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Why Do Girls Wear Pink? (full episode)
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UserPost

7:14AM
Oct-22-11


Grant Barrett

San Diego, California

Admin

posts 1212

We all know that the color pink is for boys and the color blue is for girls — at least, that's how it was 100 years ago. Grant and Martha share the surprising history behind the colors we associate with gender. Plus, we go rollin’ in our hooptie, play a game of guess-that-Google-search, and get some tips on how to avoid getting swindled by our real estate agent! Also, new terms for failed software upgrades, some sugar-coated snark from across the pond, and a new way to show sarcasm in a text message. Yeah. Sure.

This episode first aired October 22, 2011. Listen here:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download the MP3 here (23.8 MB).

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Hate it when a software upgrade is worse than the previous version? We call that a flupgrade, or a new-coke. As in, Skype really new-coked it with version 5.3.0. Come on, Skype!

What is a hooptie? Though it started in the 1960s as a term for a sweet new car, it became the common moniker for a beater, or a jalopy. Maybe Sir Mix-A-Lot said it best: "My hooptie rollin', tailpipe draggin'/ heat don't work, and my girl keeps nagging.'"

If a lady is no better than she ought to be, her sexual morals may be in question. The saying, recently popularized by the BBC program Downton Abbey, is what's known as a charientism, or a bit of sugar-coated snark. By the way, if you'd like to hear more about such thinly veiled insults, check out this episode.

If someone's in a swivet, they're flustered or in distress. For example, you might be in a swivel if you're late for a meeting or you've shown up to the SAT without a No. 2 pencil.

Our Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game based on Google searches, or at least what Google thinks you're searching. For example, what do Elmo, pink, and plant all have in common? Google suggests them, in that order, after you've entered the words "tickle me."

Did the movie Avatar make you imagine creating an entirely new language, like Na'vi? Conlang.org and the Language Creation Society have plenty of information on how to go about it and what others, including J.R.R. Tolkein have tried. Mark Rosenfelder's book The Language Construction Kit is a great resource for getting started.

What does it mean to call for tender? This British phrase for soliciting a job is rarely seen in the United States, though tender, from the Latin for "to stretch or hold forth," is used in North America in two different senses: "to tender," as in "to offer," as well as the noun "tender" for something that's been issued, such as a dollar bill, hence legal tender.

What do you call an upgrade gone wrong? Perhaps the 'Puter Principle could be the software equivalent of the Peter Principle, which in business means that every employee in a hierarchy tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence.

If something's right on, it suits you to a tee. But why a tee? Tee, or the letter T, is short for tittle, or something really tiny. So if something's exactly perfect, it's right on point, with no room to spare. Or, simply, it suits you to a tee.

Why is pink a girl color and blue a boy color? Actually, in the 19th Century, pink used to be associated with boys, since it was a stronger, more decided color. Blue, on the other hand, was regarded as a girls' color, because it was considered dainty. It wasn't until the 1940s that marketers started to switch it around. Jeanne Maglaty has a great article about this in Smithsonian Magazine, called "When did Girls Start Wearing Pink?"

To slake your thirst is to quench your thirst. But some people have been switching it to slate your thirst or other variants. It's a classic case of an eggcorn, or one of those words that people mishear, and then start pronouncing incorrectly; for example, when misheard, acorn can become eggcorn.

What does it mean to gazump someone? This phrase, specifically meaning "to swindle a customer in a real estate deal," came about in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s before disappearing and then popping up again in England in the 1970s. Whether or not the term is in vogue, the practice seems to be a mainstay.

How do you indicate sarcasm in a text message or an email? If winky emoticons aren't your thing, try left-leaning italics, as recommended by sartalics.com.

The Arabic idiom in the apricot season translates to "in your dreams," presumably because the growing season for this fruit is so brief. Incidentally, the etymological root of "apricot," which means "to ripen early," is shared with the word precocious.

The Egyptian Arabic saying "ate the camel and all it carried" is the equivalent of "to eat someone out of house and home."


Read the original blog post.

12:01PM
Oct-22-11


Heimhenge

New River, AZ, USA

Member

posts 312

Post edited 12:03PM – Oct-22-11 by Heimhenge


Sartalics is an interesting concept, if you can get the font, and if the font is on the recipient's machine (otherwise you get a substituted font).

For close to 10 years now I've been trying to use the following to convey sarcasm: -)

The two characters imply "tongue in cheek." Picked it up on a pre-emoticon website that had all the text character combos then in use. Unfortunately, it never caught on. After receiving enough "What does that -) mean?" comments, I just gave up on it.

12:00PM
Oct-24-11


bigjohn756

Member

posts 4

How does Thomas Gainsborough's Blue Boy fit in here? It was painted in the 1770s.

3:08PM
Oct-24-11


ablestmage

Wichita Falls, TX

Member

posts 29

Although I like the idea of left-leaning italics, to my knowledge, the use of /sarcasm after the phrase, or (/sarcasm) if the phrase is in the middle of a sentence, is already fairly well established. I presume it has to do with the use of tags in programming (a word I use loosely) HTML. For instance if you wanted to bold something in HTML, you would put a <b>whatever text you want</b>, and whatever text is between the b and /b is bolded by the browser reading the HTML, just as typing out <center>text here</center> would center that text in the middle of the space the text would appear. The use of /sarcasm, therefore, would indicate that the previous phrase up until that point if unclear by the language itself.

Example:
A: So I was thinking about using grape soda instead of milk on my cereal. Would that work?
B: Well, I can't imagine how that wouldn't.. /sarcasm

Switching topics, there's a typo in the summary of the episode where this is episode is more formally listed.. under the swivet section, the example uses "swivel" as if spell-check caught it and changed it. Also, the link for "this episode" at the end of the charientism section has a stray carriage return tag (or a misplaced double quote from the anchor tag) in the address linked, creating a 404.

I think "downgrade" is already well enough established and is a bit more intuitive than having to guess what another term might mean — but I quite like "new-coked" over flupgrade, or perhaps flubgrade to emphasize the "flub" since the "up" still seems to suggest improvement to me.

You might have mentioned that newspapers nowadays do post lengthy classified ads (the paper locally does anyway, in north Texas) titled "Call for Bids" before describing at length a proposed construction details and necessary specs of the project.

3:23PM
Oct-24-11


ablestmage

Wichita Falls, TX

Member

posts 29

A possible other phrase that I just thought up, when reading my own post back to myself to edit it, is "using the entities" when one finds oneself needing to go into deeper-than-expected detail to get a point across. Web browser programs read HTML (hyper-text markup language) to display things onscreen, which are generally enclosed by less-than and greater-than symbols to tell the browser, "this is the start of something you need to format, instead of display as typed" such as <center> to center something instead of showing the word "center".. In order to get an HTML tag to show up as if it were regular text, I had to use "special entity" codes that would tell the browser to display the less-than/greater-than symbols instead of interpreting them as tags. And, in order to type out the special entity code, I have to use a special entity code even still. The special entity code for less than, < is typed out in the coding as &lt; (and in order to make the browser display &lt; and not interpret it as instruction to display a less-than symbol, I had to type in &amp;lt; .. and in order to display &amp;lt; I had to type &amp;amp;lt; ..etc)..

6:53AM
Oct-27-11


Dick

Fort Worth, TX

Member

posts 95

I need to disagree with Grant when he said that bar tender had the same root and definition as as the verb "tender" meaning to offer. A bar tender is one who tends or takes care of the bar. Even though it makes some sense to think of the the bar tender as one who makes an offer of drinks, the history of the word says you have another think coming.

7:28AM
Oct-28-11


adampracht

New Member

posts 1

I've always conveyed sarcasm with a simple emoticon. :P It's obstensibly a guy sticking out his toungue, but I find it a playful way to say "Don't take what I just said too seriously.

On a different note, my coworkers had an interesting theory on the reason for the blue/pink switch. Namely, that in Hitler's Germany, imprisoned homosexuals were placed in pink to designate them as such. This led to the connection with pink and femininity. I have no idea if it's true or historically accurate, but I thought it was interesting…

8:08AM
Oct-31-11


Ricky Wilks

Boston, MA

Member

posts 5

Regarding the phrase, "she's no better than she ought to be," I'm a little surprised that it doesn't have a connection to the accused family. I always assumed that not only was the "she" being talked about but that her family was being accused of being lower class or not "raising her right," so "she" really couldn't be expected to rise above her raising (to dust off an old chestnut) and that type of scandalous behavior should be expected.

1:48PM
Nov-07-11


jpaoletti

New Member

posts 1

Post edited 1:51PM – Nov-07-11 by jpaoletti


bigjohn756 said:

How does Thomas Gainsborough"s Blue Boy fit in here? It was painted in the 1770s.

He also painted Master Nichols, AKA "The Pink Boy" in 1782.

I am the author interviewed in the Smithsonian article; you can probably find the answers to at least some of your questions at my blog, pinkisforboys.org .

6:36PM
Nov-07-11


CheddarMelt

Pittsburgh

Member

posts 65

Welcome, jpaoletti!

9:42PM
Dec-13-11


windpig

Member

posts 14

Also, "Pinkie", which is often associated with "Blue Boy". Pinkie was painted in 1794 by Thomas Lawrence.

bigjohn756 said:

How does Thomas Gainsborough's Blue Boy fit in here? It was painted in the 1770s.

7:22AM
Dec-29-11


Radams

New Member

posts 2

failed software upgrades

 

Rogrades -  When computer upgraded software goes rogue and fails to work as it should.

7:45AM
Dec-29-11


Radams

New Member

posts 2

new way to show sarcasm in a text message

 

I usually add the emoticon with the wink using the semi colon.           Ex:  I am never sarcastic.  ;>)

Sometimes I will also caps or bold (or both)  a word in a sentence to give it emphasis so when reading it the sacasm comes out.   Ex.  I am NEVER sacastic.

 

This also brings up for me the challenge of communicating the english language based simply on which word we emphasize in a sentence.

This was taught to me in a Leadership class while in Seminary.

The instructor wrote the following sentence of the board and asked us explain it's meaning.

 

"I didn't say you were ugly."

 

After a few guesses by several students, He went on to say they were all correct and that in fact there were 6 possible meanings from the sentence, all dependent on which word was emphasized.

 

I didn't say you were ugly   implies   it wasn't me that said it, but someone did.

I didn't say you were ugly  implies   I flat out did not say what you think I said.

I didn't say you were ugly  implies   I didn't say it, but I sure did think it.

I didn't say you were ugly   implies   I said your mama was ugly.  (or simply just someone esle)

I didn't say you were ugly  implies   you are ugly.

I didn't say you were ugly   implies   I said something about you, just not that you were ugly, but still something insulting.

1:21PM
Jan-24-12


jennythereader

New Member

posts 2

My understanding is that pink was associated with little boys because it was a paler version of red, which is still considered a masculine color. Blue was associated with girls and women by way of the Virgin Mary. Children in general were associated with pastels and lighter colors.

 

There is a reference in the classic novel Little Women to pink=girl, blue=boy being a French tradition. I wonder if the soldiers returning home from WWII would have been exposed to it while serving in France.