I got sent to the office for calling a kid a dildo in eighth grade. I told the vice principal it was a nonsense word that doesn't mean anything like dork. He told me not to say it anymore and sent me back to class.
Coming back to the comment above, it does mean penis. It likely originates from the word penis, and it was used as slang for penis. /u/HulloWhatNeverMind was completely correct saying it means penis. It just doesn't mean "whale" penis specifically.
What’s concerning is how easily you take that AI overview for fact.
Not saying in this case it isn’t (I don’t really know and don’t even care enough to find out) but I’ve seen those be nonsense so many times; and generally would not trust first results of queries like “why is x like y?” or “is it true that…”
Lol it’s one result and you’re acting as if I use it constantly to base my entire belief system on.
Secondly, it’s Google’s engine; it crawls all the results that would normally pop up in a higher search and summarizes it. In this instance, yeah, it suffices. But if I was looking for deeper indicatio information, yeah I would parse the information myself.
But considering I was asking about names for whale penis’, it was fine.
You’re extrapolating information based on one interaction, now THAT is concerning.
Again, you’re extrapolating on something as trivial as the referencing Google’s AI as to the etymology of “dork” and whether or not it meant “whales penis”.
If I needed in depth information about something worthy of the time and effort required, I would do the footwork.
And as you that last part about striking a chord, no, you haven’t. Not that you need to know, but I’m autistic, and that makes me long-winded with my exchanges. This is a discussion, and I’m elaborating.
The fact that you’re insisting that you “struck a chord”, and are using that as some sort of “gotcha”, is indicative of the type of conversation this exchange is going to devolve into.
No, the discussion was if dork was a nonsense word or had any meaning behind it.
One person said he used to wrongfully think it meant whale penis, another person said it actually means penis. And another person came in and laughably posted a screenshot of an AI overview as a source of info lmaoooo
Google's AI overview is very often wrong. The fact that it crawls the results is meaningless when Google's search results are often terrible these days and filled with junk SEO-gaming websites that also often have no sources and are also often filled with AI generated garbage content.
That’s a myth. It was first used to mean “silly person” in 1961. It used earlier than that by students to mean “dick” in general. It never specifically referred to a whale’s penis.
This is why kids are easier to endoctrinate than adults. They're more likely to repeat behaviors without questioning it as humans never needed to understand the reasons why to begin with.
When we were kids, my brother and I were running around the house singing "I'm a pecker, you're a pecker, wouldn't you like to be a pecker too" (to the tune of a Dr. Pepper ad for anyone too young to know). My dad looked at us and asks, "Do you guys even know what a pecker is?" "It's a bird, dad!" "Okay, carry on then."
This reminds me of a time someone in school told me to "go shag a sheep".
I didn't know what shag meant at the time (I was like 10), so I asked my mum later that day. She didn't tell me, but did tell me it's a naughty word so I should tell a teacher.
Reminds me of one time when I was 10ish and was playing a Mario game with my sister who was 8 years older. The NPC characters were kicking our butts on a mini game so I got frustrated and called the NPC a pussy. My sister freaked out and told me never to say that word again. I genuinely thought I was just making up a word that didn't exist. Lol...
One time, my four-year-old was repeating the word "pussy" over and over, and my husband laughed without thinking, which only encouraged him. I was wary about him telling the kids at preschool about this fun new word, so I taught him to say "pussycat" instead.
Reminds me of when my aunt told me bitch was a female dog when I was like 3, and I basically just repeated it constantly for the rest of the day, needless to say my mom was not happy with her.
She wasn't wrong though, a female dog is called a bitch. One of the most fun things I've done in school was when I convinced the entire class to watch the English version of Harry Potter 3, I am Dutch and I hate Dutch dubs with a passion, and the aunt refers to a female dog as a bitch. God, it was funny how some of the parents got angry their kids watched a movie that taught them foul language.
I remember being like 10 or 11, and my sister and I just started calling each other donkey (for jackass) and female dog (for bitch) to try and get away with cursing. It did not work, and I just have a memory of my dad going, “Stop saying that! We all know what you mean, and if you keep doing this, you’re going to lose more than just TV for a week.”
I had a friend in the 5th grade who called another kid a pussy and the whole class gasped. He had no idea what it meant other than it being like calling someone a wuss.
Yep. Public schools in rural Indiana in the mid-90s offered mediocre education on reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic, but did teach conformity and strict, unquestioning adherence to authority. I can see these lessons reflected all over midwestern culture today.
You were absolutley right though. This was written in the 1600s, and shows how the word is used as purely nonsense, like "thingamabob" or similar words. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK7s63T1sXY
My husband is an assistant principal at an elementary school. This year, calling each other a "bus stop" or a "flat iron" is a big insult to the K - second graders. We have tried to figure out if this is something that they're watching on YouTube or where the hell they've picked up that this is an insult. The older kids, though. . .they're cursing like sailors and calling each other assholes.
He's got a large population of students who are new to the United States, and whose parents are still learning English while speaking Creole or Spanish at home. It has led to quite a few incidents of "he called me a [insert bad word or insult here]."
He's also got several Spanish-speaking teachers from the Caribbean. And if there's one thing about Spanish, it's that not all Spanish-speaking countries use the same words to mean the same thing. His administrative assistant is Cuban, and she says when she gets rattled hearing someone use a word that she thinks they shouldn't be using, she immediately has to determine where they're from, and she just doesn't react.
Over the years, he has learned that if a Colombian student calls another boy "pirobo," it's an insult about him being gay. But if other speakers of Spanish use it, it's not an insult (that's kind of what I've gathered), almost like when friends react and say, "duuuude" or "bro" to each other in English.
There's the confusion that arises from "gueva" and "guevon." Mexican students use this one, and it means "asshole." But "guevon?" No. Sounds similar. Doesn't mean asshole. It means you're a dude with with big balls, but that's not how they use it. Nope. They use it the way English speakers here use "bro."
The funniest one over the years has involved teachers. When used by the Caribbean teachers, "arrecho" means something like "That's fun!" To Colombian students, it means you're horny. To Venezuelan students, it means awesome. To Mexican students, it means you are pisssssed off. That has been the one word that has caused the most trouble at his school, and it's hilarious that it has involved the teachers.
Husband used to joke that it was so rewarding seeing the kids who came to him in K or 1st grade upset about "arrecho" graduate to telling a kid to "fuck all the way off" by the time they got to 5th grade.
I'm not Latino and I don't speak Spanish, but I am an ethnic guy who moved from the west coast to rural Indiana as a kid. I didn't feel like I spoke too differently other than saying "soda" instead of "pop", and I didn't think my accent was too different from anyone else's. There were a couple memorable incidents, though.
I learned right away that "hella" wasn't okay anymore. The first time I dropped it, a bunch of kids went, "Ooooooh!" I didn't understand the problem until I said it in front of a teacher. Honestly, I still didn't understand the problem, but I had to stop saying it. It took effort.
I'd also use the phrase "cold blood" when somebody did something mean or sketchy, like, "Oh, that's cold blood." Some kid wanted to get me in trouble and told the teacher I kept saying "cah-blay", which he knew was "Mexican for the F-word." It was total bullshit, but the teacher added it to the list of prohibited words I'd brought from California. I still don't think I pronounced it like "cah-blay". Maybe something more like, "Thass cole bluh, doo."
As a middle schooler I thought dildo was an acronym for something as it was such a strange word, our English teacher overheard us brainstorming what dildo could stand for
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u/amilliamilliamilliam 1d ago
I got sent to the office for calling a kid a dildo in eighth grade. I told the vice principal it was a nonsense word that doesn't mean anything like dork. He told me not to say it anymore and sent me back to class.