The fashion world is a fecund, fruitful and fertile source of metaphoric phrases. (Funny, that all these synonyms for "productive" begin with f.) In 1999, an outbreak of bare midsections in the fashion world led this department to a midriff riff: I expressed my preference for the informal term bellybutton to be written as a single word, on the analogy of bellyache; this stand was opposed by a legion of navel-gazers who preferred a two-word usage, on the analogy of belly dancer. The dispute has never been resolved.
We now turn to a related locution spawned by the sight of as much as 15cm of stomach bulging out below a short blouse and above hip-clinging "low-rise" jeans.
When the wearer's abdomen is flat, a display of flesh above and well below the bellybutton produces an eye-catching picture of what the <
"Muffin-Top Mayhem!" was the headline in the New York Daily News this summer, atop a picture of a woman whose midriff was overhanging her belt. The unfortunate loser of this battle of the bulge was said by the writer, Mark Ellwood, to be called a muffin-top. He defined the display as "the unsightly roll of flesh that spills over the waist of a pair of too-tight pants." The locution is not sexist: A male actor, usually characterized as a "screen hunk," photographed in such a state is called a stud-muffin-top. (I am indebted to Ann Wort of Washington for this citation.)
Rarely can slang lexicographers find "first use" of such a phrase, but blogging helps: Coinage is claimed by a Netizen named Dyske Suematsu, who proudly informs the Internet set of having sent the compound noun to www.pseudodictionary.com in May 2003.
Anatomically, muffin-top fills a lexical void. Nearest to a synonym (with over 150,000 Google hits) is "love handles," a jocularly euphemistic neologism of the late '60s, defined in the Historical Dictionary of American Slang as "a bulge of fat at the side of the waist." But the love handles (usually plural) are exclusively on or above the hips; the muffin-top describes the roll of excess flesh spilling out primarily in front but possibly all around.
KLUTZ
"Metaphors matter," Jagdish Bhagwati writes in the Wall Street Journal. The university professor of economics and law at Columbia suggested a new vocabulary for global trade featuring a "kaleidoscopic comparative advantage." He prefers this trope to Tom Friedman's word picture of the new economic world being flat.
Offhandedly, Bhagwati used another word calling up an even more vivid image: "It turned out that the Japanese were real klutzes in the financial sector."
For the skinny on klutz, I turned to Sol Steinmetz, one of the world's great lexicographers. He has just turned out the invaluable and scholarly Dictionary of Jewish Usage, a guide to the use of Jewish terms (Roman & Littlefield, US$49.95) that shows how Hebrew, Yiddish and Aramaic words are being absorbed into the English language.
Take klutz, defined as "a clumsy person." Steinmetz informs me that the word that has largely replaced the English oaf in common usage is from the Middle High German klotz, "block, log, tree trunk," and that "the Yiddish word took on the figurative meaning of `fool, blockhead.' It came into English in the 1930s, first found in print in Meyer Levin's 1936 novel, The Old Bunch: `He's a klotz. He can't do no repairs. He got wooden fingers.'"
According to Sol, a data-bank search shows klutz to be among the top 10 Yiddishisms in Ameerican English. The others: glitsch, kosher, bagel, maven, mensch, schlock, schmooze, tush and chutzpah.
If you don't know those words, you will have difficulty being understood in American English. (I'm a language maven, occasionally a financial klutz.)
DOORMATS
Jeanine Pirro, described in the Washington Post as "a street-smart and media-savvy Republican prosecutor," began her campaign in New York for the US Senate seat now held by Hillary Rodham Clinton with a charge that the incumbent wanted to use the seat as a "doormat to the White House."
Doormat is a word that has resonance in politics. The mat placed before a doorway to absorb the grime from shoes long ago gained a figurative meaning of "a person or thing easily and submissively misused." In the summer of 1968, an American flag was burned by demonstrators in a South American country and made the television news. As a speechwriter in the 1968 Nixon presidential campaign, I had the job of updating the candidate's stump speech with timely references to the news and submitted the line, "Under new leadership, nobody's going to make a doormat out of the American flag." Nixon added it to his remarks and was startled by the crowd reaction: a roar of defiant approval. "That applause line stays in," he told us, and he used it right through to Election Day. (After the November victory, another speechwriter had the notion of presenting me with an actual doormat with a flag design but wisely decided it would be inappropriate.)
The word that probably came first to mind to Pirro was steppingstone; in politics, a charge that is often leveled at a candidate with ambitions for higher office is that he or she is treating the present campaign merely as a way station to bigger things. Early in 1968, when Governor George Romney of Michigan was running for the Republican presidential nomination and the knock on him in the media was that he was overly devout and evangelical, some wise guy (it could have been me) peddled the gag that "he's only seeking the presidency as a steppingstone."
Doormat is a tad off the point, but it's edgier.
You wish every Taiwanese spoke English like I do. I was not born an anglophone, yet I am paid to write and speak in English. It is my working language and my primary idiom in private. I am more than bilingual: I think in English; it is my language now. Can you guess how many native English speakers I had as teachers in my entire life? Zero. I only lived in an English-speaking country, Australia, in my 30s, and it was because I was already fluent that I was able to live and pursue a career. English became my main language during adulthood
Somehow, US intelligence identified “the Houthis’ top missile guy” and pinpointed his exact location. At 1348 hours (Washington time), March 15, President Trump’s national security advisor Mike Waltz texted, “positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building.” The unsuspecting Romeo entered. High above, the drone monitoring the building registered a flash. When the smoke cleared, Mr. Waltz texted, “…And it’s now collapsed.” RIP. The star-crossed “top missile guy” had been target number one in the now uproarious US Navy bombing campaign on that Sunday against the Yemeni rebels who have been holding the Red Sea hostage since October 19,
Taiwan on Monday celebrated Freedom of Speech Day. The commemoration is not an international day, and was first established in Tainan by President William Lai (賴清德) in 2012, when he was mayor of that city. The day was elevated to a national holiday in 2016 by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文). Lai chose April 7, because it marks the anniversary of the death of democracy advocate Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕), who started Freedom Era Weekly to promote freedom of expression. Thirty-six years ago, a warrant for Deng’s arrest had been issued after he refused to appear in court to answer charges of
The Opinion page has published several articles and editorials over the past few weeks addressing Taiwan’s efforts to leverage unique or strong aspects of its culture to increase international awareness of the nation. These have included submissions by foreign journalists and overseas students, highlighting how bubble milk tea, Guinness World Record attempts, the entertainment sectors, impressive scenery, world-class cuisine and important contributions to the high-tech supply chain can enhance Taiwan’s recognition overseas and therefore its soft power. That entails competing for attention in already crowded sectors. Other nations, after all, offer popular entertainment exports, beautiful scenic spots and great food.
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