[Ads-l] "trikini" as WOTY candidate

[Stanton McCandlish]

Seems to be a new and unaware coinage, not a bending of the original
sense.  "Trikini" has long meant a bikini bottom (minuscule or proper) with
pasties of one size or another (sometimes full-cup size, sometimes just
nipple hats).  I encountered that sense in the early '80s more than once,
in *Playboy* and other nudie mags, and maybe the annual *Sports Illustrated*
Swimsuit Issue. Junior high and high school boys, as I was then, traded
purloined-from-dads-and-uncles issues of such magazines like precious
artifacts, back in the pre-Internet days.

Other forms of three-piece ladies' swimwear have been around since the
concept was invented; the earliest, in the late Victorian era, seemed to
consist of a top, some capris-style pants and a skirt; much later, a common
combo has been a bikini and a matching asymmetrical skirt-scarf-thing that
covers the backside or one hip. I've never seen these referred to as
trikinis, so I don't think "any of various designs of ladies’ swimsuit
which consist of three main areas of fabric" is a viable definition.
Rather, we have a decades-old pasties+bottom definition, and a
protologism for bikini+mask.


On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 7:18 AM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> OK, I withdraw the "brand-new" comment.  Nothing entirely new under the
> summer sun, it appears--although we can still quibble over whether the new
> trikini, by virtue of the matching mask of the same fabric, represents a
> new sense of the technical term or merely a new use, depending on the
> specificity of the original entry. If we go with "Any of various designs of
> ladies’ swimsuit which consist of three main areas of fabric", the new
> version is indeed just a new use of the original (although requiring a
> rather different design than the one described in the OED's
> parenthetical).  A remaining question is whether the monokini (item and
> name) dates to 1964 (as in the wiki-entry) or 1967 (as above).
>
>
> LH
>
> On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 10:08 AM Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > > On May 19, 2020, at 6:53 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > and eventually least likely to succeed, but still...
> > >
> > > https://people.com/style/trikini-is-bikini-with-matching-face-mask/
> > >
> >
> https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Style/designer-launches-trikini-beachwear-design-complete-matching-bikini/story
> > >
> > > The Xkini reanalysis itself is old hat, as it were, dating back to Rudi
> > > Gernreich's late, (un)lamented "monokini" from 1964,
> > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monokini.  But "trikini" is, I'm pretty
> > sure,
> > > brand-new for the season.
> >
> > on my blog:
> >
> > 5/24/11: The marmaxi:
> > https://arnoldzwicky.org/2011/05/24/the-marmaxi/
> >
> > [on monokini, and then:] from OED2 under trikini n.:
> > ...
> > Any of various designs of ladies’ swimsuit which consist of three main
> > areas of fabric (as pants and a separate covering for each breast).
> [cites
> > from 1967, when Rudi Gernreich created the garment and coined the name,
> on]
> > ...
> > Other innovations in -kini (see the Wikipedia page on bikini variants):
> > microkini (super small), tankini (with tank top), pubikini (exposing
> pubic
> > hair), veilkini (for modesty). The element -kini ‘(women’s) bathing suit’
> > seems to be on its way to becoming a libfix (and -tini ‘kind of martini’
> > might be as well).
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

------------------------------------------------------------
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