Dog is actually MUCH older than “homies” or “peeps”. “Dog” is nothing new it terms of slang, but I suspect that it’s most popular usage in the early to mid-eighties to refer to men informally is almost due entirely to the hugely influential and utterly inimitable hip-hop master, George Clinton’s Atomic Dog. Like “homies” and “peeps,” it caught on first on the East coast and spread everywhere from there. It’s typically reserved for greetings, ( i.e. "What up, dog?’) and shout-out at parties. And, NO – it’s not the current word now. I think “playa” is still king, maybe supplanted in some places by “pimp” or “hustler.” I only hear guys call each other “dog” if they’re over thirty-two or Calvin Broadus.
Jump The shark is the best named website on the internet, devoted to the EXACT moment TV shows go wrong. The phrase comes from the episode of Happy Days where the Fonz uses his motorcycle and “jumps the shark”. Why? Who knows… who cares?
To add another one that seems to be popping up with great frequency, MILF, which means “Mother I’d Like to Fuck.” Is this a recent phrase? I’ve only seen it come up in the last month or so.
I don’t think it has. When “tool” is used to refer to a person, in my experience it’s always been intended to mean “a stupid or obnoxious guy”. I would guess that the term evolved from the slang use of “tool” to mean “penis”, so calling a guy a “tool” is roughly equivelant to calling him a “dick”.
Thank goodness this thread came along. I’m living in perpetual ignorance of pop culture.
Foremost on my mind is the H to the izzo thing. For the love of god, what does that MEAN? Is he trying to spell something? If so, what? (to demonstrate how profoundly out of it I am, while I have heard people say that, usually in a joking way, I heard the song itself for the first time just three days ago.)
Another thing that weighs heavily upon my soul is an internet-only … uh, punctuation mark, I guess.
O_o
Any explanations? Everytime I see it, I think it means “I have a nervous tic and one of my eyes is always squinty” but that seems unlikely.
That’s cool. If it was originally a Cajun endearment, might it be a corruption of “beau” (pretty) in the sense of “cutie”?
I don’t know about any song like that, but when I was a kid in the 80’s, constructions like that were a sort of urban Pig Latin. Just throwing in “-izz*-” in the middle of words to obfuscate meaning from eavesdroppers, or just a cool thing to do with your dogs.
I seem to remember first hearing about this in some dippy early 90’s teen flick (think “Wayne’s World”), but I could be imagining things.
Oh yeah, “H to the Izz-O, V to the Izz-A” means “H to the O, V to the A”, which spells out Hova. It’s a hypernickname of the rapper who sings the song: Jay-Z. It’s a shortening of Jay-Hova, which is a bastardization of Jehovah.
Okay, but what does that mean? Who said (or popularized) “Tell it to the hand”? Why “the hand” as opposed to, say, “the ass” or “the foot”? When did this become a catch-phrase known to everyone (but me) in the U.S.?
Because it’s more convenient to put your hand in someone’s face to mean “shut up” rather than your ass.
This phrase has been out forever, I think. I’ve never heard anyone I know use it seriously. I remember in high school we would say it jokingly in imitation of talk-show guests.
I’ll paraphrase from the book version of Jump the Shark:
“Jumping the Shark” is that moment when a TV show, having exhausted its premise, begins to resort to novelty in a desperate attempt to keep the show interesting.
Thank you, kind people, for the information on Jay-Z and O_o.
A little more on the “tell it to the hand” – the gesture was first, you know, when you put your hand up, palm facing out, to interrupt someone (sort of like the gesture a traffic cop makes for “stop”, but with more dramatic flair). “Talk to the hand” means the same thing, that you’re not listening and any more talking will be in vain.
I’ll offer my understanding of ‘Word’ here since it hasn’t been touched on.
I always thought that ‘Word’ was a was of saying “insert an appropriate word here”.
Like:
‘Word to your Mother’ meaning: "Say (hi/yo/good morning/you look lovely today/whatever else is appropriate) to you Mother for me. (Meant as a sign of respect for one’s Mother).
It’s not so much the word, but the way it’s being said that is meant to convey the concept.
I also thought it came from the song “Word up!” by Cameo, but am unsure what the meaning in the song was.
