OK, I understand that the sentence above means “Linkin Park is the SHIT”. Now I’ve been hearing this infix (cf prefix, suffix) used all the time.
A recent example is the following: There is a popular bar in my town called “The Dock”. A friend recently said that he was heading to the “Dizock” after work, of course referring to The Dock bar.
Sometimes he’ll call his friends “Dizonna”, “Bizen”, “Rizob” (Donna, Ben, Rob).
I hear this on television from time to time, too – usually on MTV or other youth-oriented fare. I see it on various message boards all over the Net (including here). It’s definitely not a local thing.
So … who or what STARTED that? How did it get in popular culture?
sup sup,
Actually, like so many other words, originally was derived from urban black vernacular. Snoop Doggy Dog has a penchant for using Z’s and such in his music and generally when he talks i public.
The adding of “iz” to such words as shiznit and dizamn and Hizo can be chalked up to the great american lyricst and poet Snoop Doggy Dogg. He has done a lot of good for the lizanguage of our proud pizeople. I hope one day he wins a pizulitzer for his cizontributions to american dizialouge. I hizope that anwsers your question.
Yup. There’s a song on that album that says it’s a slang thang (slizang, thizang). Wonder how many useful brain cells I have tied up remembering stuff like that. I hadn’t heard of it before then, but I hadn’t heard of double dutch either and I know now that double dutch is a lot older than 81.
It did get fairly popular at the time, then faded almost completely from memory until people now say it as the next “new” thing (or thang I guess I should say).
I searched on the net and everyone seems to think it came from Snoop Doggy Dog though. So much for the great knowledge base of the internet.
Not too surprising that it was around in 1981. The word Fat/Phat meaning something that is terrific… i.e. “Man, this is some PHAT music!” comes from the 19th century… and all these little hiphop kiddies thought they invented it.
Arken, I’ve been told (half tongue-in-cheek) that “phat” was an acronym for “pretty hot and tempting”, originally applied only to women, then later to things like cars, clothes, music etc.
First time I heard the “pretty hot and tempting” definition was by Chris Tucker in “Money Talks”. How long had people been saying phat before then, I wonder?
My grandmother and her friends would use a language on the phone that put an op after the first letter (or sound in the case of th, sp, etc) of each syllable. Hello there: Hopellopo thopere. This was when phones were on party lines, meaning the little old lady next door could pick up her phone & listen in on your conversation. The girls would come up with these bizarre code languages to deter eavesdroppers.
I use shnitz all the time myself when I want to indicate a mildly humorious / light-hearded exclamation of some sort (oooh shnitz! Forgot to butter my corn! Err, ok bad example)., but that is about it.
The “iz” comes from a “pig-latin” like language used on the east coast. My mother and Aunts learned it from a cousin from Jersey in the late 50’s. It’s much like the language MachV mentioned his Grandfather used. The adults in my family use it to discuss inappropriate things in front of the children. Everyone I know (who uses it) calls it “Carnie” and says it was the language the “Carnies” at the carnivals and fairs used to speak privately in front of the customers. To make it work you put “iz” or “eez” (either works, as long as the sound is consistent) in front of vowel sounds. It’s the same language as “double dutch” in the song