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Office Soup: Our Favorite Words from ‘The Office,’ Farewell Season

This season wraps the eight-year run of the mockumentary about a little paper company. We’ve gathered our favorite words from the last season here.

Belsnickel

Dwight: “What about an authentic Pennsylvania Dutch Christmas? Drink some gluhwein, enjoy some hasenpfeffer. Enjoy Christmas with St. Nicholas’s rural German companion, Belsnickel?”

“Dwight Christmas,” December 6, 2012

Belsnickel is “a crotchety, fur-clad Christmas gift-bringer figure in the folklore of the Palatinate region of southwestern Germany,” and is “preserved in Pennsylvania Dutch communities.” The name comes from the German pelz, “to pelt,” and the name Nikolaus. See also Krampus.

Bildenkinder

Jim: “Did you ever think that because you own the building, everyone in it – we’re all kind of like your children.”
Dwight: “You know, there’s a phrase about that in German: Bildenkinder. Used almost exclusively by childless landlords to console themselves.”

“Work Bus,” October 18, 2012

Bildenkinder is a nonsense German word which translates as “formation (Bilden) children (Kinder).”

bund

Andy: “Dwight’s grandfather was – ”
Dwight: “A member of the bund, which is technically not the same thing as the Nazi party.”

“Andy’s Ancestry,” October 4, 2012

The bund was “a pro-Nazi German-American organization of the 1930s.” It was also  “a European Jewish socialist movement founded in Russia in 1897.” Bund translates from German as “alliance, league.”

chore wheel

Pam: “The building’s custodian is on vacation for the month, and Dwight is too cheap to hire a replacement. So instead we’re living in filth. But not for long because I have created. . .the chore wheel.”

“Roy’s Wedding,” September 27, 2012

Pam’s chore wheel plays off the wheel of fortune, or rota fortunae, “a concept in medieval and ancient philosophy referring to the capricious nature of Fate,” as well as the Wheel of Fortune game show.

coolio

Andy: “Are we coolio? Just say the word ‘coolio.’”
Dwight: “Not a word.”

“Couples Discount,” February 7, 2013

Coolio is slang for cool or awesome.

Dumpster Man

Kevin: “What was the word they said when they showed me? Skraldespand? What’s that mean in Danish? Cool guy?
Oscar: “Dumpster Man.”

“Promos,” April 4, 2013

Dumpster Man is what Kevin is referred to in the Danish promo for the fictional documentary of the show. The Danish word seems to be skraldemanden.

full-ass

Nellie: “What if you were to stay here and ‘full-ass’ it?”

“Livin’ the Dream,” May 2, 2013

To full-ass is something is to do it to the utmost of one’s ability. Its opposite is half-ass, to do something without much effort. Half-ass is a back formation of the adjective half-assed, “not well planned or executed.” Half-assed originated around 1932, “perhaps a humorous mispronunciation of haphazard.”

gotcha journalism

Dwight: “This is gotcha journalism, and you know what? They’re not gonna gotch me.”

“The Boat,” November 8, 2012

Gotcha journalism is “any method of interviewing designed to entrap interviewees into making statements that are damaging or discreditable to their cause, character, integrity, or reputation.” The earliest citation we could find for this phrase was from 1991. Please antedate us if you can!

Irish exit

Darryl: “I hate goodbyes so last week when I left Dunder-Mifflin for good, I pulled the old Irish exit, just slipped out without making a big deal.”

“A.A.R.M.,” May 9, 2013

An Irish exit is leaving without saying goodbye. The phrase may come from the practice of Irish Americans leaving social functions without alerting anyone, knowing that goodbyes would be long and delay their departure, or perhaps, more stereotypically, leaving without a word because one is drunk.

kitchen witch

Aunt Shirley [about Angela]: “Who’s this little kitchen witch? She’s so tiny like a little kitchen witch.”

“Moving On,” February 14, 2013

A kitchen witch is a “homemade doll resembling a stereotypical witch or crone displayed in residential kitchens as a means to provide good luck and ward off bad spirit.” The country of origin may be Norway or Germany, which is where Dwight’s family, including his Aunt Shirley, is from.

kobold

Dwight: “Troy is literally one of a kind. He’s a goblin or a Hobbit or a kobold, which is a type of gremlin.”

“Junior Salesman,” January 31, 2013

A kobold is “an often mischievous household elf in German folklore.” Kobold comes from the German kobolt, which also gives us cobalt, from silver miners’ belief that the element had been placed by goblins who had stolen the silver.

perfektenschlage

Dwight: “I am so deep inside of perfektenschlage.”

“Special Project,” February 9, 2012

This word is from last season, but we couldn’t help but include it. Perfektenschlage is “when everything in a man’s life comes together perfectly.” The second meaning is “perfect pork anus.” The word translates from the German as “perfect (perfekt) bang or blow (schlage).” It’s most likely a nonsense word.

sausage factory

Pete: “This next card comes to us thanks to Meredith Palmer who called Eastern Pennsylvania Seminary a, quote, sausage factory.”

“The Target,” November 29, 2012

A sausage factory is “a party or gathering with few to no women present.” It also refers to in literature, “an unappealing process to generate something familiar”; in journalism, “the process of creating news”; and in politics, “dealing and compromise done behind the scenes to enact legislation.”

Silicon Prairie

Ryan: “I’ve actually done a lot of market research and it turns out that southwestern Ohio is going to be the next Silicon Valley. They call it the Silicon Prairie. It’s a big university town.”

“New Guys,” September 20, 2012

Silicon Prairie plays off of Silicon Valley, “a region in California to the south of San Francisco that is noted for its concentration of high-technology industries.”

The coinage of the phrase Silicon Valley is credited to journalist Don Hoefler who wrote a series of articles entitled “Silicon Valley USA” in 1971.

Stairmageddon

Erin: “Didn’t you get the memo? It’s stairmageddon!”

“Stairmageddon,” April 11, 2013

Stairmageddon is a blend of stair and Armageddon, “the scene of a final battle between the forces of good and evil, prophesied to occur at the end of the world.” As Oscar says, the Dunder-Mifflin office “has an unusually large number of unusually large people,” so when “something is routine as elevator maintenance happens and people are forced to expend cardiovascular effort, [they] have to compare it to the end of time.”

white whale

Dwight: “There’s a reason we in the paper industry call [the White Pages] the white whale. Look at all that sweet blubber.”

“The Whale,” November 15, 2012

White whale refers to Moby-Dick, the elusive white whale in Herman Melville’s novel. The expression now refers to anything desirable yet elusive to the pursuer.

YOLO

Oscar: “YOLO! It’s a thing. It means you only live once.”
Kevin: “We’re aware of what it means, Oscar. You just do not look cool saying it.”

“Suit Warehouse,” January 17, 2013

YOLO stands for “you only live once.” While YOLO came about in the last few years, according to Ben Zimmer, “the exact wording of ‘you only live once’ begins cropping up in the late 19th century, and by 1937 it was popular enough to be used as the title of a Fritz Lang film noir.”

Zuckerberg

Darryl: “You’ve got a real Facebook energy going here. You Zuckerberged this place out.”

“Suit Warehouse,” January 17, 2013

Zuckerberg in this context means to turn a workplace into something hip and casual, similar to what a start-up like Facebook might be (although the employees at Jim’s company all wear suits as opposed to, say, hoodies).

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WotD Perfect Tweet Challenge – Week of May 6, 2013

Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.

Thanks to everyone for playing! Remember, the WotD Perfect Tweet Challenge is going on a short hiatus, and will be back the week of June 3. We look forward to seeing your perfect tweets then!

And as always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.

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This Week’s Language Blog Roundup: The Great Gatsby, really old words, Dothraki

Welcome to this week’s Language Blog Roundup, in which we bring you the highlights from our favorite language blogs and the latest in word news and culture.

great gatsby

Great Gatsby

With the premiere of the latest movie version of The Great Gatsby, the 1920s were on a lot of minds this week. The OxfordWords blog discussed the language of jazz; Ben Zimmer explained how baloney got phony; and Katy Steinmetz at Time told us why F. Scott Fitzgerald is all over the dictionary.

Author Haruki Murakami discussed translating The Great Gatsby into Japanese. Flavorwire rounded up some beautiful Great Gatsby covers, and we at Wordnik discussed the language of the 1920s beyond bee’s knees and other well-known slang.

In language news, the Washington Post announced that linguists have identified 15,000-year-old “ultraconserved’ words. Not so fast, said both Sally Thomason at Language Log and Robert Lane Greene at The Economist. Thomason explained that “word sets that have similar meanings and also sound similar after 15,000 years are unlikely to share those similar sounds as the result of inheritance from a common ancestor,” while Greene questioned the “clever statistical analysis” of the study.

In other language controversies, participants in the Scripps National Spelling Bee are now required to know the definitions of the words they’ll be spelling. Ben Zimmer took a deeper look at this rule change. Disney tried to trademark the phrase Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead, then decided not to, thank goodness. We also found out that we’ve been lied to all these years about the QWERTY keyboard.

In dictionary news, we were happy to learn that DARE, the Dictionary of American Regional English, has gotten a financial reprieve through a $100,000 anonymous donation and a $30,000 gift from the American Dialect Society.

At Lingua Franca, Geoff Pullum wondered why we’re still waiting for natural language processing; Lucy Ferriss discussed the possible death of LOL; Allan Metcalf visited the zoo of language pet peeves; and Ben Yagoda delved into a specific peeve, the misuse of literally.

The Atlantic had their own wordy annoyance, the overuse of definitely; The Sydney Morning Herald is “being driven mad by extraneous ‘’whats’”; and a word snob at The New York Times confessed to words both loved and hated.

At Macmillan Dictionary blog, Luke Vyner told the story behind the phrase, eye of the tiger, and Stan Carey explored LOL slash grammar. At Merriam-Webster’s blog, Emily Brewster also looked at slash as punctuation turned slang. Arika Okrent discussed some other symbols that have turned into words.

Fritinancy’s weekly words included slow TV, “television dramas whose gradual, deliberate pacing and literary structure. . . demand patience and engagement on the part of the viewer,” and, because it’s Underwear Week over at Fritinancy’s, cheekini, a style of women’s underwear with “a raised cut in the rear that covers some but not all of the buttock cheeks.”

Erin McKean’s words of the week included zhongshan, the Mao suit; uptalk, “pronouncing statements as if they were questions”; and papalo, “cilantro on steroids.” Word Spy spotted feature nail, “a fingernail with an applied color, pattern, or shape that is different from the other nails”; get-off-my-lawn, “cantankerous and old-fashioned”; and Facebook facelift, “cosmetic surgery designed to improve how a person looks in photos posted to social networking sites.”

Fully (sic) made the case for chook lit, “chick lit for the older woman,” as chook is slang for an older woman. Oz Worders explored the word shaggledick, an “affectionate term used to greet someone who is quite familiar but whose name you’ve forgotten.”

Our own words of the week included ploddledygook, promposal (also a contender for worst word of the week), and our favorite, Rikering, which must be seen to be believed.

At The Week, James Harbeck found other languages with spelling worse than that of English, and on his own blog cleared up the difference between any more and anymore. Arrant Pedantry gave the reasons the reason why is correct. Kory Stamper considered not-so-tidy parts of speech. The New Yorker explained their love of double consonants.

In library news, the Digital Public Library of America is offering 38,000 historical maps to explore, and the New York Public Library’s remodeled Donnell Library Center was unveiled this week, as well as designs for their new 53rd Street branch.

This week we learned the Isaac Newton invented a language, and how to invent a conlang, or constructed language, like Dothraki in Game of Thrones. We found out everything we need to know about Dothraki, including that we’ve been pronouncing khaleesi wrong this whole time. But so has the Game of Thrones cast with their variety of accents. On that note, we learned how to fake an accent and get away with it.

The Dialect Blog examined the poshification of David Beckham’s accent. All Voices taught us some Yorkshire. WBEZ explored the Chicago accent, Chicago “blaccent,” and differences between various African-American accents. At Johnson, Robert Lane Greene took a look at Charles Ramsey and black dialect.

We loved this piece on poets’ second jobs and this one on New York cabbie poets. You have until July 1st to submit your haiku to Mars.

In naming, we learned why NPR reporters have such great names, and a bunch of names so awful that New Zealand had to ban them. We found out that Franz Kafka was a great procrastinator; that Harper Lee is suing her literary agent for rights to To Kill a Mockingbird; and that CIA agents use pseudonyms when they review spy novels.

We loved this guide to summer movies based on books and these weird things people have said in bookstores. Finally, we weren’t sure whether to love or hate this glossary of hipster hallmarks.

That’s it for this week!

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Chris Drumm]

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The Language of the 1920s: More Than the Bee’s Knees

No doubt: the 1920s were the bee’s knees. But the ads banking on the latest film adaptation of The Great Gatsby would have you believe the Jazz Age was all about flappers, fashion, and parties. It was more than that.

After World War I, Americans had more money to spend. That combined with “low prices. . . and generous credit made cars affordable luxuries” in the early 1920s; by the end of the decade, “they were practically necessities.”

Zez Confrey Car

Zez Confrey Car

With “a car in every backyard,” automobile-related language entered the everyday lexicon. There was step on it, as in “step on the gas” or hurry up, in 1923;  jalopy in 1924; and in 1927, back-seat driver, “a passenger who constantly advises, corrects, or nags the driver of a motor vehicle,” and by extension, “a person who persists in giving unsolicited advice.” (This 1929 article lauded Mrs. Charles Lindbergh for keeping her mouth shut as her husband flew and being “no ‘back seat’ driver.”)

Americans were also going to the movies more. By the end of the decade, “three-quarters of the American population visited a movie theater every week,” says History.com. Hollywood, a district of Los Angeles, came to refer to the U.S. film industry in general around 1926, three years after the Hollywood sign was erected.

Synonyms for the movies arose, including flick (1926) and the silver screen (1924). In 1921, Chaplinesque entered the vernacular, and in 1927, Valentino, named after movie heartthrob Rudolph Valentino, came to mean a “good-looking romantic man.”

Also in 1927, it meaning “sex appeal,” while originally coined by Rudyard Kipling, was popularized by Elinor Glyn in her novel, It, and the film of the same name. Clara Bow, the star of the movie, became known as the It Girl, which now refers to any fashionable young female celebrity with a certain something.

Clara Bow

Clara Bow

The post-Victorian age also saw a change in “manners and mores,” with raised hemlines (“all of nine inches above the ground”), petting parties (more on that later), and wider acceptance of contraception. Along with that came new words about sex and relationships.

Blind date, a date with someone one hasn’t seen before, originated as college slang around 1921, says the Online Etymology Dictionary. The earliest attested use referred to the person one was going on the date with.

While we’re sure the French kiss existed before the 1920s, the earliest citation in English is from around 1923, with the idea of equating French culture with “sexual sophistication.”

Sexpert, a sex therapist or expert in sex, is attested to 1924. Sugar daddy, a rich older man who lavishes gifts on a younger woman, came about in 1926; gigolo, a male prostitute, is from 1922; and tomcat, to pursue multiple women, is from 1927, says the OED. To two-time, or cheat on a lover, is from 1924. The earlier non-romantic notion of to deceive or double-cross is from 1922.

Now how about those petting parties? The earliest citation goes to F. Scott Fitzgerald in his debut novel, This Side of Paradise, published in 1920: “That great current American phenomenon, the ‘petting party.'” (Petting, in case you were unclear, refers to the “practice of amorously embracing, kissing, and caressing one’s partner.”) However, not everyone was such a fan of this 1920s version of PDA, such as one Fay King in a 1923 article:

But when this love stuff becomes a dull, deadly determined battle of the eyes, and a kiss is a long drawn out disgusting episode, it’s time somebody blew a whistle or rang a bell to remind these love birds that public petting parties are not permitted.

The term sleep around originated around 1928, says the OED, with the earliest recorded mention by Aldous Huxley: “‘Sleeping around’—that was how he had heard a young American girl describe the amorous side of the ideal life, as lived in Hollywood.”

Who were these young girls? We know them as flappers. The term flapper originated around 1921, but where it came from is uncertain. A possibility is flapper meaning “a young bird when first trying its wings,” or the 17th century flap meaning “young woman of loose character.”

While we might think of the flapper as a sexually free “young woman with bobbed hair and short skirts who drank, smoked and said what might be termed ‘unladylike’ things,” the term flapper became “the popular press catch-word for an adult woman worker, aged twenty-one to thirty.”

In 1926, a train which conveyed “only female workers to London each morning” was dubbed “the flapper special.” From a 1927 article about giving women over 21 in the United Kingdom the right to vote: “The expression ‘flapper vote’ has been used by those who strongly denounced the plan to extend the vote to women between the ages of twenty and thirty.” Lady Astor, “American born pioneer woman member of the House of Commons,” responded:

They are not flappers; most of those 5,000,000 women who are going to vote are hard workers. They went into factories during the World War. They are still at work and now they are going to have their rightful vote.

The first election in the United Kingdom to allow women over 21 to vote was often called the Flapper Election.

El Daiquiri @ El Floridita

El Daiquiri @ El Floridita

Despite the passing of the Volstead Act of 1919, at least a few new drink words sneaked into English. Bubbly, slang for champagne, is from 1920. It comes from the earlier bubbly water, which now refers to water that’s carbonated. The sidecar, “a cocktail combining brandy, an orange-flavored liqueur, and lemon juice,” came about in 1928, says the OED.

Daiquiri, a cocktail of “rum, lime or lemon juice, and sugar,” is first attested to Fitzgerald in This Side of Paradise: “Here’s the old jitney waiter. If you ask me, I want a double Daiquiri.” Daiquiri is also the name of a beach in Cuba, and was supposedly invented by an American mining engineer who was there during the Spanish-American War.

To discourage illegal drinking, in 1924 a national contest was held “to coin a word to characterize a person who drinks illegally.” Two contestants simultaneously entered scofflaw, a combination of scoff and law. Now scofflaw also refers to “one who habitually violates the law or fails to answer court summonses.”

Continued demand for alcohol and lack of legal supply led to supply by criminal means. Although the term speakeasy had been around since the late 19th century, it gained wide usage during the Prohibition. (For more on speakeasy language, check out this post from the OxfordWords blog.) The mob, referring to organized crime, originated in 1927. The fuzz, slang for the police, is from 1929, while cop a plea is from 1925.

In terms of harder stuff, weed became slang for marijuana in the 1920s, perhaps as a shortening of locoweed. From a 1924 article:

“Marihuana,” or “Marijuana” as some spell it, the everyday “loco weed” that formerly grew wild on the deserts of northern Mexico, now is being cultivated on thousands of acres in that country for sale to addicts of the plant in this country.

Other 1920s terms for marijuana are Mary Jane (1928) and muggle (1926). The term junkie is from 1923, and wingding, now known as a lively party or celebration, originated in 1927, says the OED, as “a fit or spasm, esp. as simulated by a drug addict.”

Crash meaning “to join or enter. . .without invitation” originated around 1922. The financial meaning of a “sudden severe downturn” is older, from 1817, but gained resurgence with the Wall Street crash of 1929, which marked the end of a prosperous and seemingly carefree time.

[Photo, “Zez Confrey Car,” CC BY 2.0 by Infrogmation]
[Photo: “Clara Bow,” CC BY 2.0 by Classic Film Scans]
[Photo: “Saturday Evening Post,” Public Domain]
[Photo: “El Daiquiri @ El Floridita,” CC BY 2.0 by kudumomo]

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The Kentucky Derby: It’s All About the Hats

derby044

derby044

Some would have you believe the Kentucky Derby is about horse-racing, but we know it’s really about the hats.

How would you describe one who is wearing a hat? You could say hat-wearing, or you could say galericulate, which means having a little galea, which is Latin for something helmet-shaped.

If you remove your hat to show respect, you’re practicing hat-honor. The term was “used by the early Friends or Quakers, who refused to pay this token of respect.” Along those same lines, to be unbonneted means to be without a bonnet but also “making no obeisance” or gesture of deference or honor.

Need to buy a hat? Visit a milliner, one who “makes, trims, designs, or sells hats.” The word probably comes from the city Milan, once “the source of goods such as bonnets and lace.” Or frequent a haberdasher, a seller of hats, men’s furnishings, or “sewing notions and small wares.” The word haberdasher may come from the Anglo-Norman hapertas, “petty wares.”

Now to the starting line: which came first, derby the hat or derby the race?  The race did, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The annual horse race was founded in 1780 by the 12th Earl of Derby. The hat may have been named for the race “where this type of hat was worn.” The derby is also known as a bowler, named for the hat’s shape. Similar is the billycock, perhaps an alteration of bullycocked, “cocked in the fashion of a swashbuckler.”

Picture-hats are the type favored at the Run for the Roses. Wide-brimmed and elaborately decorated, picture-hats were originally “supposed to be made in imitation of one shown in some striking portrait,” hence the name. They were also known a gainsborough hats as these “striking portraits” were often done by English painter Thomas Gainsborough.

More hats

More hats

Kiss-me-quick! A command, yes, but also “a small becoming bonnet fashionable about the middle of the nineteenth century,” or “a lady’s cap with ribbons that tied under the chin on one side with ‘kissing-strings’.” Kiss-me-quick was also “a name given to various things of a presumably coquettish or attractive nature.” Another kind of bonnet, the bongrace, was also a “shade formerly worn by women on the front of a bonnet to protect the complexion from the sun.”

The cloche, a favorite among flappers, is a “close-fitting woman’s hat with a bell-like shape.” Cloche comes from an Old French word meaning “bell,” and originally referred to a bell-shaped cover “used chiefly to protect plants from frost.” The pillbox, popularized by Jackie Kennedy, is pillbox-shaped with its “upright sides and a flat crown.” And we can only guess that the porkpie hat looks like a porkpie.

The Dolly Varden, large and “overloaded with flowers,” is named for a character “known for her colorful costume in the novel Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens.” Dolly Varden also refers to “a woman’s gown of gay-flowered material,” as well as “a colorfully spotted trout.” The hipster-topping fedora comes from a 19th century French play titled. “Fédora,” in which “the heroine, Fédora Romanoff, wore a center-creased, soft brimmed hat.”

The shady sombrero comes from the Spanish sombrar, “to shade,” while the fascinator, a woman’s “head decorator”, both “delicate” and “often frivolous,” is designed to fascinate. The fascinator made headlines in 2011 with its often fabulous appearance at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The word fascinate ultimately comes from the Latin fascinum, “an evil spell.”

That’s just the tip of the hat iceberg. For even more kinds of hats, caps, and hoods, check out these lists, Headgear and Names of Hats. Now off to the races!

[Photo: “derby044,” CC BY 2.0 by Lee Burchfield]
[Photo: “More Hats,” CC BY 2.0 by John Athayde]
[Photo: “Fedora Hat,” CC BY 2.0 by Nono Fara]

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Word Soup Wednesday: blood eagle, gestictionary, low riding

Vintage Televisions

Vintage Televisions

Welcome to Word Soup Wednesday, in which we bring you some weird, funny, and interesting words from recent TV.

blood eagle

Jimmy: “Vikings used to execute Christians by breaking their ribs, bending them back, and draping the lungs over them to resemble wings. They used to call it a blood eagle.”

“Coquilles,” Hannibal, April 25, 2013

The blood eagle is “a method of Viking ritual execution” mentioned in skaldic poetry and Norse sagas. Whether or not such a practice actually took place is disputed.

Not surprisingly, Blood Eagle is also the name of a band, specifically “a heavy rave trash duo.”

catarrh

Mr. Gillepsie: “If I don’t smoke, I can’t clear my catarrh.”

Episode 3, Call the Midwife, April 14, 2013

Catarrh is an “inflammation of a mucous membrane, especially of the air-passages of the head and throat.” The word comes from the Greek katarrein, “to flow down.”

Cigarettes were once advertised as having a variety of health benefits, including the “temporary relief of paroxysms of asthma.”

co-POTAL

Selina: “We’re going co-POTAL.”

“Midterms,” Veep, April 14, 2013

Thanks to Nancy Friedman, aka Fritinancy, for pointing out this Word Soup-worthy word. As per Nancy, co-POTAL relates to a “shared presidency,” and comes from POTUS, President of the United States.

folie à deux

Abigail: “Can you catch somebody’s crazy?”
Dr. Bloom: “Folie à deux. It’s a French psychiatric term. Madness shared by two.”

“Potage,” Hannibal, April 18, 2013

Folie à deux is “a condition in which symptoms of a mental disorder, such as the same delusional beliefs or ideas, occur simultaneously in two individuals who share a close relationship or association.” The terms seems to have first appeared in English around 1913, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Some real life cases.

gestictionary

Gary: “Those signals took years! I can’t just tear up the gestictionary and come up with new codes like that.”

“Signals,” Veep, April 21, 2013

Another hat tip to Fritinancy! A gestictionary is a “guide to coded gestures,” what Gary and Selina, the Vice President, have devised to allow Selina to signal when she, for instance, wants an early departure from an undesirable situation. The word is a blend of gesture and dictionary.

han

Anthony Bourdain: “To take a peek into the dark heart of the Korean psyche, maybe it helps to get familiar with han. It’s a concept that for non-Koreans can be difficult to fully grasp.”

“Los Angeles (Koreatown),” Parts Unknown, April 21, 2013

Han is a “concept in Korean culture” that “denotes a collective feeling of oppression and isolation in the face of overwhelming odds,” and “aspects of lament and unavenged injustice.”

The concept may have arisen from “Korea’s history of having been invaded by other neighboring nations, such as the Khitans, the Manchu/Jurchens, the Mongols, and the Japanese,” as well as “class system strictures, such as the distinction between the elite Yangban class and the peasants.”

Han’s cognates in Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese translate simply as “hate.”

locavore

Anthony Bourdain: “What do you do if you’re a locavore in L.A.? You look around. What’s local and delicious?”

“Los Angeles (Koreatown),” Parts Unknown, April 21, 2013

A locavore is someone “who tries to eat only locally grown foods.” The word combines local and the –vore ending of such eating words as carnivore, omnivore, etc. -vore ultimately comes from the Latin vorare, “to devour.”

Locavore was coined in 2005 by “a group of four women in San Francisco who proposed that local residents should try to eat only food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius,” and was the Oxford American Dictionary’s 2007 word of the year.

Lowrider Wynwood

Lowrider Wynwood

low riding

Anthony Bourdain: “Few things embody that particularly southern California Latino street culture than low riding.”

“Los Angeles (Koreatown),” Parts Unknown, April 21, 2013

Low riding is the chiefly U.S. “practice of driving a low rider,” says the OED,” or “the (youth) culture associated with this, esp. that originating amongst the male Chicano and Hispanic populations of southern California.” A low rider, or lowrider, is “a customized car whose springs have been shortened so that the chassis rides close to the ground, often equipped with hydraulic lifts that can be controlled by the driver.”

(And now the Low Rider song is stuck in our heads. And now it’s stuck in yours. [You’re welcome.])

mohinga

Anthony Bourdain: “Mohinga? This I must have. Correct me if I’m wrong [but] if there’s a national dish, a fundamental most beloved dish, would it be this?”

“Myanmar,” Parts Unknown, April 14, 2013

Mohinga is a Burmese dish of rice noodles in fish soup and is “usually eaten as breakfast.” More fish soups.

shrike

Abigail: “Why do they call him the Shrike?”
Freddie: “It’s a bird that impales its prey, harvests the organs to eat later.”

“Potage,” Hannibal, April 18, 2013

A shrike is a type of carnivorous bird that has “a screeching call and a strong hooked bill with a toothlike projection.” It often impales “its prey on sharp-pointed thorns or barbs of wire fencing.” The word shrike may come from an Old English term that may have generally been used for birds with shrill cries, says the OED. Also known as the butcher bird.

terroir

Roy Choi: “For me I don’t see mustard plants and sheep grazing. I see barbed wire and telephone poles. I see puddles, and all of that stuff contributes to the flavor of the food. It’s truly what I call a terroir, a regional food.”

“Los Angeles (Koreatown),” Parts Unknown, April 21, 2013

Terroir, which is French in origin, refers to “the complete set of local conditions in which a particular wine or family of wines is produced, including soil-type, weather conditions, topography and wine-making savoir-faire.” The word also now applies to foods. Choi is referring to his Kogi Korean BBQ cuisine, a blend of Mexican and Korean flavors unique to L.A.

For even more about this concept, check out Rowan Jacobsen’s American Terroir: Savoring the Flavors of Our Woods, Waters, and Fields.

thanaka

Anthony Bourdain: “But [what] they all seem to have in common, however, is thanaka, a face paint and sunblock made from tree bark that masks many of their faces.”

“Myanmar,” Parts Unknown, April 14, 2013

Thanaka, used often in Myanmar and neighboring countries such as Thailand, is a sunblock paste made from the ground-up bark of thanaka and theethee trees. Thanaka is also thought to remove acne, promote smooth skin, and act as an anti-fungal.

tourist triangle

Anthony Bourdain: “It should be pointed out that we are still within the confines of the tourist triangle, areas permissible for travel. Whole sectors of this country, much of it in fact, are off limits.”

“Myanmar,” Parts Unknown, April 14, 2013

The tourist triangle of Myanmar refers to the route of Yangon, Mandalay, and Pagan. The Golden Triangle is an opium-producing area of Asia while the Bermuda Triangle is “an area in the western Atlantic Ocean where many ships and planes are supposed to have been mysteriously lost.”

That’s it for this installment!

[Photo Credit: “Vintage Televisions,” CC BY 2.0 by Tiffany Terry]
[Photo Credit: “Lowrider Wynwood,” CC BY 2.0 by Phillip Pessar]