Verb of the Day: “schlong”

Suddenly that term is in the headlines, thanks to the latest outburst from The Donald (whom, by now, out of due respect, we should rather designate:  The Trump).

I worked for a while at Merriam-Webster, based in Springfield, Massachusetts.  Our dictionaries were rather good as regards the vocabulary of Roman Catholicism (and this, based largely on the makeup of the local workforce), not so good on Yiddishisms in English (“Yinglish”).  For that, you were better off with Random House.

I grew up near New York, and was sometimes surprised at the absence, from the M-W Collegiate, of terms derived from Yiddish, which to me were quite familiar -- though merely by osmosis;  I did not grow up in an especially Jewish environment.  Whereas Trump -- a New York macher -- would definitely know these things.

Anyhow:  schlong  (noun) ‘penis’  looks to derive (via Yiddish) from German Schlange ‘snake’ (via geometric resemblance -- though only in the flaccid state).  From that, to its use as a verb, is (as Bertie Wooster would say) “but the work of an instant”.  When Der Trumpmeister said that Obama “schlonged” Hillary, he meant (literally) that he defeated her, but (metaphorically) that he … shtupped her.  (Pardon my Yiddish.)

Today’s Washington Post has a commendable article “Donald Trump’s ‘schlonged': A linguistic investigation”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/12/22/donald-trumps-schlonged-a-linguistic-investigation/

Kudos in particular that they consulted Steven Pinker (whom, in these pages, we have often had occasion to praise) before posting.  Only … here, the professor is not at his best:  suggesting that the verbal use was a mere “malaprop” (i.e., malapropism), stemming from ignorance.   Whereas:  even had no-one ever before used the noun as a verb in this way, that use still lay ready to hand, for any competent native speaker.  Moreover, the whole shtick the Post appends, re verbing nouns, is quite périmé; it had a certain (erroneous) point, fifty years ago, but not now. And indeed, the very article adduces attestations, prior to the cause célèbre in question, that antedate the use.  Trump's offense was purely social, not linguistic.

Philological note:   Our (Yinglish) word schmuck, likewise derives  via Yiddish  from German: literally, ‘decoration’; metonymically, ‘membrum virilis’.  Yet thence, the term boogied semantically to designate … well … you know … a schmuck -- anglicè, a ‘dickhead’, a ‘dork’.

As for Schlange, it has no etymological equivalent in English, though it might be related to our word sling.   The word Schlange was coined (replacing earlier words like Natter (compare English adder) or Unke, as a deverbal, by reference to its slithering, looping motion.  English snake is likewise deverbal, being related to an old word meaning 'crawl'.

Finally, shtupp looks likely related to German stopfen ‘to stuff’;  if so, there is a parallel semantic evolution in (British) English, to ‘get stuffed’.

Doubtless it was such considerations as these, rather than mere churlishness, which prompted the glossophilic candidate to avail himself of so colorful a verb.

Herr Doktor Trumpf, pondering Teutonic etymologies

The BBC has an informative article on the matter here:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35167332

For further merry musings on word origins, click here.

Word of the day: psychosis

Well I recall, from several decades ago, when a friend explained to me the difference between a schlemiehl and a schlemassel:

   The schlemiehl is a klutz who is always spilling the coffee.

   The schlemassel is the one it usually gets spilled on.

In this spirit, we proceed to differentiate the neurotic from the psychotic, and indeed from the sociopath.

  Neurotic:  Think Woody Allen.

  Sociopath:  Think Hannibal Lector or the Joker.

And psychotic?  Well, it’s harder to think of a (non-sociopathic) cinematic representative.  For the psychotic has become quite unmoored from reality, the contents of the unconscious backflushing into the ego and cognitively disabling the patient.   Not an interesting subject for art.

Neurosis is the everyday lot of all of us, to some extent.  Sociopaths are a matter for the police.  And psychotics belong in an asylum.

~

Now, if that were all there were to it, I wouldn’t have bothered to post.  But there is a linguistic subtlety, which shades into something politically crucial. 

Headline in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/25/world/europe/in-french-port-city-calais-a-real-psychosis.html?ref=world

The reference is to the thousands of increasingly unruly illegal aliens, most from the Horn of Africa, who have collected in the tunnel- and ferry-town of Calais, on the English Channel.   A picturesque village has become a nightmare landscape. The problem has been building for years, and is swept under the rug by the socialo French government, paralyzed by political correctness.

Indeed the Times article pulls no punches, making clear how bad things have become.  (It even mentions the very touchy subject of African intruders raping Frenchwomen, which I had not seen mention of in the French press;  too hot to handle.)  But as so often happens in the NYTimes, the headline writer tries to spin things into bien-pensant correctitude.   For:  if the attitude of the French residents of Calais is a “psychosis”, then they are psychotic, delusional, and out of touch.  And the Eingdringlinge may be as sweet and innocent as the Gentle Giant, Saint Skittles, the Sandwich Man, or suchlike paladins.

Here, however (unlike earlier cases we have reported), the after-inkslinger has not made the verbiage up out of whole cloth:  for indeed the article contains the following line:

“The discontent has turned into a real psychosis,” said Emmanuel Agius, the deputy mayor of Calais and a member of the conservative Union for a Popular Movement party. “The migrants of today no longer fear breaking the laws.”

Yet even from this very paragraph, it is clear that the deputy mayor is not dismissing the concerns of his electorate as being merely delusional (psychotic sensu stricto);  just the contrary.  So what is going on?

What is going on is that the speaker undoubtedly said, “C’est une vrai psychose.”   And the reporter, lazily or inexpertly, translated psychose as psychosis.

The French word, however, is (outside of technical psychiatric contexts) about a thousand times more common than the English cognate;  its commonest use can best be translated as ‘panic’, specifically as moral panic (for which see Wikipedia).

 

http://www.nzz.ch/international/ein-neonazi-profiliert-sich-1.18412750?extcid=Newsletter_28102014_Top-News_am_Morgen

Thus, a parallel to the crisis outlined here:

   http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/10/acronym-of-day-hogesa.html

Official inaction, even denial;  and a public pushback that, having no moderate outlet allowed, turns ugly.