suffix and turn it into one? IS there a word for this?
I can't answer your question yet, but I also have a few more favorite members of the set to add:
-copter, which is much less prolific than some, but has always tickled me. e.g. gyrocopter
-burger, which is much more prolific than it deserves.
[edit: added the following]
It seems this phenomenon is called "Morphological Reanalysis," which refers to the effect that the morphology is understood differently from the original morphology, and the word parts take on new meanings, allowing them to be used productively in new word formation.
Kaa said:
Same thing with '-palooza' and '-rama.' So I can have a Feedback-a-Palooza on a podcast where they devote one episode out of every few just to deal with feedback from listeners. Or a Geek-o-Rama which is where a LOT of geeks gather together at one time. (I'm not sure where the '-rama' came from, but I'm pretty sure 'lollapalooza' is where we get the '-palooza' one.)
The "-rama" suffix originally belonged to "panorama", from the Greek meaning "all sight".
A more recent detached suffix you didn't mention is "-gate" for any sort of political scandal. The original there was, of course, "Watergate" from the name of the hotel and office complex where the original burglary occurred, which then spread to "Contragate", "Whitewatergate" and "Monicagate". (Best use I've run across was a British scam that the press dubbed "Double-billingsgate".)
Kaa said:
...A more recent detached suffix you didn't mention is "-gate" for any sort of political scandal. The original there was, of course, "Watergate" from the name of the hotel and office complex where the original burglary occurred, which then spread to "Contragate", "Whitewatergate" and "Monicagate". (Best use I've run across was a British scam that the press dubbed "Double-billingsgate".)
What about the questionable practice of adding "-aholic" and "-oholic", as in "shopaholic" and "chocoholic"? Or the Homer Simpson quote, "I'm a rageaholic! I just can't live without rageahol!"
Kaa, I have to disagree with you about -DAR. It seems to be beyond dispute that radar comes from RA(dio) D(etecting) A(nd) R(anging), and detecting and ranging is precisely how -dar is used in gaydar and graydar. The first part of these neologisms obviously is not an acronym, but does require a long A sound, and seem to work best at one syllable, so far as I can tell. I suppose I can imagine a person with a knack for locating Corvettes being described as having Chevrolet-dar, but never Corvette-dar; on the other hand, Corvette-o-rama or Corvette-oholic work just fine, if you can stand them. Use of -dar just doesn't come out of the same mold,at least not yet.
Peter
Grant Barrett said:
This week, it's the language of politics. Martha and Grant discuss two handy terms describing politicians: far center and snollygoster. Also, a presidential word puzzle, false friends, spendthrifts, and a long list of 17th-century insults. So listen up, all you flouting milksops, blockish grutnols, and slubberdegullions!
Listen here:
Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB).
To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program.
Grant explains the meaning of the new slang term "far center," and Martha tries to revive an antiquated term meaning "a corrupt politician," snollygoster.
Careful about how you spend your money? Then you're said to be "thrifty." So why is someone who isn't frugal called a spendthrift?
Pommy is an often derogatory nickname used by Australians for the English. Does it come from an acronym for either "Prisoner of Mother England" or "Prisoner of Her Majesty"? The more likely story has to do with sunburn and pomegranates.
An older woman with a knack for finding older men to date? That's what you call someone with excellent graydar.
Speaking of politics, Quiz Guy Greg Pliska presents a puzzle featuring the names of U.S. presidents.
Beware of false friends, those words that don't translate the way you'd expect. For example, the word "gift" in German means "poison," and the Spanish word "tuna" means "the fruit of the prickly pear cactus." These tricky lookalikes are also called faux amis.
Is the term "refer back" redundant?
Martha reports that listeners have been trying to help a caller remember a word for "someone who's exceptionally good at packing things in a confined space." She thinks she's found a winner: stevedore.
To keep something at bay means to maintain a safe distance from it. But does this expression derive from an old practice of using bay leaves to ward off pestilence?
A Tallahassee caller wonders about the name for terms that are capitalized in the middle, like MasterCard and FedEx. Grant explains that they're commonly called CamelCase, not to be confused with Studly Caps.
Grant shares some slang he's found while exploring the game of Skee-Ball, including to hit the hundo.
The hosts and a listener in Grand Rapids, Michigan, trade some 17th-century insults. For more, check out these references: Gargantua and George Albert Nicholson's English Words With Native Roots And With Greek, Latin, Or Romance Suffixes.
Having now heard the discussion of "at bay" (with the sidebar about warding off vampires with garlic and pixies with bay leaves), I began to wonder if there's any etymological link to "bane", a common suffix on various herbs that are traditionally used to keep certain things away.
For that matter, what's the deal with "ward" in that context? Is that one of those words like "vim" that appears in only one set expression nowadays? Could you "ward on" something that you want to attract?
Prokdoc said:
During the discussion of old insults I couldn't help but be reminded of Monty Python's Holy Grail. feature=fvw
I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper! I think I need to get me one of these.
That was my call in to the show, BTW 🙂
Here's a new one on me. I don't think it has legs.
snowacane
In the hardest-hit areas, it will seem more like a "snowacane," as a mere blizzard may not adequately describe conditions of this soon-to-be powerful nor'easter.
Northeast Braces for a Super Storm Thursday, Friday: Accuweather story Feb 24,2010 9:55 AM ET
Glenn said:
Here's a new one on me. I don't think it has legs.
snowacaneIn the hardest-hit areas, it will seem more like a "snowacane," as a mere blizzard may not adequately describe conditions of this soon-to-be powerful nor'easter.
I'm still waiting for someone to come up with "snowlocaust".
> Beware of false friends, those words that don't translate the way you'd expect. For example, the word "gift" in German means "poison," and
> the Spanish word "tuna" means "the fruit of the prickly pear cactus." These tricky lookalikes are also called faux amis.
As per your request for more false friends, you mentioned 'soy'. My Spanish is fine, but this one did catch me one time. I was driving near Mexico City and stopped at a restaurant called '100% Natural.' It's a mostly veggie place which suited my vegetarian gf. I read the menu, and found they had an item called 'Yo Soy 100% Hamburguesa.' So I ordered it, expecting to get a soy burger. But no — it was a full meat burger, and a true hamburger, just as the name said. What I should have looked for instead was a 'hamburguesa de soya'…
And don't forget about 'embarazada' — which does not mean 'embarrassed,' but rather, pregnant.
I can't believe you dived into this topic without including a reference to "mugwumps." Correct me if I'm wrong, but a mugwump is a politician who sits on the fence with his "mug" on one side and his "wump" on the other."
Grant Barrett said:
This week, it's the language of politics. Martha and Grant discuss two handy terms describing politicians: far center and snollygoster. Also, a presidential word puzzle, false friends, spendthrifts, and a long list of 17th-century insults. So listen up, all you flouting milksops, blockish grutnols, and slubberdegullions!
Listen here:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Download the MP3 here (23.5 MB).
To be automatically notified when audio is available, subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or another podcatching program.
Grant explains the meaning of the new slang term "far center," and Martha tries to revive an antiquated term meaning "a corrupt politician," snollygoster.
Careful about how you spend your money? Then you're said to be "thrifty." So why is someone who isn't frugal called a spendthrift?
Pommy is an often derogatory nickname used by Australians for the English. Does it come from an acronym for either "Prisoner of Mother England" or "Prisoner of Her Majesty"? The more likely story has to do with sunburn and pomegranates.
An older woman with a knack for finding older men to date? That's what you call someone with excellent graydar.
Speaking of politics, Quiz Guy Greg Pliska presents a puzzle featuring the names of U.S. presidents.
Beware of false friends, those words that don't translate the way you'd expect. For example, the word "gift" in German means "poison," and the Spanish word "tuna" means "the fruit of the prickly pear cactus." These tricky lookalikes are also called faux amis.
Is the term "refer back" redundant?
Martha reports that listeners have been trying to help a caller remember a word for "someone who's exceptionally good at packing things in a confined space." She thinks she's found a winner: stevedore.
To keep something at bay means to maintain a safe distance from it. But does this expression derive from an old practice of using bay leaves to ward off pestilence?
A Tallahassee caller wonders about the name for terms that are capitalized in the middle, like MasterCard and FedEx. Grant explains that they're commonly called CamelCase, not to be confused with Studly Caps.
Grant shares some slang he's found while exploring the game of Skee-Ball, including to hit the hundo.
The hosts and a listener in Grand Rapids, Michigan, trade some 17th-century insults. For more, check out these references: Gargantua and George Albert Nicholson's English Words With Native Roots And With Greek, Latin, Or Romance Suffixes.
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