this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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Today I Learned

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I was watching "Sir Mix-A-Lot - Baby Got Back (Official Music Video)", and one line is "A lot of simps won't like this song", and I didn't know that the word was so old!

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[–] JeSuisUnHombre@lemm.ee 32 points 6 days ago (6 children)

Pretty common for American pop culture to adopt trends and slang from the black community without giving them credit

[–] Tramort@programming.dev 47 points 6 days ago (1 children)

"without giving credit"

What would you expect attribution to look like?

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 13 points 5 days ago

Yeah. I don’t see too many people citing Shakespeare for the estimated 1700 words he popularized or invented. Of course many of those words were created by someone else and Shakespeare picked them up from the common vernacular and started using them in his plays.

But that’s how it works. That’s how language works. Nobody owns it.

[–] Bezier@suppo.fi 27 points 6 days ago (3 children)

How should people credit the words they pick up into their vernacular? This doesn't sound like a very workable idea to me.

[–] Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 37 points 6 days ago

You're such a simp^1

  1. Sir Mix-a-lot et al 1980's

Easy.

I was thinking about this while I was composing my post. I was thinking that I could cite literally every word with a "wiktionary.org" link, but there's probably a bootstrapping problem where if you don't already understand a reasonable amount about "wiktionary.org", you can't make use of my citations. Also, if the reader normally uses the "dictionary.com" definitions of words, and a definition conflicts with the "wiktionary.org" usage, that could cause problems.

Some states have an official group of people who determine what the "correct" way to speak is. I know that France has or had something like that. That could be useful for legal proceedings so that people who use language inconsistently don't stay free much more often than people who do.

I think that we just have to assume that everyone who's not in prison has some way to communicate with the majority of the people they meet, regardless of whether there is a group of people making prescriptive statements about definitions and/or grammar. That means that dictionaries (and any other detailed documentation like citations) don't need to be used for day-to-day communication.

Note that dictionaries and things like that will probably always be useful for "technical" interactions, like using a legal court, or making engineering plans, or directing time-sensitive operations (like how a pilot should know that someone saying "mayday mayday mayday" means that an emergency is being declared).

[–] PunnyName@lemmy.world 24 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Like saying this country was founded on freedom, when in reality it was founded on the suffering of an absolute fuck ton of black slaves.

[–] thirtyfold8625@thebrainbin.org 13 points 6 days ago

Things started earlier than that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dnp7lOObjU&t=3119s&list=PLG1NADbefbENzGtVrh_bh-W6sfSWfopqS

So I'm English. I'm poor, rich, middle; who cares? It doesn't matter. I get on a ship. I come to Virginia. If I'm free, they will deed me 40 acres of land (40 acres of land they don't own). There's a Native American family that owns it. I now have the deed to 40 acres of land that somebody else is using, that is farming. Because, right, we have this double think 1984 thing in our head: the Native Americans didn't know how to farm, Europeans did; the pilgrims arrive, they don't know how to farm, so Squanto finds them starving to death; he goes up to them he's like "dude, what's happening, why aren't you growing food" and they're like "we don't know how" so Squanto shows them how to do Agriculture, and you may have been in a play about this, and he's, like, planting fish in the ground to fix the nitrogen into the soil, and at the same time you hold these two contradictory beliefs: first that the Native Americans couldn't Farm because they're too dumb, and then second that the Native Americans taught the pilgrims how to farm, and it doesn't occur to you that they can't both be true! Anyway, turns out Squanto really did teach the dumb pilgrims how to farm because they were too stupid to grow their own food and were starving to death! So I walk out into Virginia; I got my blunderbuss. I'm walking out, and I see the family of Native Americans farming that land that's mine, and I take a shot at them. They hear the bang, they run, they fight; doesn't matter. The land will be mine; I will take it from them. There's a crop already in the field, which is great cuz then come harvest time I'm already set, and then I just continue to farm the land. Is that amazing? All I need to do is get across the Atlantic; the rest is free (well, except for the ammo). In other words, at some level, the colonial settler project that the British unleash in what will become the United States of America was a wealth transfer scheme. There is no greater asset on the planet than real estate, right? Not Bitcoin, not stamps, not coins, not gold—it's land! Land you can grow food, land you can build a house, land you can build a factory, land you can find gold, land you can find coal, you can find oil. Land, land, land, land! So to go from having none to suddenly having some with really nothing put into it other than you just happen to be English, and you had to commit a little act of violence, that's a remarkable, like, leap! That's a remarkable jump. But then, we added a layer to it. Tobacco is labor intensive. In other words, yeah, I can grow tobacco as a single person not farming, but I'm putting in a lot of hours. Now it turns out tobacco, at the time at least (I don't know if it's still true), the tobacco seed was worth more than its weight in gold, so this is going to make me a lot of money, but if I'm a single farmer out there doing this, it's not really going to make me a lot of money fast. It's better than growing yams, it's better than growing wheat, it's better than raising chickens for sure, but it's hard. As soon as I have enough money, what I'll do is I'll put in for a mail-order bride; once she comes over, she becomes part of my labor team. Now I'm producing even more tobacco, and then she'll incubate my next generation of labor; by the time it's 8 or 10 years old, I'll probably be able to get some work out of my children, and then once I have enough money, I'll buy a mule or ox or a horse or something, and then once I have enough money, I'll bring over an indentured servant, three, five year, seven-year contract. I have a conflict of interest with my indentured servant. In three, five, or seven years they're going to get their freedom; I have to give them a gift as I let them go. They have every incentive not to work hard for the time they're working for me, but I want to squeeze every ounce of labor out of them, so it's kind of a violent event, and eventually they just start to run away (becomes a nuisance), but once we've developed the level of sophistication that we can support this, we start bringing over slaves (which is almost right away; it did not take long before we're bringing over slaves).

[–] refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Don't forget the suffering and genocide of the Native American population as well.

But yeah. Black people basically invented American culture as a whole. Hell, other than electronic music, I can't think of any music genre in the past 150 years that black people did not create.

[–] Geetnerd@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

What pisses me off is that most people don't realize that 90% of the natives of both of the Americas were dead from the smallpox that the Spaniards brought there before the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock. There was a large native civilization on the Mississippi before then that traded with the Maya and Aztecs.

When you read about all the battles with ancient Greeks and Romans and Persians, there were reports of tens of thousands of combatants. In the battles in the North American West with the natives, there were rarely more than hundreds. I think think Custer's Last Stand had the most, less than 2,000 natives.

[–] refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

I was specifically referring to the smallpox, actually. Native Americans did not have viral infections, so they did not know how to fight it. I believe the Azteks came up with antibiotics at this point already, as bacterial disease was common.

Also the Trail of Tears, but that was later.

[–] lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Native Americans did not have viral infections

Uhh, citation needed lol. Certainly they did not have smallpox, but do you really think virii didn't exist in the Americas?

[–] refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

No, but viral infections spread most effectively from human to human, and Native Americans (with some exceptions) did not form large cities.

Stuff like STDs probably existed, for instance, and those are viral infections for the most part, but STDs do not spread nearly as well as something like smallpox does.

The big difference here is that smallpox can be transmitted through airbourne droplets from coughing or sneezing, or through physical contact. I am not saying it was intentional by the Europeans (I couldn't find much evidence for the smallpox blankets existing), but it was very effective in eradicating the Native American population.

[–] Geetnerd@lemmy.world 0 points 5 days ago

Everything you wrote is nonsense at best, and conspiracy level rewriting of history at worst.

[–] StaticFalconar@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago

Nobody owns a language and the black community is literally a part of america.

[–] 3dmvr@lemm.ee 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

its insanely common for white middleschoolers to claim words like (rizz, gyatt, thot, bop, etc.) and act like they are new things, since its mostly kids filling these comment sections it spreads and loses its meaning lol

[–] 3dmvr@lemm.ee 13 points 6 days ago

I think a lot of these tiktokers dont live around ppl using those words so they see it as tiktok slang

[–] ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org 28 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Newsflash: the kids never invented anything and everything that's old is new again.

[–] nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 14 points 6 days ago (1 children)

And Dale Gribble was the first to yeet.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

and Hank invented dabbing, hiding his eyes in shame of Bobby's continuing disappointment

[–] Una@europe.pub 2 points 6 days ago (3 children)

What about rizz? W and L in the chat?

[–] Lazhward@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

Pretty sure that was Shakespeare.

It's always Shakespeare.

[–] 3dmvr@lemm.ee 3 points 6 days ago

rizzle foshizzle

[–] kaklerbitmap@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

Think the first time I remember hearing it was in Boyz II Men's "Simpin' Ain't Easy" (https://youtu.be/SBrYKRh6Eeg)

[–] ABasilPlant@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Also there in Passin' Me By by The Pharcyde (1992)

When I try or make some sort of attempt, I simp
Damn, I wish I wasn't such a wimp

[–] Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago

I remember it being a reference to Homer Simpson's face turned sideways looking like a shaved pussy.

[–] macaw_dean_settle@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago (2 children)
[–] Asidonhopo@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

Perhaps, perhaps not. But the following verse shows simp to be synonymous with punk (derogatory)

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)
[–] Geetnerd@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

Remember when "Rizz" was charisma, and "Sus" was suspicious, and "Cringe" was cringe worthy?

I 'member. I mean, "Remember."

[–] DrBob@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 days ago

I'm pretty sure it's something.

[–] Dhar@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 days ago

I always thought it was short for "simpering".