low-key
I was already low-key planning to write this note before seeing the word where I didn't expect it. I was low-key shocked, you know? And the show looks low-key terrible. No, I'm definitely low-key using it wrong now.
Archive for Slang
tousy-mousy
According to an article by Fern Riddell, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley once wrote to a friend: I was so ready to give myself away—and being afraid of men, I was apt to get tousy-mousy for women. Apparently (according to that same article), tuzzy-muzzy is “slang for the vagina,” dating back to 1642. Only one of my […]
herberts
I suspect that I am, in fact, a herbert, but how can I be sure?
Robot, South African usage
From the Madam & Eve files
Grunge lexicon
Apparently I never posted here about the Lexicon of Grunge. The short version is that in 1992, the New York Times did an article about grunge music and fashion, for which (among other things) they interviewed record-company employee Megan Jasper about what terms were in use by the grunge community. But Jasper made up a […]
Sensory metaphors
In a New York Times piece from 2015, Jonah Berger wrote about the longevity of sensory metaphors. An interesting piece, and an interesting idea. Fits nicely with stuff I’ve been reading about metaphors in Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By. I find the piece a little incomplete in its discussion of the word cool, […]
cough to
I'd gladly cough to being wrong, if I am indeed wrong.
shonky
Such a great sounding word, too. Shonky.
muckers and the running smobble (NSFW)
When I was a kid, I occasionally listened to my father’s LP of Oscar Brand’s Bawdy Songs and Backroom Ballads. One of the songs on the album was “Sam Hall,” which included this line: You’re a bunch of muckers all, damn your eyes. At some point, I asked my father what muckers meant, and he […]
carny slang
Yesterday, I posted about Polari. What led me to that was looking up information about carny, the slang of carnival performers. The Dictionary of Carny, Circus, Sideshow & Vaudeville Lingo provides definitions for lots of carny terms, along with slang terms from other performance contexts.