Lana in Evansville, Indiana, says all the women in her family affectionately call each other Gert or Gertie. She has discovered that one of her friends also uses the name Gertie as a term of endearment for the women in her own family. Although in this case it seems to function as a generic term, the female equivalent of the names Joe or Mac, for a couple of decades starting in the 1920s, the name Dirty Gertie was slang for “a promiscuous woman,” immortalized in the song “Dirty Gertie from Bizerte,” Bizerte being a town in Tunisia. This is part of a complete episode.
I’m wondering if the term of endearment, “girly” turned into “gertie” somewhere along the line?
My girlfriend in Australia had the same two given names as me. We generally simply called each other “Soos”, but signed notes as S1 (she was older than I) or S2. However after she lived in Georgia, USA for about 5 years in late 1980s, she changed to calling me “Gert”, and has called me that ever since. She could never tell me exactly why, but I didn’t object. It’s been a personal “thing” between us for decades
The so-called “lifestyle influencer accent” you hear in videos on TikTok and YouTube, where someone speaks with rising tones at the end of sentences and phrases, suggesting that they’re about to say something important, is a form of what linguists...
Meg in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, gets why the state highway department encourages drivers to use their blinkers when changing lanes, but placing a digital sign at the Sagamore Bridge that reads Use Ya Blinkah is, well, a lexical bridge too far. Meg’s...
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I’m wondering if the term of endearment, “girly” turned into “gertie” somewhere along the line?
My girlfriend in Australia had the same two given names as me. We generally simply called each other “Soos”, but signed notes as S1 (she was older than I) or S2. However after she lived in Georgia, USA for about 5 years in late 1980s, she changed to calling me “Gert”, and has called me that ever since. She could never tell me exactly why, but I didn’t object. It’s been a personal “thing” between us for decades