Blasé blasé = blah blah blah
Anandashankar Mazumdar
caught my attention when one of the characters used "blasé blasé"
/blAzeI blAzeI/ in a situation when I might say "blah blah blah." I
can't remember the exact dialogue, but it was in the vein of "And he
went on with his excuses, his car broke down, blasé blasé ..." I have
noticed this usage only once before, in 1991, and that time is was also
an African-American person. Has anyone else come across this usage
before? I am assuming that it originates in the similarity in the
sounds of the two phrases.
Ananda
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Richard Fontana
> Yesterday while channel surfing I came across a "black" sitcom and it
> caught my attention when one of the characters used "blasé blasé"
> /blAzeI blAzeI/ in a situation when I might say "blah blah blah." I
> can't remember the exact dialogue, but it was in the vein of "And he
> went on with his excuses, his car broke down, blasé blasé ..." I have
> noticed this usage only once before, in 1991, and that time is was also
> an African-American person. Has anyone else come across this usage
> before? I am assuming that it originates in the similarity in the
> sounds of the two phrases.
The only time I have encountered "blase blase" was in the movie
"Clockers", in which the main character, an African-American,
asked the police detective character who cared about his well-being why he
wasn't "blase blase" like all the other cops. To me, this seemed like
it was employing the ordinary meaning of 'blase', with an added sense of
'uncaring'.
RF
Ms Mog
they say <blasé blah> as well as <blasé blasé>:
"First we went to the mall, we walked around for a while, then we decided to
leave, you know, blasé blah...
Donna Richoux
I'm pleased you let us know this. Us old fogies gotta keep in step with
the times.
Do you have any idea where it came from? Would you call it black slang?
Does anyone know if it is French or Caribbean slang? A web search turned
up almost nothing.
Best wishes --- Donna Richoux
Ms Mog
>the times.
>
>Do you have any idea where it came from? Would you call it black slang?
>Does anyone know if it is French or Caribbean slang?
It's definitely black slang, but I don't know its provenance. Another favorite
one of mine is the expression <bootleg> to mean bogus or of inferior quality.
The kids will say: "Did you hear that new CD? "Man, that was so bootleg..."
meaning that the CD was only an imitation of another one of much higher
quality. This usage may have something to do with a bootleg play in football.
In Humanities, when we began studying Cubism, one of the students brought in a
drawing he had done in art class. Another student, obviously unimpressed,
said, "Hey Picasso, that is soooo bootleg, man..."
Donna Richoux
>
> It's definitely black slang, but I don't know its provenance. Another
> favorite one of mine is the expression <bootleg> to mean bogus or of
> inferior quality. The kids will say: "Did you hear that new CD? "Man,
> that was so bootleg..." meaning that the CD was only an imitation of
> another one of much higher quality. This usage may have something to do
> with a bootleg play in football.
If "bootleg" is now used to mean "bad" that would be new, but it if only
means "produced by unauthorized means" (bogus means counterfeit) then
that is not so new.
"Bootleg" has referred to smuggling and illicit goods for over a hundred
years. I heard people talk about "bootleg records" back in the 1970s --
usually made by recording a concert without permission, or getting ahold
of studio outtakes. The word became common during Prohibition (1920s),
but the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang has an even
earlier first citation, 1889 (apparently Iowa had its own Prohibition.)
The meaning was, sneaking in small bottles of alcohol in the leg of
one's boot.
I'm no whiz on football; *is* there such a thing as a bootleg play?
> In Humanities, when we began studying Cubism, one of the students brought in a
> drawing he had done in art class. Another student, obviously unimpressed,
> said, "Hey Picasso, that is soooo bootleg, man..."
Do you suppose he meant "poorly done" or "such an obvious imitation"?
It's hard to tell from one cite. Maybe you could ask the kids what
"bootleg" means to them?
a1a5...@bc.sympatico.ca
Richoux) wrote:
[ ]
> Maybe you could ask the kids what
>"bootleg" means to them?
>
>Best wishes --- Donna Richoux
If it is found that "bootleg" does not mean "bootleg" will that
somehow change what "bootleg" means? If the answer is "no" does
that make MUCKED10 a gigantic confidence trick?
Anandashankar Mazumdar
ms...@aol.com (Ms Mog) wrote:
>Another favorite one of mine is the expression <bootleg> to mean
>bogus or of inferior quality. The kids will say: "Did you hear
>that new CD? "Man, that was so bootleg..." meaning that the CD
>was only an imitation of another one of much higher quality.
>This usage may have something to do with a bootleg play in
>football.
Considering that "bootleg" is quite a common term in
the music industry and well-known to fans of popular music,
it seems to me that the more likely derivation is from
"bootleg recording," which is not a pirated copy, but a
recording that was not authorized by the owner of the
copyright.
For example, you sneak a recording device into a
concert and release the resulting recording on c.d. That's a
bootleg recording. Bootleg recordings aren't always of poor
quality and they aren't always shunned. Some of the most
famous and best-quality recordings of popular music have
been bootleg recordings. Often a bootleg recording will have
the word "bootleg" in its title.
The music industry apparently got the term from the
"bootlegers" from the days of prohibition.
Anandashankar Mazumdar
Ms Mog
>"bootleg recording," which is not a pirated copy, but a
>recording that was not authorized by the owner of the
>copyright.
The choice of the CD example was mine; a student could just as easily have
said, "I won't take Mr. Jones's couse, I hear it's bootleg." The usage may
have started out as a derivation from the bootleg recording example (teenagers
are WAY into buying and selling bootlegged CDs and videos), but in my
experience this year, bootleg has morphed into meaning "bad" or "inferior."
Another interesting slang term among African American teenagers is <ghetto>,
used pejoratively. "Did you see Akeem and Jason at the mall? They were acting
so ghetto."