Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Gordon Ramsay Language

Smart Portmanteaus

I received the following as an e-mail from a friend and I so enjoyed the portmanteau-inspired car names that I can't resist sharing. Plus, I am still on the floor laughing about the symbolism of the last 'car' listed below.

The Smart Car - What we will be forced to drive quite soon

But look at all of the great choices we will have from 'The Smart Car'

The Smorsche

The Smerrari

The Smaudi A3 AWD

The Smamborghini

The Smorvette

And last, but not least,

The Smustang

Portmanteau Fruits

Having discussed portmanteau words last month in relation to a type of furniture, I thought I would mention some interesting hybrid fruit names I have seen that are portmanteau words.

According to Wikipedia, Zaiger's Genetics (a fruit breeding company from Modesto, California) holds the following trademarks:

Aprium — a patented hybrid of 2/3 apricot and 1/3 plum

Nectaplum — a hybrid of nectarine and plum

Nectarcot — a hybrid of nectarine and apricot

Peacotum — a hybrid of peach, apricot and plum

Pluot — a patented hybrid of 2/3 plum and 1/3 apricot

And there is also the plumcot, similar to a pluot, which was credited to and named by Luther Burbank.

And, of course, there is now the Grapple, which is not actually a hybrid fruit but an apple infused with grape flavor.

By the way, even with the diacritic over the letter "a" and the "Say 'Grape - L'" in the tag line, I still find myself using the "apple" pronunciation and thinking that I would not want anyone grappling with my apple.

Does Language Shape Thought?

The July 20th issue of Newsweek magazine included a very thought provoking (no pun intended) article about well-known linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf's question of whether or not the particular language we speak shapes the way we think and view the world. I won't discuss the entire article (it can be viewed by clicking on the link above) but the gist of it is that a psychologist from Stanford University, Lera Boroditsky, is collecting evidence from a series of experiments that strongly suggest language does shape thought. One of the examples given in the article involves the difference between masculine and feminine nouns in different languages. In German, the word for bridge is feminine (Brucke) while in French it is masculine (pont). In 2004 a new bridge opened in the south of France and German newspapers described the bridge with feminine adjectives while the French papers used masculine adjectives.

The main reason I bring up the article is that it includes the idea that if language does shape thought, it "is not merely a means of expressing thought, but a constraint on it, too."

I do believe that the language we speak is capable of shaping our thoughts but I am not so sure that it constrains them. Because language is always changing, I am not so sure it can be constrained in the same way it can be shaped.

I would love to hear from readers with examples that support or refute the hypothesis. And I would love to hear your thoughts on the constraint.

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Furtive, Dirty Words

Where Does 'Snark' Get Its Portmanteau-ishness?

Is a snark

a snake + shark combo
or

a snide + remark combo?

According to yourdictionary.com a snark is -
"An imaginary animal created by Lewis Carroll in his poem 'The Hunting of the Snark'"

According to Urban Dictionary a snark is -

"A combination of "snide" and "remark". Sarcastic comment(s)."

I have to believe that the predominant usage of the word snark in this day and age of blogging refers to the latter.

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Suffixation

Derogatory Fashion Terms for Ill-Fitting Pants

When I was growing up one of the most embarrassing comments a person could receive about their pants was "nice floods." We used the term floods to refer to another person's pants when that person was starting to outgrow the pants and they were an inch or so shy of reaching below that person's ankles - as they should have to be considered fashionable. We called these pants floods because a person wearing them would be the last to get wet in a flood.

I just came across another derogatory term for ill-fitting pants in a book I am currently reading. The book is "Dark Objects" by Gillian Flynn and following is a direct quote from the book:

"Nice highwaters was the first thing Trey ever said to him. Ben was wearing jeans that were maybe, possibly, half an inch too short. Maybe an inch."

A brief Wikipedia entry classifies both floods and highwaters in the same category as three quarter pants, pedal pushers, shants, shpants, clam diggers and jams and defines the terms as "expressions to mean pants that are longer than shorts but are not as long as pants."

Urban Dictionary, on the other hand, defines floods as "pants that are unintentionally too short in the hem, so named because you can walk in a flood with them and they won't get wet. aka high waters."

I think the Wikipedia entry needs to be amended as the terms floods and highwaters are both clearly derogatory in their usage.

The "M" "Nym" Words: Meronymy and Metonymy

Looking at the words "meronymy" and "metonymy" it is hard not to notice that they differ by only one letter. As with many words that share spelling similarities, small orthographic differences can make quite large semantic differences. I bring up this example primarily because the "r" and the "t" that differentiate the words are neighbors on the keyboard and thus more likely to be keyed in error.


Here are the differences between the two words:


The term "meronymy" is used to describe the part-whole relationship between items, for example: kitchen, bathroom and den are meronyms of house. A meronymy is a classification system similar to a taxonomy.


A metonymy, on the other hand, is more of a literary device than a classification system. The term "metonymy" is used for a identifying a referent by a word that is associated with it, for example: The White House is a metonym for the President and the Press is a metonym for news media (The Press sure ran with that story).

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If you are interested in more about "nym" words please click here.

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Sentence Diagrams

Math Test - Semantics Fail

Shall We Have Carry Out or Take Away Tonight?

On Sunday evenings, when I don't feel like cooking, we often get carry out from our favorite Chinese restaurant. I wonder how many other people are in the habit of getting carry out on Sundays (there is always a line)...though maybe take away is more popular for some. I was just reading a book in which the characters had Chinese take away. This got me to thinking about the difference between the two terms. "Carry out" and "take away" mean basically the same thing - that food is being picked up from a restaurant for consumption at a different location. In my opinion "carry out" is a slightly more descriptive term because it tells how the food is being transported; it is being carried (as opposed to being rolled, pushed or thrown). At any rate, I decided to do a google search to see which term returned more results and here are the results:

57,200,000 for carry out food

130,000,000 for take away food

So apparently my dialectical leanings are not the norm. Of course there is yet another term that is far more common than "carry out" and "take away" and it is "take out". A google search for take out food returned 212,000,000 results.

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Define "Weapon of Mass Destruction"

To my wonderful readers - Happy Independence Day

Hope you have a fun and safe holiday weekend.

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - The Semantics of "Safe"