Tag Archives: slang

Feeling “a box of birds” or feeling “crook”

To say one is feeling a “box of birds” to mean feeling good or “crook” to mean feeling bad

Context: The informant is half-Indian and half-New Zealander, with her dad being an immigrant from New Zealand. At one point, the informant’s paternal great grandmother was over for Christmas and she had caught a cold, so her family took her to the doctor, and according to the informant when the doctor asked her how she was doing she said “Well yesterday I was a box of birds and now I’m feeling a bit crook”.

Analysis: According to the informant, “box of birds” is used to describe someone who’s doing or feeling well, while “crook” is used to describe someone who is doing poorly. The informant’s family is from New Zealand, and the informant only remembers her great-grandmother being the one to use it. In doing some research, I found that “box of birds” is a common idiom in both New Zealand and Australia used to describe feeling good/doing well, due to one “feeling chirpy”, which the informant agreed was accurate to her family’s definition and context of use. “Feeling chirpy” is a similar nature-based idiom, referring to someone who is cheerful and in good spirits, similar to birds chirping excitedly. Having that much energy would logically require one to be in good health. It is unknown if both expressions were derived independently, but if so, that would indicate an instance of polygenesis, with at least two independently derived expressions relating health/energy with birdsong. It stands to reason that birdsong, like other behaviors that are consistently observed by a large amount of people would make their way into the vocabulary. Using them as comparisons would evoke a shared experience and facilitate understanding.

In the same regions, the slang “crook” refers to feeling bad or in bad health but seems as if it has less clear origins; crook comes from crooked, which can mean incorrectly or wrongly shaped, which might be where the slang comes from. Both seem to be instances of folk speech, either evolving from common

A photo of hourglass-shaped high-trasmission towers carrying electrical wires across a landscape.

“The Betties” — Transmission Towers

Nationality: American
Age: 53
Occupation: Nurse
Residence: Friendswood, TX
Performance Date: February 19, 2023
Primary Language: English

Text

“Betty” or “The Betties” (plural) as a slang term to refer to high-power transmission towers (450 to 735 kV).

Context 

JH is a 53 year-old woman from Erie, Pennsylvania. She grew up on the rural edges of an industrial city. The high-tension wires from the towers went over the property of her childhood home, and there was a power station nearby.

“The Betties were along the highway, not far from where we lived,” JH said. “They were the shape of a woman. They were wider at the top, like an hourglass. My dad called them Betties.”

JH said she always understood, even as a child, that they were called Betties because of their shape. “We would drive down the road, and I would think that [the towers] looked like my dolls, like a dolls’ dress,” she said. “I learned later that Betty is slang for a hot woman.”

“That’s Californian surfer talk,” her husband, KH, interjects. “My understanding is that the origin was from the Flintstones. Betty Rubble was the attractive wife.”

Analysis

This single slang word for an inanimate object communicates a lot about the construction of gendered aesthetics and the social ideal of a woman’s body type. The expectation that women have an hourglass-shaped body — along with the assumption that such a shape is natural — has contributed to body dysmorphia and the proliferation of voluntary or involuntary body modifications for women, from corsets to BBLs. These constrictions support patriarchal oppression of women by constricting their movement. Additionally, body dysmorphia is linked to increased instances of mental illness. 

I also find it interesting that this term was taught to JH by her father. The role that girls’ own fathers play in their gender construction is significant and markedly different from their mothers’. JH’s experience implies that fathers may be complicit in the objectification of their own daughters through the seemingly unrelated objectification of an inanimate object.

Again, the fact that so much can be contained in a single word referring to an inanimate object speaks to the pervasiveness of gender constructs. The objectification that this enacts uniquely upon women is proved by the lack of a male nickname for transmission towers of lower voltage, which take on a capital t shape. A connection could be made to men’s broad shoulders (again, a cultural construct and not an innate physical quality) but no such slang term appears. If such a term does exist, further study could examine the ‘equal’ objectification of male and female body types.

Spreading

Text:

Context:

Informant KS is a 19 year-old USC freshman from San Jose, California. The informant participated in the Speech and Debate program during all four years of high school under the National Speech and Debate Association. The event which this technique is referring to is policy debate, where teams of two students each debate a policy proposal made by one team.

KS: “Spreading is a portmanteau of ‘speed reading.’ It’s a technique developed fairly recently, but it’s very widespread in high school and college policy debate tournaments. Basically, in the first two speeches of the debate, you typically just read off your pre-written evidence. What people found out is, you can read a lot more evidence in your 6 minute speech if you read the evidence at an insane pace, then send out the documents so that people can read the evidence along with you, which they can read a lot faster than they can hear. You read the evidence at rates of 300-400 words per minute. You would slow down for the part you have written yourself, and you would speed up when you have written someone else’s words. A very common habit is people doing incredibly sharp breaths when they’re speed reading. So it’s become a joke that people breathe that way when they’re spreading. The most common reaction for a normal person is ‘How the heck is anyone understanding what’s going on?’ Basically, in college level debate, the judges are all other previous debaters or coaches. So they have all also trained how to understand spreading, and so therefore, only the people within the debate can actually understand the debate. The interesting thing about spreading is that it locks debate to a certain demographic to watch. Historically, debate has been focused on rhetorical abilities and public speaking; however, spreading has indicated a shift away from learning how to speak in public towards learning how to think critically and respond to complicated arguments and many arguments in a short amount of time.”

Analysis:

The National Speech and Debate Association was founded in 1925. Since then, the organization developed its own folklore among its participants, such as their own slang terms and techniques. The term “spreading” and its respective practice is one which reflects the growing competitiveness of academics in the United States, as it subverts the classical values of debating — rhetorical skill and public speaking, according to Keshav — in order to win the most points during the debate. Along with the growing competitiveness of academics and the NSDA is the growing inaccessibility of speech and debate: some schools lack the funding and resources to develop their own speech and debate programs; with increasingly complex and specialized skills such as spreading, the barrier of entry grows higher and higher. Additionally, the proliferation of spreading reflects the growth of a common culture amongst the NSDA. The organization is old enough that former participants return as judges and coaches to pass down the technique of spreading as coaches or adequately understand spreading as judges. The folklore surrounding spreading “spreads” further, into common jokes, such as the tendency for debaters to take sharp breaths during their speeches.

Fraternity Term

Nationality: American
Age: 19 or 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 02/23/2023
Primary Language: English

1.Fade

2. “To fade…oh I’m fading that or I’m fading you, that’s a term in my frat and its commonly used. To fade means to like leave or disengage from. If we are hanging out and I walk out of the room.. I’m fading you, I’m leaving you. Or if its like I’m fading class, I’m skipping class.”

3. For my interpretation of this term, I associate fading or being faded to a term that is associated with marijuana. I have heard people say they are faded when they are high, but I have never heard of it in this way, so that’s interesting. Because this term is common in fraternities, I could gather that because fraternities are not new, this term has been around for quite some time and is not just used at USC. By the google definition of the word fade, it means to gradually disappear or come in or out of view. With this in mind, thinking historically, in the fraternity environment I would think it is common to come of with slang like this. Moreover, throughout history the word fade has been used and changed in so many different ways, but seem mean the same thing. For example, when getting a hair cut, one can ask for a fade and basically the length gradually gets thinner and thinner to create a fading sort of look. I think this is cool to think about.

“Slay” – folk speech

Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 2/14/2023
Primary Language: English

1. Text

Main Piece: The informant provided an instance of folk speech: the word “slay”.

2. Context

Relationship to the piece:

Informant:

“So I guess a form of folk speech that I’m familiar with as part of the queer community is probably the word ‘slay'”

“I know it’s really generic but it’s a word I use a lot and my friends use a lot and also a form of queer empowerment in general”

When do they use it:

Informant:

“If you do something really well, you like ‘slayed that'”

“same thing with like ‘you ate and left no crumbs'”

“like you did something really well and there’s no debate about it”

Where they heard it:

Informant:

“I sort of just learned it on the internet and like being associated with the queer community I also picked it up as well”

“I don’t really know where it came from but it’s fun to say”

3. Analysis

With the information from the informant, “slay” seems to be a slang in the category of folk speech that is used by the queer community as well as those in support of the queer community as a word that empowers individuals, especially queer people, by celebrating their accomplishments. This is important for the queer community that has had a difficult history so coming up with slang that celebrates their own people is a powerful thing. It seems to be used in casual settings mostly between friends and has a positive connotation that cheers each other up. It seems to be pretty widespread as it is described by the informant to be “generic” and “used a lot”. It also seems to be part of the internet culture as well since the informant mentioned “learning it on the internet”. This shows how the internet and social media has been a huge changing force in bringing together the queer community and empowering the community.