Talking About Words: Phat
With Prof. Richard Bailey
Last month we sent one of today’s students back to 1896 and
put her down on the corner of State Street and North University.
All she had to guide her was a list of U-M slang expressions compiled
and published by a teacher in the rhetoric program back then.
Among the first words she heard was squatchetery, and, by looking
at her little glossary, she found out that it meant “admirable,
pleasing.” It was a good way to begin her visit, but she soon
found herself gasping with surprise as she tried to make out what
students were saying to each other. Only later did she pick up the
idea that blug meant “stylish” and skatey just the opposite.
This month, it’s time to return the favor by bringing a male
student from 1896 to the same spot in the first decade of the 21st
century, and we won’t even give him a word list to help. And
that modern young woman he’d ridiculed back then for not knoiwing
the latest slang would be there to meet him.
“Squatchetery,” she says. “Hah! Phat. That’s
what squatchetery means. Phat.” (Or in other words “good,
excellent, cool, wonderful.”)
Phat has been around since the 1960s but came into widespread use
only in the last decade. Imaginative etymologies abound, beginning
with the most obvious, that it is a respelling of fat as in fat
cat or fat city. “Pretty hot and tempting” is a definition
that treats phat as if it were an acronym; “pretty hot and
talented” is another. And there are some obscene etymologies
that build on the idea that a phat person is sexually appealing.
“Just a minute,” says our present-day student. “I’ve
gotta chirp my friend Courtney.” Talking into her cell, she
says, “Woot! I’ve got a gnarly dude over here by the
Arcade. I know you’re wasting time multislacking on the Net,
so you mobilate on down here right now.”
So the two women and the visitor went back to Courtney’s
room, and it’s pretty likely that drinkage followed and maybe
our visitor had too much and fell asleep crunked up. So we’ll
send him back home to 1896 only a little the worse for his journey.
Some methods of making slang have arisen in the past century—acronyms,
for instance: abbreviations pronounced as words. But most ways of
making slang were in place at the end of the 19th century.
Domains of intense interest to young adults are filled with an
abundance of synonyms. In October 2003, I asked 30 students to give
me slang terms for “intoxicated.” Most listed five or
10 expressions. The words totaled more than 160, but only four were
mentioned by more than 10 students each. Nearly all of the students
proposed at least one expression that no one else in the group mentioned,
suggesting that there are lots of ways to talk about this condition.
Our visitor from 1896 would have understood some
of the terms: liquored up or smashed. But most would be mysterious
to him: blitzed, crunked or zonked, for instance.
Slang makes creative use of the ways everyone makes words.
Suffixation: -tastic as in cooltastic or craptastic, where the suffix
is an intensifier.
Shortening: “Whoops, forgot there was a test today... ahh
whatev!”
Blending: “Hey, wanna be in my chicktionary?” A merger
of chick and dictionary for what was earlier known as a “little
black book.”
Shifts from noun to verb: “Don’t pick him for our group;
he’s always lunchin’.” In other words, “not
attentive to the task at hand.”
Slang is not made out of necessity but out of exuberance. Nobody
needs either squatchetery or phat. But they can have fun with the
idea of “very excellent”: “That concert was hella
tight!”
(Students in my English 309 class and in Prof. Anne Curzan’s
English 305 contributed significantly to this report.)
Richard W. Bailey is the Fred Newton Scott Collegiate Professor
of English. His most recent book is Rogue Scholar: The Sinister
Life and Celebrated Death of Edward H. Rulloff, University
of Michigan Press, 2003 - a biography of an American thief, impostor,
murderer and would-be philologist who lived from 1821 to1871. It
was published by the University
of Michigan Press in August.
|
