The Joys of Language: favourite quotes, etc.

[ribbons]

^ It was a word my mother used from time to time, Lisna.  She's been on my mind lately as her birthday just passed.  When I was a child and she gave me candy or some treat she'd say, "There's your lagniappe."   

[Lisnaholic]

^ Haha! It sounds to me that your mum was passing on to you a piece of language that she particularly wanted you to have. With my son, I did the same with the phrase, "diddled, dished, and done" which I would use whenever I could, certain that if he didn't learn it from me, he wouldn't learn it at all.

I'm sorry I haven't responded to your post until now, ribbons, but I was suddenly prompted by reading this in a book about New Orleans yesterday:

I have no documentation of when the word lagniappe first came into use in New Orleans, but it was very likely during the Spanish colonial era...The word is used in New Orleans, and, in its Spanish form, throughout the Hispanic world. In Colombia, you might hear a salsa band's encore tune referred to as la ñapa. The word comes into Spanish from Quechua, the indigenous Andean language: yapa, hispanicized to ñapa, which, with the Spanish article, becomes la ñapa, which in Louisiana became creolized to lagniappe. It might have travelled from Peru to Louisiana any way that silver did.

Well done, your mom, for giving you a small linguistic fruit that comes from such a long genalogical tree !

[larsvsnapster]

Of all their characters, Snagglepuss seemed to have the most vocal idiosyncrasies. Heavens to Murgatroyd! Exit stage left! It's (blank), (blank) even! Love it.

Did you not notice that half of it's lavender slang?  I look at Snagglepuss like a more daring Paul Lynde, and straight people didn't get that either!

[Lexi Darling]

Did you not notice that half of it's lavender slang?  I look at Snagglepuss like a more daring Paul Lynde, and straight people didn't get that either!

Of course! Well not when I was super young, but as soon as I became aware of gay culture I certainly recognized it. I was a teenager in the 2000s when there was a sizable "so-and-so cartoon character is gay" discourse among a lot of conservative-leaning media, and he was kind of a go-to reference for a lot of that.

[larsvsnapster]

Of course! Well not when I was super young, but as soon as I became aware of gay culture I certainly recognized it. I was a teenager in the 2000s when there was a sizable "so-and-so cartoon character is gay" discourse among a lot of conservative-leaning media, and he was kind of a go-to reference for a lot of that.

There were two from Paul Lynde that I can't believe made it to air, but the straight people didn't notice:

Peter Marshall:  A little what is a dangerous thing?
Paul Lynde:  A little pervert.

Peter Marshall:  Who's better looking?  A fairy or a pixie?
Paul Lynde:  (Butchly) Looks aren't everything!  (after much deliberation and moxie building) I'll .... I'll go for the fairy!

I'm going to have to find Hanna Barbera's 60's album of The Wizard of Oz (Here it is) because I could have sworn there was something on it that was in the double and triple entendre direction, although I haven't heard it in 50 years.

[Lisnaholic]

Red-hot news in the world of words:-

Merriam-Webster's word of the year is "authentic."

The online dictionary says there has been a high volume of searches for the word's definition for several years, but 2023 saw a "substantial increase," thanks to "stories and conversations about AI, celebrity culture, identity, and social media."

The reason so many look it up is because "authentic" has several meanings, according to the announcement on the dictionary's website, including "not false or imitation" and "true to one's own personality, spirit, or character."

The dictionary said it has also been a term favored by celebrities like singers Lainey Wilson, Sam Smith and Taylor Swift, who have all made headlines this year with statements about seeking their "authentic voice" and "authentic self." Another fan is Elon Musk, who has previously said that people should be more "authentic" on social media. However, that became more of an issue earlier this year when Musk, as the new boss of Twitter, now X, got rid of the trademark blue check sign of authenticity - now only available at a price.

The rise of artificial intelligence has blurred the lines between what is real and what is not, leaving celebrities, brands and social media influencers - among others - keen to prove their authenticity.

One of the other words to stand out in searches this year, according to the dictionary, was the closely related "deepfake." This is defined by Merriam-Webster as "an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said."

In 2022, Merriam-Webster chose "gaslighting" as its word of the year, saying it had become a ubiquitous term in the "age of misinformation."

Other words that led much traffic to the online dictionary in 2023 included coronation, dystopian, indict and doppelgänger.

Meanwhile "rizz" went straight to the "top of lookups" in September, when the example of internet-driven slang was added to the dictionary.
For the uninitiated, Merriam-Webster explained: "As a noun, rizz means 'romantic appeal or charm' (as in 'a bro who has rizz'); as a verb (typically used with up, as in 'rizz up that cutie') it means 'to charm or seduce.'"

[Lisnaholic]

Here's a good quote from Mahatma Gandhi:

"The world has enough for everyone's needs, but not for everyone's greed."

It occurred to me this morning as I was thinking about a conversation I had here with Toy Revolver some time ago: he'd been explaining to me his position, that everybody should be entitled to own a house or apartment, but not one of excessive size.

Time to come back, Toy Revolver, aka OH, our guru, our Gandhi !

[jimmy jazz]

My geography teacher had a poster with that on at the front of the classroom. I remember it well.

She also had one saying "Apathy is not an option" and from the back of the class it looked like Roathy is not an option and I wondered what roathy meant.

[Lisnaholic]

She also had one saying "Apathy is not an option" and from the back of the class it looked like Roathy is not an option and I wondered what roathy meant.

  I don't know what it means either, but I'm prepared to accept your teacher's advice: that it's not an option!

[Lisnaholic]

Anaïs Nin was many things, including a great journal writer. She wrote a bunch of not-for-publication journals in her lifetime, yet they contain some beautiful imo writing. These two quotes are within a couple of pages of each other, from the journal she was writing during one of the happiest periods of her life:-

AN on happiness:

What can I do with my happiness? How can I keep it, conceal it, bury it where I may never lose it?
I want to kneel as it falls over me like rain, gather it up with lace and silk, and press it to myself again.

AN on life and literature:

We talked about the trick of literature in eliminating the unessential, so that we are given a concentrated dose of life. It's a deception and the cause of much disappointment. One reads books and expects life to be just as full of interest and intensity. And, of course, it isn't so. There are many dull moments in between.

She does something I really like: writes in 1931 in a voice that could almost be from yesterday.