| Morpheme Addict

Is The Phrase "Young Buck" Racist?

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Or is it just "racism-adjacent"?

If you had asked me yesterday, I probably would have said no. I would have said that, even though it's true that black men were referred to as "bucks" on Southern slave plantations, the phrase "young buck" probably comes from the behavior of young male deer. Who are notoriously randy, full of themselves, and constantly spoiling for a fight and doing stupid things.

But then I saw Jesse Thorn - a nice guy, but white as white can be - use the phrase to describe a black male rap artist, and it made me really uncomfortable.

3 Words I Learned From Star Trek

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Not to mention "triticale," which is actually a real thing

Yeoman

I ran across this word over the weekend, and it made me smile. I remember the first time I encountered it, in an episode of the original series that I watched when I was eight or nine. Yeoman Rand makes an appearance, and I was like, "Who is this chick, and what's a yeoman?"

A yeoman is, of course, a rank in the US Navy which performs administrative and clerical duties. Luckily for real-world yeomans, a massive blonde beehive is not required for the job. (Although sadly I suspect that the two jobs may still have "unwanted sexual advances" in common.)

Language Anachronisms: Downton Abbey Vs. Mad Men

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Tracking down when a word originated is a fabulously slippery task.

Slate's Browbeat columnist David Haglund thinks that Mad Men is being more careful about linguistic anachronisms than Downton Abbey. But is it really? And what about Deadwood?

The issue of anachronisms in period shows spills over to every aspect of the show. Much - one might imagine - to the shows' creators' dismay. I know of a fistful of blogs which obsessively track font choices in Mad Men, and which gleefully crow over fonts being used by the ad agency before they were invented in the real world.

Ruminating on the word "ruminate"

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In a quiet moment, we burp up old thoughts in order to chew them over a little better

Earlier today I was reading about cows, and how they like to lie down in order to chew their cuds. Cows are ruminants, which means that they belong to the class of animals (like goats and llamas) who have to chew their food twice in order to digest it.

Long story short, cows like to lie down to ruminate. And so do I.

Grazing animals have a tough job: they have to break down the cellulose in plant matter in order to extract nutrition from it. Grass is tough stuff, which is why cows have four stomachs. This practice also lets the cow bolt down its food now, and wait until later to chew it. That's a handy ability, when you're a shy grazing animal on the run from predators.

Business Jargon: Core Competency, Buy-In, and More

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Like any form of jargon, business jargon is meant to solidify bonds between a social group.

Forbes recently identified their least-favorite items of business jargon. The full list, if you don't care to do all that clicking, is:

Core Competency
Buy-In
SWAT Team
Empower
Open the Kimono
Bleeding Edge
Lots of Moving Parts
Corporate Values
Make Hay
Scalable
Best Practice
Think Outside the Box
Solution
Leverage
Vertical
Over the Wall
Robust
Learnings
Boil the Ocean
Reach Out
Punt
Impact
Giving 110%
Take It To The Next Level
It Is What It Is

Do You Have Remora in Your Life?

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The word of the day for Saturday, January 21^st, 2012 on dictionary.com was remora. This word is pronounced [rem-er-uh]. Though related phonetically, this word has quite a different meaning than, better known word, remorse.

The first definition means that this word refers to a hindrance, obstacle or obstruction. The second definition has quite a different meaning. You have to love the English language.

The second definition refers to scientific context with regards to a type of spiny-finned fish that constitutes the family Echeneididae. They have, (believed by the ancients) on top of their head a type of vessel or sucking disk that allows them to attach to larger fish, rocks, turtles, ships, sharks or any other object of motion in their marine living environment.

What Does the Word Limerence Mean?

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Have you ever heard of the word limerence? What could it possibly mean?

Limerence is regularly tied with the term “crushing on someone”, but this relation is wrong. Regardless of whether those feelings are returned or not, to crush on someone means that you have developed feelings of desire for a person. Limerence is where one desires someone and that desire is fueled by reciprocation from the person they desire.

What Would You Do if the Internet Failed?

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A few years ago, I donated the last of my dictionaries to Goodwill. It isn’t that I don’t love words and want to know more about them, but I just never used my paper copies because it is so much faster to find what I want to know online. Recently, I have been thinking of our dependence on the Internet, and how different life has become in the past decade because of it.

Word of the Week: Relief

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"Are you comforted (another synonym for relief) by the end of Christmas?"

Well, the biggest holiday of the year has come and gone, leaving many of us with a feeling that can be described in a simple word: relief. Though Christmas is a very enjoyable time of year, it is also chaotic and downright exhausting for many, so this is a perfect word to sum up what is left over when the wrapping paper is cleared and the tree hauled to the curb.

Oil And Water: Immiscible

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How long have we fallen back on the lazy old phrase, "like oil and water"?

I like to think I have a pretty big vocabulary, but I have been surprised recently to realize how many words I have just been skimming past, taking their meaning in context - and often getting it wrong. It turns out that all these decades I have been a reader, I haven't actually been looking up the words I kept telling myself I would look up.

How do I know this? Because I got a Kindle, and now when I encounter an unknown word, I can look it up with just a few clicks of the arrow button. I don't even have to sit up and fumble around for a pen!

Morpheme Addict

Words and their meanings, origins, and other linguistic trivia

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