Category Archives: language

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For Whom the Words Toll: 10 Terms Coined by Ernest Hemingway

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Ernest Hemingway, affectionately known by a slew of nicknames including Ernie, Oinbones, Champ, and of course Papa, was born on this day in 1899. An amateur boxer and bullfighting aficionado, a hunting enthusiast and marrier of many spouses, and, first and foremost, a writer, Hemingway was also a coiner of words. Here are 10 he created or popularized.

byline

“I sorted out the carbons, stamped on a by-line.”

The Sun Also Rises, 1926

While Hemingway’s use is the earliest recorded in English, it’s unclear if he actually coined byline. In his early career as a journalist, he probably heard the term often, and merely popularized it through his first novel.

ciao

“‘Ciaou!’ he said. ‘What kind of time did you have?’”

A Farewell to Arms, 1929

Have a pretentious friend who says ciao instead of goodbye and hello? You can thank Papa for that.

The word ciao in Italian comes from the dialectal ciau, an alteration of (sono vostro) schiavo, “(I am your) servant.”

cojones

“It takes more cojones to be a sportsman where death is a closer party to the game.”

Death in the Afternoon, 1932

Cojones, Spanish for testicles, refers to courage, pluck, or guts. The word comes from the Latin coleus, culleus, literally “a leather sack.” Related in English are cullion, which in addition to meaning testicle refers to a vile person, and cull, a shortening of cully, a fool or dupe.

dirt

‘’Do you know any dirt?’ I asked. ‘No.’ ‘None of your exalted connections getting divorces?’”

The Sun Also Rises, 1926

Tabloids owe Hem a Green Isaac’s Special for giving them another word for gossip. An earlier figurative meaning for dirt is a mean action or remark, which could have been an influence.

moment of truth

“The whole end of the bullfight was the final sword thrust, the actual encounter between the man and the animal, what the Spanish call the moment of truth.”

Death in the Afternoon, 1932

Moment of truth, or a crucial point in time, comes from the Spanish bullfighting term, el momento de la verdad, which refers to the final thrust of the sword that kills the bull.

shit-faced

“Then some shitfaced critic writes Mr. Hemingway retires to his comfortable library to write about despair.”

Selected Letters, 1932

Hemmy uses shit-faced here to refer to a contemptible person. Poet Allen Ginsberg employs it in the same way in his 1961 poem, In Society:

She glared at me and
said immediately: “I don’t like you.”
turned her head away, and refused
to be introduced. I said, “What!”
in outrage. “Why you shit-faced fool!”

Shit-faced didn’t gain its intoxicated meaning until the early 1960s as “student slang.”

spooked

“He would get to worrying and get so spooked he wouldn’t be any use.”

To Have and Have Not, 1937

The original meaning of spook, a ghost or apparition, is from around 1801, and comes from the Middle Dutch spoc, meaning “ghost.” Spook gained the verb meaning “to act like a ghost” in 1867,  and “to haunt” around 1883, says the Oxford English Dictionary.

In 1928, the word came to mean, in North American slang, to become alarmed. In 1935, Hemingway was the first to use spook to mean “to frighten or unnerve,” especially in hunting, and in 1937 he used spooked to mean scared or jumpy.

Spook as slang for “spy” is from 1942, perhaps with the idea of being hard to spot, while the derogatory term for a black person is from the mid-1940s. This might also come from the notion of invisibility, in this case the racist misconception that dark skin is “difficult to see at night,” says the Online Etymology Dictionary.

During World War II, African American Tuskegee airmen called themselves Spookwaffe, which translates from German as “spook weapon.” (See also Night Witches.)

stumblebum

“American word would be awkward bum, stumble-bum, flat-footed tramp.”

Death in the Afternoon, 1932

This term for a drunkard or a bumbling, inept person is also boxing slang for a punch-drunk or second-rate fighter.

The prizefighting usage is cited a couple of years after Hemingway’s, specifically in The Bruiser, a 1936 novel by American pugilist and writer Jim Tully:  “Don’t let these palookers around here laugh you outta seein’ me go—all you’ll ever get outta these stumble bums is the holes in the doughnuts.” A palooka is also an untalented fighter.

to have been around

“We’ve all been around. I dare say Jake here has seen as much as you have.”

The Sun Also Rises, 1926

To have been around means to have experience in worldly matters. A variant is to have been around the block.

Yugo

“Maybe we can go over and fight the Yugos.”

Letter, April 27, 1919

Tatie seemed to be the first to use Yugo to refer to someone from Yugoslavia. The Yugo was also a mid-1980s car model “built in Soviet-bloc Yugoslavia.” Apparently the Yugo’s “engines went ka-blooey, the electrical system — such as it was — would sizzle, and things would just fall off,” at least according to TIME.

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10 Fantastic Fog Words

bay bridge engulfed in fog

In the summer months, we here in the San Francisco Bay Area encounter a lot of fog. How much fog? The San Francisco rugby club is called the Fog. Our fog has its own Twitter handle (with almost 86,000 followers).

We love those roiling and rolling clouds of moisture and mist, and of course, just as much, we love the terms that describe them. Here are 10 of our favorite words about fog.

brume

“In studying a 13th-century scroll where nine scaly dragons writhe through a sepia mist, Mr. Li focused on a spot near the center where the brume twists into a spiral.”

Lee Lawrence, “How to Talk Back to a Chinese Master,” The Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2011

Brume comes from the Latin word for winter, bruma, which also gives us brumal, relating to winter. Brumaire is “the second month in the calendar adopted by the first French republic, beginning October 22d and ending November 20th,” and is also known as “the month of mist.”

camanchaca

“Consider the Chilean ‘fog catchers’ of the Atacama desert, one of the world’s driest locales, who harness the camanchaca, or ‘creeping fog,’ with an ingenious system of nets that trap fog droplets and turn them into potable water.”

“Life without water,” Harvard University Press, May 31, 2006

The camanchaca can be found on the coasts of Chile and Peru, and is Spanish in origin.

garua

“With at least a day to spare you can also explore the Chongón-Colonche mountains, a little further inland, where dry forest morphs into cloud forest, with help from the garua, or sea mist.”

Sarah Gilbert, “Isle de la Plata — Ecuador’s Other Galapagos,” The Guardian, November 26, 2010

Similar to camanchaca is garua, which translates from Spanish as “mist.” Specifically, garua is “the heavy fog along the coast of Peru on which plants depend for their moisture.” It occurs from May to October and can rise to a height of a hundred feet.

haar

“A regular St. Andrews ‘haar;’ and St. Andrews people know what that is. Miss Williams had seen it once or twice before, but never so bad as this–blighting, penetrating, and so dense that you could hardly see your hand before you.”

W.P. Livingstone, Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary, 1927

Haar (in addition to what a pirate says) is “a wet mist or fog,” especially applied “on the east coast of England and Scotland, from Lincolnshire northwards, to a cold sea-fog,” says the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The word comes from the Middle Dutch hare, a “keen cold wind.”

larry

“The Rev. P.H. Newnham came to his bedroom in the early morning and asked him to look out of the window and see the fog covering Plymouth Sound. . . .Mr G.W. Ormerod had also described a similar phenomenon at Teignmouth known as The Larry.”

J.B. Cohen, “One Cause of Autumn Mists,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Volumes 30-31, 1904

Larry (not to be confused with Karl) means misty and also refers to a specific kind of “land-fog” as distinguished from another particular kind of sea-fog in the area around the River Teign in the county of Devon, England.

mistpouffer

“People living near Seneca Lake in upstate New York have long known of similar booming sounds, which they called ‘Seneca guns.’ In coastal Belgium, they are known as ‘mistpouffers,’ or fog belches.”

Charles Q. Choi, “Mysterious ‘booming sounds’ perplex scientists,” MSNBC, September 16, 2011

The mistpouffer is a “a mysterious noise heard over the ocean in quiet, foggy weather.” It’s also known as barisal gun.

The word mistpouffer comes from the Dutch mistpoeffer, which seems to translate as “fog swelling.”

Niflheim

“But he continued motionless and silent in that gloomy Niflheim or fog-land which involved him, and she proceeded on her way.”

Thomas Hardy, “The Woodlanders,” Macmillan’s Magazine, Volume 54, 1886

In Scandinavian myth, Niflheim is the misty, foggy realm of the dead, ruled by Hel, the goddess of death and the underworld. Niflheim can also be used figuratively, describing any hellish place. The word is Old Norse in origin, where nifl– means “mist” or “dark,” and heimr means “home.”

pea-souper

“The pea-souper fogs that once defined our capital city have long vanished, the last straw being the so-called Great Smog of 1952, when a thick cloud of pollution settled over London and penetrated deep into its inhabitants’ lungs for five days.”

Andrew Marszal, “Pollution: The biggest killer on Britain’s roads,” The Telegraph, February 16, 2010

A pea-souper is, according to the OED, a British colloquialism for “a dense, often yellowish fog or smog, usually associated with polluted urban areas,” especially in London. Related is Beijing’s orange fog warning, which indicates extremely high pollution levels.

Pea-souper is also a derogatory term for someone who’s French-Canadian, especially a Francophone from Quebec, perhaps because pea soup is a traditional Quebecois dish.

pogonip

“In the western U.S., freezing fog often occurs in mountain valleys and may be referred to as pogonip, a Shoshone word that means ‘cloud.’”

Laura Moss, “What is freezing fog?” Mother Nature Network, February 25, 2015

Pogonip is based on the Native American Shoshone word pakenappeh, also defined as “fog,” and is commonly used in Nevada and other western states to refer to a thick, icy fog.

roke

“Wave after wave of wet salt air was rolling in from the sea, pressing upon that which travelled slowly inland, so that the roke grew very dense, and the little house seemed to be cut off from all the world.”

J.E. Buckrose, The Privet Hedge, 1921

In addition to steam, vapor, fog, or mist, roke is also English and Scots dialectical for smoke. The word might come from the Old Swedish röker, “smoke, vapour.”

Want more fog words? Check out this list. And don’t miss this gorgeous and mesmerizing timelapse video of San Francisco fog in action.

[Photo via Flickr: “Golden Gate Bridge, effect of fog,” CC BY 2.0 by Dimitry B.]

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Surf Words Are Up! The Language of Surfing

Stand up paddle surfing on the huge waves off Sunset Beach

Since hitting the waves hit the mainstream in the early 1960s, surfing has spawned an entire culture — clothes, music, movies, and a bitchin’ lexicon.

While the act of surfing got its start by Polynesian fishermen thousands of years ago, the word surf is from the 17th century. Originally used to describe the coast of India, surf may come from an Indian language, or else is a variant of sough, a soft, rustling noise.

The verb to surf came about much later, around 1917. It was then, says HowStuffWorks, that surfing gained popularity with renowned boardsmen Duke Kahanamoku and George Freeth, often dubbed the “father of modern surfing” (and who passed away, sadly, at 35 during the 1918 flu pandemic). The word surfing entered English more than 40 years later, in the mid-1950s.

Of course surfing is nothing without a surfboard (or surfbort, as Bey would say). In Hawaii back in the day, the length of your board echoed your status in the community: the longer your board, the more important you were. Nowadays, surfers use a variety of sizes, depending on their needs.

According to SurfScience, the longboard is the most traditional and good for beginners; the shortboard “reinvented surfing in the 1970s”; and the funboard is wider than but not as long as the longboard. The fish is fish-shaped, the egg egg-shaped, and the gun is for “chasing big game,” ie big waves, and is also known as the rhino chaser or elephant gun. A whole collection of boards is a quiver.

Now that you’ve got your surfboard, you’ll need to get past the breaking waves. With a shortboard, you can duck dive, or push your board nose-first underwater, like a duck diving for food. With a longboard, you’ll have to turtle roll, which involves rolling your board upside down as the wave gets close, then right side up once the wave passes. (Turtles do indeed roll, specifically when they’re fighting or mating.)

Next is standing up. Are you regular foot? That means your left foot is forward, like most right-handed surfers. Or are you goofy-foot, right foot forward? Perhaps you can surf regular or goofy, in which case you’re a switch-foot.

As a novice surfer, you might get called lots of names. Grommet for instance, which might come from the Old French grommet, “boy, young man,” or jake, perhaps from a 19th century meaning, “rustic lout.” You might get branded a kook, a barney, or a gremlin. And watch out if someone dubs you a quimby: they could mean a beginning surfer but they could also mean jerk or loser, especially if you’re guilty of snaking, or “stealing” a wave from a fellow surfer although he has the right of way.

Another jerk-term is hodad, someone who comes to the beach with surf gear but never surfs. Where the word comes from is unknown although one theory says it’s a contraction of hoodlum.

Surfing enthusiasts in general are surf-bums, surfies, and waxheads, referring to the wax used to make surfboards less slippery. If you’re a a woman who surfs, you might be referred to as a gurfer, a girl surfer, or a wahine, a Hawaiian term for a Polynesian woman as well as surf slang for a female surfer.

Another Hawaiian surfing term is big kahuna, which originally referred to a prominent priest or sage in Hawaii, says the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and now means an expert surfer, a really big wave, or any bigwig. Kahuna comes from the Hawaiian word for shaman or wizard.

Now how about those moves? Ride with all 10 toes over the nose of your board and you’re hanging ten. Cheat with just one foot and you’re cheating five. Performing superbly? You’re shredding.

Do a misterioso and you’re bending over with your head hidden in your hands. Perform a quasimodo and you’re hunched — like Victor Hugo’s hunchback of Notre Dame — at the front of your board with “head down, one arm forward and one arm back,” as per the OED. As for the name Quasimodo, that comes from a Latin Easter psalm, quasi modo geniti infantes, “as newborn babes,” referring to the hunchback’s being abandoned as an infant at Notre Dame on Easter Sunday.

Even for experts accidents are unavoidable. When a surfer is rubbished, she’s tipped off a wave, resulting in a wipeout, which, thanks to the Surfaris, most of us are familiar with. A tombstone is what a wiped-out surfer’s surfboard looks like, and getting rag dolled means getting shaken like, you guessed it, a rag doll by a powerful wave.

A wave that might rag doll you is a very large one known as the pipeline, which also refers to the hollow part of such a wave. A greenie is a large wave before it breaks. Small yet perfect waves are nugs, perhaps from the meaning a piece of marijuana, while waves too small to surf are ankle busters.

Point break (in addition to being a movie) refers to “a long-lasting type of wave,” says the OED, which forms “when the swell moves around the land almost at a right angle to the beach and a break which begins near the point gradually progresses along the wave.”

A tube is a wave with a hollow space. Macks or mackers are giant tubes and get their name from the idea that they’re so big, you could drive a Mack truck through them. The inside of a tube is known as the green room or glass house due to its appearance, as well as the pope’s living room, perhaps with the idea that the inside of a wave is a heavenly place.

Tube also gives us tubular: tubular waves are excellent for riding, therefore tubular means excellent. Other “excellent” slang terms that have transcended waves are radical, surfing that’s challenging or extreme, and gnarly, conditions that are dangerous.

Finally, while cowabunga has become associated with surf culture, it didn’t begin that way. The interjection originated in 1954 as a fake Native American word on The Howdy Doody Show. A character, Chief Thunderthud, used the term as an “exclamation of surprise and anger.” By the 1960s, cowabunga was used as a “shout of triumph” by surfers, and by the late 1980s had “spread worldwide” with The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Now what are you waiting for? Put on your wettie, get out the longboard, and catch some waves.

[Photo via Flickr: “Stand up paddle surfing on the huge waves off Sunset Beach,” CC BY 2.0 by Peggy2012CREATIVELENZ]

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5 Cherry Blossom Terms, Translated

Sakura

If you’re in the D.C. area you’re in luck: it’s “peak bloom” week for cherry blossoms.

If you don’t have the chance to enjoy the pink pulchritude in our nation’s capital or elsewhere, please enjoy the stories behind these five Japanese cherry blossom terms.

hanami

“The Japanese tradition of ‘hanami’ – or the cherry blossom viewing picnic – has survived relatively unchanged since about the eighth century.”

David Sim, “Japan: Cherry blossom viewing ‘hanami’ parties celebrate ancient tradition using selfie sticks,” International Business Times, March 30, 2015

Hanami, which translates from Japanese as “flower viewing,” is the Japanese custom of “enjoying the transient beauty of flowers,” especially cherry blossoms.

The custom started in the eighth century during the Nara Period when it was plum blossoms that got all the attention. However, by the late 700s, cherry blossoms had stolen the show.

Nowadays, hanami parties are immensely popular all over Japan, featuring live music and “lavish picnics” that include onigiri; hanami bentos, bento boxes with spring-like hues of pink, red, and orange; and hanami sake.

Other Japanese nature-viewing words include momojigari, the “hunting” of autumn leaves, and tsukimi, moon viewing.

hana yori dango

“The phrase ‘hana yori dango’ literally means ‘dumplings over flowers’ and is usually used in a teasing way to refer to someone who prefers food (something of substance) over something beautiful or romantic.”

Kay, “Capybara enjoying a meal at Ueno Zoo treats us to the herbivore’s version of ‘Hana Yori Dango,” RocketNews24, April 1, 2014

Hana yori dango, or “dumplings over flowers,” is a saying that has its origins in hanami, says Japan Talk, and means that “people are often more interested in the food and drink at hanami parties than the flowers themselves.”

Hana Yori Dango is also the name of a popular manga series, Boys Over Flowers, where dango, which means sweet rice dumplings, is a pun for “boys,” according to NPR.

sakura

“We thus see that the cherry blossom, called sakura by the Japanese, represents the ‘spirit of Japan.’”

C.A. Howes, “Some Stamp Designs,” American Journal of Philately, 1905

Sakura refers to the either the cherry blossom or the cherry tree in Japanese. The sakura zensen, or cherry blossom front, is the “advance of cherry blossoms across Japan.”

Another common cherry blossom saying is, “Dead bodies are buried under the sakura!” This seemingly creepy pronouncement is the first line of “Under the Cherry Trees,” a 1928 short story by Japanese writer, Motojiro Kajii. The quote refers to, not literal corpses under cherry trees, but a “sense of disbelief at the beauty of sakura blossoms and suggests that history somehow adds to this beauty.”

umemi

“Not inappropriate for, as I have said, the plum blossoms appear very early and the Japanese go umemi, or plum blossom viewing, with sprigs of the flower stuck in their fur caps.”

Edith Wilds, “Great Art in Little Ceremonies of Japan,” The Art World and Arts & World Decoration, Volume 9, May 1918

Umemi is the viewing plum blossoms, rather than cherry (ume is the Japanese word for “plum”), and usually occurs in the late winter or early spring, “just before the more famous ‘sakura’ cherry blossoms,” says Japan Info Swap.

Umeshu is a Japanese liqueur made from plums steeped in sugar and sake.

yozakura

“So great is the attraction of cherry blossoms seen by the light of the pale moon, that they have even been given the special name of Yozakura or night cherry flowers.”

Florence Du Cane, The Flowers and Gardens of Japan, 1908

Yozakura translates from Japanese as “night sakura.” Yozakura Quartet is a Japanese manga about four teenagers who live in a town called Sakurashin, which “is protected by a barrier created by the spiritual sakura known as The Seven Pillars.”

[Photo via Flickr: “Sakura,” CC BY 2.0 by Yoshikazu Takada]

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The Language of Taste

Umami Burger in LA, CA

Last week the 2015 nominees for the James Beard awards were announced. Among the nominated are mostly chefs and restaurants, but also included are food writers. Food plus words, what’s not to love?

In celebration, we’re taking a look at the language of taste.

gustatory

“She was if the word gustatory had grown legs and got a dress.”

William Giraldi, “The Style of a Wild Man,” The Wall Street Journal, September 17, 2011

Gustatory means related to the sense of taste. Gustatory receptor cells are chemoreceptors that detect taste, says How Stuff Works, while gustatory hairs are “spindly protrusions” on each receptor cell. The gustatory hairs interact with molecules and saliva to stimulate the sensation of taste.

The word gustatory comes from the Latin gustare, “to taste.”

kokumi

“Food scientists have been studying kokumi compounds in hopes of exploiting their enhancement qualities to create healthier, lower-salt or -sugar versions of foods that still taste good.”

Lisa Bramen, “The Kokumi Sensation,” Smithsonian.com, January 27, 2010

Kokumi translates from Japanese as “heartiness” or “mouthfulness,” says Smithsonian.com. It refers to “compounds in food that don’t have their own flavor, but enhance the flavors with which they’re combined.” Such compounds include calcium, protamine, and glutathione.

palate

“Even Howell admits that his palate is at its sharpest in the morning, when he claims to spend a full 45 minutes pondering his first cup of coffee.”

Corby Kummer, “The Magic Brewing Machine,” The Atlantic, December 1, 2007

Palate refers to both the roof of the mouth and the sense of taste. The Online Etymology Dictionary says the roof of the mouth was “popularly considered [to be] the seat of taste, hence [the] transferred meaning ‘sense of taste.’” Both meanings are from the late 14th century.

papilla

“We like to think of these bumps as our taste buds, but actually, these bumps are known as papillae.”

Amanda Greene, “Making ‘Sense’ of Flavor: How Taste, Smell and Touch Are Involved,” The Huffington Post, September 27, 2013

A papilla is a round or cone-shaped protuberance “on the top of the tongue that contain taste buds.”

The Huffington Post describes four different kinds of papillae. In the center of the tongue are filiform, “small, skinny papillae that almost look fur-like,” and which don’t contain taste buds.

On the front and sides are fungiform, “round dot-like papillae” that typically contain three to five taste buds each. Foliate and circumvallate are in the back, and contain the mother lode of taste buds: more than 100 each.

Papilla comes from the Latin word for “nipple.”

parageusia

“Despite its name (‘parageusia’ is a medical term meaning ‘a bad taste in the mouth’), Zellersfield believes the public will taste sophistication in this beer.”

Amber DeGrace, “Upcoming beer releases worth traveling to try,” Lancaster Online, February 20, 2015

Parageusia is “the abnormal presence of an unpleasant taste in the mouth, sometimes caused by medications.” The word is Greek in origin and comes from para, “against, contrary to,” and geusis, “taste.”

sapor

“While the Italian beans (Italian cut green beans) looked from-a-can, they tasted amazing, benefitting from bacon sapor.”

Matt Wake, “Little Diner’s gargantuan Happy Burger lives up to its rep and Huntsville restaurant’s pot roast is pretty legit too,” AL.com, July 8, 2014

Sapor is a taste or flavor, and comes from the Latin sapere, “to taste.” Sapere also means to be wise and gives us words like savvy, sapient, sage, and savoir faire.

supertaster

“People with lots of papillae usually experience tastes more intensely — they’ve been dubbed ‘supertasters.’”

Allison Aubrey, “Why ‘Supertasters’ Can’t Get Enough Salt,” NPR, June 21, 2010

It could be said that supertasters have hypergeusia, an abnormally heightened sense of taste (to be ageusic means to have no sense of taste).

One might also assume that supertasters need less salt. After all, according to NPR, supertasters “need less fat and sugar to get to the same amount of pleasure than a non-taster does.” But a study actually found that supertasters prefer “high-sodium items” such as chips and cheeses.

Why this is the scientists aren’t sure. One speculation is that “as people perceive smaller differences in things, it becomes more desirable to seek those things out.” Another hypothesis is that supertasters find “bitter flavor notes” unpleasant and salt “knocks down bitterness.”

The term supertaster was coined in the early 1990s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

tongue map

“Although there are subtle regional differences in sensitivity to different compounds over the lingual surface, the oft-quoted concept of a ‘tongue map’ defining distinct zones for sweet, bitter, salty and sour has largely been discredited.”

Claiborne Ray, “A Map of Taste,” The New York Times, March 19, 2012

The tongue map was developed by German scientist D.P. Hanig in 1901, says How Stuff Works. It was first discredited in 1974, and again most recently in a 2010 paper in The Journal of Cell Biology.

umami

“Chefs including Jean-Georges Vongerichten are offering what they call ‘umami bombs,’ dishes that pile on ingredients naturally rich in umami for an explosive taste.”

Katy McLaughlin, “A New Taste Sensation,” The Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2007

Umami, sometimes called the fifth taste after sweet, salty, bitter, and sour, is Japanese in origin. It’s a rich, savory flavor, often associated “with meats and other high-protein foods.”

In the early 1900s, Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda identified the flavor and coined the word. Because Ikeda wrote in Japanese, umami’s first appearance in English wasn’t until the early 1960s, says the OED.

Now scientists say there might be a sixth taste: fat. Other tastes up for consideration are alkaline, the opposite of sour; metallic; and water-like.

For even more delicious words, check out some of our favorite food terms.

[Photo via Flickr:”Umami Burger in LA, CA,” CC BY 2.0 by G M]

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The Language of Convenience Stores

E-Mart Convenience Store
You might think of convenience stores as a 20th century phenomenon. After all, 7-Eleven, often touted as the “first ever” convenience store, opened in 1927. But the idea of a little shop where you can get some, if not all, of what you need is actually much older than that.

Location, location, location

The term corner shop first appeared in text around 1278, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED): “To Adam his son and Johanna his daughter a shop called ‘la Cornereschoppe.”

Corner shop is still used today in the UK while corner store seems to be used the south, west, and other parts of the U.S., as well as Canada, and is referred to as such regardless of location.

A dairy by any other name

In New Zealand, a dairy or dairy store sells more than milk, butter, and eggs. It sells other staples, newspapers, and more. So why is it called a dairy?

Back in the day, dairy farms delivered milk, eggs, and other perishables to homes. However, as early as the 13th century, says the OED, shops that sold milk, cream, etc. were sometimes called dairies.

New Zealand’s convenience stores aren’t the only ones that retain the legacy of the dairy farm. In Canada they’re referred to as milk stores, as well as, apparently, homo stores, named for homo or homogenized milk.

In Australia convenience stores are known as milk bars, although these may sell, in addition to sundries, fast food and “dairy based beverages” such as milkshakes.

A milk-bar cowboy, says the OED, is a derogatory New Zealand term from the 1950s referring to “a young man who, as part of a motorcycle gang, congregates in or around a milk-bar.” This term plays off drugstore cowboy, which originated in 1925 as “American English slang” for someone who loiters on sidewalks or at drugstores, or someone “who dresses or acts like a cowboy but has never been one.”

Party on

The term drugstore first appeared in 1771, according to the OED, and while they began as apothecaries and chemist shops, they’ve become a kind of combination pharmacy-convenience store.

Bodegas have more in common with drugstores than just convenience. This very New York term, which originally referred in Spanish to a wine shop or cellar, comes from the Greek apotheke, “depot, store,” which also gives us apothecary.

For liquor and crisps in the UK, you might go to an off-licence, or offy. The term off-licence originally referred to a license allowing the sale of alcohol for consumption off the premises, says the OED.

In Quebec, a convenience store that sells alcohol is known as a dépanneur, or dep for short, and translates from Canadian French as “one who gets you out of a jam.” Got a hankering for a Slim Jim and Jim Bean in Maine? Go to a package store, also known as a packie store (not to be confused with Paki shop, see below) a Northeast U.S. term for a convenience store that sells alcohol.

If you’re in the Midwest, visit a party store because of course buying alcohol means you’re having a party, or at least that’s our theory behind the term.

Variety is the spice of convenience store life

We’d argue that variety stores such as five-and-tens and dollar stores differ from convenience stores in that the focus is on low-price rather than convenience. However, there’s no doubt that diversity is a key convenience store component.

In the Philippines, convenience stores are known as sari-sari stores, in which sari-sari means, in Tagalog, “variety.” (Sari the dress, in case you were wondering, ultimately comes from the Sanskrit sati, “garment, petticoat.”). Meanwhile, in Australia, you can get “a wide variety of goods” at a mixed business, says the OED.

Say what?

Like homo store, there are some convenience store terms you might want to use sparingly, if at all.

Paki shop is an offensive term for a corner shop supposedly run by someone of Pakistan or South Asian descent. The word Paki itself is derogatory, referring to someone perceived to be from Pakistan or neighboring countries. The OED’s earliest citation for Paki shop is from 1983:

The ‘Paki-shop’—misnamed because most of them were owned, not by Pakistanis, but by Indians from East Africa—appeared to fulfill a vital service.

Arabe du coin, which translates as “Arabic corner,” is the French version of Paki shop, while chino, referring to a convenience store owned by someone of Chinese descent (again, perceived or otherwise), is still in use in Spain.

Some argue that one shouldn’t be offended by the term chino since offense is “not intended” (see accidental racism) while others say that in Spain racism is simply accepted.

How convenient

Now for the mother of all convenience store words: the term, convenience store. The phrase originated in the early 1960s, and around that time, several large chains opened including Becker’s in Toronto, Mac’s, also in Canada, Wawa in the Mid-Atlantic U.S., and Lawson in Japan.

Lawson? But that’s not a Japanese name. That’s because the popular convenience store, or konbini, began as Lawson’s Milk Company in Ohio. It became a chain of stores in the 1960s, and in the 1970s, was bought by Daiei, a large Japanese supermarket chain. Currently, there are over 11,000 Lawson stores in Japan.

Lawson isn’t the only American convenience store owned by a Japanese company. In 2005, 7-Eleven became a subsidiary of Seven & I Holdings Co., which formed was in the 1990s by Ito-Yakado, a general merchandise store.

7-Eleven wasn’t always called 7-Eleven, by the way. At first they were called Tote’m Stores, after the idea of customers “toting” away purchases. In 1946, the name was changed to 7-Eleven after its “new, extended hours” (also a catchy rhyme doesn’t hurt).

Other stores with names implying convenience are the ampm chain, Store 24 (acquired by Tedeschi Food Shops in 2002), and the Texas-based Stop N Go, which unfortunately gave rise to the term stop and rob, referring to how easily and often convenience stores are robbed. Now stop and rob refers to any convenience store.

A few additions
Thanks to commenter mcdevin for suggesting we add spa, which DARE defines as “Any of var usu small establishments where food and drink are sold; a restaurant, tavern, soda fountain, or, esp recently, convenience store” and marks as used in the Northeast, especially Massachusetts. (Other regional terms for ‘convenience store’ listed in DARE include pony keg [used in Cincinnati] and icehouse [chiefly used in Texas].)

(Special thanks to Will Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby, Russell Horton, James D. Irwin, Chris Galvin Nguyen, Caitlin Olson, Joanna Schroeder, and other online friends.)

[Photo via Flickr, “E-Mart Convenience Store,” CC BY 2.0 by AJ Batac]
[Image via Tumblr, “Korova Milk Bar”]

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Airport Lingo: 10 Terms for Your Next Trip

stewardesses

Seventy-five years ago today, LaGuardia opened for business, and say what you will about that particular airport, its anniversary got us thinking about airport lingo.

While you may have already heard of blue juice, landing lips, and Sharon Stone jumpseat, here are 10 more air travel phrases and some surprising origins.

apron

“The airport doesn’t completely have all of the funding needed to pay for the project, which also includes a bit of paving, specifically in an area where planes are parked — the apron.”

Josh Bergeron, “Extended runway still far off, but hangars inching closer for airport,” Salisbury Post, November 7, 2014

In airport lingo, the apron is what most of us think of as the tarmac: “the paved strip in front of and around airport hangars and terminal buildings” where airplanes park. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this meaning of apron came about around 1925, perhaps playing off the nautical sense of “a platform, as of planking, at the entrance to a dock.”

The word apron, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, is a mid-15th century “faulty separation” of the word napron. Napron, a 14th-century term, comes from the Old French naperon, “small table-cloth,” which ultimately comes from the Latin mappa, “napkin.”

deadhead

“Deadheading refers to crewmembers, including flight attendants and pilots, who are being repositioned as part of their assigned trip. That is, they’re flying as passengers while on duty.”

Meryl Getline, “Ask the Captain,” USA Today, May 1, 2006

It’s unclear when or how this term originated. Deadhead may be related to an earlier meaning, “a person who uses a free ticket for admittance, accommodation, or entertainment,” and also refers to “a vehicle, such as an aircraft, that transports no passengers or freight during a trip,” and “to make a trip without passengers or freight.”

Famed confidence trickster Frank Abagnale deadheaded on over 250 flights by impersonating a pilot.

dwell time

“For the airports, that means passengers will have more ‘dwell time’ – the industry term for the amount of time available that can be spent shopping and dining before a flight departs.”

Jamie Freed, “Airports looking to cash in on our ‘dwell’ time,” The Age, November 25, 2014

Dwell time refers to, in general, the amount of time something or someone remains in a given state, but has different implications depending on the industry.

In the military, dwell time means “the duty time soldiers have at their domestic home base between foreign deployments”; in the airline industry, the time between check-in and departure; and in marketing, how much of that time might spent looking at ads and spending money.

Since the 9/11 attacks and increased security measures, dwell time at airports has increased. In the late 1990s, “expected passenger dwell time” was about 50 minutes while in 2007, average dwell time at New York’s JFK airport was 127 minutes.

hidden city ticketing

“Hidden city ticketing isn’t illegal, but the airlines hate this practice. Long ago they acted to prevent it by canceling the remainder of your ticket if you missed any legs, with no compensation to you.”

Mark Murphy, “What airlines don’t want you to know about hidden city ticketing,” Fox News, November 24, 2014

Hidden city ticketing works like this: say you want to fly from City A to City B but it’s incredibly expensive. You find a cheaper ticket from City A to City C with a connecting flight in City B. You get off the plane at City B — and don’t get back on.

Recently United Airlines and Orbitz sued the travel website Skiplagged.com for helping “travelers buy what the companies call improper ‘hidden city’ plane tickets that undercut their sales.” However, hidden city ticketing has existed long before such sites, as this 1986 LA Times article states: “Hidden city ticket writing is a longstanding travel practice, and as airlines have aggressively promoted their hub cities, using a hidden city ticket has become easier.”

layover

“Nobody likes a long airport layover, but for travelers who find themselves with lots of time on their hands at Reagan National Airport, Metro makes it possible to do a little sightseeing.”

Jeff Clabaugh, “Reagan National ranked a top airport for long layovers,” Washington Business Journal, October 30, 2014

While we might think of the layover as primarily having to do with airline travel, it actually refers to any brief stop in a journey. The OED’s earliest citation is from 1873, and the first with the airline travel sense from 1969: “We have an airline ticket for this evening..with a change at New York. A four-hour lay-over there, I’m afraid.”

open jaw

“Additionally, ‘open jaw,’ or reservations that leave from one city, and return to another, were possible, so long as the final leg was less than the first leg. Now, you’ll be facing Delta pricing for one-way fares, instead of one complete reservation.”

Mark Jackson, “United and Delta devalue travel for passengers,” The Christian Science Monitor, November 25, 2014

An open-jaw ticket is basically a multi-leg trip in which the origin and destination cities differ. The path lines of the flights resemble an open jaw, and according to the OED, the term has been around since at least 1942.

red-eye

“They’ve gone home weekend after weekend on the red-eye special to stand up for the administration.”

Lawrence F. O’Brien, “Back LBJ in Viet,” The Miami News, August 8, 1966

A red-eye refers to an overnight flight, so-called, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, “from the red eyes of sleeplessness.” The OED says the earliest mention is 1964 in The New York Times: “During the long California campaign, Mr. Goldwater has many times flown the same night flight to Washington. He calls it the ‘red-eye special’.”

Earlier meanings of red-eye include a cheap whiskey (1819), military slang for ketchup (1923), and a drink of beer and tomato juice (1960). Red-eye gravy is a 1931 southern U.S. term referring to “gravy made by adding liquid (esp. coffee) to the drippings from cooked ham or other cured meat.”

slam-click

“Every true airline pilot knows that a ‘slam-click’ is a flight attendant that declines to take in the town with the pilots and other flight attendants while on a scheduled overnight stay somewhere.”

Terry Maxon, “Pilot imposter caught on US Airways plane,” Dallas News, March 22, 2013

Although the phrase is probably older, the earliest citation we could find is from a 1982 Land’s End ad: “The pilots taunt me: ‘Slam-clicker’ is a crew member who goes straight to his or her room and doesn’t come out…That’s me tonight.”

Slam-click is imitative: slam is the shutting of a door and click, the sound of the lock.

tarmac

“Think you have travel woes this Thanksgiving? At least you don’t have to push your own plane down a frozen tarmac in negative 61 degree temps like these travelers in Siberia did.”

Leslie Horn, “Passengers in Siberia Had to Push a Plane Down the Tarmac to Take Off,” Gizmodo, November 26, 2014

While the word tarmac is often used colloquially to mean the airport runway, its original meaning is “a tarmacadam road or surface,” where tarmacadam is a combination of tar and macadam, “pavement made of layers of compacted broken stone, now usually bound with tar or asphalt.” Macadam was a trademark named for John Loudon McAdam, a Scottish civil engineer and its inventor.

Some pilots take umbrage with the airport runway being called the tarmac as much airport pavement is made not of tarmac but of concrete.

Finally, check out James Harbeck’s lovely walk down tarmac lane.

trolley dolly

“My father was a great vocalist, he sang with a gospel choir but I wanted to be a trolley dolly. I want to travel the world for free.”

Jeremy Williams-Chalmers, “‘I wanted to be a trolley dolly’: So So Gay talks to Gwen Dickey,” So So Gay, June 21, 2014

Trolley dolly is a British and Australian term for a female flight attendant. An example of reduplication, the phrase comes from the food and drink trolley, or cart in American English, that flight attendants push around. The OED’s earliest citation is from 1951: “They used to call us trolley dollies.”

[Photo: “United Airlines Stewardesses [1968],” CC BY 2.0 by KurtClark]