Skip to main content

al-in-chgo's definitions

turd in the punch bowl

1. Southernism. Adds a certain repugnance to describe an idea, remark or occurrence that fell flat, killed conversation, was socially unacceptable, or went over like the proverbial lead balloon.

2. Similarly, a gauche, socially inept or unwelcome person who has a stultifying effect on social gatherings, or, by extension, was involved in some futile or hugely unpopular effort.
.
1. -- "All I did was tell one harmless little dirty joke and the whole room went silent. Apparently I had crossed some kind of taboo. No one even chuckled at the joke; it was a veritable turd in the punchbowl. I felt like one too, since the whole party immediately seized up and everyone stared at me."

2.(a) -- "There we were discussing local politics, and who shows up uninvited and parks himself right in the middle of our group? Little Georgie, the mayor's brat, who has an unerring sense of inappropriateness. I'd rather see a turd in the punch bowl than have to deal with that nuisance."

(b) "Practically everyone in town was in favor of a weeknight youth curfew, but as usual our "freethinking" pastor went contrary and opposed it. He didn't change anyone's mind. I think he's a jinx! A turd in the punch bowl of civic affairs."
by al-in-chgo February 28, 2010
mugGet the turd in the punch bowl mug.

butchiosity

Adjective "butch" (deeply or stereotypically masculine-looking and -acting, applied to both men and women) made into a jocular noun. "Butch" is nowadays almost always an adjective ("I love your butch new leather jacket"), now that the old use as a noun to mean "boy vendor" (newsbutch or news butcher) peaked during the 1950s and is now archaic if not completely obsolete. The closest nominative uses of "butch" are adjuncts or idioms like "butch haircut" or "Harold is a butch top, not a femme bottom."

"Masculinity" means possesion of masculine traits or appearance, while "butchiosity" introduces a note of irony: the appearance or trying to act in a conventionally or socially-acceptable masculine manner expected by the straight world.

"Butchness" is problematic, as it is not consisently used to mean the quality of visible masculinity; instead, the user is often forced into grammatical adaptations like "He behaves in a butch way," or "Sometimes he overcompensates and out-butches himself."

"Butchiosity" is almost certainly a back-formation inspired by the 1977 Woody Allen movie ANNIE HALL (screen play: W. Allen and Marshall Brickman): "Was it heavy a rock concert? Did it achieve . . . heaviosity?"
"Your buddy ought to butch up his act, or he'll never make it in the suburbs." "I don't think it's so much a matter of butchiosity as the fact that he hasn't been around suburbanites since going to college and knows next to nothing about kids, lawnmowers and pro sports."

"Who is that great-looking hunk?" "Oh, him satirically, "her". He looks like a tower of butchiosity but on the inside there's a major flaming queen screaming to be let out."

Compared to "masculinity," "butchiosity" introduces a note of irony: the appearance of masculinity, or trying to appear conventionally masculine. Machismo is lexically coherent as a loan-word from Spanish but has connotations of an ingrained, often unacceptable and patriarchal behavior, overmasculine from the start; or old-fashioned notions of being a man. Instead, "butchiosity"comes with a twist: it can imply a trying-too-hard, self-conscious or overstudied presentation of an image of masculinity, especially in an attempt to meet the straight world's expectations of same.

An act not a trait, as it were.
by al-in-chgo January 25, 2010
mugGet the butchiosity mug.

retronym

.
Altering or adding to a prior word or term term that must be further defined in the light of later developments or technical innovation.

Example: No one called "World War One" that until there was a "World War Two" with which to contrast it. The going term during the 1914-1918 war and up to 1939 was "The Great War."
.
Other employment of term retronym:

Telephone becomes "rotary-dial phone" to distinguish it from the push-button phones that became widespread in the 1970s and early 1980s (although rotary-dial phones still work if all you want to do is place a call and don't need to access features like querying a bank account balance).

Similarly, telephone also becomes "corded phone" to distinguish the traditional hard-wired telephone from those that are wireless in some way, such as cordless phones.

"Regular" coffee to distinguish it from decaffeinated coffee; some people say "caffeinated" coffee but strictly speaking this is a grammatical back-formation, not a retronym, because "to caffeinate" would mean to ADD caffeine to traditional coffee.

Note, though, that Coca-Cola is a "caffeinated" or "caffeine-containing" soft drink in its usual red-can form. Now that there is a Caffeine-Free Coca-Cola "caffeinated" could find use as a retronym for "the real thing."

"Manual" or "standard" or "stick" transmission on a car, none of which terms was necessary before automatic transmissions on cars became widespread and assumed to be the norm.

And, of course, "acoustic" guitar.
by al-in-chgo March 6, 2010
mugGet the retronym mug.

Scanlation

Scanlation, from SCAN (or 'SCANned') + transLATION, is the unauthorized translation of a foreign graphic novel, usually Japanese yaoi or other sexually explicit work, from Japanese into English. Typically the scanlator scans the hardcopy text into a computer, and electronically whites out the Japanese characters in the thought balloons to replace them with English text.

Illegality is the essence of scanlation, as opposed to authorized translations in which rights are granted, royalties scheduled, and chain of intellectual property is maintained. Many scanlators will argue that the more erotic or hardcore types of manga (yaoi, bara maga) are rarely translated into English, and that even a Japanese best-seller can sit untranslated for years. (Example: the graphic novels of Gengorah Tagame, like his three-volume PRIDE, which has as subject matter the training of a novice in BSDM techniques and includes very explicit sexual language and images, and scenes of torrture.)
.
-- "I'm reading a scanlation of a Japanese 'bear-loving-bear' manga."

-- "Is it any good?"

-- "Definitely gets the plot points across, though sometimes the English is a little sketchy. The scanlator uses spellings like "colour" and "honor" so it's probably someone from the British Commonwealth or perhaps a Japanese person who learned English using English spellngs. No way of telling, really, their blogs don't have to say where they live or what they do."

.
by al-in-chgo April 7, 2010
mugGet the Scanlation mug.

roughousing

Alternate spelling of "roughhousing" with one "h" omitted. Compare thresh-hold, threshold.

Means mock-fighting or wrestling, grabassing, or physical fooling around, usually between boys of similar age.

See also fooling around.
.
"Don't put the twins together in the back seat or they'll be roughousing all the way to the mall."
by al-in-chgo August 18, 2010
mugGet the roughousing mug.

Solo Aviator Division

Stands for "Mile-High Club - Solo Aviator Division."

Means jacking off on an airplane in flight. Usually done in toilet cubicle or underneath an airplane blanket. An elaboration on Mile High Club that has long meant sexual congress on an airplane.

Abbreviation: "SAD."

.
"You mean some people are so hot to join the Mile High Club that they'll fly solo?"

"You mean, join the Solo Aviator Division? That's SAD! (chuckles). As a flight attendant, I see all sorts of things, like splooge in the unisex toilets the last visitor didn't even clean up. And you wouldn't believe what goes on under those airline blankets."

"Yuck! Now I know why they're so skanky. Thanks for the warning."

.
by al-in-chgo March 7, 2010
mugGet the Solo Aviator Division mug.

haul water

To perform menial or trivial services for one's superiors, with the implication that the agent is capable of doing nothing more significant.
Alderman "X" does not seem concerned with his constituents; what he does best is haul water for the administration.
by al-in-chgo July 23, 2016
mugGet the haul water mug.

Share this definition

Sign in to vote

We'll email you a link to sign in instantly.

Or

Check your email

We sent a link to

Open your email