If you logged onto MyAccess not too long ago, you were prompted to fill out a survey that contained two short questions, one about your “ethnicity” and one about your “race.” According to an email we received from the Registrar in March, the US Department of Education required this survey, which used a “newly prescribed format.” The two questions were as follows:

(1) Ethnicity: Hispanic or Latino; Not Hispanic or Latino
(2) Race: American Indian or Alaska native; Asian; Black or African American; Native hawaiian or Other Pacific islander; White

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True randomness

Over the weekend I participated in a Habitat for Humanity build. By midday we noticed tinkly Christmas music wafting over the neighborhood and into the work site, so we looked up from our digging and saw that the sound was emanating from a mostly unmarked white van making the rounds. “An ice cream truck playing Christmas music? In March? That’s random,” we mused.

Later, while scrolling through a newly-Friended Friend’s profile pictures on Facebook, I came upon a photo of my new Friend cradling a guinea pig in his arms. Someone had commented, “you are so random and I love it.” And, in Honduras over spring break, I recall overhearing another volunteer saying disgustedly, “What a rando…”

A totally like random dog

As Urban Dictionary user Pip writes, “random is the latest buzzword” among teenagers. There truly is an infinite number of different situations that demand the label “random.” Wore two different-colored socks? Random! Ate cottage pie for dinner? Random! Wrote a column about the word random? Random! “Random” can even have a positive connotation, as the enthused Facebook comment suggests. Or it can have a negative connotation, as the volunteer’s statement showed.

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Spread the Word to End the Word flyer

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel created a stir back in February when it was reported that the foul-mouthed politician had referred to certain political activists as “fucking retarded.” Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin called for Emanuel’s resignation over the offensive outburst, and not because he said the f-word; Palin, whose son has Down’s syndrome, claimed to be offended by his use of the r-word.

It was around this time that I began to notice flyers posted on campus: large capital R’s crossed out in bright colored paint. It turns out that these are part of the Spread the Word to End the Word, a campaign that pledges to “eliminate the use of the R-word in everyday speech.”

Special Olympics spokeswoman Kristen Seckler commented, “We aren’t trying to ban a word, but the pejorative in casual use–especially used by kids in schools and in the classroom–is isolating and it hurts.” The movement seems to be gaining support; as of today, there are 123,878 pledges on r-word.org.

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“So many huge celebs stanning for Pink, they must know better who has the talent.”

“It doesn’t matter who has more stans or celebrity stans, they’re all putting work into performing, recording, and pleasing their fans.”

Who is Stan? And why has his name become a noun and a verb?

Stan, as it turns out, was a man who adored Eminem to the point of insanity, obsessively writing fan letters to the Grammy-award-winning American rapper, record producer, and songwriter. But when Eminem failed to respond to the letters, Stan became crazed, eventually driving himself–and his pregnant girlfriend–off a bridge. Soon after, sitting down to answer some fan mail, the prolific rapper realized that if he had responded to the letters only a week earlier, he would have prevented the sensational suicide that was blaring on every news station.
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Amazon, my favorite recourse when the textbooks offered in the bookstore are too pricey, has recently been showered with heavy criticism for removing rankings from books it deems to have “adult content.” Rankings are what get an author’s books into search results and bestsellers lists, so it is frustrating for any writer to have that taken away. However, when “adult” is defined as “containing LGBT/homosexual content,” which is essentially what seems to have happened, then there is ample room for the Internet to be indignant.

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“The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it,” said George Washington. He may be the namesake of the District we live in, but he could still be a real downer. In fact, when used intelligently and sparingly, swearing offers college students a myriad of benefits.

Dr. Kate Burridge, a professor of linguistics at Monash University, explains: “Studies show that if you’re with a group of close friends, the more relaxed you are, the more you swear. It’s a way of saying: ‘I’m so comfortable here I can let off steam. I can say whatever I like.’” This use for swearing is more common among guys and, in general, women and men report feeling more shocked when they hear a woman swear than a man. This response certainly hearkens back to the traditional role of females as keepers and transmitters of manners and social values. I think it is safe to say that those days are over.
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Why do the Caesars of our world get “assassinated” when the rest of us have to make do with merely being “murdered”? Maybe I have my priorities in the wrong place, but this has always bothered me. The answer can be found in—guess what!—word history.

Murder derives from Old Norse morð, which came from the Proto-Indo-European base *mor “to die,” from whence we received Latin words such as mors, “death,” and eventually our English word “mortal.” Interestingly, in Germanic culture morð was understood as “concealed or unlawful killing” and thus the “murderer” was subject to vengeance and dishonor that a plain killer would not be.

Assassin, and hence assassinate, has several disputed etymologies. The first and most popular says that “assassin” is derived from Arabian hashishiyyin, “hashish-users, referring to the drug which medieval Muslim mercenaries took while they committed their killings. That’s clear enough; plus, it draws a nice, simplistic picture of violent drug-imbibing Orientals (despite that no contemporary sources mention the killers having intoxicants, except Marco Polo who probably made it up).

A second version says that “assassin” comes from Hashashin, which also meant “hashish-eaters” and was an alternative designation for the Nizari branch of the Isma’ili Shi’a Muslims. … Wait, that’s not clear at all!
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MSB, SFS, GUSA, ICC, GUROP, GERMS. Georgetown life is rife with acronyms. Nobody envies the incoming freshman who have to learn not only all the stuff that this alphabet soup refers to, but also the conventions determining how these acronyms are pronounced in spoken conversation.

Most of the time we spell our acronyms out letter by letter (”I.C.C.,” “M.S.B.”). But some we pronounce as if they were words (”goo-rop,” “germs,” “gap”), and other times we do whatever is convenient and suits our affections (”dops” for DPS). Then there are those acronyms that we avoid referring to in conversation for fear that our tongue cannot pronounce them or that our memory cannot contain such a long string of letters.

This much is obvious to any Georgetown student who has been here more than a semester. What we all might be surprised to learn, though, is how many common, everyday words were acronyms before they became words.
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“I didn’t have time to do the reading, so I sparknoted it.” “I googled all of my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriends.” “She spent all day youtubing Laguna Beach clips.” “We weren’t home, but Dad tivoed it.”

“Verbing nouns,” i.e., using derivational morphemes to convert nouns into verbs, is an entirelly natural part of the English language. Shakespeare did it when he wrote “Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle.” I do it when I complain or adulate about having to blog on Sunday mornings. Verbification is an example of a “functional shift,” and cognitive scientists report that functionally shifted words result in a sudden increase in brain activity. As long as you don’t bring up the word “impact” around language prescriptivists (who insist that “the only thing that can be impacted is a wisdom tooth”), verbification is hunky-dory.

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What is the first word that comes out when you stub your toe or start banging your head against the desk after six hours of nonstop studying? Is it “ow,” “ouch,” “ay,” or something else?

According to the Online Etymology dictionary, “ouch” derives from the German cry of pain, “autsch.” Since the earliest examples of “ouch” have been found in the U.S., it is likely that the German word was transmitted into English via Pennsylvania German version of “autsch,” which was “outch.” In any case, it is not clear where “autsch” came from—it is a relatively rare word in German—and the OED simply suggests it is “probably imitative” of the sounds that occur naturally when we experience pain.

Steven T. Byington, writing in the Dec. 1942 issue of American Speech, recalls that in his childhood, “the interjection of sudden pain was [aʊ], which we assumed to be merely the sound that the human voice spontaneously produces under the stimulus of sudden pain, but it is…coincident with the German ‘au.’”

Is there a consensus among languages as to what is the “natural, spontaneous sound” that emerges when one hurts oneself? In Japanese, the interjection expressing pain is “itai”; in Spanish it is “ay” (”although in Spanish it is oftener lamentation than pain,” according to Byington) and French has the similar “aïe”; meanwhile, the Russian interjection expressing pain is “Ой.” As for the ancient world, Greeks would use “ah” for sharp sudden pain, the Romans would exclaim “au,” “hau,” or “vau,” and in Hebrew the interjection was “oi.”

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“Sketchy…” “Sketch!” “Totally sketchville…” Sketchiness and the judging of things and situations as sketchy is so ubiquitous in teenage and college social culture that I never gave it a second thought. There are so many moments in daily life that beg for the word—Facebook stalking, the cream of mushroom soup at Leo’s, Blagojevich, that guy you met who constantly washes his hands with Clorox wipes. What did we ever do without “sketchy”?
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Valentine’s Day today may be all about lovey-dovey business, but “Valentine,” is actually based on the name Valentius, from Latin valentia meaning “strength, capacity.” Love is certainly the only kind of strength that matters (unless you are in the SFS, in which case you probably give credence to other kinds of strength such as economy and, you know, nuclear weapons). Read onward for some sweet etymologies.

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What does the word “schmooze” mean to you? Is schmoozing good, bad, ugly, indifferent? Would you schmooze with your friends, your girlfriend, your family? Think about it for a second and then look under the cut.

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If you are going to the Presidential Inauguration on Tuesday, you might not be assured a view of the main man himself, but you already know that you are going to encounter vast multitudes of people. The Hoya reports up to two million spectators coming to DC and lining up for the parade, ceremony, and other festivities. But are you going to see “hordes” of people?
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The name of the current month, January, was derived from Janus, the name of a Roman god with one head pointing toward the past and another head pointing toward the future. He is an appropriate symbol for the new year, which is a time when we reflect on our pasts to create plans and resolutions for the future.

In fact, there may be many people out there who, for the year 2009, have resolved to improve their vocabulary in English. Here are three strategies for expanding your vocabulary that I have found most effective.
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