English - The Real Deal

Language: Who’s the hottiest of them all?

“It’s quite a normal usage in British journalism,” she notes. “Pops up on the BBC often. We’re comfortable with it in a headline, where we use the vernacular more than in copy, especially when it fits the space.” Freeland adds: “We’re a global paper. It’s important for us to be intelligible to North American readers, and not be obviously foreign, but we don’t go out of our way to change Britishisms that we think will be understandable. In our columns, writers speak in their own voices, though for our Asian edition, we take more care not to use colloquialisms. In this case, ‘hots up’ appeared in all four editions.”

说实话，我也觉得hots up怪怪的，第一次听说这是normal usage in British journalism，有意思。

A hottie began as the name of the hot-water bottle, a foot-warming device of red rubber filled with leaking hot water that went out with the kowtow. Hottie is now the name of a foxy cookie or a stud muffin - a word not unisex but duosex. The supermodel Tyra Banks has been called “a world-class hottie” and Ontario’s premier, Dalton McGuinty, has been named the “top political hottie” by The Guardian Weekly.

The source is probably American. It was popularized in 1987 in the song “Go See the Doctor,” by the hip-hop artist Kool Moe Dee. The current hip-hop star Kanye West maintains that after a year or so, when a new term is no longer in style for black people, it’s O.K. for others to pick it up. “I think white people are allowed to say bling. They are allowed to say old-skool black slang, like hottie and homie. If you say a slang word too early, it’s like you’re trying to be black. So as long as the slang is a little played out, you’re all good.”

难得同意一次Kanye West的话，嘿嘿。

Bonus video: Rihanna featuring Jay-Z - Umbrella

This entry was posted on Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 4:38 pm and is filed under Interesting Find, British English. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.