America hated the first "bailout," according to pollsters. Until pollsters described it without using the term "bailout," which made Americans much more supportive of it. So Barack Obama's multi-billion dollar economy-saving expenditure plans were soon referred to as "stimulus packages," which connotes happy visions of Bush sending everyone checks for a few hundred bucks. But now that isn't good enough for whiny Americans either! So please enjoy your economic recovery program, everyone! Congressional Democrats are now banned from saying "stimulus," because it's a dumb Washington term no one likes, and because, as we all know, if they don't call it that it isn't that. Perception equals reality! (That was true of our entire financial system for many years, btw.) Rahm Emanuel seems to have sent the memo out, and people are still adjusting. Nancy Pelosi almost said stimulus the other day! But then she caught herself: "We're not using the word 'stimulus,'" Nancy said at a press conference. Of course, Democrats do have a legitimate excuse for giving their economic policies a new label: their economic policies are actually different!

CNN chief Jonathan Klein says of his broadcast network competitors, "“What they’re playing is golf...That is, they’re trying to get there in as few strokes as possible." But at CNN, he says, they want to "Run up the score." And he promises, "We're not going to trim our sails." If you can afford three different sports metaphors in three paragraphs, you're doing just fine. [NYO]

A group of Oxford researchers have compiled a list of the "Top 10 Most Irritating Expressions in the English language." Awesome! Now we know what we need to stop saying so we don't alienate everyone we know. The number one offender? "At the end of the day." Click through for the rest of the list is below, although we must admit we were a little disappointed to see that "for all intents and purposes" didn't make the cut.

So is it Lee-man Brothers or Lay-man Brothers? It's pronounced "Lee-man," for your information, a point you might want to pass along to Rep. Henry Waxman, who pummeled Dick Fuld yesterday while mispronouncing the name of the firm the entire time. But he's not the only one! John McCain has repeatedly referred to it as "Lay-man" Brothers in recent days, too. They may have a defense, though. Although Merriam-Webster has it right, the online pronunciation guide Forvo.com has it wrong. Although to Forvo.com's credit, though, they did manage to get JP Morgan, Goldman, Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Wachovia pronounced correctly.

We need to make a slight correction. We've created a certain image around Post attack hack Steve Dunleavy, who's retiring tomorrow: a sort of man you love to hate, a swashbuckling, hard-drinking, right-wing scamp who you disagree with but can't help admiring for his way with the ladies and constant adventures. When in fact, none of those qualities are as overpowering as his weird Australian-ness. Click to watch this clip of him rattling off Australian slang. There's no way to tell what it means, or why he says it, or why such slang was created. Rin-tin-tin. [via Tabloid Baby]

"Batman would be nothing more than Bruce Wayne without the cool gadgets he uses to capture Gotham City's seediest characters. Why then are today's heroes, among them designers of rich online interactive media (videos, animations, etc.), not yet using cool tools to capture approvals on videos and animation?" You think you can beat that press release transition from a pop culture item of the moment to a pitch for an unrelated mundane service? Try in the comments, then! I beg you. [via Ad Age]

Nothing gets the highbrows blushing with illicit excitement faster than all the varied obscene uses of idiomatic speech. This Masterpiece Lecture on the history of the word "fuck" was presented in college linguistics classes. Harry Frankfurt's clever treatise On Bullshit became a minor bestseller, which wouldn't have happened if he'd written a pocket-sized critique on pure reason. All that stops Hector from feeling scandalized when Dorothy describes a boy as "cunt-struck" in the movie version of Alan Bennett's The History Boys is her indication that it's a compound adjective and Hector likes compound adjectives. Now psychologist Roy Baumeister continues down the path of sophisticated discussions of filthy words by asking, "[S]houldn't the adverb form be 'f**kingly?' As in, 'that was f**kingly ridiculous.'" Him first.

Controversy! Did Jesse Jackson want to rip Barack Obama's nuts "off" or "out"? No big deal, you say? Tell it to the Post! "Veterinarians and doctors talk about cutting nuts 'off.' Only a thug or a gangster cuts a man's nuts 'out.'" Jeff Johnson makes the importance of the distinction a little clearer: "Maybe Jackson simply does not understand human anatomy. Perhaps he tells women, in the throes of passion, that he'd like to chew on their breasts, rather than suckle them. Maybe he puts his shoes on, then his socks. Maybe he thinks that hearts don't beat, that they 'squeeze.'" [Fitted Sweats]

Journo-nerds rejoice: the AP Stylebook has been updated! It's the Bible of all that is considered acceptable in middle American newsrooms, and, like middle America itself, is consistently several years behind the times. So what changes can you look forward to in tomorrow's edition of the Mattoon Journal Gazette? More text messaging, less malarkey, and no more retarded people!

$100 million. That's how much Cottonelle is currently spending on an ad campaign to sell its toilet paper. And for that kind of cash, they're not talking out the side of their mouths about "freshness" and "toilet tissue." They're telling you straight out: our product will be used on your "bottom." In fact, now that ads for erectile dysfunction and period problems have become commonplace, ads for poop-related products are also stepping up with the strong, clear language of truth. Not just "bottom," but also "behind." Actually, it would be better if everyone just shut up:

If the New York Post had to name three things that it can't stand, those things would be: cultural sensitivity, wisdom, and peace (fourth: stepping on gum). That's why the paper is outraged that "the Bush administration has gone all PC in the War on Terror." They've stopped using words like "jihad" and "Islamo-fascism" because they may be provocative or offensive. The Post's jaw literally dropped onto the floor at that news! Right onto the floor! So the neocon, Murdoch-owned scandal sheet had to evoke the memory of prominent socialist revolutionary George Orwell to help it call for harsher language about the Arabian menace:

Buzzword watch: "bloody shirt." It means 9/11 and it's shameful when a Democrat brings it up. Because only Republicans are supposed to! The term, which refers to invoking martyrs to stave off criticism, dates back to the Civil War, and no one has used it since. Until Keith Olbermann tried to shame Hillary Clinton with it and she laughed and laughed and laughed. Now, in today's remarkable New York Times un-dorsement of Hillary Clinton: "On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11." So: "bloody shirt." Try it out this week on a friend or co-worker!

Unlike the Good Old Days, when the only thing you had to fear from an advertisement was a scary photo of a possessed-looking child, marketers in this modern era have given into the temptation to cuss motherfuckers out. The New York Times uses a surprising amount of non-cuss words to get to the bottom of the trend that is advertisers who purposely put bleeped-out words into their ads. Sometimes they're real cuss words; other times, they're mundane things like product names, bleeped out in an attempt to be clever. Fuck that. After the jump, the true balls-to-the-wall prototype of ads that bleep real cuss words: "Swear Jar," a famous viral Budweiser commercial in which I honestly think the guy in the meeting room says "We're gonna fuck some ass!" and "We're gonna suck some big cock!" Still, don't drink Budweiser.

It was cringeworthy enough when pundit-turned-blogger Arianna Huffington began talking about her cronies submitting a "blog" as if the word referred to an individual post, rather than an entire site. Now another web newbie, Steven Brill's socialite daughter, is mangling the lingo. Emily Brill ran into absurd socialgay Kristian Laliberte at Bloomingdale's menswear department last night. She summoned the fashion publicist over for a photo. "Okay Kristian, get over here. Let's blog." (Laliberte's desire to promote his label, Unruly Heir, must have trumped the embarrassment of such a hanger-on.)

In re. the Times getting cute about grammar: did you know that while they run one of the very few regular columns in a major publication on language and usage, the New York Times is guilty of ignoring the en dash? It's shocking, but true. In fact, we received a huge and comprehensive letter to the Times about this disgusting display of grammatical ineptitude, in response to a recent William Safire column about the slow death (or evolution!) of the hyphen. It is amazing, it is long, and because the Times would never print it in its entirety, it is after the jump. NB: We have no clue how to use an en dash.

We've discussed language here quite a bit over the years - primarily in an effort to figure out what the hell people are saying in New York. Most sentences these days both begin and end with "yo," forming a "yo" sandwich whose ingredients aren't readily discernable to anyone over the age of sixteen. Guides are good, guides are helpful, and blogs, on occasion provide just the guides we need.

Oh, you'll learn the word soon enough, guys. It's short for Web log, and we hear there's a whole set of associated lingo that's becoming all the range. William Safire told us so.

From today's Gatecrasher, a new frontier in blind itemization: Ben Widdicombe's Friday Word Puzzle!