When horses were a common means of transportation, horseshit was as common as potholes are today. While actual horse feces is rare nowadays, horseshit is as common as ever in our vocabulary.The list of synonyms and euphemisms—such as horsefeathers, horse hockey, horse hooey, horse pucky, and horse apples—is huge, taking up many pages in the Dictionary of American Regional English, Green’s Dictionary of Slang, and the Historical Dictionary of American Slang.
The post Holy horsecrap, Batman! The equine BS vocabulary appeared first on OUPblog.
By Anatoly Liberman
Last week I mentioned the idiom to be (dead) nuts on ‘to be in love with’ and the verb spoon ‘to make love’ and promised to say something about both. After such a promise our readers must have spent the middle of January in awful suspense. So here goes. The semantic range of many slang words is often broad, but the multitude of senses attested for Engl. nut (see the OED) is amazing. I will reproduce some of them, both obsolete and current: “a source of pleasure or delight” (“To see me here would be simply nuts to her”), nuts in the phrases to be (dead) nuts on “to be in love of, fond of, or delighted with,” to be nuts about, as in “I was still nuts about Rex,” and to be nuts “go mad” (hence nutjob ~ nut job ~ nut-job “madman; idiot” and nutsy “crazy”). The exclamation nuts! means “nonsense,” while, contrary to expectation, the nuts signifies an excellent person. It will be seen that the senses can be positive, as in “a source a delight” (here are two more examples from my reading: “An English country gentleman might express himself concerning an agreeable incident: ‘It was nuts’” and “To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call ‘nuts’ to Scrooge”), and negative (“madness; stupidity”). Consequently, tracing nuts to German von Nutzen “of use” would be a false move (this origin of nuts has been proposed by a good German scholar). In etymological works, it is common to preface a hypothesis by a disclaimer to the effect that someone may have offered the same hypothesis, but the author is ignorant of it. I am obliged to do the same: my idea is so obvious, even trivial, that it must have occurred to anyone who wondered what nuts (as in hazelnuts or peanuts) have to do with either extreme pleasure or derangement.
The slang word nut in the singular is also frequent, but we note that in all the examples given above the plural nuts occurs. I suspect that the story begins with nuts “testicles,” even though the earliest recorded examples of this sense are late (however, it must have been so well-known in the United States more than a hundred years ago that The Century Dictionary included it). Nuts and genitalia have been compared for centuries. Thus, nut occurred with the sense of “the glans penis,” and the Germans call this part of the male organ of procreation Eichel “acorn” (in older writings on the history of words the glosses in such situations were always given in Latin; those who are embarrassed by plain English are welcome to use membrum virile). I suggest that nuts emerged as a loose word for expressing a strong feeling: nuts! “nonsense,” nuts! “wonderful,” nuts! “crazy,” and so forth. Such an exclamation can express any emotion. Nut “head” is probably an independent coinage (the head has been likened to all kinds of oblong and round objects in many languages); hence off one’s nut, though nuts “mad” may have reinforced that phrase. (The Russian verb o—et’, whose middle contains the most vulgar and formerly unprintable name for “penis,” means “to become mad”—another instance of genitalia and madness being connected; compare the metaphorical sense of Engl. prick).
Naturally, since nuts existed, the singula
Mark Peters, the genius behind the blog Wordlustitude in addition to being a Contributing Editor for Verbatim: The Language Quarterly, and a language columnist for Babble, is our guest blogger this week. Check out his past OUPblog posts here. In the post below Peters introduces us to some hilarious euphemisms (be sure to read to the end of the post, the last one is my favorite).
Euphemisms get a bad rap. Or should I say a non-good rap?
Though they are tsk-tsked and pooh-poohed by proponents of honesty, integrity, and comedy, I can counter any argument for the intrinsic awfulness of euphemisms. You say liar; I say poet. You say dodge; I say dance. You say odious circumvention of the truth; I say—well, you’ve got a point there.
But no one can deny that euphemisms are creative, and some haven’t gotten the attention they deserve. If I had the necessary resources—OK, wise guy, any resources—I would found a Euphemism Hall of Fame and stock it with under-the-radar gems, including the following terms and phrases that are guaranteed to brighten and vague up your life.
composure bench
If, like me, you have a slim grasp on composure on a good day, this may sound like the answer to your therapist’s prayers. In reality, it’s a Transportation Security Administration term (pointed out by Erin McKean via Twitter) for that little bench in the airport you find just after going through security. I suppose composure bench—along with its other name, re-composure bench, and stalwart companion, the composure table—isn’t totally misleading. Then again, I rarely feel that the security staff and x-ray kajiggers have robbed me of my composure, poise, self-confidence, grace, panache, or fertility. What I tend to lose are my shoes.
mirdle
Do you really want euphemisms? Maybe you’re in the wrong place. You need to read a recent article by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan in The Wall Street Journal . This piece on girdles for men could provide fodder for a whole wing of my Euphemism Museum: terms for male-midsection-mashers include bodyshaping underwear, shapewear, bodywear, support boxers, waist eliminator, problem solver, compression shorts, and (my favorite): mirdle. By any measure, this is an inspiring word, and I can only hope it leads to a shiny future in which gluttonous fish wear firdles, while far beyond the sea, porky pontiffs don proud purple papal pirdles.
crate training
If you haven’t been part of the dog world lately, you may not be familiar with this sense of the word crate. There’s a training method in which occasionally sentencing your dog to a crate helps keep their pee and poop out of your carpet and out on the street where it belongs. To a doggie dilettante, a crate will appear to be a cage—because it is a cage. But dog-owners…well, we don’t like the idea of putting our beloved schnookum-poo in a cage. Too many nasty associations: caged animal, caged heat, steel cage death match, Nicholas Cage, cage dancer. Crate is much kinder to the fragile psyche; the only thing it reminds me of is the warehouse scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was awesome.
occasion
Many euphemisms for number two—like number two—have refused to swirl down the commode of linguistic history. Others have been less resistant to the flushing powers of time, including occasion, a bland beauty with a poopy resume that was established mainly in the 17-and-1800s. This semi-grammatical OED quote shows there may have been a need for crate training back in 1810: “My pug dog improves daily but having given him a beating for doing his lawful occasions in my cabin.”
faulty male introspection
Newcomers to the solar system may be surprised to learn that many members of the male species are in need of a beating with the clue stick. But native Earthicans should be non-stunned by a recent study conducted by Michael Motley of the University at California-Davis that looks at how college men misinterpret women in the hootchie-kootchie department. Apparently, for Joe Average Dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks, about half the possible interpretations of a woman saying “I’m seeing someone else” or “It’s getting late” involve the escalation of horizontal activity, even though that’s insane. Men seem to interpret all sounds emanating from female cake-holes using dude logic, which lacks logic and always rules in favor of the horizontal, never dreaming that women have their own brains and ideas and stuff. Thus, optimistic sleazeball idiocy becomes faulty male introspection. In addition to a fancy new euphemism, Motley provides an old lesson: messages less direct than an ice pick to the noggin may never penetrate the testosterone-marinated brain.
collaborative thought leadership
I am rarely in a corporate setting, which is good for me and good for America. Yet I occasionally nourish myself at the corporate teat, and along with the sweet flow of money, I hear some language that is a little hard to parse. During one post-lunch gabfest, I was forcefed a banquet of euphemisms, including non-success—a word that turns failure into wine—and collaborative thought leadership, which…well, that was the brain-bender. I didn’t dare ask what it meant or why it happened in a secluded location. My only conclusion was that collaborative thought leadership equaled mass mind control on a level hitherto unknown in this dimension. However, I’ve since been assured by my overlords—er, supervisors—that there’s nothing to see here, please move along, thank you for your concern.
federal building
A trip to the federal building usually involves a matter of dire, national importance, like becoming a double agent or replacing your social security card. But in the 40s through the 60s, at least in South Carolina, “I have to go to the federal building” was equivalent to “I need to see a man about a dog”—both disguised trips to the bathroom, federal building just did it more grandiosely. And federal buildings weren’t just any hole in the ground: according to the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), they were outhouses.
intense greeting interaction
These three magical words were used in a 2003 study by Jessica Whitham and Dario Maestripieri about male Guinea baboons. Let’s look at it closely: intense greeting interaction. Could it mean… A high five? A chest bump? An impromptu singalong? Nuh-uh. Intense greeting interactions are handjobs—along with occasional blow jobs. Apparently a manboon will diddle (a more candid term that’s also used in the article) his buddy “to obtain reliable information about this individual’s current willingness to cooperate and invest in the relationship.” Who knew baboons were so cooperative, so invested in their friendships? My pals can barely return an email.
I’ll leave you with five bonus euphemisms and one fond wish: I pray none of you go over the road for neutralizing a bar steward in a ceremony dedicated to the old boy that involves all-flower-water.
In other words, I hope none of you go to jail for killing a bastard in a Satanic ritual that includes cow urine. That would put a damper on the summer.
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