Any Item Can Be Turned Into an Insult by Adding the Word “Absolute”
“You can turn almost any subject into a good insult if you put“ you are absolute ”in front of it,” reads a popular Tumblr post that turned into a discussion about a particular linguistic phenomenon. Tumblr’s Ultimate Sedans have found that a full word can also turn words into insult and more:
- Absolutely Head: Drunk
- Perfectly Xed: Shocked
- Fully Xed: Depleted / Suppressed
In a thread , the blog’s text and language suggests this explanation:
This handy feature is called collocative replacement , and it occurs when certain words are strongly associated with certain contexts and / or phrases. when you read / hear a pair of words that usually don’t go together, your brain fills in context with what would normally be assumed given the original combination.
Collocative substitution is not a well-accepted linguistic term – Metafilter commentator Wobbuffet suggests the psychological term “paradigmatic substitution” – but the phrase scans. Collocation is a short phrase that you may not even think of as a phrase: make your bed, feel free, close the deal. A little pun might involve changing one of these words, like a vampire who “makes a coffin” every morning. This is a collocative replacement.
Thus, in the phrases above, the implied word is most often combined with the adjective. It helps that some of the common synonyms for drunk sound like household items: completely useless , completely plastered .
By email, linguist John McWorter tells Lifehacker about two other offensive phrases: you little X and X-ass . “The use of ass in terms of ‘lame ass ,’ ‘ lonely ass,’ and so on. Probably started off with literal ‘ big ass ,’ and now ‘ butt’ brings a touch of contempt or weirdness.”
There is a downside to the absolute that enjoys some popularity on Twitter: a sarcastic British compliment to the absolute madman and this tweet praising absolute one :
It seems that the absolute here is all the more powerful as a compliment, because it is usually perceived as an insult. Context matters! And you can only stretch out the replacement before it breaks. So when you come up with your absolute insults, make sure you don’t accidentally praise someone as an absolute jet fighter.