I have only three horrible words today, but I saw them all this week, and I want to get them off my chest before they tangle up my kishkes. Here they are, with examples. Two of them appear in just one article—at the New York Times.
1.) Tradwife: This word seems to have appeared recently, and is a shortening of “traditional wife”—that is, as AI sees it, “It refers to a woman who chooses to embrace traditional gender roles, centering her life around being a homemaker, raising children, and submitting to her husband’s role as the primary.” It’s an example of how the young people shorten phrases in order to look cool. I had to look it up the first time I saw it, but that’s the case for many odious neologisms.
2.) Cosplay. This has been around for a longish while, and yet I still don’t know whether to pronounce it with a short or a long “o”. And you’ll never hear me using it. But no matter, as it will never pass my lipes.
Again, here’s an AI definition:
Cosplay is a portmanteau of “costume” and “play.” It is a performance art and hobby where participants wear costumes and accessories to represent a specific character from a work of fiction, such as anime, comic books, video games, or movies.
Here are both of them used in a single piece from the NYT written by Lauren Jackson in her weekly column “Believing,” designed to tell the paper’s readers how wonderful religion is (Jackson claims to be a nonbeliever, but her lips are firmly affixecd to the posterior of faith).
The book “Yesteryear” has a fantastic, pithy pitch: A tradwife influencer named Natalie wakes up in the world she was cosplaying online, in the year 1855. It’s a thriller and a scathing critique of how women perform for the internet. It’s also a book all about religion, belief — and delusion.
It’s at the top of the Times best-seller list, and I bet it will hang out there for a while. Before it even came out, Anne Hathaway decided she’d adapt it into a movie.
I loved every page. So I called the author, Caro Claire Burke, to talk to her about it.
Both words in one sentence! Jackson thinks this kind of writing is au courant. Seriously, Jackson should jettison her breezy prose, which I guess is designed to lure sheep into the fold.
And my Worst Word of the Year:
3.) Bougie. I think this one is pronounced “boo-szhee”, and is a shortening of “bourgeois,” often used derisively to mock wealth and status. Here’s its usage in the Free Press by Suzy Weiss, the younger sister of Bari Weiss who was nepotistically given a slot as a writer for the FP. She hasn’t yet grown into her role:
Everyone who moves to the bougie Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope does so with big ideas about how their new life there will go. How they’re going to jog in Prospect Park; how their brownstone apartments will be an oasis in the concrete jungle, a place to read on-trend books and host delightful dinner parties for erudite neighbors.
Isn’t that so cool? She uses “bougie”. (I won’t go after “on-trend”, which is ridiculous; why not use “trendy”?) I can’t bear to go on. . .
With you 100%. Three of my most detested new words.
So true Jim so true
May have mentioned before but superfluous and often wrong use of the word “ever” as in first ever…or worse: second ever, third ever, etc. Example: He was the third basketball player ever to score 75 points in a game.
A word that drives me crazy is “feedback,” which is often used to describe opinions or views about one thing or another. I have always understood the term to refer to a characteristic of electronic or computer circuitry. The overuse of this word is mind-numbing.
Nobody really wants “feedback.” What they really want is validation.
My late husband also detested “validation.” To him, it was what you got on a parking stub. And it was unnecessary as long as there were “approval,” “confirmation,” “endorsement,” etc.
Feedback in physiology is the mechanism of homeostasis. Understanding negative feedback loops is essential. Funny, though. “Negative feedback” just means the compensatory mechanism restores the variable toward its optimum, against the direction of its perturbation. It doesn’t imply critical commentary or dysfunction. I think the noise referred to as feedback in audio systems is positive feedback, which in physiology can get dangerous very quickly, exhibiting exponential growth or a death spiral. Blood clotting uses positive feedback for a minute or two but has to be rapidly constrained thereafter. But as in electronics this is a correct, technical use. Avoid in biz-speak. (Avoid “biz-speak”, too.)
In personnel performance management, I believe “constructive criticism” is the preferred term. It’s everything that follows the negatory “but. . . .”
My fav word of the moment: crusty.
What do you think of the bougie décimale?
Je ne comprend pas. Is “décimale” (decimal place) now being used in English? I hadn’t yet seen “bougie” as short for bourgeois.
Je vous l’expliquerai. Bougie is French for candle. The bougie décimale is an obsolete unit of luminous intensity akin to a standard candle. It is actually very close to the candela. I have no idea where décimale came from, unless it was to imply decimal system. Bougie (in English) is indeed slang for bourgeois, but it has nothing to do with the bougie décimale, so you may feel free to use bougie décimale any time the subject arises.
It’s much less fiery than the Bolshie one.
Now THIS is a topic that would put me in serious danger of violating Da Roolz.
As far as Jerry’s choices: yes, yes, and yes.
“Cosplay” is pronounced with a short ‘o’ sound, as in “Bill Cosby.”
Or as in costume, which it is derived from.
Didn’t you use the word “bougie” yourself in the past couple of days – right here, in your own living room?
I think I did, and it was on purpose as I knew I was going to write this post. I did it as a joke. Someone remembered!
I caught it, too.
Yeah, I hate tradwife and bougie. Don’t mind cosplay, the word or the hobby.
I think cosplay comes from Japanese, and has been around for quite a while already (Wikipedia says 1983). And the Japanese have a propensity to contract words, especially loan words.
I hadn’t heard bougie; it means spark plug in Dutch.
Comment by Greg Mayer
The OED confirms “cosplay” is from Japanese, which got it from English, so it went English>Japanese>English.
I’d always thought it was pronounced “CO-splay”, but I’ve only ever read the word; I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used in speech.
My folk etymology was that it was a combination of “co” (meaning together, at the same time) and “[di]splay”, i.e. “displaying together”, which is what the written uses seemed to refer to. Oh well, so much for folk etymologies!
And, the words I don’t like when used incorrectly: curate, refute, rubric, gift. Words I don’t like at all: influencer, learner.
GCM
It’s a contraction of costume and play.
+1
John McWhorter once said – and only once AFAIK – referring to a particular use of language (paraphrased):
that’s lovely music
… I am coming to strongly believe that language can be abused to fulfill an unmet need that learning a musical instrument is much better suited for. Or at best, shoving “poetry” where it don’t belong.
I point to “bougie Brooklyn neighborhood”. My mind follows the rhythm – and I cannot help it.
Brainworms.
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.”
-George Orwell
Politics and the English Language
1946
Horizon. 13 (76): 252–265 (original)
(See also many collections of essays, and The Orwell Foundation)
… another quote comes to mind, a suggestion that the language in former Socialist and Communist countries had been significantly debased … cannot find it ..
There’s always a question as to how these words come into being and widespread usage. To oversimplify things: very often you have slang introduced by the younger generation, most of which gets traded out as new generations take over the role of social rebels and arbiters of what is “cool” (to use an older slang term that seems to have survived). Some of this slang sticks, while most doesn’t.
It’s gotten worse over the last few generations, which is how today we end up with such tripe as “looksmaxxing” and other similar garbage words/concepts. The advent of “influencers” has led to a trend among some members of the media, including mainstream media, to adopt or create new terms to give their output a certain “hip” (to use another dated slang term) currency. Tradwife seems like one of these. Probably bougie as well. Many of these words are, to put it gently, cringeworthy, to use a Gen Y expression that apparently Gen Z now disdains. These annoying words won’t pass my lips either. But I wouldn’t worry too much about most of these words, as I doubt they’re here for the long haul.
A very oldie but goodie LP:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=How+to+Speak+Hip
Much of the old hipster jargon is still with us.
And of course https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMB5CzzWXMQ performed by Blossom Dearie
Cosplay is a Japanese invention portmanteau, describing a hobby, and part of their economy even. Now ours as well.
Its…. like “Lolikon” – Lolita Complex, which is young women dressing sexy like in anime/mangas.
I’m in favor of Japanese cultural imperialism, so I must allow.
I had a mentee/intern for my column, 22, she taught me “bougie”. Big with the kids. Meh.
“Tradwife” is annoying in every dimension: the thing, the word. I will not allow!
Always like the “Hated Words Section” of WEIT, btw. Kudos.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
Cosplay is one I’d heard of. I associate cosplay with adults dressed as babies and with weirdos pretending to be blow-up dolls at protests.
Apologies if my peeve has already been noted in this space. But that’s the word: “space.”
Those of you who used to be liberals — sorry. Now you are in liberal spaces. Ditto, you erstwhile conservatives. That’s not an adequate characterization. Now you occupy conservative spaces.
What used to be a place is now a space. I like tangible, touch, texture. i like to go someplace. It’s odd that i now am sent somespace.
In space no one can hear your peeve.
😀
That’s the first time I’ve heard of bougie as anything other than a guide rod to assist in endotracheal intubation! I had to use them several times in my professional life before retirement.
I first heard ‘bougie’ used when I was a teenager in the 1980s. It was bandied about in certain very pretentious crowds as a pejorative to be hurled at others who weren’t sufficiently pretentious.
I suspect that “-maxxing” (e.g., “looksmaxxing,” “sleepmaxxing”) will soon rise up your list, if you’ll pardon a little grumpmaxxing.
I am an English teacher who managed to escape to a less demanding field (no more themes to grade!), and I have two comments about our language.
First, everyone is within his or her right to detest any and all words. I, for one, will never accept “wellness” as anything other than an affront to the eye and ear.
Second, language changes, whether we like it or not.
I blame the English teachers myself. They did not instill sufficient discipline in us students on language and its use.
I was forewarned: in British English, momentarily always means “for a moment”. When landing at Toronto for the first time, the stewardess announced, “We will be landing momentarily.” I still could not help thinking, will we have time to get off? Alternate/alternative also bugs me.
Often, it is the uneducated who shape our language.
My printer displays messages such as “the printing will happen momentarily.”🙈
I believe you’re right, Rom. I picked up the correct meanings of “momentarily” and “presently” only on reading Strunk & White and, later, Fowler on my own. And I pay attention to those on-line “listicles” — will that word still need scare quotes 20 years hence? — with titles like “Twenty word pairs whose misuse will make you appear uneducated.” I didn’t study English in university but I did Philosophy, where precision is vital.
I find it hard to say I detest coinages and slang. Most won’t survive. Those that do must fill a purpose. “Cosplay” probably does. “Bougie” (for bourgeois), no. “Enshittify”? Maybe. Meanings are another matter. I wish “fulsome” had not acquired its sincere sense because now I can never use it pejoratively confident it will be understood as such. Meanings that slip and confuse, making a perfectly good word useless, should be detested….impotently, though, by old people like us.
Language changes. I’ hip to that. Or is it hep? But the difference between technical and casual language in this regard has been blurring over the last decade or two. In casual/social usage, unclear language or misunderstanding due to changes can be awkward, but is rarely expensive or dangerous.
When I am working with someone that pulls the “language changes” card, I bristle. In a technical field, words need precise definitions that are agreed to by all parties and remain consistent over time. I have been on several jobs where the “language changes” argument was used to justify poor and incorrect communication, in several cases costing tens of thousands of dollars, and on occasion leading to potential jeopardy of life or property.
It never was hep.
Do you think I do not kno that language changes? Of course it does: we are not speaking Old English.
That said, I do not have to LIKE the changes. Are you saying I should? If not, what is the point of pointng out that language changes?
I wonder if the earlier popularity of Latin within theology and science was because it preserved meanings better than vernacular languages which flexed and changed?
The semantic ambiguity goes back at least as far as Elizabethan English. KJV: “And, behold, I come quickly.”
Cosplay is drag for swans.
This comment makes no sense, at least to me.
It’s a slightly obscure pun – male and female swans are known as cobs and cos respectively, at least here in England.
Although I think the s may just be a pluralisation, so possibly “the WSL for swans” would have been better :-s
I think it may refer to the fact that a male swan is a cob.
To make matters worse, although James Thurber’s “the Wonderful O”, which is where I learned it from, uses cobs and cos, every other source I can now find uses cobs and pens.
So my pun may be not just obscure but wrong, alas.
‘Breaking news’ – seems to be the opening of every newscast on TV. Followed by ‘deep dive.’
“Sammich” for “sandwich.” Apparently this is how it’s pronounced in some places, although I’ve never heard it. I have started seeing it online, as in “So-and-so’s Deli makes the best sammiches.” Is this supposed to be cute?
Heard on a radio commercial “nugs” as short for chicken nuggets.
Gave me a new word to detest.
or shortened to “sammie
I hate “marginalized” as it is primarily used to excuse bad behavior and remove agency and responsibility. Besides, who exactly is supposed to be doing the “marginalizing”? How and why?
IMO it has some non-SJW uses, unlike its big ugly cousin “minoritized”.
I wouldn’t equal Cosplay to Halloween, because the latter is a single holiday with a specific tradition while the former is a much more widespread cultural phenomena.
Besides, as a German, saying that Cosplay is Halloween for adults struck me like saying that Halloween is Fastnacht for Americans. 😉 Both are true on a superficial level, but imprecise on a deeper one. As often, it depends on the context.
“Guac” for guacamole…”Pump” for pumpernickel
Dips and bread for idiots.
As a gamer, I have used the word cosplay for many years. I don’t usually cosplay myself. I appreciate the effort that goes into good cosplay when I see them at conventions. Just like good set and costume design in live theatre. I have no issue with the word, but respect that others outside the group may. In live theatre and cosplay, the actor is clearly different than the character.
I have always heard it pronounced as ‘Cos-play’. Where Cos is pronounced just like the first syllable of costume.
I am not convinced that ‘cosplay’ should apply to a tradwife influencer faking her life for Instagram. So I disagree with how Lauren Jackson is using the term. I also realize language grows by situations. Just like ‘woke’ no longer means what it originally meant.
I have tried and tried and tried to clarify the meaning of bougie. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t mean bourgeois; it means something more like pretentious. Many, however, seem to use it as a vague pejorative with no real content other than scorn.