Sweary links #23

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.

 

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To drive awareness on International Women’s Day about how women are paid on average 25 percent less than men, J. Walter Thompson London created an outdoor campaign that uses censorship to show how offensive the world can seem with 25 percent missing. (Via Little Black Book)

 Find your purse?

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Beginning around the 30:00 mark, listen to an entertaining segment on Mat, the fascinating language of Russian swearing, on the “Collections” episode of the podcast Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. (Hat tip: John Kelly)

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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.

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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)

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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.

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From linguist Arnold Zwicky: Men swear about menswear.

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Strong Language contributor Michael Adams tells Australia’s ABC network that “we’re living in the age of profanity” (and should embrace it).

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Strong Language co-founder James Harbeck introduces us to the “bracing, mature, balanced sounds of Kat McSnatch.”

 

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The BBC notes with interest and alarm the growing popularity of rude and sexually explicit greeting cards.

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A guide to incorporating swearing into your fiction. (Thanet Writers)

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We’re doing the crossword pic.twitter.com/dGiJQmZbY4

— Orbette (@orbette) March 20, 2017