Memory Lane
Remember when The Onion had sharp, on-the-ball writers and copy editors? Yeah, those were the days. Now we get things like this:
Don't get me wrong—I love my job and I enjoy working my ill-informed fans into a frenzy by tapping into their deep-seeded, ignorant fears of people who are different from them.
We may be losing "decimate" and "hoi polloi" (apparently a lot of people think it means "the upper crust" and not "the [common] people"), but the expression intended above is "deep-seated", and ought to remain so. (College Humor knows what's what.)
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Remember when Failblog was excellent? Now they'll put up anything: you can stick a soft-core porno movie on the kids' DVD shelf at your local video store and take a picture of it and they'll post it. And they'll also post things like this:
Have we actually lost the euphemism "four-letter word" as something that means "swear word or otherwise bad thing"? Are there actually people who don't know what it means, and take it literally?
I guess so.
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At least we've still got Ugliest Tattoos, where you can see treats like this:
Funny may be a matter of taste, and fails may not be what they used to be, but ugly tattoos are forever.
Don't get me wrong—I love my job and I enjoy working my ill-informed fans into a frenzy by tapping into their deep-seeded, ignorant fears of people who are different from them.
We may be losing "decimate" and "hoi polloi" (apparently a lot of people think it means "the upper crust" and not "the [common] people"), but the expression intended above is "deep-seated", and ought to remain so. (College Humor knows what's what.)
+
Remember when Failblog was excellent? Now they'll put up anything: you can stick a soft-core porno movie on the kids' DVD shelf at your local video store and take a picture of it and they'll post it. And they'll also post things like this:
Have we actually lost the euphemism "four-letter word" as something that means "swear word or otherwise bad thing"? Are there actually people who don't know what it means, and take it literally?I guess so.
+
At least we've still got Ugliest Tattoos, where you can see treats like this:
Funny may be a matter of taste, and fails may not be what they used to be, but ugly tattoos are forever.
posted by pyramus | 1:25 AM
2 Comments:
Interesting thing is hoi polloi (literally the majority) did not originally have a negative meaning, as it was used in classical oration to contrast with hoi oligoi (the few, the oligarchy of heritage/land owning). But it then deteriorated into a negative usage synonymous of "plebs" in Roman times. Funny, no?
Yeah, I don't know how "hoi polloi" came to mean "the upper class", which the Slate article I referred to says is becoming more and more common. When I was growing up, it wasn't exactly on everyone's lips, but it meant only one thing: "the people", or, I guess more accurately, "the common people" (that Roman devolution you mentioned).
How nice to have a native Greek speaker commenting! Apart from recognizing a fair bit of English's considerable Greek heritage (so often filtered through Latin), I know nothing of the language, but it's good to have someone around to keep me on my toes if need be.
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