Going shirtless might be offensive.
It does, yes. He’s served a couple of terms. And I have no doubt he made sure his nickname was on the ballot, to avoid confusion about his gender.
But “Bubba” bugs me. It’s so affectedly country, good ol’ boy, jes’ folks. Especially in an adult. I wouldn’t be bothered if he called himself “Joe”, or “Larry”, or even something as country as “Buck” or “Junior”.
My father grew up in North Carolina, and told me he hated watching Sam Ervin during the Watergate hearings, because he thought the senator’s folksy, aw-shucks-Ah’m-jest-a-simple-country-from-Nawth-C’lina manner made all Carolinans look ignorant and unsophisticated. “Bubba” has the same effect on me.
But that’s only my $0.02.
I’m guessing it’s because his first name is “Lauren”. That’s about like a boy named Sue, and he probably picked up the name “Bubba” as a young person in preference to a woman’s name. So when he ran for office, he went by the nickname he goes by, rather than his full name.
“Ya’ll” is a contraction for “you will”, and is arguably the worst contraction, as we have a “you’ll,” which performs admirably.
Can’t say that I’ve ever heard “ya’ll” separate from “y’all” and meaning something different. “You’ll” is the usual and only contraction for “You will” that I’ve heard.
Cite?
(shorthand for “Whatch’all talkin’ 'bout?”)
Y’all is clearly “you all”, and even as a Yankee, I appreciate it. We need it because English has no distinction between singular and plural second-person.
It beats the hell out of “youse,” which I first encountered IRL from a girl from Chicago I once worked with.
All right, I should have been more clear. My apologies.
The existence of “Ya’ll” can only be defended as a contraction for “you will.”
I don’t even think that flimsy justification works - there’s no a in you will. Ya’ll only maybe works - and I say this with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek - as a contraction of Yah, well; as in, “Yah, well, so’s ya mudder!”
Technically, it does, but “thou”, “thee” and “thine” (the singulars, for which “you” and “your’n” are the plural) are somewhat archaic.
How about nouns turned into verbs? “This is how you breakfast.” Look to Madison Avenue for all the annoying shit.
That’s one that especially bothers me. Especially “adulting”. Both the concept and the actual phrase/term annoys me.
I wish I could find again the book I read some years ago, in which a dialectician from the Dictionary of American Regional English project argued that American English was evolving a new standard second-person plural pronoun. He figured it would be you guys, which has a national usage range. Seems to me though that y’all could fill that role, as well, given how it’s spread out of the South.
Madison Avenue didn’t start that process. It’s as old as Shakespeare: “Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncles” - Richard II. That’s just a sign of English’s tremendous flexibility. As the linguist Steven Pinker put it: “…easy conversion of nouns to verbs has been part of English grammar for centuries; it is one of the processes that make English English.”
Verbing weirds language…
…
“Like a rat abandoning a sinking ship”. To go where, exactly?
Sadly, the word does seem to fill a real need of the 20-somethings (and increasingly 30-somethings) to describe the dreary parts of life they (despite their age) simply don’t get and Do. Not. Want. to be bothered with. Sort of the chronological / generational equivalent of “First World Problems”.
As possible words for that issue go, “adulting” is clear, obvious, and short.
Despite shaking my head at the need, I vote “Yes” on the term.
Madison Avenue may not have started it, but they have ensured it is ever-present in today’s vernacular. I hear all about English’s flexibility from my wife, who has a Ph.D in medieval literature, generally when I bitch about something I hear that irritates me. Presently, that also includes the forthcoming Great Vowel Shift, Part II, as well as the omnipresence of vocal fry as an inflection tool. I am basically a grouchy old man, and I have come to accept that as my role in my orbit; sadly, not everyone is on board…
Hobbes with the reasonable response, as usual…
That’s horrible.
Last night, I had the tv on quietly (background noise), when I actually heard “adulting” on a trailer for Grown Ups 2.
Arrr! I hope these these kind of terms and phrasing quietly fade away, and don’t keep coming in waves. Oftentimes, people glom onto some stupid shit, so I won’t be holding my breath.
Nah, no problem at all with that one. Comes in handy, more often than one would expect.
Agreed. At first I thought that of “parenting”, but I guess I’ve gotten somewhat inured to that one.
That in bucketloads. Even when “father” is used - not often that rings convincingly for me.
Indeed - I yearn to over-size-mallet-bonk such a concept.