August 16, 2006

Eskimo ballplayers have 108 words for slump

So (jokingly) suggests Ken Arneson over at Baseball Toaster:

We definitely could use some more precision when talking about slumps. If Eskimos can have N words for snow, why can't we have some more words to describe slumps? This would be especially useful for fantasy baseball players, because you'd want to drop a player if he's in one kind of slump, but keep him if he's in another. So I'm going to make up some more terms.

So when you want to know why Jorge Posada just go 0-for-25, you could answer, "Oh, I think he's in a...":

Ken creates and defines the terms Gauss, Byrnes, Gomes, Chavez, Miller, Crosby and Blass, and invites his readers to contribute the other 101. Of course, the link to the Language Log post "More rhetorical abuse of the Eskimo lexicon" is in Ken's original. To recycle Karl Marx's overused remark about Hegel on history: stereotyped rhetoric repeats itself, first as cliché, then as irony. Now we need a word for the self-consciously ironic use of a snowclone.

A few web examples, cut from the same bolt of cloth as mine:

History, Karl Marx might have observed had he been more savvy about public relations, repeats itself first as documentary, then as a panel discussion.
Revolution repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as entertainment.
James Taranto notes that this incident (if true) shows that history indeed repeats itself first as tragedy, then as Farsi.
History repeats itself first as tragedy then as fashion.
History repeats itself: first as collegiate high jinks, then as TV movie.
History, Karl Marx might have said, repeats itself: first as Thatcherism, then as bling bling.
History repeats itself, first as triumph, then as muddle.
Toy history repeats itself -- first as plastic merchandise, then as licensed interactive media.
No less a philosopher of historical dialectic than Karl Marx once claimed that history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as disco.
History repeats itself, first as irony then as law.
History repeats itself, first as the movie, then as the Austin Powers movie.
As Karl Marx should have said, history repeats itself: first as tragedy, then as pop culture.
History repeats itself, first as tragedy then as plagiarism.
I do reach back sometimes because history repeats itself -- first as tragedy, then as Presidency.
History Usually Repeats Itself First as Tragedy, and Then as an Existing Visual Amenity.
History repeats itself; first as Tom Clancy novel, then as farce.

[Update -- Ben Zimmer points out some similar examples of ironic snowclones/canards from Slate:

Middle East. Fighting intensifies in Lebanon as dozens of innocents die, but President Bush senses a "moment of opportunity." Linguists note that in Chinese, the character for "opportunity" also means "quagmire." And "Hezbollah" means "Party of Mel Gibson."

]

Posted by Mark Liberman at August 16, 2006 07:33 AM