October 28, 2018

The mouthfeel of an integrationist coffee break.

I've constructed a post-title out of words/phrases that first appeared in print the year I was born.

Go to the link, pick your own year, and construct a title for your own blog post or memoir.

66 comments:

rhhardin said...

It's when the word appears in their dictionary, not when it appears in print.

rhhardin said...

What year did cunt turn up?
Definition of cunt
1 obscene : the female genital organs also: sexual intercourse with a woman
2 usually disparaging and obscene: woman sense 1a
(MW)

It isn't a very good definition. A foreigner would have no idea how to use it.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Disk Drive Data Structure

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Dot Matrix Electronic Publishing

rhhardin said...

"Sexual intercourse with a woman" must be their transcription of "get me some cunt." (John Kerry, 2004)

Darrell said...

Fuck the Left with a backhoe.

Ambrose said...

Hump Day Happy Hour Horror Show (1959)

Fernandinande said...

I found mistakes in first three words I checked; they're all in ngram several years before the "Time Traveler's" claimed starting date.

But thanks for playing, Merrian Webster Time Traveler!

mockturtle said...

The word 'cunt' was used in Elizabethan England. Shakespeare used the word, though cleverly, in Hamlet.

Omaha1 said...

Uncool target language.

rhhardin said...

Miriam Webster isn't going to put cunt in the dictionary until cultural forces allow it or insist on it. It's amusing that even today it's an awful definition, no elaboration or clue how it works as a word. As if the HR department was involved.

robother said...

I was a workaholic loner, headed for a hydrogen bomb shoot-em up. She, a wrecking ball in a bikini, spoke in sentence fragments. Together, we corporatized the counterculture.

Meade said...

Fortran black-power bonobo.

Texan99 said...

Gobsmacked by the psychedelic event horizon.

Fernandinande said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
rhhardin said...

The Random House Webster's College Dictionary offers a numerical scoring of how offensive words are, in the case of offensive words. This makes possible maximizing offense.

Fernandinande said...

1934: However, staple and sub staple cultivars are characterized by a drier mouthfeel.

1939: Such a statement of the integrationist is primarily of assistance in planning...

1936: On August 9, during the 10 a.m. coffeebreak on Respondent's Sunlit jobsite, Scheffer was talking to ...
(It seems they got it right with "coffee break", though)

Mid-Life Lawyer said...

Multi-institutional ombudsman describes alternative energy hovercraft project as "anti-egalitarian horror show." Airmobile program on life-support due to "counterproductive navel gazing." (1959)

rhhardin said...

Roger Price in the 50s wrote "a good word to know" "conversation 3. sexual intercourse," out of MW, back from the era of dictionary purity.

tcrosse said...

Trickle-down zero-sum vegan autism in the premenstrual old-shoe nose job. (1944)

Ann Althouse said...

"It's when the word appears in their dictionary, not when it appears in print."

That's not what they say. They say: "When was a word first used in print? You may be surprised! Enter a date below to see the words first recorded on that year. To learn more about First Known Use dates" you're directed to a page that says:

"At most entries in the Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, a date will be found following the heading "First Known Use". This is the date of the earliest recorded use in English, as far as it could be determined, of the oldest sense defined in the entry.
It is essential to keep a few factors in mind when assessing the First Known Use Date...." It goes on from there.

So if you're not wrong, you need to offer some substance.

Wince said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Wince said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
The Crack Emcee said...

I'm the "Affirmative Action Antidepressant Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force"

(I didn't read very far)

Crimso said...

The Watson-Crick worst-case transfection resulted in a picomole of mitochondrial DNA, sort of an intrauterine device point-and-shoot assault rifle leading to programmed cell death.

Wince said...

A mind-altering theater of the absurd docudrama perfecta: a military-industrial complex compassion fatigued race-baiting redistributionist porny power broker Eurocrat chocoholic nonblack affirmative action postapartheid Bircher, wearing a unitard and riding a work-around Wankel engine wayback machine minibike service module no-holds-barred through a claymore mine field skyjacked in geostationary low earth orbit around a clean room health club toaster oven while suffering a fettuccine Alfredo surf and turf eating disorder with potbellied pigs out the wazoo.

Did I just give away my age?

rhhardin said...

It offers eigenvalue for 1941, which is certainly wrong.

The passage of the eigen terms into English physics can be followed through the OED and JSTOR. In 1926 P. A. M. Dirac was writing “a set of independent solutions which may be called eigenfunctions” (“On the Theory of Quantum Mechanics”, Proc. Royal Soc. A, 112, 661-677) (OED). Eigenvalue appears in a letter to Nature (July 23, 1927) from A. S. Eddington beginning “Among those ... trying to acquire a general acquaintance with Schrödinger’s wave mechanics there must be many who find their mathematical equipment insufficient to follow his first great problem—to determine the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions for the hydrogen atom" (OED). Eigenvector appears in R. Brauer & H. Weyl’s “Spinors in n Dimensions,” Amer. J. Math., 57, (1935) 425-449 (JSTOR). While eigenvalue, eigenfunction and eigenvector were translations of German originals, the eigenstate of Dirac’s Principles of Quantum Mechanics (1930, p. 35) was a new construction and it marks the arrival of eigen as a fully English particle. Eigenstate was translated into German as Eigenzustand.

http://jeff560.tripod.com/e.html

WK said...

Tipping point: at the mini-mart in spandex hip-huggers asking if an oral contraceptive is needed for oral sex. They said it was a no-brainer.

Fernandinande said...

So if you're not wrong, you need to offer some substance.

They're wrong about when most of the words were first used in print, but whether that means they're actually referring to when the word appeared in their dictionary is another matter.

It's pretty easy to verify that their dates are wrong, though the words in the lists have more letters than usual, so maybe that makes it fun to string them together, like the rallying cry of the carbonized commission merchants: "Pride of Place is the Rule of The Road!" (1798 - ngram only goes back to 1800...)

Howard said...

Blogger tcrosse said...
Trickle-down zero-sum vegan autism in the premenstrual old-shoe nose job. (1944)


Sounds like lyrics from Beck's "Loser"

William said...

When did whoreson go out of use? It's a hearty, full flavored disparagement. Motherfucker is more obscene but it's overused. I'd like to see whoreson make a comeback.

madAsHell said...

Slowly, Althouse is turning into Facebook. Can FarmVille be far behind??

William said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
traditionalguy said...

A Bomb and Firestorm highlight the year or years, 1945.

Wilbur said...

Meade, you magnificent bastard, you stole my entry!!

William said...

I was born with the bobbysoxer and have outlived them for a number of years. Their shrill shrieks are gone from the land. Frank Sinatra, at least in record form, lives on, but no one will ever shriek at the sound of his voice. There have also been remarkable advances in the technology of sock elasticity, and collapsed ankle socks no longer exist........Who is more whoreson--Michael Avenatti or Stormy Daniels? It's hard to use an archaic word with precision. Who is the whore and who is their creation?

Paul Sand said...

I'm also 1951. And I have to go with "Nerd Nit-Picking Murphy's Law in Zero Gravity".

Danno said...

Blogger Howard said... Blogger tcrosse said... Trickle-down zero-sum vegan autism in the premenstrual old-shoe nose job. (1944)

Sounds like lyrics from Beck's "Loser"

I thought it was more like the Beatles-John Lennon song Come Together. "He wear no shoeshine
He got toe jam football He got monkey finger He shoot Coca-Cola He say I know you, you know me
One thing I can tell you is You got to be free"

rcocean said...

familial hypercholesterolemia freak-out

Or

Red Guard Ranch Dressing - Yucky or wave of the future?

Rob said...

Pick your own year.

"Prick Up Your Ears"

Yancey Ward said...

Yuck! Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Freaked by Alfredo Sauce Yeast Infection. Biocontainment Gross Out!

Ann Althouse said...

"It offers eigenvalue for 1941, which is certainly wrong."

Doesn't matter that they may get some things wrong. The question is what are they purporting to do, and it is not — I contend — to say what year they first put an entry in their dictionary for a word. You said I was wrong. Do you concede that I am right? It's a simple question.

rcocean said...

Amazing that "Thigh Slapper" and "Cherry pick" are 1960s words.

I'd assumed they were much older.

rcocean said...

The date may not represent the very oldest sense of the word. Many obsolete, archaic, and uncommon senses have been excluded from this dictionary, and such senses have not been taken into consideration in determining the date.

The date most often does not mark the very first time that the word was used in English. Many words were in spoken use for decades or even longer before they passed into the written language. The date is for the earliest written or printed use that the editors have been able to discover.

The date is subject to change. Many of the dates provided will undoubtedly be updated as evidence of still earlier use emerges.

rcocean said...

Quibblers are the dullest people on the internet.

Big Mike said...

The first “word” on my list is 2,4,5-T

rhhardin said...

Since it's not when the word first appears in print, it's my theory that it's when it first appears in the dictionary. Which raises the question, owing to cultural changes, when did cunt turn up. There's an ancient word that must have turned up at some date or other in web7.

Big Mike said...

For the benefit of the undereducated, “cunniligus” is Latin for “cunt licking,” suggesting that the vulgar term for vulva and the activity are both of very long standing.

Yancey Ward said...

Grinch Rhardin given Miranda by Tyrannosaurid Althouse.

rhhardin said...

You said I was wrong. Do you concede that I am right? It's a simple question.

I didn't mention you at all.

Molly said...

(eaglebeak)

Straight rom Wikipedia to you:

Here's a snippet from Proverbs of Hendyng (before 1325)

Ȝeue þi cunte to cunnig and craue affetir wedding.
(Give your cunt wisely and make [your] demands after the wedding.)

Clearly a very old, very basic word.

Chaucer was big on it too, later in 14th century.

Shakespeare has Hamlet make the joke to Ophelia:

Lady, shall I lie in your lap? (ha ha)

[Ophelia freaks out]

Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters? (ha ha)

Rosalyn C. said...

Epiphanic noninteractive trailblazing circumstellar 3-D orbiter.

rhhardin said...

Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters? (ha ha)

That was the source of the title of the Robert Frost poem The Need of Being Versed in Country Things.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

The words of my birth year speak of affluence, idealism, and scientific/technological progress. We still have all that shit 57 years later but the well of optimism has been poisoned.

rhhardin said...

the well of optimism has been poisoned

The fountain of doom is going.

Fernandinande said...

It offers eigenvalue for 1941, which is certainly wrong.

They claim "eigenvector" in 1941 (wrong), not eigenvalue, for which they claim 1927 (right?). And I doubt that they're claiming when the words first appeared in "their" (or "the") dictionary since the lists go back to the 12 century.

Doesn't matter that they may get some things wrong.

They get most things wrong. And it does matter if they get most things wrong because then the lists are not lists of words which first appeared in a certain year, they're just lists of words.

Ann Althouse said...

When you're wrong, you're wrong.

I'm not mentioning anyone in particular. I'm just saying.

rhhardin said...

It's the crazy ex girlfriend thing.

daskol said...

What did people call the value of a publicly traded company before 1975, since that’s when “market capitalization” first appeared.

Freeman Hunt said...

Freebase identity politics collider.

Phil 314 said...

A genetic code glitch causes inner city melatonin

Phil 314 said...

Hardin declares “I’m not playing your girlie games!”

(Let’s talk about the latest 20 year old movie I just watched, instead.)

The Godfather said...

I was born in 1943, and what interests me is how many of the “new” words (whatever that means) that year have obvious connections to the war: airdrop, airhead, airlift, bazooka, combat fatigue, copter [I thought that would have been from 1953], drop tank, drop zone, flight line, jarhead, jerrican, service woman [NOT a sexist slur], skip bomb, sonar, staging area, and [maybe] trigger happy. Two other words, sad sack and snow job, were certainly common in my very brief military career many years later, but I don’t know if they derived from WW2 experience.

Ken B said...

Boho beatnik sex kitten.

Game over folks, 1958 wins.

Ken B said...

After months of pwning her, rhhardin screwed up on eigenvalue. Sad.

Ken B said...

“When you're wrong, you're wrong.”

I call bullshit. No way were those new in 1951.