Goat rodeo

On Friday, after President Trump abruptly canceled a June 12 meeting in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, reporters scrambled to file updates. One of them was Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star, who attempted to get a quote from Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk), an expert on nuclear nonproliferation. The response wasn’t quite what Dale had hoped for, but it was newsworthy in its own way.

Transcript of my exclusive interview with @ArmsControlWonk pic.twitter.com/OtZSo7MrV5

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) May 24, 2018

Goat rodeo seems like an amusing but innocuous way to describe the chaotic situation that Lewis was alluding to. On the surface, it appears more family friendly than its time-honored synonyms clusterfuck, fuckup, snafu (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up), fubar (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition), and shitshow. Dig a little deeper, though, and you discover the sweary origins of the term.

Shitholes around the world

Donald the Trump has yet again opened his cakehole and gifted us – and especially lexicographers – with another citable instance of vulgarity. Naturally, his ass-mouth made headlines around the world when he said “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” And naturally, this shit has to be reported on in other languages. So what do you do when you’re writing in another language and trying to translate shithole countries effectively?

Down the “shithole”: Why lexicographers need your profanity

Originally published on harm•less drudg•ery

Though the average lexicographer is as odd as a horse in trousers, we are, at least, a staid and quiet horse in trousers most of the time. There’s very little that will rile us up, and that’s a feature, not a bug.

But there is one event that makes most lexicographers startle and gasp in delight, one event that will get us to look up from our desks and start shivering and chittering like lab rats on cocaine:

When a well-respected newspaper prints the word “shithole.”

“What a fucking idiot”: Michael Wolff’s sweary account of the Trump White House

Whoo-ee, 2018 started off with a fucking bang, didn’t it? Right on the heels of our third annual Tucker Awards for Excellence in Swearing drop the juicy profanities in Michael Wolff’s controversial Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.

As excerpts and early reviews ahead of its January 9th release are proving, Wolff’s account—apparently based on over 200 interviews with the president, his inner circle, and other staff conducted over 18 months, much as embedded in the West Wing—is blistering. Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, of all people, called the Trump Tower meeting with Russians “treasonous,” according to Wolff. 

Wolff’s account is also a very sweary one. As Ben Zimmer, who authors our reliably politics-packed Tucker Awards, observed on Twitter:

It's a shame all of this political profanity came too late for @stronglang's year-end Tucker Awards. Some good contenders already for 2018. https://t.co/S8R4NQmWLW https://t.co/p4DUwtoUiq

— Ben Zimmer (@bgzimmer) January 3, 2018

Zimmer’s right, so let’s highlight some choice examples we’ve seen so far. Bannon clearly positions himself as a Tucker favorite, if Wolff’s reports are confirmed. 

The seven deadly synonyms

In Sinclair Lewis’s prescient 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, the ignorant demagogue Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip wins the 1936 election with the support of millions of impoverished and angry voters. Among the more serious totalitarian indignities of Windrip’s “Corpo” government are the curtailing of women’s and minority rights and the building of concentration camps. Another tactic is the bowdlerizing of language and the forbidding of words and phrases that seemingly run counter to the administration’s noble ends.

Fast forward to the present day.