Dips, dipshits, dipsticks, dipwads, diphthongs

Fri Dec 9 16:59:24 UTC 2011

There is also "diphead."

JL

On Fri, Dec 9, 2011 at 11:22 AM, Neal Whitman <nwhitman at ameritech.net> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Neal Whitman <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Dips, dipshits, dipsticks, dipwads, diphthongs
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Thanks for the additional datum; I hadn't known about either EST or the
> "Mork and Mindy" spoof. Was Erhard known to call people assholes in his
> seminars?
>
> Here's the text of the piece:
>
> Oy, You Diphthong!
>
>
>
> I've been coaching a team of three eighth-grade girls for the North American
> Computational Linguistics Olympiad, as one of the co-curricular clubs that
> are offered at my sons' school. We've been having fun working what amounts
> to logic puzzles with a linguistic slant, and I've been introducing various
> linguistic concepts as they become relevant. A few weeks ago, as we worked
> our way through a puzzle whose solution depended on recognizing the length
> of a syllable, I decided it would be useful for the team to know the word
> diphthong.
>
>
>
> A diphthong is a sequence of two vowel sounds pronounced in the same
> syllable. The two most easily recognized diphthongs in English are [??] as
> in toy, and [a?] as in how. Also very common is [a?], which many Americans
> are more used to thinking of as "long I." Pronounce a word like high slowly,
> and you can actually feel your tongue sliding from the position for "ah"
> toward the position for "ee." The diphthong [e?] has the same kind of
> recognition problem: It's commonly known as "long A." But pronounce hey very
> slowly, and you can feel and hear the transition from "eh" to something
> close to "ee." Long O is a diphthong, too: [o?]. Say hoe slowly, and you can
> hear and feel the transition from an "oh" like the ones in Minnesota, don'tcha
> know to an "oo." Some lesser-known diphthongs end in schwa, namely the [u?]
> heard in words like cool and rule, and the [i?] heard in Neal, the Real
> Deal. Finally, depending on how you define them, diphthongs can even include
> the "yu" sequence in cute (i.e., think of it as [iu]) or the "we" sequences
> in queen (think of it as [ui]).
>
>
>
> I wasn't going to get into all that, though. All the team needed to know was
> that two vowel sounds run together were a diphthong.
>
>
>
> "What?" I asked when I noticed all three of them were stifling their
> laughter. One of them clued me in.
>
>
>
> "We, uh, sometimes call each other diphthongs for an insult," she said.
>
>
>
> That was my introduction to pejorative diphthong, or as it's often spelled
> with this meaning, dipthong. (Actually, that spelling and pronunciation do
> have historical precedent: The word was borrowed from French, where it was
> originally spelled dyptongue, and the "dip" pronunciation is recognized in
> several dictionaries.) Internet searches for "what a dip(h)thong," "such a
> dip(h)thong," and "you dip(h)thong" bring up gems like:
>
>
>
> ·        "You're such a diphthong!" This is the new favorite saying of the
> kids on my block. (link
> [http://thehormonezone.blogspot.com/2010/08/youre-such-dipthong.html])
>
>
>
> ·        My mom thought this was some kind of insult ("you are such a
> dipthong"). She was a little sad to find out it was something real. (link
> [http://www.inherentlyfunny.com/funny-7871-dipthong.html])
>
>
>
> ·        Finn needs to stop being such a dipthong. (link
> [http://z13.invisionfree.com/seddie/index.php?showtopic=651&st=420])
>
>
>
> ·        Now if you'll excuse me, my son just called me a "dipthong"- most
> likely because I plopped him in front of iCarly to write this blog. (link
> [http://callingallcoolmoms.com/whats-a-dipthong-anyway])
>
>
>
> ·        "Not you, dipthong!" she said, with a harsh tone in her voice.
> Carly was shocked at her insult while Freddie said nothing. "Did you just
> call me dipthong?" Carly asked, not sure if she heard her right. (link
> [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6099310/1/iMake_Cologne])
>
>
>
> As you may have gathered from the last two examples, there is an association
> between pejorative diphthong and the Nickelodeon TV show iCarly. On his
> blog, the creator of the show Dan Schneider wrote about
> [http://danwarp.blogspot.com/2009/07/icarly-fun-facts-about-itwins.html] the
> July 11, 2009 episode "iTwins":
>
>
>
> Sam calls Freddie a diphthong. I love it. It sounds so abrasive and crude.
> But do you know what a diphthong really is? It's "an unsegmentable, gliding
> speech sound varying continuously in phonetic quality but held to be a
> single sound or phoneme and identified by its apparent beginning and ending
> sound, as the oi-sound of toy or boil." Yay, we're learning!
>
>
>
> Diphthong is also mined for humor in this clip
> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlAaqVDSyEc] from a later episode in 2009.
>
>
>
> Though iCarly may have helped the spread of pejorative diphthong, it didn't
> invent it. This Urban Dictionary entry
> [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=diphthong] is from October
> 2007, scarcely a month after iCarly began airing:
>
>
>
> DIPHTHONG
>
> A vowel combination consisting of a weak vowel and a strong one.
>
>
>
> It is more commonly used as an insult, seeing as it is a legitimately funny
> word.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Language Log, Chris Potts quoted
> [http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=978] a line of dialogue from
> Jonathan Lethem's book Motherless Brooklyn, published in 2000: "If I wanted
> a gun, I'd get a gun, you diphthong."
> [http://books.google.com/books?id=RXxYBPpeb-AC&lpg=PT194&ots=lrgRCgBO9i&dq=%22you%20dipthong%7Cdiphthong%22&pg=PT194#v=onepage&q=%22you%20dipthong%7Cdiphthong%22&f=false]
> Furthermore, several commenters on the post tell of using diphthong as an
> insult during their elementary- and middle-school days. E. Levin wrote:
>
>
>
> "Diphthong" was a common insult in my elementary school until the music
> teacher, stepping in to arbitrate one particularly loud conflict, burst out
> laughing. I don't know how it got started on our playground, but 15 years
> later, I still can't use it without feeling like a second-grader.
>
>
>
> Another commenter named Melissa wrote in with what became the title of this
> column.
>
> Earlier still is the character of Dipthong "Dip" Dimquest, from a 1990 issue
> of Pulphouse magazine
> [http://books.google.com/books?id=dZQsAQAAIAAJ&q=%22dipthong+dimquest%22&dq=%22dipthong+dimquest%22&hl=en&ei=qYvfTvb-EKTc0QGywM2eBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAA].
> As an author, he refuses to adopt a pen name such as Dennis Daniels, saying,
> "I've put up with the name for thirty years, endured the dumb jokes and
> crank phone calls for as long as I can remember. I'm not about to toss in
> the towel now."
>
> Several commenters on the Language Log post observe that for diphthong to
> sound maximally insulting, it needs to be pronounced "dip-thong," not
> "dif-thong." This is true: Only in this way can the word piggyback on the
> established negative connotations of the word dip. As early as 1932,
> according to the Oxford English Dictionary, dip was being used as an insult.
> The first attestation is from an issue of American Speech. It was created by
> backformation from the adjective dippy, of obscure origin. Dippy goes back
> to at least 1902. Dippy peaked in the 1930s, and a Disney character named
> Dippy Dawg appeared in a few cartoon shorts in 1932 and 1933 before being
> renamed Goofy [http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Goofy]. Though less popular now,
> dippy is still hanging on, sometimes showing up in the collocation hippie
> dippie, as it did in the late 1960s with George Carlin's character of Al
> Sleet, the Hippie-Dippie Weatherman
> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2HpB5CGfLQ].
>
> By that time, the first dip-based compound pejorative had made its debut in
> a near-rhyme for dipstick, and American Speech is again the source of the
> OED's first attestation, from 1963. Dipstick itself, which in its original
> sense refers to a calibrated stick used to measure the depth of a fluid,
> began its second career as an insult a little bit later. Its earliest OED
> citation is from 1968, though if you're my age you probably remember it from
> The Dukes of Hazzard
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheriff_Rosco_P._Coltrane#General_information].
> Dipwad came a little later; the earliest I've found it in Google Books is
> 1984.
>
> Of course, diphthong carries an extra dose of funny from its second
> syllable. Although it comes from the Greek di- "two" and and phthongos
> "sound," English phonotactics breaks it up as dip(h)- and -thong. Now that
> thong has come to have as its primary meaning a type of skimpy swimsuit or
> underwear, it makes diphthong sound even more inappropriate, as it did to
> one teenage girl:
>
> I came to the next team with a printout of Chris Potts's blog post, plus one
> I'd written
> [http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2005/12/14/diphthongs-for-doug/] about
> my son back in 2006, and the team went diphthong-crazy. They wrote on the
> whiteboard, "Word of the day: DIPTHONG"; "Dipthongs are amazing"; and "This
> message has been brought to you by Linguistic Olympiad Club. 'We'll make
> dipthongs out of you!'TM" Before all was said and done, they had decided to
> rename their team the Diphthongs.
>
> "All right, all you diphthongs," I said. "Let's get to work."
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Geoffrey Nunberg" <nunberg at ISCHOOL.BERKELEY.EDU>
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Sent: Friday, December 09, 2011 12:30 AM
> Subject: Re: Dips, dipshits, dipsticks, dipwads, diphthongs
>
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail
>> header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Geoffrey Nunberg <nunberg at ISCHOOL.BERKELEY.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: Dips, dipshits, dipsticks, dipwads, diphthongs
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> I couldn't get into the site to read the piece (I have a password
>> somewhere), so you may have touched on this, but "You're all dipsticks"
>> was the denatured phrase used in place of "You're all assholes" in the
>> 1979 Mork and Mindy sendup of est in which David Letterman played the
>> mercenary founder of Ellsworth Revitalization Konditioning, or erk.
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mork_Goes_Erk)
>>
>> Geoff
>>
>>> From: Neal Whitman <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET>
>>> Date: December 8, 2011 7:31:57 AM PST
>>> Subject: Dips, dipshits, dipsticks, dipwads, diphthongs
>>>
>>>
>>> An overview of "dip"-based pejoratives, inspired by finding out that some
>>> people use "dip(h)thong" as an insult (subscription required):
>>> http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/dictionary/3058/
>>>
>>> This 2009 Language Log post by Chris Potts had some useful reader
>>> comments:
>>> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=978
>>>
>>> Neal Whitman
>>
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>
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