Geeking out on semiotics and graphs

Or How I Fell into an Internet Wormhole and Lost Several Hours of my Life

I'm not overly fond of the word "cute."  In specific instances, yes, it is perfectly appropriate. Volkswagon bugs are kinda cute.  Babies are cute.  Baby shoes are really cute.  Dogs are cute.  Puppies are paralyzingly cute.  Kittens are the embodiment of cuteness. Teenage objects of teenage crushes are cute.  Plastic buckets and shovels for the beach are soooooooo cute.  This fan-freaking-tastic little Dark Knight is unbelievably, extraordinarily cute.  It enthralls quickly with its cuteness.  I am in its cute thrall.

 

But Bane is cuter.  The cuteness of Bane is greater.

Look at the angry eyebrows...

My mom's diminutive stature makes her appear cute, but don't you dare call her that to her face because she will show you just how cute a 5-foot woman on a kill-mission isn't.  And whether it's the effect nature or nurture, you'll inadvertently stumble into a bramble of bitchery not of your own making if you dare use that word on me. 

(*Sorry for the syntax of the above paragraphs.  I'm still in grammar teacher mode and it's hard to make the shift back to "normal," so I find that I'm writing sentences with a secondary purpose: to clearly illustrate the 8 parts of speech.  In fact, in that liminal state between sleep and consciousness, my brain is still constructing sentences to illustrate the 3 functions of an adverb.  Observe: "Your stupid boyfriend plays the piano.  Your stupid boyfriend plays the piano abysmally.  Your frighteningly stupid boyfriend plays the piano abysmally.  Your frighteningly stupid boyfriend plays the piano rather abysmally."  Adverbs: spicing up your syntax since who-knows-when.

Also, that particular adjective+noun pairing of "stupid" and "boyfriend" is, I find, a particularly effective tool for teaching grammar to a group of 14 year-old-girls. It also apparently led several of my summer school students a few years ago to think I had serious man-trouble.  In my next life, I'll either use the adjective "hypothetical" instead of "stupid" or the noun "astronaut" instead of "boyfriend."  Because we all know how abysmally those astronauts play the piano, especially the frighteningly stupid ones.)

This article on The Hairpin was pretty interesting, and I learned some fun facts about the word "cute" and maybe don't hate it quite as much now.  The evolution of word meaning is really fascinating stuff, and the article made it clear that my problem with "cute" is more a product of my time and not the original meaning of the word.  According to the author, it was initially an abbreviation of "acute" and had a meaning similar to that of "striking" or "impressive."  So it makes sense that teenage me was all, "Holy Crap, Dweezil Zappa is so goddamn cute."  (Hell, who am I kidding?  I'm still saying that.  Dweezil, call me.)  That aspect of it seems to have clung to the word's current usage.

But for the most part, now it tends to be associated with young things, babyish things.  Things lacking agency and unable to care for themselves.  Weak things that need protecting.  Things that are pretty or fun to look at, but do not think thoughts or speak words.  So I guess that's why I don't like "cute" in its application to grown-up things, in its ability to infantilize by way of an ostensible compliment.  Making a big deal out of a little word?  Eh, maybe.  Just peeves me.

The article, however, put me onto a Google function I had never seen before:  Google's N-grams.  It combines a lot of things that I love that more socially-savvy folks than I would not admit to loving:  graphs, words, and piles of data.  It's pretty awesome.  The author of the article showed how the phrases "cute girl," "cute guy," and "cute baby" had increased or decreased in use over the last 200 years in literature (at least in the literature Google scanned, anyway) by using this function, so I decided to have a little fun with it myself and plug in some terms just for funsies.

For some other slang terms: I searched out "fly girl, fly guy" and just for the hell of it, threw in the term "fly zipper" and got this graph.

N-grams also lets you peruse some of the scanned texts to see the context of the terms.  Apparently, books in the early 20th century talked a lot about fly guys, but not like they were hot stuff, more liked they worked as part of a stage crew.  Y'know with ropes (not in a Christian Grey way, though.)  And all of the use of "fly girl" was mostly in Jennifer Lopez biographies and references to the unparalelled 90's sketch comedy show "In Living Color."

Then I thought I'd go with another often backhanded compliment: nice.

The spike in "nice girl" usage was largely in books on manners and deportment and expectations for feminine behavior, so I'm giddy over its decline.  The rapid increase in the term "nice guy" however seems to be largely facetious, arguably indicating a trivialization of the term "nice" that's more like its older meaning of "foolish" or "stupid" (dictionary.com)  "Nice person" doesn't have a whole lot of use outside of some dialogue in fiction or self-help books.  My guess is that it's not a very descriptive term, so could render your writing kind of lackluster.

For kicks, let's look at "death" as an adjective.

Weird little spike there in the late 30's in the use of the term "death mask."  Not a big surprise in the use of the term "death metal."

Ooh!  Ooh!  How about "stupid?!"  Haha - let's plug in some vulgar terms.

Whoa. "Stupid bitch" is on the rise.  Not sure how to feel about that...

We could argue causation and correlation all day.  But I think this is kind of a fun exploration of the dynamic of language and culture, the back-and-forth between the written and spoken word, the shifting attitudes that influence usage, and maybe the shifting usages that can influence attitudes.

And because I'm mean:

Holy crap.  Batman really is all alone.


But not for long.  Because...CUTE.