Nancy Friedman's Profile

Sometimes I’ll spot a name in the wild and it’ll make me smile all day. Trader Joe’s House Whip is one of those names. “Whippee!” “Whip-itty-doo-dah!” Makes me feel like dancing. Continue reading

Posted 7 hours ago at Fritinancy

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Operation Fortitude

During the lead-up to D-Day—June 6, 1944—the Allied nations undertook an elaborate deception strategy designed to mislead the Germans about the real date and location of the Normandy invasion. The overall plan was called Operation Bodyguard; one of its more bizarre elements—the creation of a decoy army, complete with inflatable... Continue reading

Posted yesterday at Fritinancy

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Vote for Fritinancy!

I’m pleased to announce that, for the fifth consecutive year, this blog has been honored with a nomination in the Lexiophiles Top Language Blogs competition, “Language Professional” division. Support a professional! Click the badge to cast your vote for Fritinancy! Make that two nominations. I’ve also been nominated for Top... Continue reading

Posted 2 days ago at Fritinancy

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Eat at [Verb]

These Bay Area restaurants don’t just take orders: If their names are any indication, they give them, too. Melt! (San Francisco) The exclamation point is part of the name, and melting is the raison d’être, of this fondue café in San Francisco’s North Beach. Build (Berkeley) One Yelper called it... Continue reading

Posted 3 days ago at Fritinancy

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Word of the Week: Shmeat

Shmeat: Meat grown in a laboratory from animal cells; the objectives include reducing animal cruelty and increasing the global supply of affordable protein. “Shmeat” is a portmanteau of “sheet” and “meat.” An undated article on a website called Shmeat.com (apparently operated by SavingAdvice.com) explains the process: Cells are harvested from... Continue reading

Posted 4 days ago at Fritinancy

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May Linkfest

Newt Gingrich—remember when he ran for president and talked about building bases on the moon?—now appears to be campaigning for Andy Rooney’s old slot on “60 Minutes.” “We’re really puzzled,” he tells his YouTube audience, a look of grave concern furrowing his brow, a familiar-looking device in his hand. “We... Continue reading

Posted May 16, 2013 at Fritinancy

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Vowel Obstruction

It’s been two years since I first reported on the all-consonant naming trend. Since then we’ve seen a persistent consonantal drift in the names of fashion brands, restaurants, and retailers, often shouted out in ALL CAPS. Here are four additions to the list. * BNJMN is “a paintbrush-wielding bot created... Continue reading

Posted May 15, 2013 at Fritinancy

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Dead to the World

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid-May, with the fog bearing down hard on the bay and a look of weary desperation on every shopper’s face. They were all looking for something, but I had a sneaking suspicion what they were looking for wasn’t hardboiled euphemism. Not on... Continue reading

Posted May 14, 2013 at Fritinancy

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Word of the Week: HOHO

HOHO: Acronym for “hop-on hop-off.” (Sometimes spelled HoHo.) Describes a type of sightseeing bus that allows passengers to disembark whenever they reach a stop that interests them, then re-board when it’s convenient. Tickets are valid for a specified period of time, typically 24 hours. Hop-on hop-off buses are used by... Continue reading

Posted May 13, 2013 at Fritinancy

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Underwear Week: Commando

How can a brand name convey a specific benefit—in this case, underwear so smooth and sleek it’s almost like wearing no underwear at all—without resorting to descriptive terms (Vanishing Edge, Invisibles)? For one U.S. company, the solution came from Vietnam-era slang. Commando is a brand of elastic-free women’s underwear and... Continue reading

Posted May 10, 2013 at Fritinancy

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Underwear Week: Ginch Gonch

It’s Day Four of Underwear Week! Grab your passport and some loose loonies: we’re headed north of the border for today’s installment. I stumbled upon undie-maker Ginch Gonch about six months ago. The name was a complete puzzle to me, the tagline (“Live Like a Kid!”) didn’t seem to clarify... Continue reading

Posted May 9, 2013 at Fritinancy

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Underwear Week: Startups

It’s Day Three of Underwear Week! Time for some news of the new. TechCrunch, to which I turn for the latest info about gadgets, gizmos, and Google, surprised me a couple of weeks ago with a guest column by research analyst Ross Rubin about, of all things, four new underwear... Continue reading

Posted May 8, 2013 at Fritinancy

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Underwear Week: True & Co. and the MILFs

It’s Underwear Week again here at Fritinancy—time to get down to basics and revisit our foundations. During the last Underwear Week (has it really been three years?), we wondered why bra sizing makes no sense, admired the Camelflage brand name, examined mirdles and other shapewear for men, and held our... Continue reading

Posted May 7, 2013 at Fritinancy

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Word of the Week: Cheekini

Cheekini: A style of women’s underwear with moderate coverage in front and on the sides and a raised cut in the rear that covers some but not all of the buttock cheeks. Victoria’s Secret Bridal Cheekini Panty. The style sometimes appears, with minor variations, under different names: boykini panties, boyleg... Continue reading

Posted May 6, 2013 at Fritinancy

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Name in the Wild: Flexicado

Spotted at a local Ace Hardware while I was (of course) looking for something else: The “firm yet flexible” Flexicado avocado slicer. An avocado slicer? Really? Your mileage may vary, but I’ve found that a butter knife usually does the job pretty well. But one cheer for American invention and... Continue reading

Posted May 2, 2013 at Fritinancy

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"I Am a 'Shape' "

The nounification of verbs – “the ask,” “the get,” “the reveal” – continues apace. Nominalized verbs are even showing up in job titles (or anti-titles). Here’s Seth Merrin, the founder and chief executive of the global trading network Liquidnet, in an April 26 interview in the New York Times, “Saying... Continue reading

Posted May 1, 2013 at Fritinancy

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The Whole True and Nothing But the True

“The New Look of Public Relations,” New York Times business section, April 29: Fleishman-Hillard, which was founded in 1946 as Fleishman, Hillard & Associates, will rebrand itself this week as FleishmanHillard, with elements that include a new logo and a new slogan, “The power of true” — no relation, presumably,... Continue reading

Posted Apr 30, 2013 at Fritinancy

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Word of the Week: Slow TV

Slow TV: Television dramas whose gradual, deliberate pacing and literary structure – “unrushed, atmospheric narratives,” as Salon’s Matt Zoller Seitz described them – demand patience and engagement on the part of the viewer. Current or recent examples include the Danish series “The Killing”; the BBC’s “The Hour”; and the American... Continue reading

Posted Apr 29, 2013 at Fritinancy

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Weekend Link Pack

Longtime readers may recall my 2008 post about the British energy-drink brand Pussy (“Bad Brand Names: The New Champion!”). Now the UK’s advertising regulator has ruled on complaints about Pussy ads. The deadpan ruling is worth your time for passages like this one: We noted that the slogan in ad... Continue reading

Posted Apr 26, 2013 at Fritinancy

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Name, Shmame

Remember Shpock (“Your mobile yard sale for beautiful things”) and Shpoonkle (“Justice you can afford!”)? This farshtinkener naming trend is still trending. I recently learned about Schmap, which calls its product “the world’s first Twitter-powered city guides.” (The official spelling includes two shoe-print exclamation marks, but I refuse to play... Continue reading

Posted Apr 25, 2013 at Fritinancy

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Manifesto Destiny

Manifesto: from the Italian, “a public declaration.” Earliest English citation 1620. Karl Marx published one about communism in 1848. Tristan Tzara issued one about Dada in 1918. Richard Stallman wrote one about GNU in 1985. British political parties have had them since 1900 (or 1834, if you count Sir Robert... Continue reading

Posted Apr 24, 2013 at Fritinancy

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Nicely Domained: Whisper.sh

Here’s a good example of thinking beyond .com. Whisper, according to an effusive TechCrunch post, is “the latest social app to capture the attention of a huge — and growing — audience of users, as well as the attention of a group of investors.” Like PostSecret (founded in 2005), the... Continue reading

Posted Apr 23, 2013 at Fritinancy

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Word of the Week: Zajonc Effect

Zajonc effect: The tendency of people, after repeated exposure to an unfamiliar thing, to reverse their initial feelings of dislike or distaste and like the thing more over time. Also called the Mere Exposure effect or the Mere Zajonc effect. The Zajonc effect is named for Robert Boleslaw Zajonc (1923-2008),... Continue reading

Posted Apr 22, 2013 at Fritinancy

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Those Adimab Ads

I originally wrote about the Adimab cable-car ads in January 2011, when the company – which is in the antibody-discovery business – was one of several advertisers using the colloquial tag “not so much.” At the time there was a reason for a small biotech company based in Lebanon, New... Continue reading

Posted Apr 18, 2013 at Fritinancy

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On the Visual Thesaurus: Shall We Plus?

My latest column for the Visual Thesaurus, “Shall We Plus?”, looks at the evolution of “plus” from preposition, adjective, and noun into a verb. Full access to the column is restricted to subscribers; here’s a sample: Enterprise Rent-A-Car is also positive about plussing — although “Plus Your Life,” the slogan... Continue reading

Posted Apr 17, 2013 at Fritinancy

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