Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 June 27

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June 27

Meaning of "You took my freak"

I was watching a Bart Baker video on Youtube (I know, I have bad taste!) and one of the lines in the song is "You took my kid's freak!". This is said at 2:21 in the video by an angry dad to Bart (who is playing the part of PSY in the song). It's obviously something he (Bart) shouldn't have done, since a cop is holding a gun to his head (he has been placed under arrest!). I haven't got this line wrong since there are subtitles. What does "You took my kid's freak" mean? Thanks everyone! 59.167.253.199 (talk) 03:07, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

The line is actually You took my kids freak. Notice that there is no apostrophe ('), so it's not 'my kid's freak' (the freak belonging to my kid), but 'my kids [,] freak' (they're my kids and you are a freak). See greengrocer's apostrophe. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 05:12, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

That makes sense :-) Thanks Mike 59.167.253.199 (talk) 11:40, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

German speakers, what do the Jerry soldiers say to and around the lost Yankee G.I. in this scene?

I couldn't find any subtitled versions, as hard as I tried. You see, this hapless Private gets so lost and doesn't know what he's doing in his retreat that in an attempt to run away from the Germans, he literally runs straight INTO one.

Also, would it have been appropriate to shake his head at whatever the first thing was that the German alpha-soldier told him? --70.179.161.230 (talk) 08:28, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

The first thing the German alpha-soldier says is to tell him to put his hands up. Then when the guy shakes his head, he repeats the command in a shout. They also ask him (or each other) whether he has any cigarettes on him. The last thing they say is "pig American" (as someone notes in the youtube comments). --Viennese Waltz 08:43, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, though may you also provide a bilingual transcription of what everyone says? --70.179.161.230 (talk) 17:49, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

'Kensington' as adjective

Chambers English Dictionary has a strange adjectival definition of Kensington as "interested exclusively in artificial city life and material values". Now, I can understand where this usage might have come from, since Kensington is one of London's snobbiest districts, but I've never come across it myself. So how common is this adjectival use? I don't have access to the OED, which might give some quotations, so if anyone here does I'd be grateful to hear from them. Thanks, --Viennese Waltz 16:16, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

My 2nd-ed. OED lists only an attributive sense of Kensington that denotes the speech supposedly charateristic of the district. It also has Kensingtonian, with quotations that also mostly relate to speech patterns but one of which ("a truly Kensingtonian drawing-room" from 1958) suggests an extension to other aspects of hoity-toitiness. All of the quotations are from the 20th century, mostly from the second half. Deor (talk) 17:52, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Future nostalgia

Is there a word in any language for feeling nostalgic for the experience or time that you are currently going through? A kind of future or pre-emptive nostalgia? FreeMorpheme (talk) 22:27, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

It wouldn't be nostalgia if if was current. Nostalgia is usually vaguely pleasant, if I'm not mistaken, so "contentment", maybe? Mingmingla (talk) 02:06, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Wow. There was a line in the first season of Remington Steele, where Pierce Brosnan said he felt a "reminiscent foreboding". I laughed for a week. μηδείς (talk) 02:13, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

There's a line from a Carly Simon song, "These are the good old days." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:10, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

I think Ralph Reader got there first with "These are the times we shall dream about, / And we'll call them the good old days...". Alansplodge (talk) 20:15, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Or Vladimir Nabokov, who wrote, in "The Admiralty Spire":

Katya and I also would have liked to reminisce, but, since we had nothing yet to reminisce about, we would counterfeit the remoteness of time and push back into it our immediate happiness. ... [T]hanks to a vague inspiration, we were preparing in advance for certain things, training ourselves to remember, imagining a distant past and practicing nostalgia, so that subsequently, when that past really existed for us, we would know how to cope with it, and not perish under its burden.

and in the story "A Guide to Berlin":

I think that here lies the sense of literary creation: to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern in the far off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade.

I have a whole sheaf of quotations on related themes in my commonplace book but, alas, no single word to describe them. Deor (talk) 21:18, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

This is the time to remember / 'cause it will not last forever. Billy Joel. I always feel that way in early summer. --Trovatore (talk) 21:20, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Mono no aware is very similar to the "pre-emptive nostalgia" you are describing. --Dr Dima (talk) 21:06, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Like Yes, I think this phrase is almost exactly what the OP is looking for! SemanticMantis (talk) 19:17, 1 July 2013 (UTC)