Turbo-Cojones

[Dennis R. Preston]

Not my point. Calderon and Perez Tolon are (presumably) not
linguists. I simply doubted Ana Roca's referring to the testicles
sense of cajones as  connotation (when it is clearly denotation).

Huevos are another matter.

dInIs



>On 3/18/06, Dennis R. Preston <preston at msu.edu> wrote:
>  >
>>  I'm taking bets it was the journalist and not Ana Roca who said "the
>>  real connotation." The line between deno and conno may not always be
>>  clear, but it seems pretty straightforward here:
>>
>>  deno = testicles
>>  conno = courage, chutzpah, etc...
>
>There's a longer article about this in the print edition of today's
>Wall St. Journal (I don't see it in the online edition). Two other
>Spanish speakers are quoted saying about the same thing:
>
>----
>"In English, Turbo-Balls might not sound so offensive," says Luis
>Perez Tolon, an instructor at Miami-Dade College who supervises a
>writing program for Spanish-language network, Telemundo. "But in the
>Spanish-speaking community, it will always have a vulgar connotation."
>...
>"For us Latinos, it's a bad word. It's offensive," said Hector
>Calderon, maintenance supervisor of a fitness center in Los Angeles.
>But he conceds, "a billboard like that sure attracts attention."
>----
>
>The article also discusses the brouhaha over Madeleine Albright using
>the word "cojones" in 1996 on the floor of the U.N.  (She told Castro,
>"This is not cojones, this is cowardice," over the downing of two
>flights of exiles.)
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
Morrill Hall 15-C
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1036 USA
Office: (517) 353-4736
Fax: (517) 353-3755

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org