speakeasy: big-ups to big-up

nobody@vox.com(Jason) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:38:17 -0800

Note that Jaime Pressly said that “Ugly Betty” was “big-upping the ugly fat girl,” not that the show was “bigging up the ugly fat girl” (or “bigging the ugly fat girl up“). So we find that big-up is being treated as a single entity that can be inflected with verb endings, rather than as the verb big plus the particle up.

- "Big-Up" on the Rise by Ben Zimmer, OUPblog, 01.24.08

I'm sure my first awareness of "Big-Up" was Biggie Smalls giving "Big-Ups to Brooklyn". Given his Caribbean roots that all makes sense.

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WOTD: Winnow

nobody@vox.com(Jason) — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 12:27:41 -0800

Definitions of winnow on the Web:

separate the chaff from by using air currents; "She stood there winnowing chaff all day in the field"
blow on; "The wind was winnowing her hair"; "the wind winnowed the grass"
cull out: select desirable parts from a group or list; "cull out the interesting letters from the poet's correspondence"; "winnow the finalists from the long list of applicants"
blow away or off with a current of air; "winnow chaff"
the act of separating grain from chaff; "the winnowing was done by women"

wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

As in:

"Some day when the weariness has passed," Ashmore had responded, trying to keep the door ajar, "I will want to get back into the old fight, of which this war is a military phase. I've come to believe that the important things, the essential freedoms, the democratic processes are luxuries, not inalienable rights, and the price we must pay for them is high. Sometimes we fight to preserve them with guns, sometimes with typewriters, but always we must stand ready to fight." Reading this paragraph many years later, Ashmore would be amused and add, "Whatever else may be said of it, this was a sentiment that would serve to winnow prospective employers."

- The Race Beat: The Press, The Civil Rights Struggle and The Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff

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speakeasy: big-ups to big-up

WOTD: Winnow