Today, I’d like to highlight some interesting neologisms (new words, idioms and word uses) upon which I’ve stumbled recently.

Yard Sale — Noun, from Skier/Snowboarder parlance

This refers to a very bad fall when skiing, during which your skis, poles, hat, goggles and other accoutrement are ripped off of you and strewn about the snow. The origin doesn’t take a lot of imagination, it’s simply drawing a comparison between having all your gear spread out in the snow and spreading it out on your lawn for a yard sale.

“Then, I hit a mogul, and dude, it was a total yard sale”

BoBo — Noun, originally French, but imported

A contraction of “Bourgeois Bohême”, it refers to a yuppie (rich, young businessperson) who pretends to be a hippie and/or socially conscious through involvement with Eastern Religion/Decorating, Yoga, New Age beliefs, Fair-Trade Organic Shade-Grown Vegan Coffee, and conspicuous charity. There’s a level of inherent hypocrisy here, taking the Humvee to the “No blood for Oil” rally and paying $5000 for a luxury meditation retreat.

My city (Boulder, CO) is a true haven for these types. They’re attracted by the hippie reputation of the city, but also thrilled with the accessibility to modern conveniences and businesses. Perhaps the epitome of the BoBo mindset can be experienced by a quick visit to Now & Zen, a merchant which sells, I kid you not, “Zen Clocks and Timers”. Instead of a conventional tone, they knock against a Tibetan Singing Bowl. These are upwards of $100 each, and, last I checked, actual monks get up at sunrise, by natural means. However, if you’re a Bobo, what better way is there to express your spiritual consumerism than with a “tibetan phone bell”?

“Are Rob and Erma bringing little Samsara?” “Nah, they’re going to drop her off at the Meditation Center on their way to work over at Exxon.” “Ugh. They’re such BoBos”

Nascar — Noun, originating in the blogging community

“Nascar”, in the blogging context, refers to the sometimes endless list of social bookmarking site icons on the side or underneath blog posts. These are used by site authors to garner more clicks on social bookmarking sites (which help people to share interesting content and make things more well known online). See the below example:
Nascar

The etymology (word origin) stems from the visual similarity of a blog like this to a NASCAR race car, which is generally plastered with many smaller advertisements.

“I’ve chosen not to put any Nascar on this site, but I don’t mean to pick on those who have. I just prefer the cleaner look.”

Toolgazing — Verb, origin unknown

This is a very colorful, humorous and poetic term for a very awkward situation. For those who might not share my Y Chromosome, American Men’s Restrooms usually have a wall with 2 or more urinals, all flush (no pun intended) with the wall, and often there are no dividers between these urinals, so men just line up side by side. “Toolgazing” refers to the act of a man glancing over at the exposed genitals of the other men urinating next to him. This is not looked upon nicely in the men’s restroom community, and those few who persist are very likely to enrage or offend the victim if caught.

“Fred’s kind of weird. One time I caught him toolgazing in the restroom at work”

Victory Lap — Noun, found among college students

A “victory lap” is the fifth year of classes taken to complete a four year degree program in college, and is often the result of a change in concentration or a school transfer. A person who is taking a victory lap is often called a “Super Senior”.

“Are you graduating this spring?” “Nah, I’m taking a victory lap, I have to take a Literature class”

Stall Call — Noun, origin unknown

A “stall call” refers to the act of placing or receiving a phone call while using the restroom. Some people are reluctant to make or take stall calls, but others seem to see no problem with the practice, even taking heroic measures to hide the associated sounds of flushing and sink usage.

“Who is Jim talking to in there?” “He’s making a Stall Call.” “Eww.”

That’s it for this episode of Neat Neology. If there are any you’d like to see featured here in the future, let me know. I hope you’ve learned some new words, and that you find interesting ways to work them into conversation. Then again, I hope you don’t have to use all of them…

Tagged with Language Usage, Language, Computers, and the Internet, Words, Phrases, and Idioms | 3 Comments


Hello everybody!

This post really has two reasons for existence. The first, a linguistic reason, is to pose a question to the readers about our use and perception of language. The second is to post a series of pictures (not my own) that will assuredly make the reader smile and/or laugh. Hopefully you’ll enjoy both.

Caturday

From what I gather, the phenomenon of funny cat pictures began on one particular web image board. I’m not going to give the name of the board as it’s an board where people can post anonymously, so there’s frequently content there I don’t want to endorse. Regardless, a tradition called Caturday arose. On Saturdays, people would find pictures of cats with interesting expressions, then caption them in humorous ways. These have been posted in various places on the internet, and it’s not uncommon for them to show up in random discussions on all sorts of sites. Recently, I went looking for more of them (as I find them quite funny), and found a treasure trove of cats, strangely enough, posted on a BodyBuilding forum. Based on these images, I’ve been able to make a Linguistic observation:

Cats have bad grammar, and it’s funnier that way

In many of the pictures I found, I’ve noted pretty significant deviations from conventional English Grammar. Ranging from the incorrect application of language rules (“eated”), to internet style contractions (“plz” for “Please”), to out and out incorrect verb agreement (“I are serious cat”), many of these captions use blatantly bad grammar. Here are some examples:

Whyyoudomadeacookieplz-dont-byte-mee.jpgseriouscat.jpghassnowCouch

The fact of the matter, though, is that the bad grammar somehow makes it funnier. Somehow, saying “I am a Serious Cat, and this is a Serious Thread” doesn’t have the same ring to it. The best explanation I’ve come up with is that the grammatical errors remind English speakers of the speech of children, and thus, come up with more cuteness. If you have any ideas, I’d like to hear them.

A meme is born

Before I go, I’d like to talk a bit more about the “im in ur ____, ____ing your ____” construction. I’m not sure what the original version was, but since its inception, it has truly become an internet meme, a sort of internet in-joke that’s become a cliché due to frequent posting. There are lots of different variations on this construction (“im in your fridge, eating ur foodz”), and it has even been applied outside of cats. This past November, when the Democrats gained control of the US Congress, this picture promptly popped up online featuring the new Speaker of the House:

pelosidoodz

Just to think, from such humble roots, Caturday has spawned a new internet sensation reaching as far as the US Congress. Oh, the glory of the internet.

Followup: I’ve discussed the LOLCat dialect a bit more recently, so if you’re interested in this phenomenon and the heights it has reached, you might want to read “im in ur programmz, codin in ur dialect”

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Language Humor, Language, Computers, and the Internet, Speech and Grammar Errors | 34 Comments


So, I’ve posted in the past about the difficulty of choosing “a” versus “an”. Generally, it’s not very difficult to decide. You use “an” before a word beginning with a vowel sound (“an enemy”, “an alley”) and “a” if the next word starts with a consonant sound (“a university”, “a shark”). However, this time, I’m stumped.

I was making a post today about Apple’s iPhone on a forum, and wanted to express my wish that they might install a hard drive in it to raise the capacity. However, it’s a fairly computer literate forum, so I was using the abbreviation for Hard drive (“HD”). So, I ended up with this sentence:

I hope that they’ll offer a version of it with __ HD next year.

The reason I’ve left the blank there is because I was stumped as to which article to use. If I expanded it to “Hard Drive”, I would use “a”, because “Hard” starts with a consonant. However, “HD” starts with a spoken vowel when said aloud (“aitch dee”) (loosely transcribed as /eit∫ di/), which would require “an”.

So, as a spoken abbreviation, it’s obviously “an”, but if the reader substitutes the full word, it uses “a”. This could happen elsewhere (“a(n) SQL server”, “an FAA regulation”), but seldom are the acronym and the real word as interchangable.

I’m stumped. I ended up cheating (“a larger HD”), but I’m curious what you all would do in this situation, if given the option to pick one or the other. This is an F’ing frustrating question. Wait… would that be “a F’ing”? I give up. :p

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Language Usage, Language, Computers, and the Internet | 6 Comments

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