I meant to go get a Brazilian wax today but then flaked out. I must do it tomorrow morning or it won't be calmed down in time for the New Years' Party!
This brought to mind another example of reanalysis: the "boyzilian" or "boykini" wax. Now, this one is not a mistake, it's a deliberate pun. But you could imagine future misunderstandings and mis-dissections of the word so that "zilian" came to mean "getting something waxed" and you could affix the names of body parts to it so that getting your toes waxed would be, um, getting a digizilian, or dedozilian in this neighborhood since it's said "el wáxing" or "el bikini-waxing" or "un brazílian " Or, if you were waxing a hairy hippopotamus at the zoo, it could be a hippozilian. My question is, does the original deliberate pun-word have a special name in linguisitcs?
And is boyzilian a new word from this year, coined in SF by some clever waxer in the Castro and picked up quickly by others? If it weren't recent, it would have more than the 100 hits it has right now.
Fear me, for I have twisted the innocent historical linguistics books around so that they're a fun pedantic segueway to blog about my coochie and its marvellous adventures!
Then what would a Godzilian wax be like?
Posted by: Prentiss Riddle | December 28, 2004 at 03:32 PM
Everything waxed except for a racing stripe that is neatly shaped into Liberty spikes?
Posted by: badgerbag | December 28, 2004 at 05:00 PM