Every Wednesday for the next few weeks, I will be sharing a screen capture from an episode of Batman: The Animated Series. I dearly love this show, and watched it as an impressionable child. Some of the frames are stunning, some have errors, and some are just odd.
I don’t own these images and I’m not getting anything for this except happiness. Please enjoy.
Batman: The Animated Series: Season 1: Episode 27: The Underdwellers
What’s the episode about? It’s about the Underdwellers (read: Morlocks), a society of orphan children who live under the harsh rule of a Fagan-type evil leader in the sewers of Gotham. The Sewer King lives underground (like the Rat King from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) owns trained alligators (like GI Joe’s Croc Master) and has an eyepatch (like Callisto, leader of the Morlocks). There is very inconsistent use of sunlight as both a painful punishment and later as a comfort for the children when they return to the surface. It is not a good episode.
When Does This Frame Happen? Towards the end of the episode, a child morlock swoops in and rescues another child morlock from the arms of The Sewer King (who looks like Captain Hook).
Why Are You Sharing It? Batman’s a pretty stoic guy, but because the kid just gave Batman the thumbs up, Batman mimics the gesture. It’s so unlike him. If it weren’t such a dark picture, it could be a meme.
I’m trying to figure out whether flapjack is an endocentric or exocentric compound. Flap is a verb, jack is a noun, and it’s a fun compound. If I can include it in my research, I’d like to. Is a flapjacka type of jack, or a thing (not a jack) that flaps jacks?
Flap from flapjack is listed in the OED under definition 4a. It has Germanic relatives.
— Do yourself a favor and act out the definition of flap as given above. Do it now. I defy you not to giggle while you do it. Descriptive words are amazing. You really get the feeling that you’re manhandling whatever it is between your hands. Wrestle it to the ground! Flap it!
So I’m looking at verb-noun compounds in English, and there are a number of endocentric compounds that begin with the verb blow. Blow comes from OE bláwan, and shows up in a lot of endocentric compounds, which makes sense, since it is a Germanic word. (Trust me on that.)
Blowgun (which comes from blowpipe),blowtorch (which comes from blowlamp) and blowfish are some of the common Modern English forms that use blow. Then of course there is blowjob, which my friend Jason thought up when I told him I was looking for verb-noun compounds in English. This tricked me into saying “Hmm, okay, I’ll look into blowjobs” in public. (Between that discussion and his political-ethical considerations about what makes necrophilia disgusting and illegal, “Hey Jason, how’s necrophilia going?” we seem to have conversations that are quite dangerous when out of context. But he’s cool. Check out his new vlog.)
Blowjob is first attested in 1961, while hand job (a noun-noun compound) first appeared in 1939. Both are American in origin (U! S! A!). Thus, it is very likely that blow job is modeled after the –job pattern of sex acts, rather than being independently created as a verb-noun compound.
And to top it all off, I found this little charmer with one citation from 1885… yes, it’s blow-cock. It really could NOT look more dirty if it tried, but apparently it is a boiler component. The definition even sounds like a euphemism…
So there it is. A dirty dip into etymology.
(All of the data from this post comes from oed.com.)
Conn and Anjel loved it so much that they married it on May 7, 2006. Then they designed cabbages. Then they started on a dangerous business. Now they are enjoying 35 summers. They are currently celebrating their 6th year of matrimony, so I made them a video:
If you had some trouble catching all the businesses, here they are:
alaskan fisherman
crocodile wrangler
nanny for quintuplets
axe handle fastener and tester
crash test dummy
pinboy for tron bowling
coal mine explosive fuse lighter
beijing water department quality control
bomb inspector
food tester for evil dictator
circus dentist
jackie chan stunt man double
assistant to blindfolded knife thrower
extreme wedge shoe foot model
window washer for dubai tower
killer whale pool cleaner
hyena dog walker
hot potato juggler
artichoke picker
deaf rodeo clown
bungee jump inventor
wampa manicurist
nepalese mountain pilot
ringwraith dance partner on dancing with the stars
drummer for spinal tap
eiffel tower bulb changer
tightrope unicyclist
spacepizza deliveryboy for reevers
wells fargo stagecoach shotgun
nudist camp grill master
in-flight propellor mechanic
anthrax delivery service provider
red shirted enterprise crew member
medusa hairdresser
shark portrait artist
If the embedded video does not work for you, find the video here on Youtube.
