P.E.P.?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Aug 10, 2007, at 10:12 AM, Ron Butters wrote:

> I'm not sure that the time does match up. PEP was (as a noun) an
> outdated
> slang term in the 1950s., at least for me: I thought of it as a
> term favored by
> people born before 1920...
>
>> [Dave Borowitz] This is pure speculation, but consider the target
>> audience of erectile
>> dysfunction ads. Using a slang term from baby boomers' youth for
>> that kind
>> of product could help recall their own younger, more vigorous
>> days. (I say
>> this without being particularly confident that the timing matches
>> up.)

one place "pep" lives on is in the pep squads and pep bands of many
schools and colleges; try googling on "pep squad" and "pep band".
(there was even a 1998 movie Pep Squad.)

but i suspect that it's not the currency of the word that's important
in the ad; all that's required is that readers recognize it as a word
meaning something like 'vigor', whether or not they use it themselves.

spammers are constantly searching for vocabulary that readers will
recognize and understand but spam filters won't catch.  i'd imagine
that "vigor" is now a flag to many bayesian spam filters, so it makes
sense for the spammers to go for a somewhat outdated (but
interpretable) expression.

in fact, they went a couple of steps further: they used an all-caps
version (so that the expression looks like an abbreviation), *and*
they inserted periods (underlines and spaces are also popular), so
that the sequence P.E.P. doesn't look like a word to search programs,
but is easily perceived as one by human beings.

i posted a few days ago on the Language Log on the tactics of spamming:

   AZ, 8/6/07: Annals of spam:
   http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004797.html

(i assume that PEP as an abbreviation for "pudendal evoked potential"
-- i'm not making this up -- is irrelevant to the ad; i'd guess that
the spammers didn't know this technical term,)

arnold

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