![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.7){kind=small}
When someone attacks you with a raspberry
I just realized I've been spelling "zrbt" wrong.
As far as I know, this word was coined for The Cosby Show in the 1980s. It refers to blowing a "raspberry" against somebody else's skin, usually the belly or the arm. It can be used as a noun or a verb.
On television, the characters pronounced it "zerbit," and for years, I've been thinking it was just a nonsense word, and spelling it the same way. I'm not alone in this. Apparently, urbandictionary.com gives the primary spelling as "zerbet," with variations "zerbit" and "zurbet," but offers no definition for "zrbt." But the correct spelling becomes immediately apparent as soon as you realize that "zrbt" is not a nonsense word, but has a clear and very precise etymology. That is, it is an instance of onomatopeia, referring to the sound one makes when one gives a zrbt.
Of course, the child actors added vowels in, as kids (and often adults) will do when faced with a new word--the same reason people often mispronounce my last name as "Skylar" or "Skalar," because they're just not used to the phoneme "skl." And indeed, I would be hard pressed to come up with a dozen words that use those three letters together.
The correct spelling is confirmed by my favorite method of determining the most common spelling of neologisms that haven't reached the dictionary yet--i.e., by doing a Google search with different spellings and seeing which one gets more hits. An imprecise method, because often it turns up results that are totally unrelated, such as the history of the Zerbet family.
Oh, and for those who may have missed it, the "Ask the Editor" feature at merriam-webster.com says that "raspberry" may be derived from rhyming slang, the same way that "whistle and flute," meaning "suit," is shortened to "whistle," or "plates of meat," for feet, becomes simply "plates." This isn't known for certain, but they believe "raspberry" is short for "raspberry tart."
In other news, my 3-year-old daughter has learned how to return a zrbt--if you do one on her belly, she will respond with one on your arm. This is not so much a new development as something cyclical that's coming around again. I vaguely recall a time last summer when she was sitting in my mother's lap and giving her zrbt after zrbt as a way of putting off bedtime. Ultimately, I responded with, "RELEASE THE TODDLER!!! Which, of course, is what you do when someone attacks you with a raspberry."
Yes, I come from a family of geeks, and I have every intention of passing it on.
As far as I know, this word was coined for The Cosby Show in the 1980s. It refers to blowing a "raspberry" against somebody else's skin, usually the belly or the arm. It can be used as a noun or a verb.
On television, the characters pronounced it "zerbit," and for years, I've been thinking it was just a nonsense word, and spelling it the same way. I'm not alone in this. Apparently, urbandictionary.com gives the primary spelling as "zerbet," with variations "zerbit" and "zurbet," but offers no definition for "zrbt." But the correct spelling becomes immediately apparent as soon as you realize that "zrbt" is not a nonsense word, but has a clear and very precise etymology. That is, it is an instance of onomatopeia, referring to the sound one makes when one gives a zrbt.
Of course, the child actors added vowels in, as kids (and often adults) will do when faced with a new word--the same reason people often mispronounce my last name as "Skylar" or "Skalar," because they're just not used to the phoneme "skl." And indeed, I would be hard pressed to come up with a dozen words that use those three letters together.
The correct spelling is confirmed by my favorite method of determining the most common spelling of neologisms that haven't reached the dictionary yet--i.e., by doing a Google search with different spellings and seeing which one gets more hits. An imprecise method, because often it turns up results that are totally unrelated, such as the history of the Zerbet family.
Oh, and for those who may have missed it, the "Ask the Editor" feature at merriam-webster.com says that "raspberry" may be derived from rhyming slang, the same way that "whistle and flute," meaning "suit," is shortened to "whistle," or "plates of meat," for feet, becomes simply "plates." This isn't known for certain, but they believe "raspberry" is short for "raspberry tart."
In other news, my 3-year-old daughter has learned how to return a zrbt--if you do one on her belly, she will respond with one on your arm. This is not so much a new development as something cyclical that's coming around again. I vaguely recall a time last summer when she was sitting in my mother's lap and giving her zrbt after zrbt as a way of putting off bedtime. Ultimately, I responded with, "RELEASE THE TODDLER!!! Which, of course, is what you do when someone attacks you with a raspberry."
Yes, I come from a family of geeks, and I have every intention of passing it on.
excited
amused
horny
bored
groggy
giddy