Friday, April 9: Bandersnatches
OH SNAP!
by Steven Steinbock
Continuing on last week’s column about words, as well as Rob’s slinky column from Wednesday, I have a few more words about words to share with you. The first one defies logic. My thirteen year-old has been using it relentlessly and I only recently learned that its usage goes beyond him and his circle of friends. The offending word is snap. He uses it as an alternative for “shit” or “crap.” I’m not sure I get it.
Obscenities are usually the last refuge (or in this case, refuse) of people who can’t think of anything smarter to say. Words like this, as well as other “shit” substitutes like sugar and sherbet, are just slightly more polite excuses for not having anything better to say.
Then I learn that in Great Britain snap has nearly the opposite meaning. Deriving from the card game “Snap,” when Brits use this slang, it essentially means “me too.”
For more on snap, here’s an interesting article.
Meh!
In contrast to snap, I find the term meh to be oddly satisfying and appropriate to its usage. Popularized by its usage in a 1994 episode of “The Simpsons,” this interjection indicates an expression of mediocrity, apathy, and boredom. If I ask my older son how his day was, he might respond, “Meh,” and shrug his shoulders. Meh is much more polite (and positive in a glass-half-full sense) than “it sucks” while being more honest than a weak-hearted “fine.” Meh has echoes of “eh” as well as “mediocre.” It also sounds something like a cow mooing and a person yawning.
I’m grateful that my life is interesting enough that I haven’t had a situation where I’ve needed to use Meh, but it’s still nice to know it’s there.
More wordiness next week when I explore Laconic, Languid and Feckless, and show how Ninny and Nincompoop are etymologically unrelated. See you in a snap.
The use of ‘snap’ to mean ‘me too’ or ‘same here’ is the vestige of a childhood card game of the same name where opponents try to shout ‘Snap!’ first when matching cards are displayed. I’ve never heard of an off-colour meaning.
I suspect meh or simply ehh is a reduction of mezza-mezza, ‘half-and-half’ or ‘so-so’, kind of comme ci, comme ça.
“Do you have the energy to say mezza-mezza?”
“meh.”
Broad Abroad (or anyone else who can answer): I’ve known South Africans to use sherbet as a euphemism for “sh!t” but I wonder if it’s used elsewhere in the English speaking world. I’ve heard Americans use sugar.
Also, is it only Americans that have the habit of adding an extra “r” to sherbet making it rhyme with Herbert?
I thought snap was short for two snaps up!
Well, I am so unhip (to paraphrase Douglas Adams) that it’s amazing my legs don’t fall off, but I had thought “snap” in the U.S. meant “what an insult.” (which is suggested in the article: “— that handy phrase which accompanies a moment of consternation or a dutiful dissing.”
“The best book he ever wrote was which ever one was shortest.”
“Oh, snap.”
Not included in the discussion is the meaning of “snap” as something that is easily and quickly performed:
Q: How difficult is it to post comments on Criminal Brief?
A: It’s a snap.
I’m sure this usage is simply a shortening of, “It’s as easy as snapping your fingers.”
As far as the pronunciation of “meh!” is concerned, I wonder if it was influenced by the Yiddish pronunciation of “fie” (or its close cousin “faugh”): “Feh!”
“Feh!” is a lot stronger than “meh!”, the latter thus satisfying a milder interjectory niche.
Yiddish has a strong influence on American slang, but sometimes it goes the other way. The American usage of to bitch, meaning to whine or complain, predates use of the Yiddish to kvetch, with the same meaning. The noun kvetch, which is applied to someone who finds fault with everything, comes from German quetsche, a presser or crusher.
As far as etymology is concerned, Leigh’s mezza mezza theory seems far fetched to me. I think it’s more likely that it’s a truncated combination of the two interjections “hm” (an abbreviation of “hem”, dating from the 16th c.), indicating consideration, and “eh” (also dating from the 16th c.), indicating indifference.
>Also, is it only Americans that have the habit of adding an extra “r” to sherbet making it rhyme with Herbert?
My enunciation and diction police parents would never let us use 2 Rs in sherbet! Likewise, they were fastidious about pimiento and pimento… the fruit and the plant, respectively.
In Europe, I don’t recall hearing ‘sherbet’ used, even in Ireland and Britain. They generally say sorbet. French also use the word ‘givre’.
In the US, we use the term to mean “fruit-flavored ice”, but the original meaning was a sweetened fruit drink, cooled by snow, invented in the Middle East.
(laughing) I often say ‘sherbet Herbert’, which rhymes as we ignore Herbert’s second ‘r’.
Without sounding twee or holier than thou, I’m not given to utterances much stronger than ‘bother!’ or ‘dammit!’ and don’t think of them or ‘sherbet Herbert’ as disguised replacements for stronger cousins.
I’m far more out of it than you, Rob! Up ’till this moment the only place I’ve seen the word “Snap” used as an expletive was the t.v. show “That’s So Raven.” Hey, I also never noticed that I was saying “Sherbert” wrong all these years! (“Oh, Snap!”) Oh, and Steve, I remember one of Alistair Cooke’s “Letter From America” commentaries where he not only connected the origins of the terms “Maverick” and “Gobbeldygoop” but he knew one of the people involved!
Jeff, I may have to do a column about “Maverick” and “Gobbeldygook.” Your comment sent me on a research quest, and there indeed is a connection between the words. Who’d have thunk it?
If we’re going to correct “sherbet” can I take a moment to remind us all that “asterisk” is pronounced the way it is spelled and it is NOT spelled “asteriks.”
There used to we a show called Sandy Bradley’s Pot Luck on Seattle radio and each week she reminded her listeners “that there IS no R in Washington.” A lot of people pronounce it as if there is.
The comic-book character ‘Asterix’ probably exacerbates the ‘asterisk’ problem.
Whilst on the subject of pet pronunciation peeves – one of mine is ‘escape’, as spelled, not ‘excape’.
A long time ago in a column far far away, I mentioned et cetera as one of my pronunciation pet peeves. (More often than not, I hear it pronounced ex cetera). But as I also noted in that column, if one were to pronounce it in proper Latin, et would probably sound like “eight” and the “c” in cetera would be hard, so it would sound something like “ketera”.
Looking forward to it, Steve (and to any of these columns!) Don’t know if the Alistair Cooke “Letter” is on the ‘net in audio. I listened to it live sometime after the year 2000 when I found the show on the overnight broadcasts of the BBC. Cooke’s pet peeve? The word “area.”
For me, the two most facial-tic inducing mispronunciations are (and John will back me up on at least the first one):
(1) “Short-lived” with a short “i”, as if it were the past tense of the verb “to live” instead of the adjectival form of the noun “life”. SHORT-LIVED should have a long “i”, as with “live bait” or “live performance”.
(2) The adjective “consummate”, which should be accented on the second syllable (con-SUM-mate, with a short “u” in the second syllable and schwa in the third), pronounced as if it were the verb (CON-sum-mate, with a long “u” in the second syllable and a long “a” in the third).
I don’t get exercised about long and short ‘I’s in forms of live and similar words after trying to assist a highly intelligent foreign colleague:
Steve:
Pronunciation Pet Peeve:
AKsterisk instead of asterisk
Steve:
Pronunciation Pet Peeve
AKsterisk instead of asterisk