AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on WORDMASTER: we talk with Pam
Munro, a linguistics professor at the University of California, Los
Angeles, about the latest slang on campus. It's in U.C.L.A. Slang, a
dictionary that she and her students have published every four years
for the last two decades.
The first entry in the new sixth
edition -- well, the first one we can say on the radio -- is a buck. A buck is usually the term for one dollar, but here it means one
hundred dollars.
PAM MUNRO: "Yeah, that one is really strange
but it does illustrate a common process about slang, that slang tends
toward hyperbole on things like that. And so there are a hundred cents
in a dollar, and so why not use the term 'a buck' for a hundred dollars
rather than a hundred cents?"
AA: "Well, the -- "
PAM MUNRO: "But that one is a completely new word."
AA:
"If I hear someone saying a buck I'll have to make sure they don't mean
a hundred dollars. But you know there are a few terms that I notice
seem to come from hip-hop."
PAM MUNRO: "Yes."
AA: "Why don't you give me some examples of those."
PAM
MUNRO: "There are some words from African-American English that are
kind of well known as African-American English, words like homeboy
and homegirl -- "
AA: "Meaning friend."
PAM MUNRO:
"Meaning a friend. And it used to mean a fellow member of your gang.
But now people, students with no connections to the black community,
use this as just a word that means friend."
AA: "And then, well like cheddar, which is a term meaning money also, right?"
PAM MUNRO: "Cheddar means money."
AA: "It's not just cheese."
PAM
MUNRO: "Well, it derived from cheese. So cheese is an earlier term
meaning money that's been around for quite some time. And shortly after
people were saying cheese, there were people who thought that it would
be sort of cute to replace this by cheddar. I first recorded cheese in
two thousand two, and cheddar a year later, so it is a later term.
Cheddar is another type of cheese, so you might as well say cheddar for
money too."
AA: "Tell me what an awkward turtle is?"
PAM
MUNRO: "Awkward turtle is a comment that you make during an awkward
pause or an awkward moment in the conversation. So if somebody says
something embarrassing or that reveals that they're giving out
information that they shouldn't, or they ask about something that is
very taboo sort of to talk about, you can say awkward turtle -- maybe
in an undertone to your friends.
"And you can also make an
awkward turtle gesture, which consists of putting the palm of one hand
on the top of the back of the other hand, and so this leaves your thumb
and little finger able to stick out on both sides, and you wiggle them,
sort of like turtle feet. The way it's been explained to me is that
people think of this as a turtle upside down. I mean, that is an
awkward turtle."
AA: "Well, you know, lately there've been a lot
of terms -- in fact, there's even a dictionary devoted to this now, to this idea of bro terms."
PAM MUNRO: "Right. The most widely
used one that is current in a lot of media these days is bromance. A
bromance is a very close platonic friendship, totally non-sexual,
between two heterosexual male friends. But we do have other ones. So
one that I had not heard before is brolition. So a brolition -- which
is a combination of bro and coalition -- is a big group of guys."
AA: "I'd never heard that one."
PAM
MUNRO: "Well, that was new to me this year also. Then we have various
other words that sort of go into this. So a brother from another
mother is a close male friend who isn't your own brother but you sort
of think of him as a brother. And then there's a term for women who
feel a close friendship with a girl who's not their sister. They can
call her a sister from another mister."
AA: Next week, we'll
talk again with linguistics professor Pam Munro from the University of
California, Los Angeles. She's the editor of U.C.L.A. Slang 6, the
latest edition of a dictionary compiled by a team of students from
terms used on campus. And that's WORDMASTER for this week. Archives are
at voanews.com/wordmaster. I'm Avi Arditti.