A New Deal on Terms of Endearment

Having already encouraged my readers to insult each other, I was planning to write on the necessity of voting. I think it is an underwritten topic nowadays. Unfortunately, I heard that elections just happened—fatally problematic timing strikes again, it seems.

Instead, I thought I’d follow my insults column with a call to compliments. This, however, would most likely precipitate the end of virtue, globally. Consciousness of a valued attribute is the beginning of its perversion.

But compliments have an innocent, charming, and neglected alternative: terms of endearment. The state of our endearing terms, however, is bleak. Some advice:

1) To begin, we must overcome our uptight perception of our names as sacrosanct, personal property. But what is in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But we will not understand this logic, and we will not tolerate being called someone’s “tushy-winkle,” as long as we take our persons as seriously as we do, and get huffy when we are teased or interrupted, or when a friend takes the first bite of our sandwich without asking, or when we hear an acknowledged generalization about a category we belong to or respect. Especially in an age when most names are decided out of thin air—or, worse, a baby-name book—to take a name as something meaningful seems odd.

“Hello, my golden wings.” “I am not your wings, I am not anyone’s wings, I am Bradley, and Bradley will I always be!”

2) Cut the syrups, young lovers—“honey” and “sweetheart” are romantically offensive. Among terms of endearment in current popular use, “baby” has a cocky charm and “darling” is delightfully aristocratic. Otherwise, we must invent new ones.

3) One problem is that, as nouns in English don’t have cases and therefore aren’t flexible, the primary way to make diminutives—adding “ie” or “y” to the ends of words—is a nauseating practice. “Cutie” and “sweetie” are off-putting, “lovie” is bone-chilling, and “sexy” is an outrageous concept which I don’t have time to rail against here.

THIS IS A MAJOR PROBLEM.

The solution is to use the more literal “my little” before epithetting your beloved. If “my little bunny” is saccharine, try for the tender juxtaposition of an aggrandizing moniker: my little baroness, my little sorceress, my little prince, my little lion-king, my little consultant.

4) Nothing is sexier, or more flattering, than food. Let’s face the facts: men want to be called beefsteaks. Women want to be sushi platters, or Community Food & Juice salads.

5) Perhaps because of our highly monosyllabic English lexicon, we are either suspicious of, or too lazy to complete, long words. Despite your reservations, let the term of endearment increase the syllables of her name. When it comes to softening up your beloved after a spat, nothing will guarantee reconciliation better than “salty clam-clad mermaid” or “my sugary hunk of butter, spread on both sides of my toast.”

6) Increase the length of the words, but not the size of your addressee. “Hippo-mamma,” “barge,” and “Western omelette” may be succinct, but not complimentary to a modern urban woman, unless, God forbid, she is a freethinker.

Women should also shrink down their male beloveds, not because he won’t like “mastodon,” but because he’ll find it perversely satisfying. Put him in his place—deep down, he’ll like “rubber ducky.”

7) Do not use terms of endearment solely for your partner-in-bed! Spread the affection, and call your floormate “floral matron,” your professor “professor darling,” and your local cashier “my stalwart Rhodes Colossus.”

Don’t even limit yourself to humans. Call your Metrocard “Metrushi,” your lamp “lampie,” your shoes your “little foot-hugging concubines.” Let the goodwill and tenderness flow.

8) Metaphors aren’t for pansies.

Time to moan.

People’s inability to use terms of endearment and affectionate diminutives (“you little shit” isn’t affectionate) is not just a product of our grammatical inflexibility and linguistic colorlessness. It’s not just another consequence of the commercial-brainwashing complex, or the decline of friendship in Western civilization—yawn and yawn, respectively. It’s also the consequence of the law of emotional restraint, which rules us, all the time, except when we are drunk or “in love.”

Maybe it’s better elsewhere, maybe not. But cavemen weren’t like this. The degree of emotional restraint with which we choke ourselves chokes us. The chill dude, the ironical hipster, the messenger of gloom trudging down Broadway, the friendly but cold spring bird of positivity—they are all in a conspiracy to annihilate joyfulness, along with every other gratifying, simple emotion. We grumble, silently, when people laugh too much, or do not return our smiles, or commit the grotesque act of PDA.

I admit that calling someone by a term of endearment makes the speaker vulnerable to judgment, spite, mockery, and unimaginative rage, just like any expression of affection or emotion. Many would consider your action unthinkable, weird, and most of all idiotic. But, my lovely readerloins, joy is idiotic, is it not?

Alexi Shaw is a Columbia College senior majoring in Russian literature. wordpecking">Wordpecking runs alternate Thursdays.

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