Language says a lot about its surroundings. It's been said, for example, that Eskimos have over 24 words for snow. Back home in Minnesota, we have around 11 words for ice hockey and a remarkable 29 different words for milk toast. It is fitting, then, that Dartmouth has an estimated 77 ways to say frat party, and that is where we will turn our attention today.
Freshmen, alumni and visitors: if you want to come play "Homecoming" with the Dartmouth kids this weekend, you will need a rudimentary grasp on our language. Without it, no big weekend at the College on the Hill will be complete.
Learning to speak and write Dartmouth is challenging. True, grammatically speaking, Dartmouth is far simpler than French or Spanish. It is not, however, Latin-based, and students who speak it fluently are most often unwilling to rise early each morning and conduct drill.
Thus (with apologies to William Safire), I present you with some notes on language. On a normal day, the amount of slang I am about to use may be nauseating. But pushing these limits is what this big bender (sorry, did I type bender? I meant weekend) is all about.
Also, some of the language below may seem a bit rough. I chose to include it for the simple reason that the words we use intimately reflect our thoughts, opinions and surroundings. For better or for worse, this lesson on lexicon is also a reminder (for some, an introduction) of the way of life around here.
I. Beerspeak
Welcome to Hanover, where somewhere right now a ragey pledge is doming himself on a 30, then booting until the cows (or, as is often the case, the pledge-ucators) come home.
What? It's true; the fraternity basement (to be honest, we usually just say "basement") lingo is a lot to handle. We can start with "rage," a word that has been the chief d'oeuvre of Dartmouth's beerspeak for some time now.
Rage (rj) v.: (1) to party with an irresponsible demeanor. (2) to drink alchohol, to consume illicit substances. See: -ragey adj., raging adv., rager n.
Rage, ragier, ragiest: students hear "raging" from the moment they get here until the moment we leave. After raging too much (or just enough), a rager may "black out" (be unable to remember his/her behavior), or "brown out," (remember some things but not others). Hopefully the rager will eventually "black in" (return to a state where things are memorable/remembered). "To boot" is to vomit, "to crush" is to destroy or consume something (such as a pong opponent or a pizza), and "to soil" is to commit some sort of party foul, i.e. spill something, hurt something or cause damage to life, limb or property. Finally, in true Dartmouth form, the popular phrase "nobody rages anymore" is used to imply that even your best raging, booting, crushing and soiling is nothing compared to how ragey the rage was back in the day, when frat boys had to carry their kegs five miles uphill from Stinson's every morning and smashing a beer can on your forehead "meant something."
Moving on, if you are at a party, and someone asks you if you would like to play shrub, tree, sequoia, line, two cup, social, black forest, ship, holy war, World War II, wall, tower, harbor, slop, leisure, 56, slam, cathedral, Kallman tree,or anything else that sounds like a card game but isn't, they were asking if you would like to play one of the many versions of pong. Pong games are set up, or "racked," with cups of beer, and someone asking for "a third" or "a fourth" is asking for additional people to fill out a standard pong game, which involves four people. And don't forget, this is not beirut, so be sure to grab a paddle.
II. Talking Smack
A student who has put in a decent amount of "face-time" (time spent seeing and being seen) could tell you that a few simple adjectives can describe most Dartmouth students, whether they be a "rando" (random person; anybody) or a "campus icon." For example, people and places are frequently ranked as "A-side," "B-side," or "C-side." The "-side" system runs from best to worst, respectively, and gives an implicit nod to the teams of the "DRFC" (Dartmouth Rugby Football Club), which take the same names.
The prize for most overused adjective in the Dartmouth lexicon goes to "sweet," which is akin to saying cool, but also insinuates a level of raginess and popularity, as well as the arrogance that often to accompanies the two.
A student who gained admission to Dartmouth without the help of a sports team or donation is "legit." A student whose parents fund his or her iconoclastic lifestyle is a "trustafarian:" an amalgamation of "trust fund baby" and "Rastafarian." A student who prefers the great outdoors is "crunchy" or "granola," whereas one who prefers to spend time at Friday Night Rock is "alternatief" (an alternative to being "alternative," if you will).
To call someone a "shackle" is to say they drag you down or hold you back; this is most often used in reference to a boyfriend or girlfriend who is a "buzz kill" (sobering; not fun enough.) And, since kids are cruel, "unattractive" best translates into Dartmouth idiom as "beat," "busted" or "grim," to name a few.
III. So-Called (Sex) Life
Yes, it gets it's own section. Not because great sex is so pervasive at Dartmouth that we have our own locker of vocabulary with which to talk about it, but because that's the dream, and you'd best be prepared in case you get the chance to live that dream.
Flirting, in its less, er, innocent light is coined "macking," "spitting game," or simply "gaming." Successful game may lead to a "take-down," where one of the involved parties "slays" the other. A rising favorite in sexual lingo is "slam piece," which refers to a person's significant (or, as the case may be, not-so-significant) other (see also: slamwich, Amsterslam).
Seeing as we live in close quarters around here, there is language applying to copulation that is "incestuous," or committed within a close-knit group. These "-cest" relations go by many names depending on the "-cest" itself, prominent examples being hall-cest (on a freshmen hall), dorm-cest (within a dorm), house-cest (within an off-campus or co-ed house), society-cest (?!?), trip-cest (members of a freshmen orientation trip), and team-cest (the women's rugby team), to name a few.
IV. Are You Forpounding Me? Advanced Vocabulary and Linguistics
Up to this point, the language I have explained has been pretty commonplace. A mastery of the Dartmouth tongue, however, can produce speech that is clever, and sometimes even ingenious. Language connoisseur (and campus icon on the rise) Ephraim Froelich '08 speaks Dartmouth so fluently that most people rarely understand what he is saying. Lucky for us, he agreed to share a few of his own thoughts on speaking Dartmouth.
According to Ephraim, the break-out word of 2007 is "Laaallller": "a derivative from later. Later, or Laaalllller, can be used primarily to proclaim success.
"The most impressive piece of slang I have ever heard," Froehlich explains, "is the word forpounding. It is like, 'are you f*cking kidding me?'"
"Are you for pounding me? Do not forpound me! It's one word and is magical."
Other tips from Ephraim include (but by no means are limited to) hoodrats, hotribes, scurry-trolls and baby hoodrats (these are his favorite misogynistic references to females). He also recommends, "Chicken or beef?," "a derivative of the saying, 'would you like chicken or beef on your FACEadilla,' which is saying you got faced ... or, owned." "Wesley Snipes" is another favorite, "as in, goddamn, last night I got Wesley Snipes... that's the same as blackout."