i invent and borrow words
Jul. 14th, 2004 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keryxI think I mentioned some time ago the origin of "asshat" - my thing with adding curse words to other words to have more fun cursing.
Well![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hothead's post about the use of "cunt" and "bitch" reminded me of some other odd word inventions.
Like dykebitchcunt. I worked with a costume designer in high school who was a serious trash talker, and also a fairly radical feministy person. She kinda invented this word, as one of her many streams of ellided curses. A dykebitchcunt can be a woman who pisses you off or who rocks, a man of either sort, an annoying inanimate object (seam rippers, I recall, were known for their dykebitchcuntyness). It's just a word. Something about the sheer absurdity of putting all three of those words together (really, it just needs "whore" and "slut" added somewhere to be the essence of all bad things to call women) defanged the words for me. It's not reclaiming any of those words, but it does interject humor where you're angry - if you're with other people who know it, at least. It's still not a word you scream at someone on the schoolbus, even if she did just pull your hair.
Like gwadish. See, my dad used "gay" for the longest time to mean, basically, fey in a really really mistaken and tasteless way. And by the time I'd broken him of the habit, I found it cropping up in my own slang. I had to replace it with something that evoked mistaken tasteless feyness in fewer words. I think it's a contraction "gaywad-ish", maybe. I have no idea.
Well
hothead's post about the use of "cunt" and "bitch" reminded me of some other odd word inventions.Like dykebitchcunt. I worked with a costume designer in high school who was a serious trash talker, and also a fairly radical feministy person. She kinda invented this word, as one of her many streams of ellided curses. A dykebitchcunt can be a woman who pisses you off or who rocks, a man of either sort, an annoying inanimate object (seam rippers, I recall, were known for their dykebitchcuntyness). It's just a word. Something about the sheer absurdity of putting all three of those words together (really, it just needs "whore" and "slut" added somewhere to be the essence of all bad things to call women) defanged the words for me. It's not reclaiming any of those words, but it does interject humor where you're angry - if you're with other people who know it, at least. It's still not a word you scream at someone on the schoolbus, even if she did just pull your hair.
Like gwadish. See, my dad used "gay" for the longest time to mean, basically, fey in a really really mistaken and tasteless way. And by the time I'd broken him of the habit, I found it cropping up in my own slang. I had to replace it with something that evoked mistaken tasteless feyness in fewer words. I think it's a contraction "gaywad-ish", maybe. I have no idea.