"fur bikini"

[Wilson Gray]

And it should be, in order to be punning language-consistent,
"unikini." I know that people say "unicycle, bicycle" and not
"monocycle, dicycle." Hence, I realize that this reduces my
observation to a mere pet peeve, but WTF? I had to get it off my
chest. :-)

-Wilson

On 1/9/07, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "fur bikini"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 12:42 PM -0500 1/9/07, Charles Doyle wrote:
> >I wasn't sure whether Fred meant by "two areas" top-and-bottom or
> >front-and-back.  "Bikini panties" certainly don't cover anything at
> >the top, and they may or may not offer any significant amount of
> >dorsal coverage.
> >
> >"Furkini"?  "Merkini"?
> >
> >--Charlie
>
> I like "merkini", although it's a bit opaque.
>
> The difference for me between "bikini panties" and "fur bikini" is
> that the former (given the semantics of compounding) are a kind of
> panties, viz. the kind that looks like what you have with a bikini,
> while the latter is a kind of bikini, which comes in two parts, top
> and bottom.  A woman whose bikini top is washed away in the ocean is
> now wearing a bikini top, not a bikini, and after all we do have the
> evidence from the reanalysis and coinage of "monokini", even though
> there's no "bi-" prefix historically in "bikini".
>
> LH
>
> >_________________________________________________
> >
> >---- Original message ----
> >>Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2007 11:31:48 -0500
> >>From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> >>Subject: Re: "fur bikini"
> >>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >>
> >>At 9:40 AM -0500 1/9/07, Fred Shapiro wrote:
> >>>On Tue, 9 Jan 2007, Charles Doyle wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>Insomniac TV was showing Hugh Hefner's 80th (!) birthday. His
> >>>>current girlfriend--buxom (of course), blonde (naturally?), and
> >>>>mid-twentyish--had organized a party for Hef. She had invited
> >>>>several elderly Playmates from the 1970s, who (she explained
> >>>>matter-of-factly) had posed in the magazine in the old-fashioned
> >>>>style--in "fur bikinis." That is, they did not shave (or
> >>>>otherwise depilate) their pubic area.
> >
> >>>
> >>>This seems like an odd term, in that the essence of a bikini is
> >>>that it covers (at least minimally) two areas of a woman's body,
> >>>whereas the fur here presumably covers only one area.
> >>>
> >>>Fred
> >
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Indeed; seems more like a retronymic fur monokini.
> >>
> >>LH
> >
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Sam'l Clemens

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