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I'm all for the evolution of language, but this is being different for different's sake, which most of us learned in junior high is pretty lame.
"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, “...
Can "grass-shoots" be far behind?
Word of the Week: Grasstops
Grasstops: The leadership in a community or organization. First documented in 1992 in a Public Relations Quarterly article, where the word was spelled “grassTOPS” to emphasize the coinage. Usage has increased since 2007, according to a Google Insights graph. Here’s a recent sighting, in a May 5,...
Hi Nancy,
Mr. Blobby was more than a marshmallow. He was a squeaky, squealing, bizarro-world character on a UK TV show. Despite his pink-and-yellow-polka-dotty appearance, I find him slightly terrifying. You can see him here, if you dare: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngdWbvpztk
Hey, Mister!
For your frittering pleasure: a Flickr set of “weird advertising characters” that’s a nostalgiafest, a kitschapalooza, and a bizarrorama. Step right up and see the seppuku-ing pig, the martini-sipping pink poodle, the shockingly un-PC Frito Bandito, the Doggie Diner doggie, the Chicken of the Se...
As I read this, I suddenly remembered a bit of dialogue from the 1980 movie "Saturn 3"; my husband and I joked about for years.
Benson (Harvey Keitel): "No taction contact."
Alex (Farah Fawcett): "You mean, 'Don't touch'?"
"To Contact" in 1918?
Like millions of TV viewers in the US and the UK, I’ve been under the spell of “Downton Abbey,” the period drama originally produced for Britain’s ITV and rebroadcast in the US on PBS. We’re now three episodes into Season 2, which opens in the middle of World War I and shuttles between a grand Y...
Thank you so much for mentioning the word hoyden, a word I haven't heard much in recent decades; the nuns used to sling it at us in eighth or ninth grade. It kicked off a whole train of memories about nuns that are surprisingly funny in retrospect.
This Is Gonna Hoit
The Hyundai Equus evidently does not travel by way of Toidy-Toid and Toid. Full-page ad, Time magazine, January 9, 2012. I’ll say this much: I stopped and stared. As one would at a bridge collapse. The reference here is to hoity-toity, a relatively rare modifier (and, occasionally, noun) that ...
It just occurred to me that among my friends and probably tons of other people, "ffff" became a kind of code in 1960s. Origin: the Who, "My Generation" -- "why don't you all ffffade away."
The Fffff Words
Irregular spellings are old news in brand names. Sometimes the spelling is simplified or compressed: Google (modified from googol), Millenia (an erstwhile Mazda luxury model), Flickr, Segway. Occasionally the spelling is tweaked to make the name stand out or to finagle an available URL: Qollage,...
"media personality Sarah Palin" — thank you for that accurate and complete description.
Word of the Week: Reticle
Reticle: “A grid or other pattern of fine threads, wires, lines, etc., in the focal plane or eyepiece of a telescope or other optical instrument in order to facilitate positioning, aiming, and measurement.” (Oxford English Dictionary) Synonymous with “crosshairs.” From Latin reticulum, a small m...
My experience with garden leave (which sadly does not include being paid to do nothing) is a bit different from the examples above.
In 2005, when the U.S. agency I worked for was taken over by a British conglomerate, my boss, the North American CEO, accepted a job with a different agency. His contract with the old employer prevented him from starting the new position for six months; during that time the British company paid him his full salary and called it garden leave.
Similarly, in 2007, my nephew was lured from one big London bank to another and he, too, enjoyed a lengthy garden leave.
Word of the Week: Garden Leave
Garden leave: “Suspension from work on full pay for the duration of a notice period, typically to prevent an employee from having any further influence on the organization or from acting to benefit a competitor before leaving.” (O.E.D.) A British euphemism (also seen in Canada, according to my s...
To me, lardcore sounds like...lard. Therefore, I nominate Spinal Tap's "Big Bottom" for lardcore anthem. Runner up: Rockpile's "Knife and Fork."
Word of the Week: Lardcore
Lardcore: “Southern food with hard-core attitude.” — Josh Ozersky in Time magazine, Oct. 27, 2010. Coined from lard and hardcore. From Ozersky’s article: But a slew of young chefs are taking modern Southern cooking to a new place, forming a movement in the crucible of high ideals, virtuoso tech...
I saw the Dutchers give a talk about wolf-pack pecking order at the American Museum of Natural History a few years ago. Overall, while wolves are harsh, I think they ultimately care more for their omegas than humans do.
Word of the Week: Omega Male
Omega male: The opposite of an alpha male; a follower rather than a leader. (Omega is the last letter in the Greek alphabet.) The term comes from animal behavior, especially the behavior of wolves. In complex packs, there will be an alpha male and female and an omega male and female. According ...
I suspect that bad taste and bad grammar are a package deal.
Lay to Rest
As you know, I’m peeved about the Hanes “Lay Flat Collar Tee” for multiple reasons. But not as peeved as I am about this SpeedSleep ad, which occupies a full page in the July 5 issue of Time and makes the same lay/lie error that Hanes does. The point of my peeve is the all-caps callout on the...
A friend sent me a link to this article, which has a headline that sums things up rather neatly. http://bit.ly/38gpQV However, my African friends (and not just South Africans) are ticked off about all the criticism. To them, it's seems to be a symbol of African pride.
Word of the Week: Vuvuzela
Vuvuzela: A cheap plastic trumpet responsible for the amateur soundtrack of the 2010 Fifa World Cup, currently under way in South Africa. The vuvuzela makes “a high-pitched blasting sound, much like a big air horn on trucks,” according to Boogieblast, a South African manufacturer of vuvuzela...
Batey + Campbell = twaddle.
G.M. Backs Up on “Chevy” Memo
The news made Page 1 of today’s New York Times. “Chevy,” the decades-old nickname for General Motors’ Chevrolet, was to be banished from the lexicon. According to a memo sent to Chevrolet employees at G.M.’s Detroit headquarters, it was all about brand consistency: “We’d ask that whether you’r...
What a fun post. Congratulations on your fourth anniversary (I'm very glad blogs don't have term limits) — a fine time was had by all!!
Bloggiversary 4
Have I really been writing this blog for four years? Why, that’s an entire presidential term. In blog-years, it’s more like a geologic period, punctuated by occasional earthquakes in the form of TypePad upgrades. (I now compose posts in Windows LiveWriter and export the content to TypePad. More...
I am unduly fond of the word louche. Whenever I hear it or see it, I am instantly and powerfully reminded of my late, great friend Denis Lemon, the publisher of the UK's Gay News, from whose lips I first heard it. Sometimes words are like aromas from childhood — they can be time machines.
Word of the Week: Louche
Louche: Of questionable taste or morality; decadent. Pronunciation: loosh. From French louche, “squinting” or “cross-eyed”; originally Latin lusca, “one-eyed.” Louche is one of those words you can go years without seeing in print, and then—wham! It’s everywhere. As it has been in the last few we...
I don't think I ever realized what a lot of ego-driven foolishness people in your line of work encounter. The most ridiculous part of this particular example is, with a celebrity chef and a location like Lincoln Center, this is one of those rare cases where the name is almost beside the point. They could call it The Dog's Breakfast; if the food and the buzz were great, the foodies would come.
Given the story in the Times, it sounds like it's destined to be one of those places that's more about the foofaraw than the food.
The Restaurant with No Name
It's on schedule to open in September, but the $20 million "upscale Italian" restaurant at New York's Lincoln Center still has no name. It's not for want of trying, reports Glenn Collins in Wednesday's New York Times. “The restaurant requires a name as iconic as its location,” said the restaurat...
Thank you for the laugh and the homework. I had a feeling it was bigger than local people making jokes, and the late '50s timing of the magazine meshes perfectly with my memories. One thing's for certain: no matter how you spell it, it's a pretty stale idea.
Think Twice
And then think some more. A spread from Saks Fifth Avenue's new "Think About It" campaign. Bare Escentuals' "Rethink What Matters" campaign (cover of online brochure). Bare Escentuals, Powell Street BART station, San Francisco (station domination). Think Mutual Bank, Minnes...
I spent some of my growing up years near the IBM Country Club in Sands Point, LI. People in those parts used to say, "THIMK."
Think Twice
And then think some more. A spread from Saks Fifth Avenue's new "Think About It" campaign. Bare Escentuals' "Rethink What Matters" campaign (cover of online brochure). Bare Escentuals, Powell Street BART station, San Francisco (station domination). Think Mutual Bank, Minnes...
This is the lazy communicator's response to the mantra that "the consumer is in control." Instead of thinking through what that actually means, they address people in the second person. Problem solved!
It's All About YOU
My latest Visual Thesaurus column, "The You Decade," was published yesterday. In it I revisit the changing meaning of you in marketing, a theme I've touched on in a couple of blog posts: "The City • The Committee • And You" (about Philadelphia's new city slogan) and ("Life • Liberty • And You") ...
In my experience, the people in LinkedIn writers' groups range from the nearly illiterate to the extremely talented. It is bizarre to see them interact.
Shrift Much?
From a comment in a LinkedIn discussion about book publishing: It is ... difficult for a new writer to get much of any shrift from their publisher. By "shrift," the commenter apparently means something like "attention" or "consideration." (And is "of" supposed to be "if"?) But he got my attentio...
So...what does J-Roll mean? Is it related to the baseball player?
Goodbye to All That
I'mma let you finish 2009, but not without a few parting links: The 15 Most Stupid Products of the Decade, including Vista, the UroClub, and—talk about the Walk of Shame!—Crocs. (Hat tip: Irene Nelson.) Laurel Sutton of Catchword Branding selects the ten best and worst Internet company brands of...
My guess: Like most ads these days, this one was written by and for people in their twenties (no matter what the client's actual target demographic was).
Broken
There's a sin in this syntax: Here's the problem: "Paperbacks" is the subject of the first phrase, which means the possessive "yours" in the second phrase must refer back to it. "Without breaking your paperbacks" surely isn't what the copywriter intends, although that's the only conclusion, gr...
Design-minded?
Style seeker?
Gaga for gewgaws? (just kidding)
Opportunism Knocks
This ad for Saks Fifth Avenue appeared on page A3 of Monday's New York Times: I skimmed along until opportunistic brought me up short. Opportunistic? Really? It's clearly the wrong word. But why? And what should it have been? Some background: Opportunity, opportune, and opportunist(ic) share a...
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