Idiolexicon Entries

[akirlu]

Riffing off the notion of an idiolect and in imitation of David Levine and Kate Yule's documenting their household's private or idiosyncratic terms and phrases to explain what they mean and where they come from, I give you the idiolexicon - a lexicon of idiosyncratic or personal linguistic usage. I've been meaning to document some of our household's idiolect for a while, as Hal does from time to time, and since I've now managed to remember three entries for long enough to get to a keyboard, I can begin.

breathed on - adj. - A stock item that has been altered after-market to get better performance. Borrowed from the world of auto mechanics and racing; presumably the imagery is mythological, referring to a god breathing life, soul, or spirit into previously inert manner. As in the sentence, "Yeah, that looks like a stock Mustang, but the engine's been bored out and gotten nitrous injection; it's been seriously breathed on."

Since then, we have been to Las Vegas. - Our assessment of the subject has been revised, usually upward, not because the thing changed, but because our contextual knowledge is greater now. Derived from an interview of a Formula 1 racing driver, who was racing in the Long Beach Grand Prix, raced through the city streets of Long Beach for the second year in a row. When asked what he thought of the race course, he said, "This year, the course is much better." "But," sputtered the interviewer, "The course is exactly the same as last year!" "Ah," said the driver, "But since then, we have been to Las Vegas." The Las Vegas course at that time was created by the expediency of setting traffic cones in one of the hotel-casino parking lots.

a fast pig - n. - a project executed for speed rather than beauty, finesse, or accuracy. Comes from a family story of my Dad's school days. The teacher had offered a prize to the student who could draw a pig the fastest. Dad sweated at the chalk board over an anatomically accurate drawing while his competitor drew a telegraphic concatenation of circles, triangles, and a spiral curlicue tail. Dad's pig was the better drawing, but his competitor won the prize, because the charge had been to produce the fastest pig, rather than the best.

Comments

[replyhazy.livejournal.com]

more! more!

These are great.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

There will be more, as they come to me. It's surprisingly hard to just sit down and think of them independent of a context where I would use them. And then when I use them in context, it's often in a situation where it's inconvenient to make myself a note to blog later.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

"It's surprisingly hard ..." Indeed. Imagine being asked to write down all the words you know. Obviously, you know them, by definition - yet it would be an impossible task. Reason being, they're not organized in the mind that way.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I love these kinds of things.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

;-)

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yup, delightful. Though I think of "breathed on" as implying ... ummm... actual and hearty physical work by human articifers -- the kind of people who (figuratively, I guess) Go Into Labor in an attempt to perfect mechanical things. That's not at all my cup of tea, but is something I respect and (kinda) admire.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

To get an end product that "has been breathed on" can, indeed, take a lot of physical work, yes, rendering the breezy phrase that much more ironic in those cases, but can be as minor as swapping a stock carburetor out in favor of a Holley, which isn't something anybody should have to break a sweat over.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yup. Though I think I'll adopt "breathed upon" in the context of "being at least partially crafted by human hands". (And yeah, I think of most commercial products -- including automobiles -- as being entirely constructed by automated robots, nowadays.)

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

One of my sisters once compiled a glossary of Williams terms. A short one. I hadn't heard of an idiolect at that time — that had to wait for my linguistics teacher to point me out to the class as having a 'phony' accent. He explained that what he meant was that I had no regional identity in my speech, having taught myself pronunciations from the dictionary.

As you say, it's hard to remember these things when you're not using them. What you have here is tantalizingly neat, though.