January 19 2012
Hip-Hop Flip-Flop
Big storm in a small teacup last week, based on a hip-hop clue in the New York Times crossword. The setter in question was Joe Krozel, overseen by editor Will Shortz. The clue was 28-Down in the Saturday puzzle: Wack, in hip-hop.
The answer was ILLIN, which was news to me, and news to Julieanne Smolinski too, a freelance journo in hier 20s who’d only known ILLIN to mean cool, or menacing. Whereas wack means crazy, or stupid. Like going into KFC and orderin' a Big Mac, according to Run DMC – that’s illin'.
The ruckus magnified into rumpus – or maybe the other way around. But hip-hop can do that, or slang in general. Just like wicked, or gay, or bad…street words have a habit of reversing direction. They mutate in your grasp. Part of me sides with Shortz, defending his clue from a dated dictionary, just as I get Smolinski’s POV. Words change. Both parties are right – with one party more current than the other.
What other words have done a U-turn in our lifetime? I like how swipe has gone from meaning to steal, as well as to use a credit card. Or yo-yo has gone from toy to biscuit to a pair of homeboys passing in da street. That’s illin'. Any others?
Comments
Mauve — 19 January at 11:49AM
The much-travelled yo-yo also passed through "diet" at some stage
And not quite on brief but re U-turns, I find interesting the fact that when the five temperatures...
cold, cool, warm, lukewarm, hot
are applied to people, #2 #3 and #5 are compliments and #1 and #4 are insults.
JPR — 19 January at 02:35PM
I believe brownie points has reversed its meaning.
quantum leap has in a way -- from the smallest possible jump to to a very big one.(but perhaps that's just GI)
again state of the art used to mean off-the-shelf, industry standard -- sort of now means cutting edge instead.
literary theorists have discussed pharmakon as a term with 2 opposite meanings as I recall. but so does 'draw the curtains' (actually that has got 3)
Boniface — 19 January at 03:00PM
My candidate would have to be SICK for a 180 degree reversal: Dave's new hotrod is truly sick! MAD is similar.
Closely followed by AWESOME which basically means anything remarkable but not awesome: Australia's bowlers in the Border-Gavaskar trophy were awesome.
While ORDINARY or AVERAGE have come to mean something rather less than ordinary or average: After two bottles of wine at Christmas, I felt ordinary on Boxing Day.
As for NICE, well that's just damnation by faint praise.
And I won't touch NASTY...
JT — 19 January at 03:37PM
Similar to SICK and MAD: The youngsters also use "filthy" as a positive word, as in "Dave's new hotrod is filthy!"
And imagine my confusion some years back, having just played my first gig with a new band, when the guitarist commented "Those solos you played were bulls**t", also apparently a compliment.
RobT — 19 January at 04:05PM
LOL now has turned into an expression of amusement rather than outright 'forte'. It's like a receding hairline, I am guessing.
JPR — 19 January at 04:15PM
Hi JT, sorry, I was there at the gig, actually they were just bulls**t LOL (sotto voce)
PRS — 20 January at 10:25AM
Following from Mauve's temperatures, cool and hot are frequently interchangeable, perhaps, as Bon suggests - awesome.
And, caused by the semi-literate, since flammable is the new inflammable, does inflammable now mean 'won't burn' to those who don't know nonflammable?
DA — 20 January at 03:05PM
Speaking of flames, JPR - a curio I struck in the diciotnary this morning.
FLAME - a sweetheart; a hostile email (as in flame war)
DA — 20 January at 03:06PM
Of course a diciotnary is an OED for those with ADHD.
JPR — 20 January at 05:10PM
and a dicksionary is an OED for those with ACDC.