| 词汇 | double-talk |
| 词源 | double-talk. Purposely confusing talk, sometimes humorous, often meant to cheat a customer or evade a question. Double- talk is first recorded in the mid-1930s. For a humorous exam- ple, here’s an excerpt from the Federal Writer’s Project New York Panorama (1938): Observe in this sample of Mr. Hymie Caplin’s double talk the creation of gibberish having a distinctly disturbing “sensible sound,” and the ingenuity with which it is woven into the entire melody line: “Well, take now you’re in a restaurant. So you say to the waiter, ‘Gimme the chicken and vegetables but portostat with the chicken with the fustates on it.’ So he says ‘What?’ and you say ‘You know, the portostat, and moonsign the sarina on the top with the vegetables.’ ” The same source explains that this “humorously conceived sys- tem of language corruption” is meant to seduce or rib the un- knowing listener into believing that he is “either deaf, ignorant, or ready for a lifetime run in the part of Napoleon.” Also called talking on the double, the “language” hasn’t nearly the number of speakers that it had a half-century ago. |
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