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.