Posts Tagged ‘slang’
“Wrestling is ballet with violence”*…
“You call it wrestling, they term it ‘working’ … As Shakespeare once said: ‘A rose by any other name,’ etc.” So Marcus Griffin began his groundbreaking 1937 book on the ins and outs of the pro wrestling business, Fall Guys: The Barnums of Bounce. It’s a good place to start, because any discussion of the grunt-and-groaners (as Griffin would call them) inevitably involves an examination of the artifice that undergirds the endeavor, and that artifice — be it the antediluvian secret that the whole show is a put-on, or the modern-day pretense that both actors and audience interact as if it’s legitimate — is itself bolstered by an intricate, seemingly inane vocabulary of lingo, idiom, and jargon.
Every subculture has its lingo, but the subbier the culture, the more unintelligible the dialect can be. Couple that with an industry conceived on falsehood and dedicated to keeping the lie alive, and you’ve got a rabbit hole that even the most stalwart of linguists would think twice before exploring. We take a stab at it here. The most obvious of terms, those used in common parlance outside the wrestling world — pin, feud, dud, etc. — are mostly omitted, despite their prevalence inside the biz. Some terms are listed within other definitions for readability’s sake. As with anything of this sort, this list is far from complete — and as with anything so idiomatic, the definitions are frequently debatable. Though some of the terms are obscure, their purpose is larger. The terms obscure the industry’s realities, sure; they function as a secret handshake among those with insider knowledge, obviously; but moreover, they try to describe a unique, oddball enterprise in terms of its own bizarre artistry…
From…
angle (n.) — A story line or plot in the wrestling product, as in, “They’re working a classic underdog angle.” It can be employed in either small-bore usage — i.e., the angle in a match — or in large-scale terms to describe a lengthy story. The term is borrowed from the archaic criminal/carnie phrase “work an angle,” which means figuring out a scam or finding an underhanded way to make a profit.
and…
Andre shot (n.) — A trick by which a camera is positioned beneath a wrestler, looking up, so as to make the wrestler look bigger. Famously used to make the 7-foot-4 Andre the Giant look even bigger than he was.
to…
workrate (n.) — A term for in-ring wrestling quality, used primarily by wrestling journalists to rate the physical and psychological performance of a match. The field of wrestling critique is often associated with journalist Dave Meltzer, who rates matches on a star scale; great matches throughout history are often referred to as “five-star matches” in reference to Meltzer’s rubric.
and…
zabada (n.) — A catch-all term for an arbitrary tool used to fill in a hole in anangle, usually used when the tool is still undefined, as in, “He’ll come out, cut a promo, run-in, zabada, then the finish.”
…it’s all in “Grantland Dictionary: Pro Wrestling Edition,” along with illustrations like the one above (for “chain wrestling”). Check out Grantland‘s other delightful dictionaries here.
* Jesse Ventura
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As we feel the frenzy, we might recall that it was on this date in 1906, in a game against Carroll College, that St. Louis University’s Bradbury “Brad” Robinson hit Jack Schneider with a 20-yard touchdown toss– the first legal forward pass in football.
“E. B. Cochems [the coach at St. Louis University in 1906] is to forward passing what the Wright brothers are to aviation and Thomas Edison is to the electric light.”
– College Football Hall of Fame coach David M. Nelson
1906 St. Louis Post-Dispatch drawing of Brad Robinson’s epic throw
“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause”*…
via @ShortList
The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
Rather be dead than cool
– Kurt Cobain/Nirvana, “Stay Away”
* Mark Twain
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As we bask in the boss, we might send tubular birthday greetings to John Anthony Burgess Wilson; he was born on this date in 1917. A composer, translator, and author better known by his pen name, “Anthony Burgess,” he put his linguistic facility to use in his most famous novel, A Clockwork Orange, creating a “Nadsat” slang for Alex and his gang that included a word that surely belongs on the list above– “horrorshow.”
Special Valentine’s Day Edition: “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass… and I’m all out of bubblegum”*…
If you’ve ever read a hardboiled detective story, you may have come across a sentence like,
“I jammed the roscoe in his button and said, ‘Close your yap, bo, or I squirt metal.’”
Something like this isn’t too hard to decipher. But what if you encounter,
“The flim-flammer jumped in the flivver and faded.”
“You dumb mug, get your mitts off the marbles before I stuff that mud-pipe down your mush—and tell your moll to hand over the mazuma.”
“The sucker with the schnozzle poured a slug but before he could scram out two shamuses showed him the shiv and said they could send him over.”
You may need to translate this into normal English just to be able to follow the plot.
Or maybe you want to seem tougher. Why get in a car when you can hop in a boiler? Why tell someone to shut up when you can tell them to close their head? Why threaten to discharge a firearm when you can say, “Dust, pal, or I pump lead!”
Want to learn the language of Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Mike Hammer and the Continental Op.? Turn to William Denton’s Twists, Slugs and Roscoes: A Glossary of Hardboiled Slang.
* Nada (Roddy Piper) in the tragically-unappreciated They Live. The photo above is, of course, from the entertaining, but adequately-appreciated Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.
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As we practice patois, we might might recall that it was on this date in 1929 that four men dressed as police officers entered gangster Bugs Moran’s headquarters on North Clark Street in Chicago, lined seven of Moran’s henchmen against a wall, and shot them to death. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, as it became known, was the culmination of a gang war between Al Capone’s South Side Italian gang and Bugs Moran’ North Side Irish gang. Moran’s gang was in fact incapacitated, and was never again a force in Chicago; but Capone’s victory was short-lived, as Eliot Ness began his investigation later that year, and succeeded in jailing Capone in 1931.
(Real) police re-enact the massacre. (Library of Congress/Chicago Daily News)
What’s Old is New Again: Occupy Language!…
Just in case: from Meagan Hess at the University of Virginia, Slang in the Great Depression.
As we do our best to steer clear of Hooverville, we might recall that it was during this period– on this date in 1932– that Hattie (Ophelia Wyatt) Caraway won a special election and became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate. An Arkansas Democrat, Caraway had been appointed to the seat two months earlier to fill the vacancy left by her late husband, Thaddeus Horatio Caraway. In 1938, she was reelected.
Although she was the first freely-elected female senator, Caraway was preceded in the chamber by Rebecca Latimer Felton, who was appointed in 1922 to fill a vacancy but never ran for election. Jeannette Rankin, elected to the House of Representatives as a pacifist from Montana in 1917, was the first woman to ever sit in Congress.
Senator Caraway (source)
Man up!…
It’s a tricky thing, in these post-gendered times, to project an unmitigatedly masculine image. Even if one successfully dresses in denim and leather, drives a muscle machine, and dominates the playground hoops, ones locution can undermine the butch effect for which one strives.
The Art of Manliness has ridden to the rescue. Their “The Art of Manliness Dictionary of Manly 19th Century Vernacular” is a well-worn saddle bag full of phrases one can use to stir testosterone into the any conversation. Consider, for example, these bony mots:
Earth Bath – A grave.
Gullyfluff – The waste—coagulated dust, crumbs, and hair—which accumulates imperceptibly in the pockets of schoolboys.
Half-mourning – To have a black eye from a blow. As distinguished from “whole-mourning,” two black eyes.
Hogmagundy – The process by which the population is increased.
Ladder – “Can’t see a hole in a Ladder,” said of any one who is intoxicated. It was once said that a man was never properly drunk until he could not lie down without holding, could not see a hole through a Ladder, or went to the pump to light his pipe.
Scandal-water – Tea; from old maids’ tea-parties being generally a focus for scandal.
More masculine ammunition at “The Art of Manliness Dictionary of Manly 19th Century Vernacular.”
As we twirl our moustaches, we might recall that it was on this date in 1947 that Thor Heyerdahl and five crew mates set out from Peru on the balsa raft Kon-Tiki to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia.
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