Strong Language contributor Jonathon Green (@misterslang), the author of Green’s Dictionary of Slang, has a new project of special interest to SL readers: Slang Family Trees. “The aim,” writes Jonathon, “is to look at some of slang’s primary themes and show the way the lexis assesses given topics on a semantic basis.” The trees are constructed with mind-mapping software and appear as .pdf files. To get started, see vagina, penis, and drunk.
Two linguists — Gretchen McCulloch and Strong Language contributor Lauren Gawne — have started a Patreon (an online subscription service) for their new podcast, Lingthusiasm. To kick it off, they’ve included a bonus episode on swearing for patrons who subscribe at the $5-or-more level. The episode includes conversation on swear word acquisition, false-friend swear words, and cross-cultural rude gestures.
When people claim they can use
f— as every part of speech, I wonder about article, conjunction, and preposition. (I’m good with pronoun.)— Ben Yagoda (@byagoda) March 27, 2017
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Why being bilingual makes swearing easier. (The Guardian)
Shitgibbon has been added to the Macmillan Dictionary. Read more about this useful and timely epithet in Ben Zimmer’s February 9 post, “The Rise of the Shitgibbon.”
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The Scottish brewery Williams Bros. is selling a “deeply irreverent” Profanity Stout, whose “huge roasted malt character” gives way to “a profanely dry hopped finish.” (Hat tip: @knirirr)
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Among the 300 recent additions to Dictionary.com: “an impressively robust entry” for bitchface that notes that “it also goes by the names resting bitchface, bitchy resting face and chronic bitch face.” (Time)
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The menu at Bar Cañete in Barcelona is in Catalán, Spanish, and English. But the pithy slogan is in English only.
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You can be scared shitless, but can you be bored shitless? Brendan O’Kane explores fecal intensifiers over at Language Log; the comments are both erudite and hilarious.
We’re doing the crossword pic.twitter.com/dGiJQmZbY4
— Orbette (@orbette) March 20, 2017
Reading the categories and tags are maybe my favorite part of every post.
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And this, today: Verizon Announces New Name Brand for AOL and Yahoo: Oath. Dang!
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As Jonathon Owen speculated on Twitter: “As in ‘Why the @#$!^ is anyone still using AOL or Yahoo’?”
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Yahoo is great for all those online news outlets & blogs that require a functional email address. It’s my garbage email, also handy for shopping. I sort coupons and discount codes I will actually use as well as invoices and shipping/returns info for gifts and things without cluttering my real email.
Handy, free, and reasonably good at self-sorting.
Otherwise? I’m always surprised when people use those services (or the occasional Netscape–seriously, that still exists???) for anything important.
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”Yahoo is great for all those online news outlets & blogs that require a functional email address. It’s my garbage email, also handy for shopping.”
ditto
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