February 2012

Is The Phrase "Young Buck" Racist?

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

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

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"

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.

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Words and their meanings, origins, and other linguistic trivia

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Is The Phrase "Young Buck" Racist?

3 Words I Learned From Star Trek

Language Anachronisms: Downton Abbey Vs. Mad Men

Ruminating on the word "ruminate"