A few entries in our family glossary
Jul. 8th, 2008 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
resonantDoesn't everyone have words and phrases that only have meaning in their own families? I want to hear yours, too!
Walter: Sad, but not with ordinary sadness -- with that voluptuous melancholy that you can sink down into and enjoy.
For a Spanish class, the spouse was reading the poetry of Lorca in Spanish, and he read me "The Ballad of the Water of the Seas" (there's a not-great translation here). The poem has a repeating refrain of "the water of the seas" (el agua de los mares), and the last stanza says, more or less: "And you, my heart, where was your deep bitterness born?" "Bitter, very bitter is the water of the seas." So we would go around saying, "Bitter, very bitter."
Well, of course "de los mares" makes you think of Walter De La Mare, who was melancholy his own self. So eventually we wound up saying, with mock solemnity, "Walter, very Walter."
Boorstinian: It seems trivial, but if you examine it closely, it turns out to tell a whole larger story.
We read Daniel Boorstin's three-volume American history together (back when we had neither offspring nor computers to occupy our time). Boorstin will do an entire chapter on, say, glass windows. You'll go, "How could he possibly have thirty pages on glass windows?" But by the time you're done, glass windows will have been used to demonstrate import/export patterns, technological development, economics, and attitudes toward shelter.
So say you're in a mall, surrounded by the same slick, identical chain stores you see in every mall, and suddenly you come upon a little tiny shoe-repair shop crammed into a corner, and all the words on the outside are in some other language, so you can only tell it's a shoe-repair shop because of the drawing of the broken-down shoe. And one of you will say, "I wonder how long that's been here," and the other will say, "I'll bet it's Boorstinian."
Peel me a grape: I feel guilty for making you work while I just lie around, but while you're up ... I was an adult before I realized my mother had gotten that one from a song.
You're gooder'n ary angel: Thank you. Another from Mom, who probably got it from her farmer parents.
How I hate waffle night: May mean: The person in question is a mean-spirited person who can't stand other people's harmless pleasures. Or may mean: This harmless thing that you take such innocent pleasure in? It's driving me insane.
My ex-boss, the Space Alien, ate, as near as I can tell, nothing. She seemed to take no pleasure in food, and, indeed, to view it rather the way some old religious writers viewed marital sex, as a disgusting necessity.
Well, the Space Alien lived with a boyfriend who loved kitchen gadgets, and one year he got a waffle maker for Christmas.
"I can always tell when it's going to be a waffle night," she said, "because sometime after dinner he'll start humming. Oh, no, I'll think. We'll go to bed the way we always do, and in the night when I'm almost asleep, he'll get up and go down to the kitchen, humming. And then the smell will waft up the stairs, and I'll know he's down there eating waffles at midnight. How I hate waffle night."
Mostly I say it when the spouse enters his second hour of piano practice.
A tricky, crafty x: This one is hard to explain, but it made me laugh out loud in the car when I thought of it, so I'll do my best: The spouse used to lean over the basinet that the baby was in and say, "That one's up to something. What a tricky, crafty baby."
Eventually he explained that it was funny to him because obviously there is nothing less tricky and crafty than a baby, but the thing is, the kidlet did have a mischievous expression as a baby; they did look like they were up to something. So the phrase means, at the same time, someone who's perfectly, completely innocent, and someone who actually is up to something. As in: "Mr. Green gives me such difficult pieces to play." "Well, he's up to something. He's a tricky, crafty piano teacher."
You don't have to label all those rocks today: Means, more or less: This project you're driving yourself insane over? You think it's a tedious necessity, but it's not a necessity at all but an obsessive compulsion.
The spouse's entire family is prone to this sort of thing. (I have dark theories as to why this is. There are three siblings, and the spouse is the only one who's not addicted to anything.) His brother is the worst, though, possibly because his drug of choice is a stimulant rather than a depressant.
He had a rock collection. I think he may have had one rock from every important place he'd ever visited. Hundreds of them. And he called the spouse one night and said, "I spent weeks building a cabinet with a little compartment for each rock, and then I was up until midnight putting labels on each cabinet, and suddenly it occurred to me ..."
At this point, the spouse is thinking, "He's finally going to figure out that this is a fool's errand that does no one any good and is causing him lots of stress and effort for nothing!"
But no. What the brother-in-law says is, "It occurred to me: I can do the rest of it later! I don't have to label all these rocks today!"
(In its spectacular missing-of-the-point, this is not unlike that commercial for the smoker's toothpaste that used to be on television in the seventies -- does anyone remember that? The guy would take a puff of a cigarette, then exhale through a handkerchief and show the black stain that resulted. He'd say, "Can you imagine what all that smoke is doing to your teeth?" And all of us would yell, "Your lungs, you idiot!")
When we make verbs out of our last names, the spouse's verb sometimes means becoming obsessed with some pointless exercise in order to stave off some nameless doom, and sometimes it means taking weird joy in adding up enormous numbers, often to demonstrate how inevitable the nameless doom is. I'm not going to share the names, so let's just say one is "spousing" if one collects twenty bottles of drinking water in the basement just in case the bird flu shuts down all the stores in town, and one is also spousing if one says, "They say bird flu could spread at a geometric rate. So say one person gets it, and she gives it to four other people, and those four give it to four apiece, that's sixteen, and then those sixteen ..."
One is Resing, on the other hand, when one is making pedantic corrections. "You forgot the original one -- that's seventeen."
edited 2020 to retroactively correct the kidlet's gender pronouns
Walter: Sad, but not with ordinary sadness -- with that voluptuous melancholy that you can sink down into and enjoy.
For a Spanish class, the spouse was reading the poetry of Lorca in Spanish, and he read me "The Ballad of the Water of the Seas" (there's a not-great translation here). The poem has a repeating refrain of "the water of the seas" (el agua de los mares), and the last stanza says, more or less: "And you, my heart, where was your deep bitterness born?" "Bitter, very bitter is the water of the seas." So we would go around saying, "Bitter, very bitter."
Well, of course "de los mares" makes you think of Walter De La Mare, who was melancholy his own self. So eventually we wound up saying, with mock solemnity, "Walter, very Walter."
Boorstinian: It seems trivial, but if you examine it closely, it turns out to tell a whole larger story.
We read Daniel Boorstin's three-volume American history together (back when we had neither offspring nor computers to occupy our time). Boorstin will do an entire chapter on, say, glass windows. You'll go, "How could he possibly have thirty pages on glass windows?" But by the time you're done, glass windows will have been used to demonstrate import/export patterns, technological development, economics, and attitudes toward shelter.
So say you're in a mall, surrounded by the same slick, identical chain stores you see in every mall, and suddenly you come upon a little tiny shoe-repair shop crammed into a corner, and all the words on the outside are in some other language, so you can only tell it's a shoe-repair shop because of the drawing of the broken-down shoe. And one of you will say, "I wonder how long that's been here," and the other will say, "I'll bet it's Boorstinian."
Peel me a grape: I feel guilty for making you work while I just lie around, but while you're up ... I was an adult before I realized my mother had gotten that one from a song.
You're gooder'n ary angel: Thank you. Another from Mom, who probably got it from her farmer parents.
How I hate waffle night: May mean: The person in question is a mean-spirited person who can't stand other people's harmless pleasures. Or may mean: This harmless thing that you take such innocent pleasure in? It's driving me insane.
My ex-boss, the Space Alien, ate, as near as I can tell, nothing. She seemed to take no pleasure in food, and, indeed, to view it rather the way some old religious writers viewed marital sex, as a disgusting necessity.
Well, the Space Alien lived with a boyfriend who loved kitchen gadgets, and one year he got a waffle maker for Christmas.
"I can always tell when it's going to be a waffle night," she said, "because sometime after dinner he'll start humming. Oh, no, I'll think. We'll go to bed the way we always do, and in the night when I'm almost asleep, he'll get up and go down to the kitchen, humming. And then the smell will waft up the stairs, and I'll know he's down there eating waffles at midnight. How I hate waffle night."
Mostly I say it when the spouse enters his second hour of piano practice.
A tricky, crafty x: This one is hard to explain, but it made me laugh out loud in the car when I thought of it, so I'll do my best: The spouse used to lean over the basinet that the baby was in and say, "That one's up to something. What a tricky, crafty baby."
Eventually he explained that it was funny to him because obviously there is nothing less tricky and crafty than a baby, but the thing is, the kidlet did have a mischievous expression as a baby; they did look like they were up to something. So the phrase means, at the same time, someone who's perfectly, completely innocent, and someone who actually is up to something. As in: "Mr. Green gives me such difficult pieces to play." "Well, he's up to something. He's a tricky, crafty piano teacher."
You don't have to label all those rocks today: Means, more or less: This project you're driving yourself insane over? You think it's a tedious necessity, but it's not a necessity at all but an obsessive compulsion.
The spouse's entire family is prone to this sort of thing. (I have dark theories as to why this is. There are three siblings, and the spouse is the only one who's not addicted to anything.) His brother is the worst, though, possibly because his drug of choice is a stimulant rather than a depressant.
He had a rock collection. I think he may have had one rock from every important place he'd ever visited. Hundreds of them. And he called the spouse one night and said, "I spent weeks building a cabinet with a little compartment for each rock, and then I was up until midnight putting labels on each cabinet, and suddenly it occurred to me ..."
At this point, the spouse is thinking, "He's finally going to figure out that this is a fool's errand that does no one any good and is causing him lots of stress and effort for nothing!"
But no. What the brother-in-law says is, "It occurred to me: I can do the rest of it later! I don't have to label all these rocks today!"
(In its spectacular missing-of-the-point, this is not unlike that commercial for the smoker's toothpaste that used to be on television in the seventies -- does anyone remember that? The guy would take a puff of a cigarette, then exhale through a handkerchief and show the black stain that resulted. He'd say, "Can you imagine what all that smoke is doing to your teeth?" And all of us would yell, "Your lungs, you idiot!")
When we make verbs out of our last names, the spouse's verb sometimes means becoming obsessed with some pointless exercise in order to stave off some nameless doom, and sometimes it means taking weird joy in adding up enormous numbers, often to demonstrate how inevitable the nameless doom is. I'm not going to share the names, so let's just say one is "spousing" if one collects twenty bottles of drinking water in the basement just in case the bird flu shuts down all the stores in town, and one is also spousing if one says, "They say bird flu could spread at a geometric rate. So say one person gets it, and she gives it to four other people, and those four give it to four apiece, that's sixteen, and then those sixteen ..."
One is Resing, on the other hand, when one is making pedantic corrections. "You forgot the original one -- that's seventeen."
edited 2020 to retroactively correct the kidlet's gender pronouns
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 05:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 02:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 05:22 pm (UTC)"Well, Cesar Romero was tall." Means, "your conversation is ridiculous and full of non sequiturs." From While You Were Sleeping, when Sandra Bullock is listening to this huge family conversation where no one's actually listening to each other, and they're answering the wrong statements and everybody's getting confused. Pretty much describes our family dinners to a T.
(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 05:42 pm (UTC)Well, Cesar Romero was tall. When I was in high school, I had a friend whose term for this was "Dick Clark looks younger every year."
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 05:31 pm (UTC)- "It's your car." Essentially, "your decision affects only you." A reminder of agency. My sister once went over a curb and waited anxiously for her boyfriend to cuss her out, and when he finally asked what was wrong, she said her late husband would have yelled at her by now for damaging the car. She was waiting for the other shoe to fall. "It's your car," replied the boyfriend. The "you nincompoop" was barely even implied. ;)
This has been expanded. Should I dye my hair? "It's your car." Should I move the furniture around? "It's your car." And so on.
(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 02:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 05:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 05:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 05:39 pm (UTC)My roommate and I use Myers-Briggs letters as adverbs. As in "I just wanted to go in there, buy some grapes, and go home, but she had to E at everyone in the store," or "Yeah, our apartment got P'd pretty fast." Yes, to say we P'd all over our apartment sounds pretty crude, but when you consider the sheer number of half-finished craft projects and boxes of cereal with half a bowl's worth left in the bottom that inhabit our front room, the vividness of the metaphor makes sense.
(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 02:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 05:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 02:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 05:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 02:16 pm (UTC)Those of us who took Latin together in high school had a short-lived catchphrase for whenever someone pointed out that you'd left something out of your calculations: I supplied it. It started out as, "Janet, where did you get the word 'chariot' in that sentence?" "Oh, I supplied it," and eventually came to be used in contexts like, "Hey, you said the six of us could ride with Guy, but his car will only hold four." "Oh, I supplied it."
(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 05:44 pm (UTC)I know we have actual words and expressions more like what you describe, but they're not coming to mind just now.
(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 02:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 05:46 pm (UTC)When ST:TNG first premiered, I observed to my father that the producers were clearly hoping to get one Spock out of the wide range of characters they'd created who were in some way alienated from humanity-- half-human, raised by humans, built by humans... My father chimed in, "And Captain Picard, who is not human but French!" and launched into a Beldar Conehead impression. We laughed, and then he very seriously warned me, "Now don't tell that to anyone from France."
I was in seventh grade. I did not know anyone from France at the time; and if I had, I like to think I would have had the sense not to start up a conversation with Coneheads jokes.
(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 02:18 pm (UTC)We needed this phrase on our last visit to the in-laws; they were telling us some scandalous story that happened in the 1940s to two of their friends who've been dead for years, and they said, "Now, don't tell anyone."
(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 05:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 03:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 05:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:21 pm (UTC)Or possibly we are related.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:01 pm (UTC)"Like a mob hit" is
"Malt soda" is cheap mass-produced beer, like Miller or Coors. We generally only drink this beer at sporting events where there is no actual good beer to be had.
(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:42 pm (UTC)Our dog is so excited by the prospect of a walk that we cannot say "walk" (or ride) within his earshot, unless we are prepared to "go for a walk." We found early-on that anything that sounded like "walk" would result in the same frenzy, and the boys in the house took great delight in "balk"-ing like chickens at the hapless dog. So when we're searching for volunteers, we ask, "who's taking the dog for a chicken?"
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:09 pm (UTC)A couple of current ones:
Damnit = Coke ("What do you want to drink?" "Damnit.")
Spot remover = Sprite
Damnit comes from the fact that Coke is bad for us but sometimes we just want Coke, damnit.
After we do our errands on Saturday and are on our way back home, we're usually thirsty. So we need something to "hit the spot". I usually have Sprite (because I avoid caffeine) so Sprite has become spot remover. (MrGiraffe has a large damnit.)
(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 02:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:09 pm (UTC)Eventually, I did the family history and discovered that my grandmother's grandmother was a Caldwell, so "Come in, Caldy!" most likely originated sometime in the 19th century.
(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 02:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:13 pm (UTC)"Listen," said my grandmother, "that's no criterion."
She meant "that's no crisis", and proceeded to help the customer shorten the sleeves, but this was when my father was a teenager, and for as long as I can remember, "that's no criterion" has meant "don't worry about it, it will be all right".
Or the time my grandmother called my grandfather at work and said "On your way home, so it shouldn't be a total loss, pick up a quart of milk and a loaf of bread at the market." [facepalm] "So it shouldn't be a total loss" is a common expression, but I don't think most people apply it to their husbands' coming home from work. :-P
I can remember the following conversation (which must have taken place something like twenty years ago) as if it happened yesterday:We were about to leave en masse for the beach or something, and my grandfather was hoping there was a snack of some kind before we got in the car, but that couldn't be less important. To this day, "In short, what do you have?" sort of means "I acknowledge that everyone has been on your case as if you were the only person capable of doing anything around here." It's not so frequent, but I feel like I can hear my brother saying it not long ago, so it does occur.
It's not just my grandmother, though. "Is the rye bread fresh?" means "What? I can't hear you. Can a person get an answer around here?" This is from a conversation a friend of my parents' reported witnessing at a deli counter.
There must be others -- some from my mother's side of the family, for a start -- but nothing is coming to me at the moment. I suppose it's the kind of thing you have to come upon in context.
(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 02:38 pm (UTC)I'd love to steal "In short, what do you have?" but it's totally context-dependent; I'd just get stared at.
(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 02:38 pm (UTC)Bird gender really only matters to birds, anyway.
(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:26 pm (UTC)"Squish": the traditional cry that ends a meeting of our local chapter of the SCA, instead of "adjourned" or the like. I don't remember where this comes from.
"foreskin mashpotatoes": the rest of them have forgotten this, but Best Guyfriend
Because of all the ex/military/philes around, everyone asks "say again" instead of "repeat that", but that's pretty common; similarly, the way
(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 02:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:29 pm (UTC)Clicker: the remote for the garage door opener
Zapper: the remoter for the TV. Unfortunately, we have more than one zapper because the cable box has it's own, so they're distinguished by color - the zapper, and the gray zapper. Other remotes are "remotes."
Rain Dummies: People whose driving skills are suddenly vastly impaired by the occurrence of rain. There are also Snow Dummies and Friday Dummies. The Fridays are just excited because it's the weekend, Snows can be hazardous to your health, as their impairment is far worse than a Rain's.
Goobernoski: This is an affectionate term for someone who is being an uber-goober, but you still love them anyway. "You goobernoski" tends to mean, "I can't believe you just now did something that idiotic, and that I've loved you and been married to you for the past 2 decades - how did this become my life?" It is occassionally replaced by "goof-mack-nut" (I don't know why).
Major Award: n. usage: Turn on/off the Major Award, wouldja?
My sister gave us a red neon Stoli sign from her former bar for xmas one year. It arrived during a marathon viewing of "A Christmas Story." It hangs proudly on the wall above the fish tank. If we leave it on when going out, we can see the "warm glow of the Major Award" from halfway down the street.
Zerberk: (it's onomatopoetic) for blowing raspberries. It's a threat, usually - "If you don't cut it out, I'm gonna zerberk you!" Or, if you're out of reach, it's a place holder - "I zerberk you!"
The kids are in the car: It's the socially acceptable way of saying "You have said good-bye to everyone in the room and are working on your 2nd or 3rd round. Get your ass in the car now."
(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:29 pm (UTC)OMG! This exactly describes my week at work this week!
*sigh* Yeah.
::goes back to it, because I know damn well there's got to be a *way*::
(Heh.)
(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 02:41 pm (UTC)Family phrases
Date: 7/8/08 06:30 pm (UTC)At one point, my great-grandfather posted an editorial cartoon at the house. A gazelle at the edge of a crevice looked down at another gazelle who was spreadeagled within the crevice, clinging by his hooves to rocks on either side. The caption below read, "You know, for a gazelle, you're a real klutz." or something of the sort.
I can't be sure of the wording, as I've never actually seen this cartoon, but in the houses of my grandmother, mother, all my uncles, and my great aunts, "You know, for a gazelle..." has echoed a beat after tipped casseroles, slammed doors, dropped vases and bruised toes.
Re: Family phrases
Date: 7/9/08 02:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:32 pm (UTC)Usually requested after my Dad had taken apart/put together something.. "Why do I have all these left over parts?!? Hand me the damn distructions!"
(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 7/8/08 07:33 pm (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:32 pm (UTC)Would Ian's grandmother like some salt/green beans/butter/other dish is a means of asking for items at large dinner gatherings. It originated with one of our friends' grandmothers, who would say "Would you like some green beans?" when, in fact, she was the one who wanted the green beans. She would ask around until finally someone would say, "No, would *you* like some, Grandmother?"
Fine linen Freds are paper towels. This comes from a friend's parents who nearly divorced over a difference of opinion over how to correctly pronounce the word "towel." To save their marriage, they decided that they would henceforth call all towels Freds. This eventually merged with the habit of called paper napkins/towels "fine linen."
One that doesn't get used much anymore--not since we started reproducing--is penis to mean "remote control." This came about from a monologue by a friend about how a remote control is like a penis in several ways: Whoever has it in their hand is in control. There's often competition for who gets to hold it next. No one who has it wants to let it go, etc.
I think I'd better stop now. :)
(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 02:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 02:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:44 pm (UTC)We live above above a charity shop, which has been the source of many excellent bargains. It's second nature to check the window as we pass. Anyway... it was the first really sunny of spring, and I had forgotten (as I do every year) that I don't react well to sunlight. The Spawn and I walked out of the shady lane from our side of the building and I recoiled in horror, 'Augh, the sun, it burns... oooh, trampoline!'
Yeah, trampoline in the window, giggling Spawn all over the street.
Another family one is 'elephants' in reply to any question we don't have an answer to.
What's for lunch? Elephants.
Where are my shoes? Elephants.
Who clogged the loo in the small bathroom? Elephants.
(no subject)
Date: 7/9/08 02:47 pm (UTC)The spouse will respond to the question "Why?" with "Porque el puerco." (Because of the pig, but it also makes you think of Porky Pig.) I told this to the Space Alien, and she said her family's equivalent was "Parce que de leon" (because of some lions/Ponce de Leon).
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 06:55 pm (UTC)This comes from a story about a family my mother knew, where the mother had her children fooled into thinking she liked chicken backs, when in fact she was taking the gross pieces for herself so that her family could have the good stuff.
(no subject)
Date: 7/8/08 09:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From: