Collocation and Pejoration.

‘I am a gentil womman and no wenche’: from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale, c1386. Photograph: Alamy.

Linguists call it collocation: the likelihood of two words occurring together. If I say “pop”, your mental rolodex will begin whirring away, coming up with candidates for what might follow. “Music”, “song” or “star”, are highly likely. “Sensation” or “diva” a little less so. “Snorkel” very unlikely indeed.

What do you think of when I say the word “rabid”? One option, according to the dictionary publisher Oxford Dictionaries, is “feminist”. The publisher has been criticised for a sexist bias in its illustrations of how certain words are used. “Nagging” is followed by “wife”. “Grating” and “shrill” appear in sentences describing women’s voices, not men’s.

[…]

Perhaps “rabid” is collocated with “feminist” more often than with those other words (if the data the OUP uses includes online discussions, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case). Sexist assumptions find their way into speech and writing for the simple reason that society is still sexist.

Language, as the medium through which we conduct almost all relationships, public and private, bears the precise imprint of our cultural attitudes. The history of language, then, is like a fossil record of how those attitudes have evolved, or how stubbornly they have stayed the same.

When it comes to women, the message is a depressing one. The denigration of half of the population has embedded itself in the language in ways you may not even be aware of. Often this takes the form of “pejoration”: when the meaning of the word “gets worse” over time. Linguists have long observed that words referring to women undergo this process more often than those referring to men. Here are eight examples:

Those examples are Mistress, Hussy, Madam, Governess, Spinster, Courtesan, Wench, and Tart. I’ll just include Hussy here:

Hussy.

This once neutral term meant the female head of a household. Hussy is a contraction of 13th-century husewif – a word cognate with modern “housewife”. From the 17th century onwards, however, it began to mean “a disreputable woman of improper behaviour”. That’s now its only meaning.

My whole lifetime, hussy has carried a negative meaning only. I had no idea it actually meant head of a household, much like my surprise over the primary definition of paraphernalia.  Click on over for the full article and to see the rest of the words, and how they have changed over the years! (I got to this article from another interesting one, on how American is taking over English all over the world. I get teased a lot for using English spelling rather than American, but that was how I was taught, and I’ll keep using it.)

Word Wednesday.

Concupiscent

Adjective.

Concupiscence, noun: strong desire; especially: sexual desire.

Concupiscent, adjective.

[Origin: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin concupiscentia, from Latin concupiscent-, concupiscens, present participle of concupiscere to desire ardently, from com– + cupere to desire.]

(14th Century)

It wasn’t like an apple, or any crisp fruit, where you might sink your teeth in and lever a piece away from the orb. She bit through, faint resistance of the skin and then concupiscent flesh. Juice slicked her cheeks and chin, coursed down her forearm, dripped from her elbow. The flavor was—intense. Honeyed, but not cloying, complex and buoyant. – Dust, Elizabeth Bear.

Word Wednesday.

Fulsome

Adjective.

1a: characterized by abundance: copious. b: generous in amount, extent, or spirit. c: being full and well developed.

2: aesthetically, morally, or generally offensive.

3: exceeding the bounds of good taste: overdone.

4: excessively complimentary or flattering: effusive.

– fulsomely, adverb.

– fulsomeness, noun.

Usage: The senses shown above are the chief living senses of fulsome. Sense 2, which was a generalized term of disparagement in the late 17th century, is the least common of these. Fulsome became a point of dispute when sense 1, thought to be obsolete in the 19th century, began to be revived in the 20th. The dispute was exacerbated by the fact that the large dictionaries of the first half of the century missed the beginnings of the revival. Sense 1 has not only been revived but has spread in its application and continues to do so. The chief danger for user of fulsome is ambiguity. Unless the context is made very clear, the reader or hearer cannot be sure whether such an expression as “fulsome praise” is meant in sense 1b or in sense 4.  [Merriam-Webster.]

[Origin: Middle English fulsom, copious, cloying, from full + –som -some.]

(13th century.)

“Glad to meet you, sir. I have heard your name mentioned in connection with that of your friend. You interest me very much, Mr. Holmes. I had hardly expected so dolichocephalic* a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum. It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.” – The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle.

*Dolichocephalic

adjective: having a relatively long head with a cephalic index of less than 75.

[Origin: New Latin dolichocephalus long-headed, from Greek dolichos long + – kephalos, from kephalē head.]

(1852)

Word Wednesday.

Peach

Verb.

2 . Transitive verb: to inform against: betray.

Intransitive verb: to turn informer.

[Origin: Middle English pechen, short for apechen to accuse, from Anglo-French apecher, empecher to ensnare. A shortening of appeach, an obsolete variant of impeach. Related: Peached; peaching. ]

(1560)

“I have the cabman who took you to Whitehall and the cabman who brought you away. I have the commissionaire who saw you near the case. I have Ikey Sanders, who refused to cut it up for you. Ikey has peached, and the game is up.” – The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle.

While James Cagney never actually said the line “you dirty rat”, I can hear his voice in my head, saying “you dirty, rotten peach!”

Word Wednesday.

Malevolent

Adjective.

1: having, showing, or arising from intense often vicious ill will, spite, or hatred.

2: productive of harm or evil.

-malevolently, adverb.

[Origin: Latin malevolent-, malevolens, from male badly + volent-, volens, present participle of velle to wish.]

(1509)

“He had a vision of that lone velvety ear, fluttering like a huge malevolent moth through the attics at the Schloss.” – Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand, Fred Vargas.

Word Wednesday.

Antipathetic

Adjective.

1: having a natural aversion; also: not sympathetic: hostile. Opposed, averse, contrary; having or showing antipathy.

2: arousing antipathy.

Antipathetically – adverb.

Antipatheticalness – noun.

[Origin: Greek antipathḗs opposed in feeling, anti– + –pathēs, adj. derivative of páthos, with –etic by analogy with pathetic.]

(1630-40)

“Schnee, the colony’s governor, called upon Fu Hao in the unexpected company of his antipathetic military counterpart, Oberstleutnant Lettow-Vorbeck.” – Everfair, Nisi Shawl.

The Rising Tide of the Theocalypse.

Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. (YouTube).

Educational standards have hit a new low with the Tiny Tyrant and De Vos, and it looks like they are about to be delivered yet another blow. Does anyone think that Liberty ‘University’ is any sort of high standard when it comes to education? Outside of Trump, that is, who always finds a crowd of acolytes there.

Jerry L. Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, will be part of a White House task force, an official from the White House told The Chronicle on Sunday.

The news is the first official comment from the White House on the topic since Mr. Falwell told The Chronicle in January that President Trump and others in his inner circle had asked him to head up a task force on reforming regulations related to higher education.

Even so, information on the task force’s role, membership, purview, and timing is still scant.

“We are working on a task force that Jerry Falwell will be involved with,” was all the official would say on the topic for now. He is someone who was authorized by the White House to speak on the subject but not be named.

[…]

Mr. Falwell said he and others at Liberty have also been developing position papers on various higher-education topics which he has shared with the White House and the U.S. Department of Education. At the White House, he said, he’s been sending the papers to Andrew Bremberg, who is an assistant to the president and director of the Domestic Policy Council, a White House agency that has under prior administrations exerted considerable influence on higher-education policy.

Let me guess: god, god, prayer, god, bible, god.

The full story is here.

Word Wednesday.

Gauche

Adjective.

1a: lacking social experience or grace; also not tactful: crude.

1b: crudely made or done.

2. not planar.

– gauchely adverb
– gaucheness noun

[Origin: French, literally, left]

(1751)

“I got out of my car, map of Glasgow in hand, and asked her for directions I did not need in an English I hoped was gauche and charming.” – Irene, Pierre Lemaitre.

Facebook, Oh Facebook XVII.

Clay Higgins. © Facebook.

We open with republican congressman Clay Higgins, who seems to be a tad fuckin’ bloodlusty.

In a Facebook post, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), a viral YouTube star who was elected to Congress last November, argued that Christendom “is at war with Islamic horror.”

“Their intended entry to the American homeland should be summarily denied. Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down,” Higgins wrote. “Hunt them, identity them, and kill them. Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all.”

Oh, but it’s ever so bad that some of those people you so demonize feel exactly the same way, right? That makes them evil, but being an indiscriminate bloodthirsty killer is okey dokey if you’re white and at least nominally christian. Got it. Don’t go speaking like you represent America, either, because you sure as hell don’t represent me.

“Not one penny of American treasure should be granted to any nation who harbors these heathen animals. Not a single radicalized Islamic suspect should be granted any measure of quarter,” Higgins said in the post.

Oh stuff it, you obnoxious blowhard. This isn’t pirate land, and no one is after your “treasure”. What other nations do isn’t any of your business, Clay. Many of them are setting a fine example of how to be an excellent nation, and how to focus on integration, love, and empathy, rather than how to be a self righteous psychopath. Every single person who elected this fucking idiot? You should be godsdamned ashamed of yourselves.

Via The Hill.

Then there’s Harvard students…

Harvard College rescinded admissions offers to at least ten prospective members of the Class of 2021 after the students traded sexually explicit memes and messages that sometimes targeted minority groups in a private Facebook group chat.

A handful of admitted students formed the messaging group—titled, at one point, “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens”—on Facebook in late December, according to two incoming freshmen.

In the group, students sent each other memes and other images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust, and the deaths of children, according to screenshots of the chat obtained by The Crimson. Some of the messages joked that abusing children was sexually arousing, while others had punchlines directed at specific ethnic or racial groups. One called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child “piñata time.”

After discovering the existence and contents of the chat, Harvard administrators revoked admissions offers to at least ten participants in mid-April, according to several members of the group.

The Harvard Crimson has the full story.

Word Wednesday.

Nascent

Adjective.

Coming or having recently come into existence.

[Origin: Latin nascent-, nascens, present participle of nasci to be born.]

(C. 1624)

“Near the end of Delancey Street, the smells of sea and fresh water, along with the stench of refuse that those who lived near the waterfront simply dumped off the edge of Manhattan every day, mingled to produce the distinctive aroma of that tidal pool we call the East River. A large structure soon slanted up before us: the ramp approach to the nascent Williamsburg Bridge. Without pausing, and much to my dismay, Stevie crashed onto the boarded roadway, the horse’s hooves and carriage wheels clattering far more loudly against wood than they had against stone.” – The Alienist, Caleb Carr.

 

The Fiscal Interests of the Unborn.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney (R) listens as U.S. President Donald Trump meets with members of the Republican Study Committee at the White House in Washington, U.S. March 17, 2017.

In a stunning display of republican “compassion”, Mick Mulvaney defended the $3.6 trillion cuts to domestic programs in the tragic Trudget. Rather than address all those who desperately need assistance to simply put food on their table; people who already face a tangle of red tape to get the slimmest of benefits, Mulvaney waxed dispassionate about the fiscal rights of the non-existent. It’s great, just fabulous, to take food away from living children, because of Mulvaney’s grandchildren, who are at this point, non-existent. But hey, the potentiality of grandchildren, well, that’s important! Much more important than poor children, who barely have enough food to keep them alive.

It should not need to be pointed out that food which allows for subsistence is a terrible thing when it comes to children. Children who are not eating enough have an awful time trying to concentrate, they do poorly in school, and aren’t very active physically, because that takes energy, and when you don’t have enough fuel, well, you get the picture. The domestic programs in place can barely manage to get enough food to families, it’s not as if it’s a massive bounty. There is a massive, horrible problem in America when it comes to hungry children. That problem keeps getting buried, stuffed in the back of closet, and given the Trudget, it seems as though republicans think it’s okay if they just get on with starving, as those hungry children are not important at all when weighed against the non-existent.

During a hearing about the $3.6 trillion in cuts to domestic programs included in President Trump’s proposed budget, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney made a case that the fiscal interests of the unborn should take precedence over the lives of present-day Americans — or at least those who rely on food stamps to eat or public schools to educate their children.

During a hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) grilled Mulvaney about the budget’s 25 percent cut to food assistance for the poorest Americans.

“Mr. Mulvaney, at least 20 percent of people eligible for SNAP don’t even receive SNAP because of stigma and other reasons,” she said. “So there are more people who need SNAP benefits… And you have a 13 percent cut in the Department of Education. The most vulnerable kids who need — ”

Mulvaney cut her off and made an impassioned case that people like Lee aren’t sufficiently concerned about his “unborn grandchildren.” He said:

What about the standard of living for my grandchildren who aren’t here yet? Who will end up inheriting $30 trillion in debt? Fifty trillion dollars in debt? A hundred trillion dollars? What about their standard — who’s going to pay the bill, Congressman? That’s what this is all about. That’s what this new perspective is. Who is going to pay for all the stuff you just mentioned? Us? Or somebody else? And I suggest to you if it’s important enough to pay, to have, then we need to be paying for it. Because right now, my unborn grandchildren are paying for it, and I think that is morally bankrupt.

And there you have it, the rethuglican rationale in all its ugliness – the non-existent are paying, and that’s bad, really super-evil! I had no idea the non-existent had pockets to pick.

Think Progress has the full story.

Word Wednesday.

Vitrification

Noun.

1. The process or act of vitrifying or the state of being vitrified.

2. Something that is or has been vitrified.

Vitrify

Verb -fied; -fying

Transitive verb: to convert into glass or a glassy substance by heat and fusion.

Intransitive verb: to become vitrified.

Vitrifiable – adjective.

Vitrification – noun.

[Origin: Middle French vitrifier, from Latin vitrum glass.]

(1594)

“This is in fact a DEEP SEVEN cadaver, and appears to have undergone some sort of postmortem vitrification process, or perhaps a hibernation from which it failed to emerge, approximately seven million years ago.” – The Jennifer Morgue, Charles Stross.

Cool Stuff Friday.

the artist in front of “Tyrannosaurus” in Chiba prefecture (2016).

“Asura” in Akita prefecture (2015).

Toshihiko Hosaka began making sand sculptures in art school and has been using beaches and sand boxes as his canvas for almost 20 years. His work defies what we typically think of as sand art as he sculpts and carves the loose, granular substance as if it were some malleable form of clay.

There is no core, mold or adhesive ever used throughout the process: just sand. The only trick Hosaka uses (and this is commonly accepted) is a hardening spray applied to his sculpture only after it’s been completed, in order to prevent wind and sun from eroding it for a few days.

Looking at his work, you can hardly credit it, that’s it’s just sand, nothing more, because it’s truly amazing and intricate. He has done sculptures of Musashi Miyamoto, Godzilla, Alice in Wonderland, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Asura, and a massive Kraken, among others. All the ones listed you can see at Spoon & Tamago, and be sure to visit Toshihiko Hosaka’s website!

An octopus sings about overfishing:

Overfishing Song from “Papa Cloudy’s Restaurant” from Studio Creature on Vimeo.

Artist Chuck Miller is fascinated with bodies, as many artists are, however, what fascinates Miller the most is fluidity and complexity of flesh. You can read and see more at The Creators Project.

Milena Ogrizovic beside Monument of the Fallen Fighters. Designer: Dajana Vasic.

Throughout the former Yugoslavia, mysterious and beautiful monuments dot the landscape, initiated by Yugoslav revolutionary Josef Broz Tito and designed by modernist architects. Increasingly forgotten, these brutalist concrete sculptures, which were public monuments to the country’s fallen soldiers of World War II, are revived in Serbian photographer Jovana Mladenovic‘s series Monumental Fear, which not only explores the former country’s triumph over fascism, but echoes the painful split that led to several Balkan states. Mladenovic’s series is also a tone poem meant to celebrate the creativity of the Serbian people, many of them artists facing uncertainty in the wake of the Brexit vote.

After studying photography at Belgrade’s University of Arts, Mladenovic moved to London to pursue her interest in fashion photography at the London College of Fashion. But she soon realized she was more interested in conceptual art and photography. Though she was happy to be in London, exploring avant-garde impulses, Mladenovic started thinking about her home country—specifically, its brutalist Yugoslavian communist monuments unveiled in the decades following World War II.

Fascinating and beautiful work. You can read and see more at The Creators Project.

And last, but certainly not least, Mr. Rogers!

Mr. Rogers is singing about how it’s ok to hug a pillow or pine after a teddy bear, and even though it seems like I’m too old for such things, I feel my stomach drop and I’m suddenly having trouble breathing. I feel like a kid again, and thanks to the 18-day Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood marathon currently streaming on Twitch, over 2 million people have already had the chance to feel the same. The Twitch stream is playing the entire Mister Rogers archive back-to-back in chronological order, including rare episodes that only aired once on terrestrial TV.

Twitch reached out to PBS with an idea for a Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood revival in the lead up to the show’s 50th anniversary. They launched the marathon on May 15, partially thanks to the overwhelming response to marathons of Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, and Julia Child’s The French Chef on the streaming platform. “We were excited to build on that momentum with this experimental initiative,” Lesli Rotenberg, a Senior Vice President at PBS, tells Creators.

You can read more about this at The Creators Project. The Twitch Mr. Roger’s Stream.