August 7, 2013
Redneck is a derogatory slang term used in reference to poor, uneducated white farmers, especially from the southern United States. It is similar in meaning to ‘cracker’ (especially regarding Georgia and Florida), ‘hillbilly’ (especially regarding Appalachia and the Ozarks), and ‘white trash’ (but without the last term’s suggestions of immorality).
By the 2000s, the term had expanded in meaning to refer to bigoted, loutish reactionaries who are opposed to modern ways, and has often been used to attack white Southern conservatives. The term is also used broadly to degrade working class and rural whites that are perceived by urban progressives to be insufficiently liberal. At the same time, some Southern whites have reclaimed the word, using it with pride and defiance as a self-identifier.
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August 6, 2013
Blockbuster, as applied to film, theater, and sometimes also video games, denotes a very popular or successful production. The term began to appear in the American press in the early 1940s, describing the largest of aerial bombs: single bombs capable of destroying a city block, also known as ‘cookies’ during the firebombing of Hamburg. Later figurative use referred to anything making a public impact:
‘Broadway reacted to the request of War Mobilization Director Byrnes to close all places of entertainment by midnight Feb. 26 as if a blockbuster had landed on Manhattan’ (1945). Some entertainment histories cite it as originally referring to a play that is so successful that competing theaters on the block are ‘busted’ and driven out of business, but the OED cites a 1957 use which is simply as a term of ‘biggest,’ after the bombs.
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July 24, 2013
‘C.R.E.A.M.‘ (‘Cash Rules Everything Around Me’) is a song by the Wu-Tang Clan, from their 1993 studio album, ‘Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).’
The song was produced by Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA, and samples The Charmels’ 1967 song, ‘As Long As I’ve Got You.’ The track features a verse from Raekwon, a long verse from Inspectah Deck, and the hook performed by Method Man: ‘Cash rules everything around me, C.R.E.A.M./Get the money; dollar, dollar bill, y’all.’
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July 14, 2013
In gay culture, a Bear is a large, hairy man who projects an image of rugged masculinity. As a rising subculture in the gay and bisexual male communities, Bears are one of many LGBT communities with events, codes, and a culture-specific identity.
The term was popularized by Richard Bulger, who, along with his then partner Chris Nelson (1960–2006) founded ‘Bear Magazine’ in 1987. There is some contention surrounding whether Bulger originated the term and the subculture’s conventions. Author George Mazzei, for example, wrote an article for ‘The Advocate’ in 1979 called ‘Who’s Who in the Zoo?,’ that characterized homosexuals as seven types of animals, including bears.
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July 14, 2013
Twink [twingk] is a gay slang term describing a young or young-looking man with a slender, ectomorph build (long and thin), little or no body hair, and no facial hair. In some societies, the terms ‘fox,’ ‘plum,’ ‘chick,’ or ‘chicken’ are preferred. The related term ‘twinkle-toes,’ which implies that a man is effeminate, tends to be used in a derogatory manner. The terms can be complimentary or pejorative. The opposite of a twink in gay slang is a ‘bear,’ a large, hairy man who projects an image of rugged masculinity.
The term’s namesake is the ‘golden-colored phallic-shaped snack cake’ Hostess Twinkie, commonly regarded as the quintessential junk food: ‘little nutritional value, sweet to the taste and creme-filled.’ In ‘Queering Pornography: Desiring Youth, Race and Fantasy in Gay Porn,’ essayist Zeb J. Tortorici notes that gay twink porn thrives on the production and performance of ‘consumable and visually/anally receptive masculinity.’
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May 31, 2013
A howler is a glaring blunder, typically an amusing one. Eric Partridge’s ‘A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English’ (1951) defined it in part as: ‘… A glaring (and amusing) blunder: from before 1890; … also, a tremendous lie … Literally something that howls or cries for notice, or perhaps … by way of contracting howling blunder.’ Another common interpretation of this usage is that a howler is a mistake fit to make one howl with laughter.
All over the world, probably in all natural languages, there are many informal terms for blunders; the English term ‘howler’ occurs in many translating dictionaries. There are other colloquial English words for howler, in particular the mainly United States and Canadian slang term ‘boner’ which has various interpretations, including that of blunder. Like howler, boner can be used in any sense to mean an ignominious and usually laughable blunder, and also like howler, it has been used in the titles of published collections of largely schoolboy blunders since at least the 1930s.
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May 2, 2013
The phrases ‘no homo‘ and ‘pause’ are slang terms. They parenthetically assert that the speaker of such does not have any homosexual intent and are usually used after an utterance that may have given that impression. The term originated in East Harlem slang of the early 1990s.
It was used by many to distance themselves from the stereotype of closeted gay and bisexual men. Several social commentators have criticized the use of both ‘no homo’ and ‘pause’ in hip hop and in the mainstream. It has been said that the phrases, ‘uphold an unhealthy relationship with homosexuality, a relationship based in fear.’ Fox News commentator Marc Lamont Hill encouraged the hip-hop community to stop using the terms.
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March 5, 2013
Mat is a term for strong obscene profanity in Russian and some other Slavic language communities. Mat is censored in the media and the use of mat in public constitutes a form of disorderly conduct, or mild hooliganism (although, such laws are only enforced episodically, in particular due to the vagueness of the legal definition).
However, despite the public ban, mat is used by Russians of all ages and nearly all social groups, with particular fervor in male-dominated military and the structurally similar social strata.
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September 18, 2012
A groupie is a person who seeks emotional and sexual intimacy with a musician or other celebrity or public figure. ‘Groupie’ is derived from group in reference to a musical group, but the word is also used in a more general sense, especially in casual conversation. The word ‘groupie’ is commonplace, a derisive term used to describe a particular kind of female fan assumed to be more interested in sex with rock stars than in their music.
Groupies became prominent in the music scene in the 1960s and 1970s. This was prior to the murder of John Lennon in 1980, and before security levels for bands increased significantly. Female groupies in particular have a long-standing reputation of being available to celebrities, pop stars, rock stars, and other public figures. Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant is quoted as distinguishing between fans who wanted brief sexual encounters, and ‘groupies’ who traveled with musicians for extended periods of time, acting as a surrogate girlfriend or mother, often taking care of the musician’s valuables, drugs, wardrobe, and social life.
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May 2, 2012
Yo is an English slang interjection, commonly associated with American English. It was popularized by Italian and African Americans in Philadelphia in the 1970s. It is used to signify informality, close cultural understanding, and communal bonding. It remains very popular among Philadelphia Italian Americans, possibly arising from the Italian language word ‘io’ (meaning ‘I’). In Italian, first person statements are often preceded by io.
Although often used as a greeting, yo may come at the end of a sentence, often to direct focus onto a particular individual or group or to gain the attention of another individual or group. It may specify that a certain statement that was previously uttered is more important, or may just be an ‘attention grabber’ (e.g. ‘Listen up, yo!’). In the Japanese language, the sentence-final particle ‘yo’ is used to emphasize sentences as is often the case in English slang as above, but is etymologically unrelated. ‘YŌ’ is also used by Japanese teens as casual greetings between friends, but is pronounced with a more drawn-out tone.
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March 5, 2012
Not safe for work (NSFW) is Internet slang or shorthand to mark URLs or hyperlinks which contain material such as pornography or profanity, which the viewer may not want to be seen accessing in a public or formal setting such as at work. Determining a site to be NSFW is invariably subjective. The less frequently used warnings PNSFW (Probably/Possibly Not Safe for Work), LSFW (Less Safe for Work), TSFW (Technically Safe for Work), and PNFO (Probably Not for the Office) are sometimes used to indicate content possibly considered salacious (lustful) by certain censors, such as images of underwear or swimwear models, or a news story about sexual issues that does not contain explicit images.
NSFW is also sometimes used to refer to any media that produces sound, such as a game or video file; the implication being that the noises may alert others in the vicinity that the user is taking a break with entertainment materials instead of working. An alternative abbreviation is NSFL, meaning not safe for lunch or not safe for life – this indicates subject matter too grim, shocking, stark, or frank to be recommended without a disclaimer.
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February 13, 2012
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing or humorous because of its deliberate ridiculousness. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being ‘cheesy.’
When the usage appeared, in 1909, it denoted: ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical, and effeminate behaviour, and, by the middle of the 1970s, the definition comprised: banality, artifice, mediocrity, and ostentation so extreme as to have perversely sophisticated appeal. American writer Susan Sontag’s essay ‘Notes on ‘Camp” (1964) emphasised its key elements as: artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness, and ‘shocking’ excess. Camp as an aesthetic has been popular from the 1960s to the present.
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