Dr. Foster's Dictionary: March 21, 2007

It's official. The distinction between high culture and low culture is no more. The Rubicon has been crossed...Il est fini....or, if you will, Git 'er Done.

If Borat didn't perform the coup de grâce, then certainly this Vanity Fair piece on British ex-pats in New York does. In the midst of his Anglo-baiting self-flagellation, A.A. Gill manages to comment on the "severe moose knuckle" caused by the British New Yorker's inproper deployment of American blue jeans. Let's see the entry and discussion from Dr. Foster's Dictionary.

moose knuck·le
[moos nuhk-uhl]
noun

1. A minor regional dysphemism from the middle-low American, having to do with the bifurcation and bulging of the scrotum and gonads, respectively, caused by a high-riding crotch seam on an overtight pair of pants. The sartorial phenomenon derives its name from its apparent similarity to the phalanges bones of the American moose. It relates also to the more widely celebrated "camel toe" phenomenon (though the taxonomic connection is vague at best: camels and moose come from two entirely different suborders--Tylopoda and Ruminantia, respectively--of Order Artiodactyla. What a gaffe!)

Since Europeans use "Elk" and not "moose" to refer to the relevant genuses, it speaks to the true thought-transforming power of globalization, as well as to Gill's immersion in American culture, that he uses "moose knuckle" instead of "elk knuckle" to describe a suffocating nutsack. Don't be surprised if William Safire has a thing or two to say about the affair in his "On Language" column in the New York Times Magazine.

Dr. Foster's Dictionary, September 8, 2006

Today's entry in Dr. Foster's Dictionary comes from the section on slang usage, under "R".

ran-dom [ran-duhm]
adj.

1. occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern.

"Since they still rely on fixed inputs for their algorithms, computers remain unable to generate truly random numbers.

2. [slang] irrelevent, disconnected, lost, apropos of nothing:

"Most of the Phi Kappa Alpha guys love Seth MacFarlane's random humor."

3. [slang] distasteful, tacky, or otherwise unaesthetic:

"Jane noted on her MySpace profile that her taste in music was 'really random'. She liked everything from Panic! At the Disco to Ashlee Simpson."

4. [slang] signifying choices made for the wrong reasons (usually because of inebriation and/or low self-esteem):

"Tori was not really looking for a relationship because of her recent success with random hookups."

5. [slang] as a beat, or placeholder, in the hipster patois.

"I was at some random bodega in this random part of Park Slope with these random people trying to find directions to this random gallery opening at random in random."

Dr. Foster's Dictionary: 17 April 2005

Today's entry from Dr. Foster's dictionary comes from the glossary of American colloquialisms, under 'f':

for·ty-fiv·er
n. slang

1. An individual, usually a post-adolescent American male, who wears a baseball cap in such a fashion that its brim is approximately forty-five degrees off-center. Do you think those two forty-fivers are lovers?

[syn: tool, douche-bag, asshole, cretin, prick; see also 'Von Dutchman']

[ant: n. Fosterite]

Dr. Foster's Dictionary: 12 April, 2005

In honor of the 250th anniversary of the publication of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary--the tome that didn't so much define the English language as it did unleash it upon subsequent generations of poets and philologists--I thought I'd go out on a limb and post excerpts from a work in progress I hope will one day replace my fellow Pembrokian's. Today's entries come from the section on comparative ideological taxonomy:

lib·er·al
n.

2. Someone who prefers the message of Neil Young's "Southern Man" to that of Lynrd Skynrd's "Sweet Home Alabama". Jones is a classic liberal vis-a-vis classic rock.

Know-Noth·ing
n.

4. Someone who prefers listening to Neil Young's "Southern Man" over Lynrd Skynrd's "Sweet Home Alabama". Sean has displayed disturbing Know-Nothing tendencies of late.