A Nerd By Any Other Name

In the world of Science Fiction, is there a trend more annoying than the invention of fake futuristic slang? If you've ever dipped into a third-tier post-apocalyptic novel of high-tech buccaneering, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you don't, that's good, you're normal, but hear me out regardless. SciFi authors, especially if they're trying to paint a gritty tableau, will often pepper their characters' dialog with made-up exclamations and idiomatic expressions designed to reflect the fact that language, along with technology, will evolve. To the best of my knowledge, there are three general tactics. The first is to take an existing word and modify it slightly: "fucking" as "frocking," "fracking," "fripping" etc. The second is to take existing words and give them meanings they do not currently convey, a strategy particularly useful when the writer is covering futuristic drugs and drug trips ("the mutant was totally skunking on redbone"). And finally, when all else fails, there's pure invention: "grok" "plinx" "phoon," etc.

It's hard to tell which of these is clunkiest because they all share the same problem: none of them work the way slang is supposed to. Though it's a multifunctional tool, at its core, slang is about being cool. And no matter how many pairs of cyber-shades or laser-powered Ferraris a character owns, if he goes around saying things like "Holy Shoste! That was a monster fecking spaceship!" he sounds like, well, a guy who reads science fiction books. Slang terms have no regulatory body, they function with mob authority. That's why terms clearly invented by one person sound so comically tin to the ear; slang is a pure popularity contest, and the short guy with an overbite and the peach-colored backpack saying "holy fripp" isn't going to excercise much cultural clout.

Backing this up is a noticeable lack of fake slang in SciFi's more mainstream branch: futuristic movies and TV shows. If the stuff reads awkward, it sounds like pure garbage out loud, and most SciFi script writers know that, especially the more successful ones. Star Trek characters, for example, speak in an enlightened standard English and manage to convince their audience that it's THE FUTURE the way SciFi should: with convoluted technical jargon about Penrose Tubes and Mixellidian Crystals. Neal Stephenson, please take note.

Making Time for Making Out

Recently I found myself in the Slanguage break room flipping through the latest issues of the Journal of the International Phonetic Association and US Weekly. While musing on the possibilities of an article examining the linguistic constructions of Brit & K-Fed, I overheard the interns discussing their weekend activities:

"Yeah me and Saraswati* hooked up on Saturday."
"So you guys had sex?"
"No we just fooled around."
"You just made out?"
"No I told you, we hooked up."

The conversation continued in this vein for several minutes until I reminded the young lads that their time would be better served completing the TomKat study I had requested. Yet after they were gone, the questions they raised lingered on. In my day, if I had known the company of a woman, I would clearly tell my associates that we had "made time" and all confusion would be availed. But today ambiguity of the language surrounds sexual activity. To that end I embarked to stake out a clearer understanding of the terms at hand.

To begin my research, I contacted colleagues at UCLA, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Manchester, all of whom I had "made time" within the course of my career. Unfortunately these discussions did not solidify the boundaries I had hoped to shore up. Stymied, I decided to go to the source, approaching several very helpful young ladies at the Sunnydale Mall. I queried them on making out, hooking up, and fooling around. They were reluctant to divulge the precise definitions. A certain nervousness surrounded their answers and manner, which I attributed to a possible fear of reproach from their peers for disclosing and giving clarity to what I believe to be intentionally obscure usages.

Findings in short:
Making out: Kissing with the use of tongues. No other qualifiers are required. Extended periods of closed mouth kissing could possibly be considered making out, but only in rare instances.
Hooking up: The most argued and abstract of the terms. While some may argue hooking up can be limited to making out, general consensus indicates hooking up begins once behavior moves beyond solely tongue kissing. Any petting light or heavy would immediately upgrade making out status to hooking up levels. The danger and flexibility of this term is that it can also be used to extend to the further reaches including intercourse and light water sports.
Fooling around: Another unnecessarily vague term. As far as my research could conclude, fooling around has a higher threshold as relates to its initiation. One would be incorrect to describe an encounter as 'fooling around' unless the actions progressed to at least the level of heavy petting. As with the aforementioned term, the upper boundaries of fooling around are hazy and unclear.

Conclusions:
I argue these terms are kept intentionally muddy for dual paradoxical reasons. For the more aggrandizing participants in the act, use of such vague language allows for an appeal to the upper limits of the term's boundaries. While the participants may have not proceeded beyond first base, the use of the term 'hooked up' and a well-timed wink could give the listener the impression of a greater sexual conquest with no actual fabrications on the part of the speaker. Likewise for the more demure participants, use of the terms can appeal to the lower limits, giving listeners the impression that what transpired was nothing more than light-hearted fun and not octupal daisy-chain felching.

* I have changed the young lady in questions name out of respect.

A New Word Dawns

In an effort to stay at the very farthest reaches of the summit of the cutting edge of slang and new idiomatic offerings, the research partnership of Slanguage (funded in part by a generous grant from the RAND Corporation) often forgo the normal bodily functions including eating, sleeping and even full blood circulation. We may pause from our exhaustive schedules to glance longingly at our Murphy Bed constructed out of old editions of the OED, but the glances are for naught. And it is for that naught that we are able to pounce like a sargassum when a new expression bubbles its way into the cultural blitzgeist.

For those who spend the better parts of their day traipsing through the blogosphere, the recent mental unhinging of Tom Cruise is old hat to say the least. Beginning with reports that Cruise offered Scientological "assists" to cast & crew on the set of War of the Worlds, winding its way around to his unsettlingly amusing relationship with Katie Holmes, exploding into our synapses with freak outs on both Oprah and Jay Leno continuing on to...well we have two interns currently compiling a complete dossier and inputting it into our vintage TRS-80 Model II computer to calculate the sick-disturbing to sick-awesome ratios.

Along with wowing us in the movie Legend, making us cry in the movie Legend, and titilating us in the movie Eyes Wide Legend, Thomas Cruise Mapother IV has given us the greatest gift a scientologist can give. The gift of language. To our mother tongue's perky bosom the new expression "cruise" clings, still somewhat gross and squishy but with a look of wonder and expectation in its unblinking eye that assures us it has a healthy future. Celebrate our language's newest member by tuning in to Thursday's Oprah repeat and see Tom jump, crouch, kick, paw, laugh, scream, and show us all the true meaning of 'cruise.'

Cruise ('krüz), v. cruis·ing, cruis·es, on a cruise. Slang. 1. to act in an exceedingly irrational and excited manner suggesting the influence of narcotics or extreme self-delusion, especially in response to situations that would not suggest such behavior warranted: The homosexual actor was cruising after announcing his engagement to the frightened young starlet.

Etym. [Dutch kruisen, to cross, from Middle Dutch cruce, from Latin crux, cross.]

Frogspeak

Recent political developments have rendered the state of Franco-American relations a-shambles. It is neither here nor there to debate who saved who in what war, who brought who Amelie, or who sent who an exchange student that made out with the editorial staff's senior prom date. The editorial's staff's primary concern is not to assign blame--she wasn't that hot anyway--but to mend rifts. And as everyone knows, true cultural healing cannot begin until the two fueding nations have gotten together and taught each other their dirty words. Or in today's case: exclamations.

Sacre bleu

or, more appropriately:

Sacre bleu! Cogsworth, mon ami, did you see how mademoiselle was dressed for dinehr! Why, she is falling in amour! Surely we will be rehstored to our proper state!
[Editor's query: are Cogsworth and Lumiere the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of our generation?]

Literally, it means "sacred blue." Nice enough of a dyad, but obtuse without some history. Apparently, much like purple in Rome, blue was the traditional color of the French monarchy. Though unlike the Purple/Rome dichotomy, the royal connotation of the color had little to do with the pigment itself (royal purple was ground from a rare and therefore expensive mollusk) but instead referred to a metaphor of divine rule. In it, blue represents the sky, or the tissue that connects heaven to earth. Therefore the king, in his azure regalia, was asserting his role as man's link to god.

Interesting etymological hopscotch, and it accounts for the fact that so many things in Paris are "blue" (the city's most popular cab service being a noticeable example). Still, not quite sure what this info, even in the hands of our diplomats, would truly accomplish. To really get anywhere, we're gonna have to delve into more contemporary French slang. Stay tuned for that. Next time: bo-bo, mef, and a popular protest song that changes the refrain in "Frere Jacques" to "Jacques Chirac."

Slap Happy

"Bitch Slap": Convenient descriptive or frustrating paradox?

It's easy to take slang for granted, that's what it's there for, a shorthand. But every now and then you have to step back and take these little engines apart, and sometimes you hit a wall. What I really want to know is: does the "Bitch" in "Bitch Slap" refer to the slapper or the slappee?

The case for Slappee: probably the stronger of the two. It seems as though the recipient of the slap should be the one referred to in a derogatory fashion, i.e. the slap renders its target a bitch. And I've definitely heard "you got slapped like a bitch" tossed around.

The case for Slapper: true or not, it's a commonly understood that when two women fight, their primary mode of attack is a slap. So is a "bitch slap" a slap issued by a bitch? Bitch, in this case, being the gender-descriptive "bitch," not the explicitly derogatory "bitch."

It could also be some amorphous combination of both, something along the lines of "The method you used to put that guy down was feminine, thereby rendering him feminine for allowing himself to be put down." Not helping things is the flexibility of the term. It no longer necessarily refers to a literal attack. It can also just mean a general instance in which one person clearly dominated another. I guess that would probably back up the case for Slappee. But since I would venture that the term initially was used to describe a physical act, I think the paradox still stands. Then again, I could just be being a bitch.

The Sharpest Knife

The death of any slang term is a sad affair, but you can console your distraught children by explaining that the passing of a particular word or phrase is all part of the cycle of life. "No diggity" may have gone up to heaven, yes, it's truly sad, but look! What's this that's sprung up? Why, it's "No dizzle"! And look, there's another one, "No Dizzy"! And don't worry, kids, "No Diggity" will never die in our hearts, minds, and our future sense of ironic nostalgia. Why, I bet when you kids are grown up and in college, all the boys and girls will be tossing it around in a flip gesture of admiration/scorn for the bygone nineties.

One such term long in need of such a resurrection: Blade. As in "dashing youth."

I first encountered it in "The Gold Diggers of 1933," an old Busy Berkeley musical. In it, a pugnacious stuffed shirt of a character actor says something along the lines of "We came down from Harvard, a collection of young blades out for a good time..." Since then I've seen it pop up in various settings, nothing much dating after the fifties. Interestingly enough, it seems to have been wiped away completely, not even surviving as a museum piece like "Peachy Keen" or "Hepcat." I'm guessing that's probably because it wasn't particularly widespread to begin with. There's something sort of literary and upperclass about it. Etymologically, it probably comes from the usage of "blade" as "swordsman," and it seems as though these swordsmen and their exploits were probably popularized by novels.

Anyway, that's all conjecture. My main point is that its total disappearance from popular parlance makes it perfect for a comeback. It just needs someone to bring it back, and it's too bad that Method Man has no credibility left to blow, because he would have been perfect. Frankly, I don't think Mike Jones is up to the task.

In Translation

Three popular phrases run through several iterations of an automatic language translator.

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"--Russian--English--Greek--French--German---English--"Bird for value 2 at the bushes"

"Can't stop the body rock"--Japanese--English---"The body stone is stopped is not possible"

"Shake it like a polaroid picture"--French--Italian--French--Portuguese--French--English--"Jolt appreciate an image polaroid"

Love how the Japanese translation turned "Can't stop the body rock" into a Zen koan. Consider this a regular feature.