{"id":1131,"date":"2013-01-07T23:52:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-08T07:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tankhughes.com\/?p=1131"},"modified":"2013-01-07T23:54:40","modified_gmt":"2013-01-08T07:54:40","slug":"tiki-bar-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tankhughes.com\/?p=1131","title":{"rendered":"Tiki Bar Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

So a few nights back, my mom and I went to Forbidden Island<\/a>, a Tiki Lounge in Alameda, CA. I’d been there many years before with my brother and (his) wife, where this interesting picture was taken:<\/p>\n

\"n7302731_33033002_2446\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This time, it was me and lovely mom standing at the bar, playing Zombie Dice and drinking the most spectacularly delicious blended drink I’ve ever had, called the Banana Mamacow<\/em>. I don’t care what you think about the name, just go there and drink it. It is so smooth, you’ll fall over. Go do it. I’ll wait.<\/p>\n

\"banana<\/a><\/p>\n

This post is not about the Banana Mamacow.<\/p>\n

This post is about a club at Forbidden Island called the Kill Devil Club<\/strong>. It is\u00a0a club for people who love rum so much that they want to try a sip from every single bottle that the bar has to offer. (Not all in one night, but over time, like a fancy connoisseur.)\u00a0Why does a whiskey-loving linguist want to talk about a rum club? She doesn’t, at least, nothing beyond the name.<\/p>\n

If you are new to this site, you are now learning that the formation kill devil<\/em> stands out to me in a big way because my recently accepted master’s dissertation is about agentive verb-noun compounds, and why they are not productive in English or German but are very productive in French and Spanish. The compound kill devil<\/em> falls into this group of compounds.<\/p>\n

When I spotted the club’s name on the menu, I panicked, recognizing the compounding pattern, but feeling unsure if I’d put it on my gigantic list of 483 agentive and instrumental verb-noun compounds. Guess what! There was no reason to panic. It is on the list.<\/p>\n

The OED entry on\u00a0kill devil<\/em>\u00a0lists the oldest definition as describing ‘a reckless person’, much the same as a\u00a0daredevil<\/em>. I used the oldest usage to catalogue the compound in my dissertation, hence the panic. The second oldest usage takes us to alcohol and rum:<\/p>\n

\"kill<\/a><\/p>\n

(Sidenote: rum<\/em> is short for rumbullion<\/a>?!?!)<\/p>\n

Though I was not confident I’d known this word before Forbidden Island, the components and the subject fit nicely into the English pattern of agentive verb-noun compounds like cutthroat<\/em>, spitfire<\/em>, scarecrow<\/em>, pickpocket<\/em>, and turncoat<\/em>. Why? Here’s a list to tell you why.<\/p>\n

1. The subject.\u00a0Alcohol<\/em>. Of the many topics that English agentive and instrumental verb-noun compounds are good at describing, alcohol is a large category. Rotgut<\/strong> is the most commonly heard example in modern speech, but tanglelegs<\/em>, kill-priest<\/em>, stitchback<\/em>, huffcap<\/em>,\u00a0ticklebrain<\/em>, pinchgut<\/em>, and tear-brain <\/em>also\u00a0refer to strong or sour types of ale, wine, and liquor. In general, this form excels at describing people and things in a comically negative manner, and kill<\/em> devil<\/em> fits right in.<\/p>\n

2. The verb. Kill<\/em>. Kill is the 4th most common verb I found in this type of English compounding. Other common verbs, from most to least productive are: break<\/em>, turn<\/em>, lack<\/em>, pick<\/em>, catch<\/em>, lick<\/em>, and\u00a0make.<\/em><\/p>\n

3. The noun. Devil<\/em>. Of the many nouns used in these compounds, devil<\/em>, penny<\/em>, and\u00a0water<\/em>\u00a0show up often, in compounds like scare-devil<\/em> (the hypericum plant) and pull-devil<\/em> (a cluster of fish hooks).<\/p>\n

In conclusion:\u00a0<\/strong>If you take me to a tiki bar, I will drink a joyous amount of alcohol in my tummy, and I will find a way to turn the conversation to historical linguistics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So a few nights back, my mom and I went to Forbidden Island, a Tiki Lounge in Alameda, CA. I’d been there many years before with my brother and (his) wife, where this interesting picture was taken: This time, it was me and lovely mom standing at the bar, playing Zombie Dice and drinking the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tankhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tankhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tankhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tankhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tankhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tankhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tankhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tankhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tankhughes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}