Tuesday, April 2, 2013

SQUAB, CORNUCOPIA, PANTIES, NAVEL, BRAINCHILD, CRUD, SLACKS, CREVICE, AND FUDGE: Slate digs even deeper into the concept of word aversion, and notes with regards to a certain word evocative of dampness:
It’s squishy-seeming, and, to some, specifically evocative of genital regions and undergarments. These qualities are not unusual when it comes to word aversion. Many hated words refer to “slimy things, or gross things, or names for garments worn in potentially sexual areas, or anything to do with food, or suckling, or sexual overtones,” says Riggle. But other averted words are more confounding, notes Liberman. “There is a list of words that seem to have sexual connotations that are among the words that elicit this kind of reaction—moist being an obvious one,” he says. “But there are other words like luggage, and pugilist, and hardscrabble, and goose pimple, and squab, and so on, which I guess you could imagine phonic associations between those words and something sexual, but it certainly doesn’t seem obvious.”
According to Language Log's Mark Liberman: “There could very well be a viral aspect to this, where either through the media or just through real-world personal connections, the reaction to some particular word—for example, [that one regarding dampness]—spreads. But that’s the sheerest speculation.”

11 comments:

  1. girard3111:51 AM

    This makes me remember the weirdest thing I've seen along this lines: A photo from a high school basketball tournament game where a kid held up a sign that simply said "Moist".

    ReplyDelete
  2. J. Bowman6:29 PM

    I don't know that I have an aversion to a specific word. But if one more g-d person tells me to Keep Calm and Carry On, I'll... well, I won't keep calm, I'll tell you that.

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  7. What about the 70,000 variations on the theme? Surely you wouldn't object if you were instructed to "Be Excellent and Party On," would you?

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  8. J. Bowman6:55 PM

    Of course not. In fact, not four score and seven minutes ago someone exhorted me to do just that.

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  9. Yet somehow I am not averse to that word when someone uses it to refer to an apple cake, or brownies. I certainly don't want to hear that word in connection with worn clothing. Somewhere in between is using the word in connection with ground/soil conditions.

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