Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 February 6

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February 6

Crocide

I came across the word crocide in a review of a biography of the poet Les Murray, who apparently coined it in reference to his having being relentlessly bullied at school. That's all I know of it, as I do not know which poem it's from, and Google has been somewhat reticent.

I'm trying to get a handle on the possible etymology of the word. Can anyone assist? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 04:26, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

If that were a misprint for crucide then I suppose the first element could be irregularly formed from Latin crucio, "to torment". Admittedly Google offers no more evidence for this reading than for crocide. --Antiquary (talk) 10:29, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

He's Australian - could it have anything to do with croc(odiles)? Wymspen (talk) 14:21, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Poets and other writers are known for inventing nonce words and Nonsense words. Lewis Carroll for example, in the poem Jabberwocky, is among the most famous. But many authors, from William Shakespeare to James Joyce have done so. Les Murray would not have been the first. --Jayron32 15:45, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh, certainly not. Poets are famously laws unto themselves (Murray has Aspergers to boot, so he's maybe twice removed from the rules). But words still have to mean something (Finnegans Wake notwithstanding). If an author creates a -cide word, readers would expect the first part to come from an English word or some Latin or Greek root, for it to have any obvious meaning. Otherwise, the author would have to explain the word within the text, and that defeats its own purpose, unless the word is used repeatedly. Maybe it is used repeatedly; maybe the context makes it clear; without the poem, I have no way of knowing. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:33, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

This claims it's a variant of Latin crosis, possibly referring to one of the Catchfly plants. —Stephen (talk) 23:59, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I think that's just listing a Latin declension, where crocide would be (I think) the ablative case. That seems sort of unlikely as what Murray meant, but who knows. --Trovatore (talk) 01:30, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

• Ah ha! I have the answer. It was a typo for "erocide". See here:

• This is partly a reference to the bullying Murray encountered on entering high school soon after his mother's death, a bullying in which the participation of girls was more hurtful than that of boys, and for which Murray later coined the term "erocide" to indicate its morbid effect on his sexual development.

• It all makes perfect sense now. Thanks for helping. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:09, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Resolved

As the six-fingered man said to Inigo Montoya, I think that's the worst thing I've ever heard. Well, maybe not literally. But anyway, thanks so much for that little happy note in my day, Jack :-/ --Trovatore (talk) 09:00, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

asshole

Why is ‘asshole’ an insult?

I know that it’s impossible to know for sure, but I’d like to see the hypotheses. I read that Rictor Norton proposed one, but I can’t find a direct citation. — (((Romanophile))) ♞ (contributions) 05:32, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Do you mean 'Why is it considered an insult?' or 'How did it enter the English language as an insult?' ... ?

In any event, you might be interested in Geoffrey Nunberg's latest book Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years. If you can't get a hold of it, check out these interviews with the author: "A Linguist's Serious Take On 'The A-Word'" (NPR) or "Who You Callin’ A**hole?" (Slate).

Some quotes from these sites which might address your question (and I still believe you might wish to clarify it a bit):

"['Asshole'] originated during World War II as a GI's term for an officer who thinks his status "entitles him to a kind of behavior — to either abuse his men, or makes him more important than he really is." When GIs came home, they brought the word with them, and movement radicals began to use it."

"I think the literal meaning of the word is hovering around it. I mean, we use it to refer to somebody who's contemptible and the idea of something small and foul and dirty and contemptible—which is the conventional view of the anus, though there are some who will take exception to that—still pervades the word, even when we use it to describe a person."

---Sluzzelin talk 14:35, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Synecdoche. Same reason "cunt" and "dick" are insults. The idea is to refer to the whole by means of a part, and to pick a part that is not held in high esteem. You occasionally see this inverted e.g. "I'd call you a pussy, but they are actually tough", or "To call you an asshole would be an insult to the orifice, which is useful!" Hope that helps, SemanticMantis (talk) 17:23, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

No it's not. Calling a male a cunt is a rather popular insult, but does not refer to the whole by means of its part. --217.140.96.140 (talk) 13:09, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

But it does mean you're transferring the alleged properties of the object to the person being so insulted. --Jayron32 15:22, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

That's correct, and it's called metaphor, which is the opposite of metonymy, which synecdoche is a class of. --217.140.96.140 (talk) 11:44, 9 February 2017 (UTC)