Alternate slang/phrases

I figured it would be fun to come up with some alternate slang terms and phrases, along with a description of how they came to be and using it in a sentence. I'll try to keep adding to this over the next while, feel free to add your own. The focus is on post-1900 stuff but if some pre-1900 terms get in it's no problem.


Chicago spelling bee champ: term for a poor speller, used particularly often by newspaper staff.

This phrase stems from the Chicago Tribune's long-standing practice of using simplified spelling: as of today the paper still uses Colonel McCormick's guidelines and writes frater, thoro, thru, and other idiosyncratic simplifications. Though the Tribune has less influence on Chicago kids' spelling than it did in pre-Internet times, the term has stuck around.

"The word processor's spell checker was a great help to Fred: he's an OK writer but a real Chicago spelling bee champ."


Trusting in Providence: to embezzle money and/or hide it in a secret account. Especially used for government officials.

Since the Banking Reform Act of 1872, the Free Republic of Rhode Island has been notorious in North America as a place where the rich and powerful can hide ill-gotten wealth in numbered bank accounts. The first use of "trusting in Providence" as an ironic term for this was in the Boston Globe in 1913: now it is often used in cases of corruption that don't involve Rhode Island banks at all.

"Mayor McHenry is going to prison: turns out she's been trusting in Providence to the tune of a million Mex dollars."


Kneading the margarine: term for work percieved as pointless busywork that is necessary to meet government or internal business regulatory standards.

To this day, Minnesota and Wisconsin still require margarine and other non-dairy butter substitutes to be sold undyed, with a separate dye pack (whether of Yellow #5 or of natural dyes like tumeric) be mixed in by the customer to achieve a proper yellow color. This sop to the dairy lobby has been analogized by Upper Midwesterners to represent all kinds of excess paperwork and double-checking required by regulators.

"Sorry I'm late, had a late night kneading the margarine. Boss said we needed paper copies of everyone's hiring contract filed in triplicate. They're on the computer but apparently that's not enough for the IRS..."
 
Magnet team: a sports team, especially a baseball team, whose offense is nothing special but who excel defensively.

Many people think this comes from such a baseball team's excellent fielding, as if the ball was magnetic and they had magnets in the gloves. But it is in fact a corruption of the phrase "Maginot team", referring to the French defensive belt in Alsace-Lorraine that helped them win the Second German War by channeling the Nazi offensive right through Belgium where the Anglo-French armies were set up to meet it. Though a few sportswriters in the '40s would use "Maginot team" to describe defense-focused ball clubs, American sports fans who found "Maginot" hard to pronounce and spell would make "magnet team" the enduring phrase.

"With Quesada as shortstop - those amazing catches but a .201 average - the Reds are really setting themselves up as the NL's magnet team."


New York silverware factory: A place where casual sex is easily procured, similar to "meat market".

This term, primarily used in the Northeast US, stems from the economic basis of the Oneida Community, a quasi-religious Utopian commune in upstate New York that practices "community marriage" where the adults of the community swap partners regularly and raise the children collectively. Though the Community started out sustaining itself with a variety of industrial products, since 1910 or so the focus has been on cultivating their 200 acres of land (mostly for subsistence) and on manufacturing silverware. Many American citizens to this day set their tables unknowingly with silverware made by a "free-love Communist cult", but for those in the know, the Oneida Community's industry has become a slang term for a successful singles bar or "computer dating" program.

"After the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, it was as if the whole country was a New York silverware factory. For a decade or so anyway."
 
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Sino-Soviet Split

A breakup between two friendly individuals that is probably not as deep or long-term as it may seen. From the short-lived split between China and the USSR for a couple of years in the late 1950s.

"Yeah, I heard about Luke and Brenda calling off their wedding, but I'm pretty sure it's just a Sino-Soviet Split. They'll be back together in a couple of months, tops."
 
"Peace Talks"

Attached to the end of certain words, to indicate that the referenced thing has become a political scandal. An allusion to candiate Nixon's efforts to sabotage the Paris Peace Talks in 1968.

A: Ya think Mayor Smith is gonna survive Hooker Peace Talks?

B: No way. Hiring call-girls on his city expensne account was about the dumbest thing he could do.
 
“Cheez-it”

A small person, animal, team or group who believes themself to be mighty and ferocious but cannot compete with greater forces.

“You think Duke has a chance against Clemson on Saturday?”

“Nah, Duke talks a big game and has crazy videos, but they’re a Cheez-it on the field.”
 
Soupper.

Deragative term originating in the UP for a person who clearly can anddoes support themselves availing themselves of free meals at community shelters and soup kitchens.
 
Sticker.
Short for "potsticker", a type of fried dumpling.
"Shanghailanders don't make proper stickers. You'll have to go to China to have some proper ones."
 
Otetanist: Derogative term for somebody considered to be too xenophilic and open to other cultures, it implies a sense of betrayal of one's native culture. Comes from the name of a Iroquois character from the book "The Pipe Breaks", called Otetan, who in the books abandons his native culture to embrace the Europeans', helping them to establish colonies and massacre entire villages.
 
Hooters Air

A place or situation dominated by supposedly militant feminists. From the airplane owned by the titular company, hijacked and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean by self-styled feminist guerillas protesting that company's commodification of women, killing all on board(including the hijackers), in 2005.

A: So, how's your brother liking that Women's Studies course he got roped into taking?

B: He says it's totally Hooters Air. They sit around all class talking about how horrible men are.
 
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Here's one I've had a go at:

Owlhamite

A person from Oldham, Greater Manchester (as it's sometimes pronounced owl-dhamm in some local accent rather than old-ham).


In OTL, Oldham already has owls in its coat of arms and in The Latics soccer team as The Oldham Owl mascot.

"Those Owlhamites are closer to Rochdale than us Mancunians!", quote from Channel 4 property show.

-----

Alternate usage:

(pejorative)
A fan of the Court of Owls from DC Comics' Batman franchise. Portmanteau of owl + Gotham with -ite suffix.

"He's a real Owlhamite, supporting the Court Of Owls". DC Comics fan, 2018.
 
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This seems appropriate to this thread
 
Soupper.

Deragative term originating in the UP for a person who clearly can anddoes support themselves availing themselves of free meals at community shelters and soup kitchens.

This one feels the most real to me somehow. Lots of good ones though.
 
Selling tea in Charleston: trying to compete in an overcrowded market, similar to "coals to Newcastle".

When the boll weevil landed in South Carolina in the 1880s, it stimulated interest in alternative crops less vulnerable than cotton. In the low country around Charleston, a tea-growing industry developed. This was primarily for export, but the local tea glut lead many of the city's residents to decide around the turn of the century that selling tea would be their ticket to wealth. The streets teemed with tea sellers, iced tea sellers, tea-and-lemonade men... Within a few years most were out of business, but the association stuck around.

"I don't buy Fred's business plan, a horse-racing app is a Tea in Charleston situation right now".
 
Another one:

Chesuv: Derogatory slang for large SUV driver who overtakes and treats SUV as battering ram. Named for Chevrolet Tahoe.

"Another bloody Chesuv driver. Awful, goddamn awful!"
 
Frothy: full of errors or glitches, used to describe computer programs or computing systems.

This term stems from the golden age of hydraulic computing, from 1930 to 1955. Before electronic computers surpassed them, many calculating engines were made with hydraulic switches and complex tubing, allowing for both analog water levels and digital on/off flows in the same device. A common cause of errors in these machines was air bubbles or pockets in the tubing. For a time, a computer error was even called a bubble or "bub", but this is rarely used today. However the idea of an error-prone system being full of bubbles and thus frothy has stuck around.

"All of NitroProg's machines are so frothy, I can't recommend them at all".
 
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