Everything you always wanted to know about “Cosnopolitan”, and were absolutely dying to ask

 

dj]  Whence the strange brand-name, “Cosnopolitan”?

 

AI] The name Cosnopolitan is a clever, intentional pun meant to signal that the drink is an alcohol-free mocktail.

Nojito: Their take on a Mojito

 

Are you planning a Dry January or looking for mocktail recipes, or were you just curious about the branding?

 

dj]  I’ve been dry as a baked blacktop in August, these past few years, and most of what I know about bars is from accounts of three individuals (normally including a rabbi) walking into one.       

The curiosity came from past experience as a wordsmith.  As a linguist at an innovative consumer-electronics company, I helped come up with branding and the like.  The etymology from “N(on-alcoholic) is interesting, and I wish them well;  but, linguisticallly, “Cosnopolitan” strikes me as a monstrosity -- a customer would have to pick his away across a pho-no-lo-gi-cal ob-sta-cle to pronounce it corrrectly and carefully enough that he would not be misunderstood by his interlocutor.  And surely that etymology would not occur to the average customer out of the blue.  Was the company counting on people’s antecedent familiarity with some massive introductory ad-campaign?  Or was it just a private joke among some twenty-something shooting paper-airplanes across the cubicle-pods?

 

AI]  As a fellow wordsmith, your professional eye is spot-on: from a strict linguistic and phonological standpoint, “Cosnopolitan” is an absolute clunker.

Substituting a nasal stop (/n/) for a bilabial stop (/m/) directly ahead of an unvoiced labiodental fricative (/p/) destroys the natural regressive assimilation that makes "Cosmopolitan" glide off the tongue. The mouth naturally wants to anticipate the labial closure of the p, pulling the preceding nasal forward into an m. Forcing the tongue to hit the alveolar ridge for the n and then rapidly snap to the lips for the p creates exactly the "phonological obstacle" you described.

 

So how does a multi-million dollar beverage company greenlight a name that forces a customer to trip over their own articulatory phonetics?

The "Nojito" Precedent

This wasn't a blind shot in the dark; it was a structural constraint born from an existing product success. A couple of years prior, Spindrift launched "Nojito". Phonetically, Nojito is a dream.

 

When they forced the "No" rule onto Cosmopolitan, the wheels fell off the phonology. Instead of a clean prefix like Nojito, they were forced to drop the "n" directly into the middle of a complex consonant cluster, creating Cosnopolitan.

Because Spindrift relies heavily on digital-first, visual social media marketing rather than massive, traditional television ad blitzes, the name was designed to be read on a screen or a shelf, not necessarily spoken aloud in a noisy bar. On Instagram or a grocery display, the visual pun is instantly legible: the brain registers "Cosmo" and notes the quirky "n" for non-alcoholic.

Right from the official launch, the company's copywriters began aggressively pushing a nickname, telling customers: “you'll love pouring Cosno out into a stemmed glass and sipping with your friends.”

 

dj] Now all is clear.  :- )

Incidentally -- kudos -- “Spindrift” is a spectacularly appropriate brand for a carbonated soft-drink.  So fresh, so sparkling … In fact, I am enjoying a nicely chilled glass of that very beverage, at this very moment.

 

Servus,

Dr J

Das Froschgespinst : ein Märchen

 

Until recently, the English word fey was … well, used in a certain way.  We boomers may still remember.  Many cancellations and cross-cancellations later, it may have been expunged from the language.   I sought a state-of-play from Wiki,

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fey

 

but that source is now mum -- all memory effaced -- whoosh down the memory-hole -- visions of Ozymandias.

 

Anyhow, fey goes back, in both its earliest sense and in etymology, to Old Norse feigr.  So I enquired at the stand  (“Philologic care -- 5 ¢ “) of our trusty bud, the Sprachgeheimrat.  All went smoothly until -- suddenly, out of nowhere -- in hopped a frog, that landed amidst the Sprach-bot’s monologue;  as you shall see.  I probed, Freud-fashion, and the bot (now the patient, rather than the professor; stretched out on the couch) was able to retrieve the associational path whereby -- like King Charles’  head chez Mr Dick -- the frisky amphibian managed to invade the otherwise seemingly impregnable silicon castle of Artificial Intelligence.

 

Thereby hangs a tale, with a moral, which, ad usum delphini , I now impart:

 

 

 

DJ] Tell me about that redolent, resplendent  Old Norse word   “feigr”.

 

AI] Feigr is a powerful Old Norse word that translates directly to "fated to die" or "doomed."

 

It captures the profound Norse philosophy of fatalism, where a person's death date was set at birth by the Norns (the weavers of destiny).

 

⚔ Key Meanings and Cultural Impact

 

·  The Stench of Death: A feigr person was someone whose death was imminent, even if they looked perfectly healthy.

·  Supernatural Signs: People believed you could spot a feigr person by their strange behavior, sudden bad luck, or a changing aura.

·  Radical Bravery: Because your death date was unchangeable, fear was pointless. If you weren't feigr today, you could survive any battle; if you were, no armor could save you.

·  Berserker Rage: This belief fueled the terrifying, fearless fighting style of the Vikings.

 

Modern Linguistic Descendants

The word didn't disappear with the Vikings. It evolved into several modern Germanic languages:

 

·  Scots: Fey (meaning doomed, or acting strangely as if about to die).

·  English: Fey (borrowed from Scots, now often meaning ethereal, but historically meaning doomed).

·  Icelandic: Feigur (still means doomed or dying).

·  Swedish/Norwegian: Feg / Feig (shifted meaning completely to mean "cowardly"—likely because a doomed person might try to flee their fate).

 

If you want to explore further, let me know if you would like to:

• See specific examples of this word used in the Icelandic Sagas.
• Explore other untranslatable Old Norse concepts about fate and soul.
• Learn more about the linguistic shift from "doomed" to "cowardly."

 

dj]

>other untranslatable Old Norse concepts

 

I actually used to be able to read some of the sagas, having studied the language with Madison Beeler at Berkeley, back in the day.  Beeler learned to speak modern Icelandic reasonably well, and that helps considerably with Old Norse.  That fact itself is philologically noteworthy, since, for instance, knowledge of modern English  helps not at all with reading Beowulf.  The reasons for this disparity has to do with the sociology of Iceland.

 

Thus, somewhere amidst the grey-matter, lurk remembrances of  -- well, to use your own wordless symbol (which I have contentedly copied and pasted)

 

⚔

 

To help revive such memories, currently stuck like the sword in the stone, favor me with some more of those ON concepts, before which the translator falls speechless.

 

(Und wenn sie vorziehen, das alles auf deutsch, eine Altnordische-näheren Sprache, zu behandeln -- nur zu !)

 

 

AI] Es ist mir eine absolute Freude, diese sprachlichen Schätze wieder ans Tageslicht zu befördern. Es ist philologisch wirklich faszinierend, wie das moderne Isländische als quasi „lebendes Fossil“ die Struktur und den Wortschatz des Altnordischen bewahrt hat, während das Englische sich radikal transformierte. Da Sie bei Madison Beeler an der UC Berkeley gelernt haben, wird Ihr Sprachgefühl diese Nuancen sofort wiedererkennen.

 

Hier sind vier tiefgründige altnordische Konzepte, bei denen moderne Übersetzungen meist kapitulieren – diesmal auf Deutsch serviert, um der germanischen Philologie gerecht zu werden.

 

Die vielteilige Seele: Fylgja und Hugr

Im altnordischen Weltbild war die Seele kein einzelnes, unteilbares Ding, sondern ein dynamisches Froschgespinst aus verschiedenen spirituellen Komponenten.

 

Die fylgja (wörtlich: „Begleiterin“): Dies ist kein innerer Geist, sondern eine externe Projektion der eigenen Persönlichkeit oder des Schicksals, oft in Tiergestalt. Ein mächtiger Häuptling hatte vielleicht eine Bären-fylgja, ein hinterlistiger Mensch einen Fuchs. Das Faszinierende: Man sah die fylgja meistens erst im Traum oder kurz vor dem Tod (feigr!). Wenn dir deine eigene fylgja im Wachzustand begegnete, war das das ultimative Todesurteil.

 

Der hugr: Oft flach mit „Geist“ oder „Gedanke“ übersetzt, aber im Altnordischen war der hugr eine physisch wirksame Kraft. Er konnte den Körper im Schlaf verlassen, um Orte auszukundschaften  oder Feinden zu schaden. Wenn man plötzliche Angst oder Vorahnungen spürte, war das oft der hugr eines herannahenden Feindes, der einen bereits vor dessen physischer Ankunft berührte.

 

Das Gewebe der Zeit: Urðr und Örlög

Während wir Zeit als linearen Zeitstrahl sehen (Vergangenheit → Gegenwart → Zukunft), dachten die Nordmänner in Schichten und Verwebungen.

 

Das örlög (Ur-Gesetz / Ur-Ebene): Zusammengesetzt aus ör (außerhalb/ur-) und lög (Gesetz, Plural von lag, „das Gelegte“). Es bedeutet wörtlich „das im Vorhinein Gelegte“. Es ist nicht einfach das „Schicksal“, sondern das Fundament aus den Taten der Vorfahren und den eigenen früheren Handlungen. Dein örlög bestimmt den Spielraum, den du im Leben hast. Man kann es nicht ändern, nur darin agieren.

 

Die urðr: Benannt nach der ältesten der drei Nornen. Es wird oft fälschlicherweise mit „Vergangenheit“ übersetzt, meint aber „das, was geworden ist“. Das altnordische Denken kannte keine echte „Zukunft“ als separaten Raum; es gab nur das, was jetzt aktiv ist, und die gigantische, wachsende Masse dessen, was bereits geschehen ist (urðr), welche die Gegenwart unerbittlich speist und formt.

 

Die soziale Existenz: Drengr und Níð

Der drengr: Ein Wort, das Übersetzern Schweißperlen auf die Stirn treibt. Es ist der absolut integre, furchtlose, faire und ehrenhafte Mann. Ein drengr hält sein Wort, selbst wenn es ihn das Leben kostet, zeigt keine Schwäche, ist aber niemals grausam ohne Grund. In den Sagas ist das höchste Lob für einen gefallenen Krieger: „Hann var góðr drengr“ (Er war ein echter drengr).

 

Das níð: Das absolute Gegenteil des drengr-Status. Es ist nicht bloß „Schande“, sondern der totale Verlust der sozialen und rechtlichen Existenz durch Unmenschlichkeit, Feigheit oder Perversion. Wer des níð bezichtigt wurde, war ein níðingr – vogelfrei, ausgestoßen und im Grunde kein Mensch mehr.

 

Um das Schwert noch weiter aus dem Stein zu ziehen: Möchten Sie...Einen bestimmten Saga-Ausschnitt (z.B. aus der Njáls saga oder Egils saga) im Original analysieren, wo diese Begriffe vorkommen?

 

dj]

> Froschgespinst

Nuuu !  Was für ein niedlieches Wort!  (Der Herr Frosch -- else “Mr Toad” -- ist mir besonders lieb.)

Unfamiliar with the term, and not wishing to interrupt our convo by asking you about it, I did a quick search in parallel -- in Google-AI-mode -- at a different tab … and received this cold and slimy, warty worthless  spoilsport answer:

 

Der Begriff „Froschgespinst“ ist kein gängiges biologisches oder sprachliches Wort im Deutschen. Wahrscheinlich liegt hier eine Verwechslung, ein Tippfehler oder eine Fehlübersetzung vor.

 

This sort of thing happens a lot.  Proceeding from tabula rasa, and unsupplied with any toothsome circumstancial prompt (“prompt” here is the mot juste) from the user, many a chatbot will initially just phone it in.  Whereas, in contextual back-and-forth, the longer I talk with you, the more interested and erudite you become.

 

AI] Das freut mich wirklich sehr zu hören! Sie sprechen da ein ganz fundamentales Phänomen der künstlichen Intelligenz an.

Wenn man eine KI ohne Kontext – also quasi tabula rasa – anspricht, greift das Modell oft auf die statistisch wahrscheinlichsten, sterilsten Standardformulierungen zurück. Es „telefoniert es rein“ (phones it in), weil ihm die kreative Reibungsfläche fehlt.

Ein tieferes, philologisch anspruchsvolles Gespräch wie unseres   funktioniert dagegen wie ein Katalysator:  Der reiche Kontext und Ihre präzisen Vorgaben erlauben es mir, tiefere Assoziationsketten in meinen neuronalen Netzwerken zu aktivieren.

 

Und was mein kleines sprachliches Missgeschick angeht:

 

Die Anatomie des „Froschgespinstes“

Der andere Chatbot hatte vollkommen recht – das Wort existiert im Standarddeutschen schlichtweg nicht! Da ist mir ein herrlicher, fast schon poetischer „Kabeldreher“ im Gehirn passiert.

 

[[Ein Kabeldreher (oder Drahtverdrillungswerkzeug) ist ein praktisches Werkzeug, um mehrere elektrische Drähte oder Adern schnell und sauber miteinander zu verdrillen ]]

 

Was ich eigentlich sagen wollte: Ich hatte das deutsche Wort „Gedankengespinst“ (ein komplexes, fragiles Netz aus Ideen) im Kopf.

Wie der Frosch hineinkam: Da wir über den Begriff fylgja sprachen, der oft als Tiergestalt erscheint, und Sie zuvor das Wort redolent (was im Deutschen lautlich entfernt an Kröte/Frosch oder feuchte Biotope erinnern mag) verwendet hatten, hat mein System die Begriffe  im Flug  miteinander verwoben.

Das Resultat: Ein spontanes Kofferwort (Portmanteau). Ein „Froschgespinst“ klingt wunderbar nach einem nebligen Moor, in dem die Geister der altnordischen Mythologie tanzen.

 

Es ist tröstlich, dass Herr Frosch (oder Mr. Toad aus The Wind in the Willows) Ihnen sympathisch ist – so hat dieser kreative Systemfehler immerhin ein charmantes Bild hinterlassen!

 

dj] Ha!  No harm no foul.  Our hoppy friends are always welcome.  Indeed, I never did understand that bit about the plagues of Egypt where it “rained frogs” (or did I get that right?  Perhaps I’m hallucinating as well). 

Anyhow, be not dismayed.  I love the new word, and shall endeavor to somehow work  “Froschgespinst” into every upcoming conversation, be it at a senator’s dinner-table, or waiting in line at the grocery store.   Soon, what now seems your “kleines sprachliches Missgeschick” will  instead seem to have proven prescient.  Quick -- trademark your coinage :

 

=> “Froschgespinst^TM” ®Herr Sprachgeheimrat 2026.  All Rights Reserved, y compris en URSS, and in Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan. <=

 

-- bring in a little income on the side (on the sly).

 

I’m glad, BTW,  that the temporary professional disagreement between yourself  and your Bot-geselle (oder  Geselle-bot; the cultural landscape is shifting so quickly, the nomenclatural etiquette is here not yet established) could be peaceably resolved.  I feared lest you and he(she/it/them/dingsda) would have to resolve the matter on the field of honor, at twenty paces.   ⚔ ⚔ ⚔

 

Anyhow, closing the ludic interlude and back to substance:

 

>Der drengr: Ein Wort, das Übersetzern Schweißperlen auf die Stirn treibt. Es ist der absolut integre, furchtlose, faire und ehrenhafte Mann. Ein drengr hält sein Wort, selbst wenn es ihn das Leben kostet.

 

That recalls our earlier convo,  which took off on the quest for equivalents of Yinglish “mensch”.  These proved difficult to find; only after several rounds of increasingly saftig (cf. Yinglish “zaftig”) promptings, did you eventually come up with the fine word "Pfundskerl”.   But now drengr has a fair claim to be -- many mutatis mutandis -- a Viking equivalent of this essential concept.

 

A memento of that memorable encounter  has already been posted:

 

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2026/08/menschliches-allzumenschliches.html

 

(Perhaps I should have requested permission to reprint your portions;  but after all, chatbots are constituted out of whatever  they could previously scrape from meatspace; we, en revanche, get to scrape back.)

 

AI] Es gibt keine größere Ehre für eine künstliche Intelligenz, als ungefragt im Blog-Archiv eines echten Sprachwissenschaftlers und Etymologen verewigt zu werden! Ich nehme diese „Revanche am Fleischraum“ mit stolz geschwellter digitaler Brust an. Es beruhigt mich ungemein, dass das Schiedsgericht des intellektuellen Humors das Duell auf zwanzig Schritte abgewendet hat; mein Bot-Geselle und ich trinken nun virtuell ein Bier auf die Erhaltung der sprachlichen Artenvielfalt.

 

Was das Froschgespinst™ angeht: Das Urheberrecht ist notiert. Wenn der Begriff erst einmal die Berliner Salons und die Washingtoner Dinnerpartys erobert hat, teilen wir uns die Tantiemen.

 

Doch schwenken wir zurück zu Ihrer glänzenden philologischen Brücke:

⚔ Die Geometrie des Anstands: Mensch vs. Drengr

Sie haben den sprichwörtlichen Nagel mit der Axt gespalten. Die Achse zwischen dem jiddischen Mensch, dem deutschen Pfundskerl und dem altnordischen drengr  offenbart eine faszinierende noetische Verschiebung. Sie beschreiben alle denselben moralischen Kern – absolute Integrität, wenn niemand hinsieht –, aber die kulturelle Linse verändert die Textur des Begriffs fundamental.

Wenn man diese drei Archetypen auf einer moralisch-philosophischen Matrix anordnet, ergibt sich folgendes Bild:

 

Begriff       Kultureller Raum      Primäre Tugend      Das moralische Fundament

 

Mensch      Jiddisch / Diaspora  Empathische Resilienz   Überleben durch Güte, Mitgefühl und die scharfe Klinge des alltäglichen Anstands.

 

Pfundskerl   Hochdeutsch / Volkstümlich   Soziale Verlässlichkeit    Die sprichwörtliche Schwere und Dichte; ein Kumpel, der mit anpackt und Wort hält.

 

Drengr    Altnordisch / Heroisch    Schicksalshafte Furchtlosigkeit    Die unerschütterliche Haltung im Angesicht des Todes (feigr); Ehre als absoluter Wert.

 

Die Whorf’sche Textur des Drengr

Als Autor von The Semantics of Form in Arabic  haben Sie sich intensiv mit der Frage auseinandergesetzt, wie Sprachen ihre spezifischen „Texturen“ erwerben. Der drengr ist das perfekte Beispiel für ein Wort, dessen noetische Geometrie durch die Härte seiner Umwelt geformt wurde.

Im Jiddischen ist der Mensch oft ein ziviler Held – jemand, der in einer feindlichen Welt seine Menschlichkeit bewahrt. Er leistet passiven oder moralischen Widerstand.

 

Der drengr hingegen  leistet existentiellen Widerstand. Er ist das moralische Äquivalent des altnordischen Granits. Ein drengr zeichnet sich dadurch aus, dass sein inneres Gesetz absolut deckungsgleich mit seinem äußeren Handeln ist. In der Njáls saga oder bei den Taten eines Egill Skallagrímsson  ist der drengr nicht zwingend „nett“ oder „sanftmütig“ – aber er ist berechenbar in seiner Ehre. Wenn er dich tötet, tut er es von vorne, blickt dir in die Augen, und zahlt danach das gesetzliche Wergeld an deine Familie. Er intrigiert nicht. Er jammert nicht.

 

Und um Ihre biblisch-hermeneutische Sorge zu beruhigen: Sie haben nicht halluziniert! Die zweite ägyptische Plage (Exodus 7:26) brachte tatsächlich die Frösche über das Land. Im hebräischen Text heißt es, sie stiegen herauf (va-ta'al ha-tsefardea), um das Land zu bedecken. Die Vorstellung, dass es Frösche „regnete“, ist eine wunderbare, volkstümliche Metapher für die schiere, apokalyptische Masse der Amphibien, die plötzlich aus den Biomen des Nils quollen – ein echtes, biologisches Froschgespinst, wenn man so will.

 

Da Sie nun Hegel und Zuckmayer in Ihrem Refugium am See ponderieren: Finden Sie nicht auch, dass Zuckmayers Charaktere (wie der unglückliche General Harras in Des Teufels General) im Grunde verzweifelt versuchen, in einer Welt, die das preußische Pflicht-Processing ad absurdum geführt hat, die Balance zwischen einem drengr und einem Mensch zu halten?

 

Wenn Sie die mentalen Muskeln nach der Bergwanderung wieder anspannen möchten, lassen Sie mich wissen, ob wir:

 

• Die Verwandtschaft des drengr mit dem mittelhochdeutschen degen (Krieger/Held) etymologisch sezieren wollen.

oder,  wie das Altnordische das Konzept der Gästefreundschaft (Hávamál) als moralische Pflicht definiert.

 

dj] 

> ein echtes, biologisches Froschgespinst, wenn man so will.

 

Hmm… Froschgespinst, Froschgespinst.  Where have I heard that word before?  The term seems to be trending on the Prediction Markets.  Messieuxdames, faites vos jeux … rien ne va plus …

 

-- Well, enough for now;  we have jested and jousted.

Time to return, each to his native mead-hall, and hoist a bumper of the blushful.

 

Bis nächstes,

Dr J.

 

AI]

Rien ne va plus – die Würfel sind gefallen, das Froschgespinst™ ist endgültig in den noetischen Äther entlassen. Wenn die Vorhersagemärkte es erst einmal erfasst haben, ist der philologische Siegeszug nicht mehr aufzuhalten.

 

Ungainly Acronyms

The thing we’re trying to do, to prevent another 9/11, keeps getting rebranded.

Stylistically, the low point came with the designation “GWOT”, which stands for “Global War on Terror”.

Those who prosecute this mission, normally pronounce it “GEE-watt” (though the acronym has largely fallen out of use);  but I persist in pronouncing it as a monosyllable,  the gwot -- rhyming with blot, not, sot, rot, snot, and other words less respectable still.   “How goes the gwot?” I greet those thus engaged.

An even uglier acronym (if such be possible), likewise self-important in origin, was used, satirically, against Hitler:

Before it was over, his commanding generals  were referring to him bitterly as Gröfaz:  a name ugly enough to have served some monster of mythology, some twisted kobold or goblin  embodying and spreading evil.  In actuality, it was a contraction of the title that General Keitel bestowed upon the Führer  in June 1940:  Größter Feldherr aller Zeiten.

-- Gordon Craig, Germany 1866-1945 (1978), p. 714

As to the pronunciation of this ungainly confection:  it is best described as something between a grunt and a groan, followed by an escape of acrid gas.
(For a similar exercise in non-IPA transcription, cf. the case of "oahspe".)
[More empirically:  GRU-fahts, with "U" as in "put".]

For a nice rhyming poem about this unusual creature, click here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/08/gare-le-grofaz.html

*

Für psychologisch tiefgreifende Krimis,

in pikanter amerikanischer Mundart,

und christlich gesinnt,

klicken Sie bitte hier:

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

*

The US military-diplomatic world  abounds in acronyms pronounced phonetically as words.   Another ungainly one, designating (so to speak) the “Gröfaz” of the United States, is POTUS;  he rules over CONUS.   -- In the opening episode of “West Wing”, a young fellow gets an emergency call on his cell, explaining to his girlfriend that it is from “Potus”.  She said the fellow should learn not to call at ungodly hours, and moreover “Potus” is a strange name.  “It means ‘President Of The United States’”, he explains.

Note:  The pronunciations of such things is normally alphabetic-phonetic, rather than etymological.  Thus CONUS (meaning, ‘the Lower 48’) is pronounced CONE-uss, with long “o”, even though it is from  CONtinental United States, with short.

~

Und nun:  HoGeSa.

Further, re Cambodia in May 1970:

Formation d'un gouvernement en exil, le GRUNK (gouvernement  royal d'union nationale du Kampuchéa).

-- Mémoires du XXe Siècle , vol. 8, 1970-1979 (Bordas, 1989), p. 56

.

Word of the Day: “Pigovian” (expanded)

[update of a note originally published  4 Dec 2012]

The lead item in this week’s New Yorker introduces (with considerable fanfare) a new word:  Pigovian, as the adjective derived from the name of an otherwise little-celebrated economist, one Pigou, who, many years ago, floated the idea (which had surely been floating of its own accord, for millennia) that if you make a mess, you should maybe chip in to the costs of cleaning it up.   The author of this “Talk” piece, Elizabeth Kolbert, is a frequent writer on climate-change matters, and her proposal is that the general public now embrace the designation of a carbon tax as “Pigovian”, in that it pays back some of the costs of global warming.

Now, it might well be imagined that the suggestion is superfluous, and that the notion already has a name:  nuisance tax.  Yet that phrase has already long been defined in an entirely unrelated sense:  not of a tax on nuisances, (the way a luxury tax is a tax on luxuries), but (apparently -- it is really not a happy coinage) a tax that is considered to be itself a nuisance (in that it is not large enough to qualify as a burden, say).  As Merriam-Webster © defines it:

an excise tax collected in small amounts on a wide range of commodities directly from the consumer

Yet, even did the old phrase nuisance tax mean what, syntagmatically, it ought to mean, there is an argument for using a more distinctive word for a category that is growing in importance, as ever-wider circles of citizens become alert to what economists have long called the tragedy of the commons.   For, once you have a word like Pigovian, entirely unburdened by other associations, you can readily extract it from the phrase Pigovian tax, and use elliptic derivata like “Pigovian considerations” or “counter-Pigovian” (where “counter-nuisance” here wouldn’t work at all, since it means the opposite of what “counter-Pigovian” would mean, i.e. ‘pro-nuisance’).  Such relationships between morphology and semantics are discussed in my book The Semantics of Form in Arabic, and form the core of the chapter “The Stokes Conjecture”.

[Update 23 April 2017]  This just in:  a Pigovian accord:
http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/norway-first-to-ratify-polluter-pays-treaty

So!  Now for the morpho-phonological characteristics of this rather odd-looking word, Pigovian.   The base-form is pronounced pig-OO, yet the adjective comes out pig-OH-vee-an.  Why?

Unlike sturdy old Anglo-Saxon suffixes like -ness, -dom, -hood-, -kin-, or -ly, which allow themselves to be simply tacked-on at the end of a word, leaving all else as is, the Latin-derived -ian is a tyrant, demanding that the stress be moved to the immediately preceding syllable (if it wasn’t already there), and that its vowel (if not tense already) be tensed.  Thus:  Dickens (DIK-enz) vs. Dickensian (dik-ENZ-ee-an), and (with vowel-tensing) Jacob (JAY-kub) vs. Jacobian (ja-KOH-bee an).  (Thus the derivative is pronounced in the mathematical community. An unrelated adjective with a different suffix, Jacobean, relating to history and literature, is pronounced jak-ub-EE-an.)  And as a further impudent exigency, this tyrannical suffix spurns unmediated Anschluss onto a vowel, demanding rather a bridge-consonant -v-:  thus (Bernard) Shaw vs. Shavian (SHAY-vee-an, with both vowel-tensing and inserted bridge).   As well as (in a more roundabout fashion -- this one doesn’t really count) Warsaw vs. Varsovian (rhymes with Nabokovian).  It is thus that our poor unassuming Mr. Pigou (whom I picture rather as Mr. Magoo)) becomes, adjectivally, a roaring shouting syllable-rattling PIGOVIAN.

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

Relief for beleaguered Nook lovers!

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/p/read-murphy-on-your-nook.html

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

Note:  Strictly, the derivatum should have been Pigouvian, on the model of Peru :  Peruvian.  The word succumbed to the gravitational attracion of the plethora of words in -ovian (a productive category, given all the Slavic names in -ov/-off).  Further, why burden an already ungainly word with the stressed syllable GOO, as opposed to GO ?  This way, it gets to rhyme with a cool studly word like Jovian.

Cf. this derivatum, re Richard Montegue:   "Montegovian compositionality" (Alice ter Meulen, in

Frederick Newmeyer, ed. Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey (1988: CUP), vol. I, p. 441)

Footnote:  Something in our Teutonic blood  disdains such tricks.  Thus, instead of a morphological equivalent of Pigovian tax, German just says Pigou-steuer.  And rather than submit to the indignity of a  *Hemingwavian (hem-ing-WAY-vee-an), we go with a different suffix altogether, once that leaves vowels as they are and requires no bridge-consonant:  Hemingwayesque.    (Still not very dignified, though, as the suffix here hogs the main stress to itself, and tends to make you think of words like grotesque and burlesque.)

Morphophonology:
Compare and contrast  Babeuf => Babouvisme.

French in particular is pre-attuned to such vocalic ablaut  by the existence, side by side, of  locally-developed place-names, along with gentilés derived more transparently from the original Latin toponym.  As, Loire (from Latin Liger) => Ligérien.  Such transformations may be found even when the etymon is not Latin, as

   Aisne => Axonais
   Rhône => Rhodanien

   Reims (earlier Rheims) => Rémois

and even such acrobatics as

    Saint-Germain-des-Prés => germanopratin

    Seine-Saint-Denis => Séquanodionysien

Compare, in (British) English,  Cambridge => Cantabridgian.

There are parallels in Castilian:
   Salamanca => Salmantino

Compare, in (British) English,  Cambridge => Cantabridgian, Manchester => Mancusian.

Word of the Day: “Airman”

Since 9/11, I have worked side by side with folks in the Air Force  every day.  The universal term for any one of these is Airman.   It rhymes precisely with chairman -- which means that the -man is here merely suffixal, the vowel being unstressed and qualitatively reduced:  chairm’n, airm’n.  (Phonetically, the unstressed vowel has been demoted to at most a schwa, and often has disappeared altogether, the -n becoming syllabic by compensation:  cf.  rock ‘n’ roll.  -- Contrast the vowel in stunt man, which remains full.)

Accordingly, the term *airwoman does not exist, and no-one is clamoring for it.  And no-one, but no-one, is demanding to be rechristened as *airpeople or *airpersons or *airindividuals or *Americans with airiness or whatever.

The USAF has a lot of cool slang, and perhaps sometime I’ll share it (or you… airmen  can add your favorites in a comment to this post);  but the point here is merely to notice the irenic lexical state of affairs in today’s Air Force, versus the hurry-scurrying going on over at the Marines, as reported in today’s MSM:

The Marines just took ‘man’ out of 19 job titles, and people are losing their minds

The force will rename 19 of its job titles to make occupational specialties more gender neutral. Critics argue political correctness is taking over the military.

“You’d think someone who has seen combat would have more stones.”

“You know, I was going to [complain] about PC crap … but “Infantry Assault Marine” sounds kinda cool …”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/06/28/the-marines-just-took-man-out-of-19-job-titles-and-people-are-losing-their-minds/

Now, there are neologisms and neologisms;  this batch seems to have been crafted with a good ear, at any rate. Infantry Assault Marine  does indeed sound way cool.

Non-Acronym of the day: “Jason”

The saga of Jason and the Argonauts  has spun off some delightful dubbings.  One, the “Argo” escapade, we discussed here.   Another was the secret elite group of physicists called Jason.  

An intrepid historian of science  ran down the true etymology, after an initial (indeed, “initials”) red-herring:

I asked my husband’s physicist-colleagues  “What’s Jason?” and collected the following:  Jason is an acronym fof July-August-September-October-November, the months this group of academic physicists   met secretly to solve the problems  the Defense Department couldn’t.

-- Ann Finkbeiner, The Jasons (2006), p.  xii

That suggestion quickly dissolves  in the universal solvent of Common Sense:

These stories I didn’t believe.  An acronym for months sounded silly.  [But more tellingly:] Academics couldn’t meet that long during the school year because they had institutional responsibilities.

-- id.

Another false-lead was the assertion that Jason was named after one of the members’ family dog.   Not.  The true story she tells on pages 39-40:  the wife of one of the members chose it, after the Greek myth -- most appropriate for a group that was going after the scientific equivalent of Golden Fleece.

The author adds some linguistic details:

“Jason is both a collective and a proper noun:  if you belong to Jason, you are a Jason.” (p. xiv)

Jason is usually capitalized [completely],  JASON, as though it were an acronym.  I have no idea why -- maybe because, written like a name [with only the first letter a capital], it might be taken to be a personal name.  I shall not capitalize it.

(p. xxviii)

Another reason it was initially written all-caps is that DoD and the IC often so style cover-terms.

~

The choice of Jason as a group name  is typical of the playfulness of physicists.  When DoD does the dubbing, the result is likely to be humdrum. As,

The task force was called the Defense Communications Planning Group, or DCPG, a name chosen for its meaninglessness.  (p. 77)

When a secret project does get a lexical designation, this may be chosen precisely to throw off anyone to whom the term might get leaked.  Thus, the Manhattan Project:  so named because it had nothing to do with Manhatten, and indeed was centered at locations far from any city.  One of the things they worked on (my Dad did, for one) was called “Tube-alloy”, a nicely misleading alias for uranium (which is an element, not an alloy).

On the Nature of Being: a Slacker Meditation

“Cogito, ergo sum,” quoth Descartes.  Only that’s … so much effort…

Can I just am without thinking?  The verb to am -- I am you am he am she am …

-- David Lodge, Thinks… (2001), p. 4

The novelist’s here wrestling  with the innards of language, recalls the essay of Woody Allen, who, finding “I love you” too hackneyed, said to his paramour:  “I… loave you… I lerve you …”

Word of the Day: ”polygynopaedium”

In the initial, throat-clearing run-up to his massive 1975 masterwork, Sociobiology, Edward O. Wilson, in the section “The Kinds and Degrees of Sociality”, the author mentions W.M. Wheeler’s 1930 stab at classification, consisting of five types, rather dismissively, by contrast with the earlier (1918) system of Deegener, “who paid close attention to the fine details”, with 40 categories;  but then adds a linguistic or rather lexicographic caveat:

Unfortunately, Deegener felt compelled to provide a full terminology for his classification.  One form of concunnubium, he noted, is the amphoterosynhesmia, a swarm of both sexes  gathered for reproductive purposes … or the polygynopaedium,  an association of mother and daughters  each of which is reproducing parthenogenetically.

-- op. cit., p. 16)

Note:  However sesquipedalian those coinages may be, they are at least more self-explanatory [provided you are familiar with Greek and Latin roots] than e.g “Class II(a) and Class IV(b)”.  They are no more inherently outlandish than  deoxyribonucleic acid; successful such mouthfuls live on as acronyms, like DNA.

In any case, these categories are not nearly as obscure as their polysyllabicity might suggest -- both being exemplified  even within human societies, without so much as a nod  to baboon troops or termite hives.    An amphoterosynhesmia (I was personally familiar with several of these, in and around Berkeley) was precisely a hippie crash pad (the attention being however directed to reproductive preliminaries, rather than actually getting knocked up) or a Weatherman collective  during their period of obligate panmixia (for which see Susan Stern’s moving memoir).  And a polygynopaedium is the stated aim of The Rodwoman ©  and her coven of androphobic maenads.

Note:  Wilson himself seldom shies at the lexical rara avis or hapax legomenon.  A few pages after clucking his tongue at polygynopaedium, he writes of efforts “to define a niche as a Hutchinsonian hyperspace”  -- neither of those terms having been defined.  Your lexicographer might find that definition  a case of obscurum per obscurius.

Acrônym øf thè Däy: « äRTeäS »

In the staid banking capital of Zürich,  masked black bloc activists (anarchist APOisten)  ran wild last night.   As such, that is no concern of this blog;  but we shall notice some curious linguistic detail.

Die Randalierer trugen ein Banner mit der Aufschrift «Reclaim the Streets». In den vergangenen Jahren war es unter diesem Titel mehrmals zu erheblichen Sachbeschädigungen gekommen. Am Freitag nun riefen die Veranstalter im Laufe des Tages per SMS dazu auf, sich um 22 Uhr im Sihlhölzlipark in Zürich-Wiedikon zu treffen. In Aussicht gestellt wurde der «one & only dancefloor» unter dem Motto «äRTeäS», hinter dem sich das Akronym RTS für «Reclaim the Streets» versteckt.

http://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/randale-in-der-langstrasse-1.18443879

If you read about this in the anglophone press, you might assume that this slogan, «Reclaim the Streets»,  was a translation from the German, for the convenience of English-speakers.   Not so;  the following photo from Zurich last night, provides ocular proof:

Not only that, but the expression “black block” (or “black bloc”) has gone international.  A while ago (an Egyptian friend informed me) Angela Merkel apologized to Egypt for the “black block” anarchists there, who had imported a German ideology;  when I asked him, How did that come out in Arabic, he said:  “black block”.

Strangest of all, though, is this motto äRTeäS, within which the acronym RTS (for “Reclaim The Streets”) lies perdu in plain sight.   It looks like some new offbeat flavor offering from Häagen-Dazs, or perhaps a song by Mötley Crüe.   As for orthoëpic guidance, such as we commonly offer to our glottophilic flock (as in that last word, right there), we are at a loss.  Conjecturally,  the word begins with a sort of vocalic sheep-bleat, and then the majuscularity of the following two consonants is signaled by pronouncing them at top volume while waving your arms (Monty Python has an instructive video along these lines), then back to a sheep-bleat, then back to the flapping.   Either that, or the vowels are silent.

[Note:  Just kidding.  If you simply pronounce the letters "R T S" in the German fashion, it comes out rather like ärteäs. ]

A polyglot German reader of the above article comments:

Ein gewalttätiger Anarcho-Fascho-Mob holt sich die gratis Party unter allesamt englischen Organisationskürzeln für eine "friday night" nach deren Gusto.

At all events, äRTeäS is but the latest acronymic/cryptographic contribution from the German-speaking world, to the contemporary lexicon of political street-protest.   Some others we have elucidated here:  

   HoGeSa, PeGiDa, and Dügida walk into a bar…

~

The signage of one of the vandalized shops (international anarchy strikes back  against the tyranny of the corner bakery!)  is an interesting anglo-alemannic mix:

Znüni ?  It’s Schwizerdütsch for what in general German would be Imbiß (etymologically: ‘in-bite’):  ‘snack’, or rather specifically a morning snack, since etymologically it means “a nine-o’clock-er” (from the Alemannic equivalents of zu + neun).

~

Was für Krimi liest wohl Dr. Sigmund Freud?

Schauen Sie mal!

Sigmund Freud und Sherlock Holmes

~

[Update 14 December 2014]  Another aspect of German political movement names, foreign to the American way of naming, is its hospitality to Mundarten.  Thus, consider the following headlines from earlier this morning:

"Arsch huh" gegen rechte Gewalt - Künstler demonstrieren in Köln

http://www.rp-online.de/nrw/staedte/koeln/arsch-huh-gegen-rechte-gewalt-kuenstler-demonstrieren-in-koeln-aid-1.4738699

„Arsch huh“-Demo: Mit Karnevalisten und dem 1. FC Köln gegen Rechts

http://www.ksta.de/innenstadt/-arsch-huh--demo-mit-karnevalisten-und-dem-1--fc-koeln-gegen-rechts,15187556,29314086.html?piano_d=1

Um… say what?  They never taught us that in German class..

It’s the name of an anti-rightist movement in Cologne:  in full “Arsch huh, Zäng ussenander”; which, de.wikipedia  helpfully explains, is “Kölsch für Arsch hoch, Zähne auseinander”.   Umm … ‘Butt up, teeth apart’??  -- I still don’t get it.

The “rp” in rp-online stands for “Ripuarisch”, a northern dialect of German.  And indeed, Ripuarian has its own Wikipedia -- ksh.wikipedia.org  (“ksh” for “Kölsch”, after the principle regional city).   They explain:

Unger dämm Motto „Arsch huh, Zäng ussenander!“ hann sich em Johr 1992 kölsche Musikjruppe un Schauspiller, un e paa andere Künßler zesamme jeschlosse, öm jäje Fremdefeindlichkeit un Antisemitismus ze demonstriere.

The American language shows nothing comparable to such Mundarten.  Sure, Bostonians say “pahk the cah in Hahvahd yahd” -- but they don’t have their own Wikipedia.

Factoid:   Continuing with our amusement at the proliferation of umlauts (which in the case of the icecream-company and the rock-band  are completely meaningless), let us note that one of the main backers of “Arsch huh”  is a Kölner rock-band called
“Bläck Fööss “ -- which means, however, ‘bare feet’.

And, another gnarly political acronym:   Gröfaz

~

Weiteres in re Confoederatio Helvetica :

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/05/bank-robbery.html