The Lexicon of Lifting

[bigcity]

ATOMIC DOG
The Lexicon of Lifting
by TC

The Atomic Dog is a weekly feature that isn't necessarily about weight training or bodybuilding. Sometimes it's about sports in general, sex, women, or male issues of some kind. At times it's inspirational, but it can also be informative, funny, and even a little weird, but hopefully, always interesting and a little controversial. We hope it reflects the nature of Testosterone magazine in that, just as no man is completely one-dimensional and only interested in one subject, neither are we. If it makes you think or laugh — or even get angry — it's served its purpose.

As most native speakers of English know, the lexicon of the language is one huge mother of a meatball. There are more words in English than any other language, and dozens more are plopping themselves into the spaghetti sauce of the vocabulary every week.
Historically, English has borrowed words from other languages to make up for any linguistic shortcomings, the vast majority coming from Latin and Greek but with a respectable contribution made by Arabic, Hindu, French, and German.
Many of these new words become necessary because of new technologies and new inventions. If a scientist makes a discovery or an engineer invents something, he or she often plops open a "Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Latin Dictionary" and gets wild and crazy. Witness the new order of insects that were discovered this week. While you or I might have named the things "Stickbugs," scientists came up with Mantophasmatodea. (Yeah, I like our name better, too, but whadda' ya' gonna' do?)
However, cultural change is occurring just as rapidly as technological change and this is when the language has to get really creative. Consequently, many of us make up words without consulting Latin or Greek. Our new words, or neologisms, are a little less formal. For instance, what do you call the phenomenon of landing a low-paying, low dignity, little-chance-of-future-advancement job? There's no name for it, right?
Sure there is. It's called a McJob, in dubious honor of the burger franchise.
Similarly, what do you call it when the nerdy kid in your Sophomore English class comes in and he's wearing pants that are about five inches short of the top of his shoes? Yep, you say he's "Noah's Arking," after which you tease him mercilessly until he develops a drug dependency and drops out of school.
And what about when your Netscape browser freezes? There ought to be a technical term for it, but the Internet has grown so fast that it can't wait for engineers to come up with appropriate words. So instead, language had to take the initiative. When your boss walks in and despite your frantic mouse clicking you can't get womenandlivestock.com off your screen, your computer has cometised, i.e., the little Netscape comet in the right-hand corner has frozen.
Amazingly, there's one cultural/sociological arena where the language has pretty much stagnated. Yep, it's the old gym. There are all kinds of new things going on around us in weightrooms every day, but alas, no new words have been born to describe them.
For instance, what do you call what you see between a girl's legs when she's wearing really tight, light-colored Lycra/Spandex shorts with no underwear? There's no word for it, right? Well there is now. It's called a vagindentation.

Vagindentation, otherwise known as camel toe.

I've taken the liberty of coming up with a few more words, too, and I ask that you incorporate them into your vocabulary; you know, take 'em out for a spin every once in awhile so they'll work their way into a future version of Webster's.

Dancing Hippo n: An inordinately fat aerobics instructor, from the Disney film Fantasia.
Defarture n: The act or instance of passing horrifying wind and then departing the area, leaving women to believe that the lone male remaining in the contaminated zone is the culprit.
Fatlock n: Term applied to heavyset, silver-haired, doddering old white men who have a remarkable resemblance to Andy Griffith. Fatlocks will wander about the gym and appear to be searching for some misplaced piece of equipment. Usually dressed in white shorts, white T-shirt, and black socks and shoes, a Fatlock will invariably stand in front of the dumbbell rack while you're trying to get your weights.
Figure Mortis n: A delusionary state where the afflicted one thinks he's a huge bastard and walks around with his upper arms flared out by imaginary lats.
Gilligan n: Named after the TV show character who was stranded on a desert island, a Gilliganrefers to the lost, submerged-in-fat navel ring worn by a pudgy girl.
Hogan n: Ever see those guys sprawled out on the bench press who are wearing baggy shorts and loose underwear? Yep, more often than not, a testicle has escaped from Stalag 13. "Check out Leroy on the bench press. He's got a Hogan going on." Proper etiquette requires that you go up to him and say, in your best Colonel Klink voice, "Hoooo-gan! Get back in da coolah vit LeBeau!"
Jerk Du Soleil n: These poor bastards started lifting weights years ago and they're still wearing the same brightly colored circus clown pants they wore in 1985. Sleeveless sweatshirts that say something like "Get Big or Die" or some such other anachronistic saying often accompany the pants.
Magnavox n: A bodybuilder who is all upper body and no legs, resembling the old console-style color TV sets from the sixties and seventies.
Mammogram mama n: A large-breasted girl wearing a bra top two sizes too small so that her compressed breasts look like what the radiologist would see if the x-ray plate were made of clear glass.
Moonstruck adj: When the underwear model who comes in to train every day at 5 PM bends over in front of you to pick up a chrome weight when you're just about to do a set of military presses, you're not dumbstruck, you're moonstruck. Being moonstruck while in the middle of a set is the cause of 99% of all gym-related injuries and may often require a visit to the chiropractor to dislodge the cervical spine from the liver.
Osama n: The foreign guy employed by the gym who saturates the air with disinfectant while you're getting ready to do a set of squats. This sends you into a coughing jag where your eyes tear up and you find it difficult to breathe, causing authorities to believe you were the victim of bioterrorism.
Pignoramus n: A man or woman who spends one to two hours on the treadmill and then leaves to go next door to Cinnabon and have a frosted cinnamon roll and a double mocha frappe. Syn: Weight Botcher.
Prairie Dog Alert n: When a tasty morsel of a girl walks into the gym wearing a bra top and short-shorts, all the straight men immediately straighten up and look around, similar to families of prairie dogs on the plains when a rattle snake is spotted. Often, the men in the gym will communicate her presence to each other through an as-yet-indecipherable series of grunts and groans.
Rod Stewart n: Named for the scraggly haired, emaciated rock star, the term applies to skeletal older women with overly bleached hair who spend two to three hours a day doing aerobics.
Sharon Stoneing v: When a girl spends an inordinate amount of time on the thigh adduction machine, she's Sharon Stoneing, particularly if she lights a cigarette and says, "You gonna' arrest me for smoking?" Can be fun to watch, particularly if there's vagindentation.
Stroking the weasel v: A muttonhead who only uses about a six-inch range of motion on squats or bench presses is said to be stroking the weasel. From the Latin phrase, choking the chicken.
Watering the camel v: When you walk to the drinking fountain to get a drink after doing multiple drop sets in 90-degree temperature and there's some hoser taking an eternity to fill up his empty 128-ounce Monster Big Gulp glass, he's watering the camel. In Middle Eastern countries, the appropriate course of action for this breach of etiquette would be to tie the infidel's hands, cram his mouth full of dates, tape his mouth shut, and set him loose to wander the desert until the searing heat cooks him and the dates. Here, in America, we just hrrumph a little and shoot the perpetrator a dirty look.

Hopefully, these new words and phrases will help you communicate your thoughts much more clearly and make the gym experience all the more satisfying. And, I fully expect that many of these neologisms will worm their way into the new dictionaries within the next few years.
Now excuse me while I adjust my Hogan.
This Atomic Dog was first posted on April 18th, 2002.
Note: Do you guys have any of your own weight-lifting neologisms? Post them here and if I think they're funny enough, I'll send you a tub of Metabolic Drive Complete. —TC

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