Words Mean Things: Cool

[MK]

I think about words and phrases....maybe too much. Somewhere along the line, somebody told me words are important. I guess it stuck. There are few bits of verbage I have been dwelling on for a while now:

Cool & Hip
This is a hard one to get a handle on a definition. Here is what the dictionary says:

Hip:characterized by a keen informed awareness of or involvement in the newest developments or styles

Cool:fashionable and attractive at the time; often skilled or socially adept

The usage of cool as a general positive epithet or interjection has been part and parcel of English slang since World War II, and has even been borrowed into other languages, such as French and German. Originally this sense is a development from a Black English usage meaning ?¢‚Ǩ?ìexcellent, superlative,?¢‚Ǩ? first recorded in written English in the early 1930s. Jazz musicians who used the term are responsible for its popularization during the 1940s. As a slang word expressing generally positive sentiment, it has stayed current (and cool) far longer than most such words. One of the main characteristics of slang is the continual renewal of its vocabulary and storehouse of expressions: in order for slang to stay slangy, it has to have a feeling of novelty. Slang expressions meaning the same thing as cool, like bully, capital, hot, groovy, hep, crazy, nervous, far-out, rad, and tubular have for the most part not had the staying power or continued universal appeal of cool. In general there is no intrinsic reason why one word stays alive and others get consigned to the scrapheap of linguistic history; slang terms are like fashion designs, constantly changing and never ?¢‚Ǩ?ìin?¢‚Ǩ? for long. The jury is still out on how long newer expressions of approval such as def and phat will survive.

---------

Cool is an odd thing. I am coming to believe that for the most part clothing and hairstyles are not inherently cool. There are people who are thought of as cool because they are either good looking, talented or popular. Others wanting to be more cool will borrow ideas from these people. There is a fine line from creating a look to fit into what one thinks as cool, to appearing like you are trying to look like someone else. i.e. impersonating someone else's look. There is a similar fine line of trying to fit in but be an individual. Wanting to look like everyone else but not wanting to look like everyone else.

My journey of sorting this all out is not over. I am still polishing my thoughts on the subject, but I do have one conclusion; young people feel at least one aspect of their look has to be wrong to be cool.

Here are some examples:
1. Ball caps have to be worn crooked or backwards to be cool.
2. Boys have to wear clothes that are too big.
3. Girls have to wear clothes that are too small.
4. To look cool in a suit you have to wear sneakers
5. To look cool wearing a dress shirt it can't be tucked in.

That in my opinion is because wholesome is not cool today. You have to be tainted in some way to be cool. If not you are square.....or whatever slang word is popular for that now. Girls would rather be Madonna than Condoleezza Rice.

There is one phrase I have been thinking about lately: "Looking like you are trying too hard." I have heard that from time to time. Our culture has become so sloppy that it is becoming more like looking like you tried.....at all.

I am done rambling now. What do you think about this? How do you see it?

 

[photobyalan]

"I was with it once...
then they changed what it was.
Now what I'm with isn't it,
and it seems weird and scary to me..."

Grandpa Simpson​

 

[Bebop]

It seems that cool is considered cool as long as you do it with other people that consider it cool. I can't help thinking about why many of us started to smoke cigarettes. To look cool. Also why many of us quite smoking cigarettes and took up cigars. To look cool. It is acceptable and indeed deemed cool, to almost, but not quite, be unacceptable. To be unacceptable, only like everyone else, is to be cool. To be the only one that is unacceptable is not cool. Or better yet, try being the only cigar smoker at a party. That is the definition of "not cool". After all is said and done, we know cool when we see it because we have our own definition of cool.
Our bending and chopping of the language is also quite interesting. Things like "that is so not true". As opposed to saying "that is such a lie". Saying something like, "get your newspaper for free". When the correct way of using the word free is to say "free of charge" or just "free". If it is "free", it is not "for free". The only reason I think I pay attention to these things is because english is a second language to me and I become hypersensitive to it's use (even though my spelling is sometimes incorrect). It is all quite interesting.

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

I think "coolness" also has a large element of counterculture and rebellion in it. The irony is that people will get caught up in something because it is cool and because of that popularity the look becomes mainstream and thus not "cool" anymore.

It is because people are always being influenced by the conflicting desires to fit in and to stand out. Thus you have a constant progression of what is "cool" and what is not.

 

[K.D. Lightner]

It is interesting how "cool" depends not only on your age, class and ethnicity, but where you live. I was born and raised in Iowa, spent 13 years in NYC, then moved to San Diego. New York City had its own coolness, depending on where you were in the city (upper East Side a lot different than the Village), but no place in the country has more definitions of "cool" than California.

Sometimes it is the right clothes, or sunglasses, or car or...? Certainly, it is the crowd you run with -- what is cool to surfer might not be so to a preppy frat kid. Cool was one thing to beatniks, another thing to hippies, another to radical feminists. And on and on.... I lived with a Southern woman who had a graciousness and cordiality that I lacked. She was decidedly a bit more conservative in dress than I was. Her mother was a Southern "lady."

Now, I am moving back to Iowa to be with my 86-year-old mother, not to stay forever, but to be with her for however long that is. My mother, who probably has her own definitions of cool, is worried about me fitting in -- she comes from an era when, at least in her culture and time, people very much worried about what other people thought.

What will people think, she said, when I became a theatre major in college. What will they think, she fretted, when I remained unmarried. Now, she is worried about my fedoras. They don't wear those things, here, she said, but she could be wrong. I bet the black and hispanic folks are wearing them.

Finally, I told her to tell her friends at the senior center that her daughter has lived in Southern California for over 20 years and has become acclimatized to the culture out there. Then, when her Iowa friends see me dressed as I am, they will say "Ah, yes, Southern California."

We may think we are cool out here; they think we are weird.

karol

 

[Biltmore Bob]

I didn't think people said 'cool' anymore.

I guess I was never cool. I've always been somewhat of an oddball. Imagine that. After grade school I never really had a crowd or clique that I was associated with. When I worked for a living I usually had some sort of managerial role so there was not much fraternization going on. I always did my own thing, never really following 'cool' social trends. I'm a weirdo now too. Plus I just irritate folks. I often wonder how it was that I found a woman that would put up with me, let alone marry me.

 

[The Wingnut]

I've said this half a million times if I've said it once.

'Cool' doesn't advertize, it just is.

'Cool' means, at least to me, that you don't get ruffled easily. You don't seek validation from your peers. You have defined yourself without using others' standards.

James Dean, cool? Maybe. Tom Wolfe, cool? Definitely. See the difference?

 

[Bebop]

I guess that when cool does advertise, it can be acused of "trying too hard".
My version of what can be "cool" is the Paul Newman role in the movie "Cool Hand Luke". No bull, no extra words, no strong emotions. A wonderful movie, by the way.

 

[BellyTank]

The meaning of 'cool', as in a thing being cool, is surely relative to the mutual understanding of its same meaning by 2 or more parties- relative of course to culture and context. Culture can be as specific as 'me and my Wife'. If we both understand something to be cool because we understand what we mean, then it works.

Many terms that we use go way beyond dictionary definitions and have much more culture specific meaning-

B
T

 

[Slicksuit]

As I read these posts, I can't help but think and chuckle on how advertisers try to chase the teenagers and figure out what the hell the next 'cool' product will be.

I just recently read "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. In it, he has the belief that what is 'cool' as a social phenomenon spreads by social epidemic. A few trendsetting people do something, and it spreads down the line to the general public. Some advertisers actually have people who monitor and surmise what the upcoming trends will be.

Even though most people on this forum do whatever the hell the want to do in regards to hats (which I applaud), I was excited to see the fedoras and driving caps are coming back into the mainstream. Even though they are of cheaper construction and feature some weird fabric patterns, I am happy to see hats, other than baseball caps, being embraced by larger segments of the population.

 

[Senator Jack]

How cool is that?

Here are some examples:
1. Ball caps have to be worn crooked or backwards to be cool.
2. Boys have to wear clothes that are too big.
3. Girls have to wear clothes that are too small.
4. To look cool in a suit you have to wear sneakers
5. To look cool wearing a dress shirt it can't be tucked in.

Gee, I knew the The Little Rascals were pretty cool, but to have every point covered!

All right, my two cents on cool etymology. I wish I could remember exactly what book it was - I'm thinking perhaps it was Ford Maddox Ford's "The Good Soldier" (1915) - but I remember coming across a very early usage (definitely pre-twenties) of 'cool'. The line was something to the effect of 'his attitude was cool' which of course meant that he didn't care, but the way I read it, I could see how this turned into the 'cool' that we now know and despise. I've researched this on the interent but came up with nothing.

As a second note - to address the issue of "not true", I think it's usage is valid but not in the context we have here. As Kingsley Amis wrote, someone can be "not unkind" meaning he wasn't exactly rude, but was far from any act of actual kindness too. George Orwell, of course, had trouble with such construction and made a mockery of it in '1984'. As he might have written about "that's so not true" , the usage is undoubtedly double plus uncool.

Kind regards,

Senator Jack

 

[Bebop]

I think the real fumble comes from saying, "that is so not....." To me it feels like you are using a negative (not) where there should not be one. Maybe saying "that is so untrue" is the correct way. I am not an english major but at least it sounds better. I think that the word "not" is the pivot point. I believe that word became "cool" to use a few years ago just by itself. It is harsher and a little more brash than "un" to preceed a word and harsh and brash is where society has tended to go.

 

[Senator Jack]

The "not"ness of things

Ex. 1

She: You flirted with her.
He: That's not true!

Certainly no one can argue with this construction

Ex. 2

She: You flirted with her.
He: That's so not true.

Arguable, yes?

Ex 3.

She: You flirted with her.
He: That's so untrue.

Inarguable

It comes down to the "so not" construction, doesn't it? While I tend to be infuriated by what's become of the English language I may have to let this one slide. It doesn't bother me as much as, say, newscasters reporting "There's five people missing" or such hyperurbanisms as "I feel badly."

Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[Bebop]

You are correct, Senator Jack. I also tend to get infuriated at newscasters and newspaper journalists that should know better than I do. I am from Argentina, a spanish speaking country and speak english as a second language, yet I know that the newscaster or journalist is not putting sentences together correctly. I sometimes wonder if anyone that proof reads their work catches mistakes and just lets them go, or if the proofreader is as uneducated about english as the journalists themselves. Or even if anyone does proofread their material.

 

[Senator Jack]

I firmly believe they no longer have proofreaders at news bureaus. It's not possible with the number of incorrect usages in each broadcast. What's nauseous is that this is what newscasters are paid to do - speak - and, aside from possibly looking good, that's all they have to do. So is it asking too much to just get it right? Is it too diifficult to look up a word they don't know the exact meaning of? I hate to be a pedant, but I also hate when I use a word correctly and someone tries to tell me otherwise. This, certainly, comes from a trickle-down effect from the media. Here's a memorable example of idiocy from one of our local reporters.

(speaking of a seasonal hunt for black bear in Northern NJ)

"The hunters claim they are not here to decimate the bear population, but to thin it out."

I wrote the station about that one: "Decimate means to thin out, you ninnies." But, of course, I never received a reply.

I suppose it's hopeless. Far greater minds than mine have stuck their fingers in the dike but the flood of poor grammar keeps rising.

Kind regards,

Senator Jack

 

[MK]

.

This is straying from the topic of the thread, but I will share my thoughts on subject.

Try to keep in mind that a news program's #1 goal is report news stories. Goal #2 is ratings. The next objective is to be entertaining. Making sure their grammar is correct is down the totum pole a bit.

I have found that there are two schools of thought on the use of the English language.

One group feels that our speach and our writing must perfectly follow the rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation. There cannot be any bending of the rules. Strict adherence must be kept at all times. If someone makes mistakes or regularly breaks the rules, they are looked down on as less educated, less intelligent or uncuth.

The other group sees the English language as just a tool to communicate. The goal is to have what they are trying to say be understood. How well they conveyed their thoughts and ideas are far more important than the rules. They are willing to bend or even break the rules..... if it will better get their point accross.

I just gave an example. The rule of an elipse is just three periods . I always do more because three is not enough to convey what I am saying.......and to piss off the grammar and punctuation Nazis.

I guess we know which group I'm in.

 

[Bebop]

My hat is off to you MK, and with all due respect, there should be no need for journalists to have to "look up" how to structure a sentence or communicate properly. They should not have to "not worry about grammar" because they as journalists should use it correctly. They should be doing it without even having to think about it. They are at the forefront of communication. Having to bend or break the rules in order to get your point across or to convey an idea is for people like me that are not journalists. Just because I am not perfect at the english language does not mean that I can't understand it when used correctly. If we have to educate our children so they can understand the news better, so be it. We should be confident that if the journalist uses such a word, it must be correct. That does not mean that it should be their #1 objective. It means that in order to get the job they have, they should have known grammar and communication correctly so they don't have to "break the rules in order to communicate". You can use the same logic when dressing for the occasion. You can go about your daily life dressed as a slob and still get things done. Your point always being to get the job done, not how you look while doing it. A pro. stylist would probably not even have to think about not looking like a slob every day. They would just dress correctly. For them to dress incorrectly, (if that exists) would be frowned upon more than if you or I dressed incorrectly.
The statement, "well, you know what I meant" or "whatever", is not a statement I want to hear from a journalist, and not using proper grammar or sentence structure is like the journalist saying "well, you know what I meant" or saying "whatever". I will accept it from a teenager but from anyone that graduated from a university and is telling me what is going on in the world? Difficult to swallow. I guess you can call me a punctuation Nazis. It does not piss me off. It kind of saddens me.

 

[Senator Jack]

You're on the trolley with that one, Bepop. Yes, while informally speaking I make grammatical errors all of the time. Hell, I'm a fast-talking New Yorker (we appear to be a dying breed, though) and it's bound to happen, but in my writing and in business I do try to be careful. As you wrote, after dressing with style for years, one doesn't even have to think about it - it should be natural. The inability of the sneaker and sweats crowd to comprehend how easy it is for us to dress the way we do is the very reason for their constant interrogations of 'where are you going'.

All right, as MK expressed, this thread hasn't gone the way he had intended, and as I'm new here, I shouldn't want anyone to think of me as a figure of social derailment. Perhaps I can get it back to where it was.

Apart from the psychobilly crowd, anyone who fully lives a vintage lifestyle will never by today's standards be cool. The psychobillies get away with it because of the tattoos, and while I'm very much part of the rockabilly scene I have not crossed over to the psychobilly crowd. My style fluctuates between 40s, 50s and 60s. Some nights I feel 40s, others 60s. Weekend leisure outings usually have me in my 50s mood: lightweight sport shirt, black slacks, Milano weave straw hat. Perhaps if I had a sleeve of tattoos I'd be cool, but that's something I've never been and don't intend to start trying at my age. My suggestion is if anyone want to be considered cool in today's world he'll have to trade his phonograph player in for an iPod and be prepared for a life of Diesel clothing.

Kind regards,

Senator Jack

 

[jake431]

It seems to me that "cool" in terms of style has always been what the previous generation did not like. Zoot suits, motorcycle jackets, mod suits, bell bottoms, baggy pants, low rise jeans - it always seems to be a reaction to the previous generations "cool" clothes.

Ironically, the style icons, even in todays times, seem to be people who don't follow "Style" but follow their own style. And I do think that's "cool".

Likewise, with language, it is important to keep in mind that (according to my Linguistics professor a few years ago) languages change. Grammar and word usage changes. We may not like it, or want it, but it happens. Accents change, slang changes and even word usage rules change. So I try not to be too bothered when others don't communicate as I would like them to.

-Jake

 

[Bebop]

You are right, Jake431. Language does change. I know that some people say "axs" when meaning "ask". It does not mean that it is an acceptable change that should not be questioned. I see that person in a different light. Or when someone pronounces "height" heigth. They don't pronounce weight "weigth". Why pronounce height like it has a "th" at the end? I have heard local newscasters do that. Language changes but not being bothered by it, in my opinion, is like not helping an old lady cross the street.