slang list

[Dennis R. Preston]

I speak French that you do not want to  hear. Once I quaked in
linguistic horror as I entered a French pharmacy to buy the athlete's
foot medicine I so sorely needed. Would it be medicine for the "foot
of the athlete" (the English model), or the "mushrooms of the foot"
(the German model). I could say both in French, but which to say?
What a dilemma!

dInIs

>         Note that these have different characteristics.  "Halitosis" and
>"B.O." were coined names for recognized problems that already had names
>("bad breath" and "body odor," respectively).  The new, euphemistic name
>made the problem less of a social stigma, allowing the consumer to
>safely buy a product to combat it.  "Athlete's foot" (instead of "foot
>fungus") is in this category too.
>
>         "Ring around the collar" and "tattle-tale gray," on the other
>hand, were coined terms to address a phenomenon that previously had
>barely even been perceived and did not have its own name:  that clothes
>washed in laundry soap did not get as white as clothes washed in modern
>detergents.
>
>John Baker
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
>Of Laurence Horn
>Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2005 2:44 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: slang list
>
>>There were a lot of these anxiety-producing expressions in ad writing
>>in those days:
>>"Halitosis" (Listerine)
>>"B.O." (Lifebuoy)
>>"Tattle-tale Gray" (Fels Naptha soap)
>>"Pink Toothbrush" (Can't remember who promoted this worry) There was
>>some shaming term for dandruff which I have forgotten, promoted by
>>Fitch's Shampoo.
>
>And let's not forget "Ring around the collar", an insidious and
>generally fatal disorder, curable only by I forget which product.
>
>>Not that the technique began or ended there, but these I remember as
>>being more or less contemporaneous with "gaposis."
>>
>>A. Murie
>>
>>~@:>   ~@:>   ~@:>   ~@:>


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages
A-740 Wells Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: (517) 432-3099
Fax: (517) 432-2736
preston at msu.edu