reanalysis of "mondo"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 12:38:30 -0400, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
wrote:

>Anu Garg's wordsmith list, <wsmith at wordsmith.org>, just sent out this
>nice example of reanalysis I hadn't thought of:
>=================
>mondo (mon-DO) adjective
>
>    Huge; enormous; ultimate.
>
>adverb
>
>    Extremely, very.
>
>[After 1966 movie Mondo Bizarro (literally "Bizarre World" but
>interpreted as "very bizarre"), where mondo is from the 1961 Italian
>movie Mondo Cane (A Dog's World) and reinterpreted as an intensifier.
>More on this movie at: http://imdb.com/title/tt0188909/ ]
[...]
>==================
>Other than the odd pronunciation guide (does anyone, in either
>English or Italian, really stress "mondo" on the second syllable?),
>this seems right.  "Mondo" provides a really nice example of
>reinterpretation through opacity, like "Wherefore art thou, Romeo?"
>or "chili" or even "bead".  (Sorry if all this is in HDAS; I don't
>have my copy on me.)

And reanalyzed "mondo" seems to have influenced the formation of "mongo"
('huge'), says HDAS. The clipping of "humongous" to "(hu)mongo" was also
helped along by the clipping of "mongoloid" to "mongo" ('idiot').

In a thread last year, Page Stephens recalled:

-----
Do any of you remember the complaints about the name Mongo which Mel
Brooks used for a huge dimwitted person played by Alex Karras as I
recall in "Blazing Saddles"?

Defenders of the retarded got up in arms and accused Brooks of insulting
the retarded by calling them mongoloids.

Brooks then had to explain to them that it had nothing whatsoever to do
with any insult but was merely a cheap joke since when Mongo rides into
town a Mexican shouts out, "Mongo, Santamaria!"
-----

So was Mongo in "Blazing Saddles" understood as (hu)mongo(us), or
mongo(loid), or both? The "Mongo" nickname was more obviously offensive
when used in "There's Something About Mary", in a scene where the
tasteless Pat Healy (Matt Dillon) is trying to impress Mary (Cameron
Diaz), who works with the mentally disabled (including her brother). He
explains that he too "works with retards" and begins to reminisce,
"There's this one kid, we call him Mongo, on account of he's a mongoloid.
He got out of his cage once and..." (much to Mary's horror).

http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/There's-Something-About-Mary.html


--Ben Zimmer