August

Hello and welcome to August! Shall we start the month with a few weird words? Oh yes we def will.

Zhuzh
     verb
to make something more lively and interesting, stylish, or appealing, as by a small change or addition.

• Zhuzh first appeared in the mid-1960s in gay communities in the U.K. in the sense meaning “to improve the look of one’s clothing or outfit.”
• The current sense of zhuzh (also spelled zhoosh) was first recorded in 1975–80.
• Zhuzh possibly comes from a Polari word meaning “to fix or tidy” or the Romani word zhouzhou, meaning “clean, neat.”
• It’s more likely that zhuzh is imitative of someone rushing around. (source)
  

I zhuzhed up my look with a totally trippy, tie dye scarf.

Polari
     noun
a form of slang incorporating Italianate words, rhyming slang, and Romani, used originally as a kind of secret language in England by people in theatres, fairgrounds, markets, etc. and adopted by some gay people in the 20th century.

Polari was spoken to skirt the UK’s strict anti-homosexuality laws. Though largely forgotten, some of its words can be found in dictionaries today.

     “Bona to vada your dolly old eek!”

That may seem like a string of nonsense words from Dr Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat or Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange but it’s a real-life greeting gay men in the UK would say to each other in the 1950s and 60s. It means “Good to see your nice face.”

Until 1967, homosexual sex was illegal in England and Wales. To avoid imprisonment, gay men used Polari, a language that the Oxford English Dictionary says is “made up of Italianate phrases, rhyming slang and cant terms.” It had sprung up in the 1700s and 1800s as a secret language vagrants, itinerant performers, sailors and “gypsies” – many of its words, in fact, derive from the Romany people scattered across Europe. (source) 

Italianate
     adjective
Italian in quality or characteristics

Aside from in the, above, definition of Polari, I’ve never seen Italianate used to describe anything but architecture. It’s cool to see it used to limn a language—really pulls Polari into much sharper focus.


Revanchist
     adjective
of or relating to a policy designed to recover lost territory or status : of or relating to a revanche

 This is from the French word revanche, meaning "revenge," especially in national policy.

Probably this is just me but the word implies an especially clever and stylish form of revenge/payback/recapture. Ya know:

Donna always rocked her metallic silver Vans and black leather biker vest when she engaged in a bit of revanchism.

Side hustle
     noun
work performed for income supplementary to one's primary job.

I keep seeing this term. It seems to be the new, hip (?) way of referring to your second job. Previous appellation? Moonlighting.

A side hustle can be a good way to pick up new skills while supplementing your main income. I wonder though, how many second jobs are stepping stones to anything other than getting the bills paid on time, exhaustion and crankiness.

My best side hustle was as a glaze mixer in a group ceramic studio. It afforded me financial breaks on studio rent and other fees. While doing this I learned a lot more about glaze chemistry (which I was wild about) but it didn’t evolve into a full time, higher paying main gig. Eventually I had to quit—too much time and energy sunk into the joint with insufficient payoff.

Does everyone have a second job now. Is it no longer possible to pay the rent/mortgage, buy groceries and just plain live on one income? The average rent for a two bedroom apartment in Boston is now $3,758. In NYC? $5,250. I blame side-hustle-fever on property owners, landlords and other assorted greedheaded fucks.