Especially if you're a monoglot, language seems transparent. You don't remember what you said, you remember what you thought, but you think there's no difference between them, so of course you think you said what you would say now if you thought that. (Indeed many monoglots think they think in language!)
The forgotten meaning of "jerk"
91–100 of 142 posts
Re: The forgotten meaning of "jerk"
#92It's a good time as any to remind everyone that The Jerk is still one of the funniest movies ever made. It could never be made today, and I suggest you pick up a copy if you've never seen it.
I watched it again recently because someone I knew had never seen it. It's actually not very funny anymore. I am still amused at a lot of the jokes in it, but more in an academic sense because I remember how funny it was. There's a lot of stuff in it that's really funny on paper but just doesn't make you actually laugh anymore. Comedy doesn't really age that well, and I believe that it's because what surprises us and…
It wasn't funny when it came out, for me, and I was a big fan at the time :P
Steve Martin's comedy in general isn't funny anymore for me. I listened to his 70s albums which I found hilarious when I was a kid. Nothing about them is funny anymore. The jokes themselves aren't funny. It's only the delivery that made them funny and that style of delivery doesn't work anymore. He's been in some great movies, some of which are comedies and still funny but his own stand up comedy isn't anymore, at least for me.
Re: The forgotten meaning of "jerk"
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheer From Norman French , "face, merry faces, festivity"; from Late Latin , "head". The sense of smiling, merry expression, good cheer, cheerful, is well attested in literature. "Cheers" is a versatile modern expression. I have heard it as "thanks", "drink well" (of course), and yes even "see you later".
>and yes even "see you later". this being my point. how do you know that what you were hearing wasn't someone saying thanks as they were leaving?
I think you’re right. You do (or, at least, when I imagine it in my head, I do) hear it frequently used when saying goodbye, but I don’t think it would be used to say goodbye.
If someone said ‘cheers’ to me when parting, I’d interpret it the same way as if they’d said ‘thanks’ — which could be slightly strange, depending on the situation.
Re: The forgotten meaning of "jerk"
#94The evolution of "jerk" makes me also think of "nimrod" and how it referred to the biblical hunter and meant someone with great skills in hunting, until it was used to refer to Elmer Fudd, at which point the meaning changed to mean a complete idiot. https://thehabit.co/nimrod-hectoring-maudlin-eponymns-and-pe...
It's also still used as a name in Israel, I think.
I worked with a Nimrod in San Francisco. He was more of a doofus, but very affiable.
Re: The forgotten meaning of "jerk"
#95Thought it also referred to change in acceleration in Physics. But never understood the relevance of such a type of unit.
Could be fun to talk about the “instantaneous jerk”, “integrating the jerk”, and the “average jerk”.
Re: The forgotten meaning of "jerk"
#96The term "racist" used to mean someone who believed that one's race, or ethnic background was superior to another's. It was a form of belief in racial supremacy. It didn't mean that someone used race as a form of prejudice. But for decades this hasn't been the case, and it is almost exclusively used to describe someone who uses prejudice or discriminates others on the basis of race or ethnicity. And now we no longer…
For the vast majority of the situations in a English-speaking society, the term for that type of person is a "white supremacist". For example, a person who does Nazi salutes, or wants to update refugee policy so that the majority of immigrants are White South Africans, is a white supremacist.
No, that just describes white supremacists, and ignores Black supremacists, East Asian supremacists, Hispanista supremacists etc.
Re: The forgotten meaning of "jerk"
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
the British slang version of the word "cheers" is a very good example of this. I can tell you for absolute certain that the most people use the word "cheers" to mean "thanks", but if you go online and look up the definition, you will be told it also means goodbye, which it really doesn't, but I think this arises from the fact that it's a bit more relaxed form of thanks, so people frequently say it as thank you at the…
>but if you go online and look up the definition, you will be told it also means goodbye, which it really doesn't, but I think this arises from the fact that it's a bit more relaxed form of thanks, so people frequently say it as thank you at the end of an interaction where directly thanking the person might sound a bit awkward or overly formal. Possibly also because of the phonetic similarity with "ciao"?
Or "tschüß". I have a friend who speaks German and frequently says goodbye with "tschüß", and one time I heard it, thought he said "cheers" (as I often do), and then realise what he'd said—and that the two sound surprisingly similar.
Re: The forgotten meaning of "jerk"
#98There are a few places in the article that they refer to the modern usage as being similar to "asshole", which was interesting to me because I've often been mystified about that word and it's relationship to "ass". When used alone, "ass" to me feels like it's roughly synonymous as when it's prefixed with "dumb", which would seem to relate to that old meaning of "jerk", but with "hole" on the end, it's equivalent to the modern version of "jerk". Putting aside my usual questions about what makes the hole smarter but more rude, maybe "jerk" just gained an implicit hole? And can this tell us anything about whether "jerkwad" will evolve beyond jerk in a generation or two?
Re: The forgotten meaning of "jerk"
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
>but if you go online and look up the definition, you will be told it also means goodbye, which it really doesn't, but I think this arises from the fact that it's a bit more relaxed form of thanks, so people frequently say it as thank you at the end of an interaction where directly thanking the person might sound a bit awkward or overly formal. Possibly also because of the phonetic similarity with "ciao"?
Or "tschüß". I have a friend who speaks German and frequently says goodbye with "tschüß", and one time I heard it, thought he said "cheers" (as I often do), and then realise what he'd said—and that the two sound surprisingly similar.
I used the handy audio pronunciation feature on my dictionary, and I am not a German speaker, but I can definitely see how that eggcorn might have occurred.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn
> An eggcorn is the alteration of a word or phrase through the mishearing or reinterpretation of one or more of its elements, creating a new phrase which is plausible when used in the same context. Thus, an eggcorn is an unexpectedly fitting or creative malapropism. Eggcorns often arise as people attempt to make sense of a stock phrase that uses a term unfamiliar to them, as for example replacing "Alzheimer's disease" with "old-timers' disease", or William Shakespeare's "to the manner born" with "to the manor born". The autological word "eggcorn" is itself an eggcorn, derived from acorn.
Re: The forgotten meaning of "jerk"
#100The term "racist" used to mean someone who believed that one's race, or ethnic background was superior to another's. It was a form of belief in racial supremacy. It didn't mean that someone used race as a form of prejudice. But for decades this hasn't been the case, and it is almost exclusively used to describe someone who uses prejudice or discriminates others on the basis of race or ethnicity. And now we no longer…
Maybe I'm misremembering, but people used to use "racist" (and "sexist") as adjectives, not nouns. You'd say "Joe is racist", not "Joe is a racist". The latter seems more common now, particularly in American English, but just sounds wrong to me.