As the snow descends upon Northern Virginia in the latest winter storm, and as DC's elite line-up at their local Whole Foods and Trader Joe's clutching their reusable bags filled with heavily packaged prepared meals, cardboard-container salads, 6 bottles of wine, and one bottle of water ('cause, ya know, it's an "emergency"), I am struck by the fact that the great Eskimo vocabulary hoax (pdf) is no hoax at all! It turns out that I too have a great many words for snow. This evening, while running a few modest errands before the night's predicted 20 inch snow drop, I meticulously recorded the various terms I uttered as synonyms for the fluffy white stuff which descended, rather gracefully, upon the landscape.
A few choice examples (NSFW):
shit
- "Why do people drive like such morons in this shit?"
- "Hey asshole! This shit's not Vasoline! You can drive faster that 6 miles an hour!"
- "This crap's gonna be piled up in disgusting dirty brown heaps for weeks."
- "Fuck these fucking fuckers who can't drive in this fuck!"
- "Ahhhh! You drive on this asshole-shit-motherfucker like it's nuclear!"
- (directed at a plow driver) "push the fucking fuck fuck onto the curb, not back into the road!"
- "gawd I hate everybody! All of you! All because of this ... grrrrrrr!" (picture head exploding)
*asshole-shit-motherfucker is actually quite productive in my dialect. It replaces a great many phrases.
Addendum (1-31-2011): I want to see a Visual Thesaurus word map of my words for snow!
5 comments:
Christfucking shit swearing is so goddamn versatile. Uncouth? Fuck it; it's motherfucking *fun*.
Also, a good stream of cursing can be even more expressive sometimes, so fuck the folk who claim it implies a limited vocabulary. I have a great vocabulary; I use it often. But sometimes, "fucking shitting fuck" is just the right phrase.
Chris - I enjoyed your spot-on observation about peeps at Trader Joe's shopping with reusable grocery bags stuffed full of overly-packaged preprepared meals.
Brandon, thanks! And I see you're at Davis, my neck of the woods. Love it. I miss the Sacramento Valley "winter", hehe.
I just shoveled a shitload of heavy ass, mother f'ing, back-breaking, fuckity fuck in southeast Michigan. Some say it is pretty to look at, but I know that it is going to turn into fugly snirt* before long.
*For the uninitiated that is a portmanteau of snow + dirt.
Laura, I love snirt! It has a Liz Lemon ring to it!
Post a Comment