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Square is slang for a person who is conventional and old-fashioned, similar to a fuddy-duddy. [1] [2] [3] This sense of the word "square" originated with the American jazz community in the 1940s in reference to people out of touch with musical trends. [1] Older senses of the term square, referring positively to someone or something honest and upstanding, date back to the 16th century. [3] [4]
The English word square dates to the 13th century and derives from the Old French esquarre . By the 1570s, it was in use in reference to someone or something honest or fair. [3] [4] This positive sense is preserved in phrases such as "fair and square", meaning something done in an honest and straightforward manner, [5] and "square deal", meaning an outcome equitable to all sides. [6] A West Country variant on the phrase, "fairs pears", bears the same meaning and was first traced by Cecil Sharp in 1903 when visiting his friend (and lyrics editor) Charles Marson in Hambridge, South Somerset. [7]
The sense of square as a derogatory reference to someone conventional or old-fashioned dates to the jazz scene of the 1940s; the first known reference is from 1944. There it applied to someone who failed to appreciate the medium of jazz, or more broadly, someone whose tastes were out of date and out of touch.
A common phrase "Be There, or Be Square." implies that a 'Square' is the opposite of someone who is a 'Round'. A play on words, a square is someone who is never around, regularly stays home, and avoids social gatherings. Especially unchaperoned gatherings where illegal activities might take place, for fear of getting in trouble.
Implying if you are not around (a "round") you are squareIt may derive from the rigid motion of a conductor's hands in a conventional, four-beat rhythm. [3] It is used as both an adjective and a noun. [1] [2] A square contrasted with someone who was hip , or in the know. [1]
The cub scout promise included the pledge "to be square" from the 1950s to the 1970s. In contemporary language, U.S. branches of the military refer to "squared away" to describe things that are ordered.
Rhyming slang is a form of slang word construction in the English language. It is especially prevalent among Cockneys in England, and was first used in the early 19th century in the East End of London; hence its alternative name, Cockney rhyming slang. In the US, especially the criminal underworld of the West Coast between 1880 and 1920, rhyming slang has sometimes been known as Australian slang.
A slang is a vocabulary of an informal register, common in verbal conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-groups in order to establish group identity, exclude outsiders, or both. The word itself came about in the 18th century and has been defined in multiple ways since its conception.
Pussy is a term used as a noun, an adjective, and—in rare instances—a verb in the English language. It has several meanings, as slang, as euphemism, and as vulgarity. Most commonly, it is used as a noun with the meaning "cat", "coward", or "weakling". In slang usage, it can mean "vulva or vagina" and less commonly, as a form of synecdoche, meaning "sexual intercourse with a woman". Because of its multiple senses including both innocent and vulgar connotations, pussy is often the subject of double entendre.
Patois is speech or language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. As such, patois can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects or vernaculars, but not commonly to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of cant.
In linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, “to calque” means to borrow a word or phrase from another language while translating its components, so as to create a new lexeme in the target language. For instance, the English word "skyscraper" has been calqued in dozens of other languages, combining words for "sky" and "scrape" in each language, as for example, German: Wolkenkratzer, Portuguese: Arranha-céu. Another notable example is the Latin weekday names, which came to be associated by ancient Germanic speakers with their own gods following a practice known as interpretatio germanica: the Latin "Day of Mercury", Mercurii dies, was borrowed into Late Proto-Germanic as the "Day of Wōđanaz" (Wodanesdag), which became Wōdnesdæg in Old English, then "Wednesday" in Modern English.
This is a list of British words not widely used in the United States. In Commonwealth of Nations, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, India, South Africa, and Australia, some of the British terms listed are used, although another usage is often preferred.
A quiz is a form of game or mind sport in which players attempt to answer questions correctly on one or several specific topics. Quizzes can be used as a brief assessment in education and similar fields to measure growth in knowledge, abilities, and skills, or simply as a hobby. They can also be televised for entertainment purposes, often in a game show format.
An officer-elect is a person who has been elected to a position but has not yet been installed. Notably, a president who has been elected but not yet installed would be referred to as a president-elect.
Ylem is a hypothetical original substance or condensed state of matter, which became subatomic particles and elements as are understood today. The term was used by George Gamow, his student Ralph Alpher, and their associates in the late 1940s, having resuscitated it from Middle English after Alpher found it in Webster's Second dictionary, where it was defined as "the first substance from which the elements were supposed to have been formed."
A freak is a person who is physically deformed or transformed due to an extraordinary medical condition or body modification. This definition was first attested with this meaning in the 1880s as a shorter form of the phrase "freak of nature", itself a broader term meaning "whimsy or caprice of nature", attributed at least as far back as 1847. The term's original neutral connotation became entirely negative during the 20th century; therefore, freak with its literal meaning of "abnormally developed individual" is viewed purely as a pejorative today. However, the term is also recently used playfully to refer to an enthusiast or obsessive person.
Flogging a dead horse is an idiom meaning that a particular effort is futile, being a waste of time without a positive outcome, e.g. such as flogging a dead horse, which will not compel it to do useful work.
Turning a blind eye is an idiom describing the ignoring of undesirable information.
Sigillography, also known by its Greek-derived name, sphragistics, is the scholarly discipline that studies the wax, lead, clay, and other seals used to authenticate archival documents. It investigates not only aspects of the artistic design and production of seals, but also considers the legal, administrative and social contexts in which they were used. It has links to diplomatics, heraldry, social history, and the history of art, and is regarded as one of the auxiliary sciences of history. A student of seals is known as a sigillographer.
The duit was an old low-value Dutch copper coin. Struck in the 17th and 18th centuries in the territory of the Dutch Republic, it became an international currency. It had the value of 1/8 stuiver.
A liripipe is an element of clothing, the tail of a hood or cloak, or a long-tailed hood. The modern-day liripipe appears on the hoods of academic dress.
Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is first attested in writing from 1826.
Milord is a term for an Englishman, especially a noble, traveling in Continental Europe. The term was used in both French and English from the 16th century. It derives ultimately from the English phrase "my lord", which was borrowed into Middle French as millourt or milor, meaning a noble or rich man.
English prepositions are words – such as of, in, on, at, from, etc. – that function as the head of a prepositional phrase, and most characteristically license a noun phrase object. Semantically, they most typically denote relations in space and time. Morphologically, they are usually simple and do not inflect. They form a closed lexical category.
TL;DR or tl;dr, short for "too long; didn't read", is internet slang often used to introduce a summary of an online post or news article. It is also used as an informal interjection commenting that a block of text has been ignored due to its length.
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