Tonight’s theme at drinks: Textcapades – the act of flirting without
consummating, committing or conversing. Do you do it?
As I write my first “word on the tweet” post, I can’t help but joyfully anticipate the worded journey that this twitter adventure will prove to be. Similar to that of sifting through a haystack of language, I’ll be browsing 140 characters for written gems that send me into an etymology coma.
Many thanks to the fabulous @mrjoezee! For those of you living under a rock (make that a boulder), Joe Zee is the “Creative Director of ELLE Magazine, Stylist, Fashion Loudmouth, Backup Dancer.” After taking a peek at his tweets to catch a few twitpics of racks filled with to-die-for clothing and tables of may-I-have-some accessories on his most recent shoot, I stumbled across his tweet discussing his encounter with “textcapades.”
Beyond Mr. Zee’s spot-on and simple definition of textcapade: “the act of flirting without consummating, committing or conversing,” I took a look at the slanguage know-it-all word source, Urban Dictionary. According to the 1st contributor on UD’s textcapade page, this sexy noun is defined as “a textual escapade; a wild and oftentimes illicit text message episode through a series of text messages.”
Although I am a language purist at times, I love the occasional piece of slangauge that evolves from combining techy words with established words holding their own in the dictionary; a language fusion of sorts. In this case, “text” was fused with “escapade.” This second generation definition of “text,” a verb/noun associated with written communication via a cellphone, originally made it’s mark in 1369, “wording of anything written” from O.Fr. texte. And the second part to the slanguage wonder, “escapade,” originated in “1653, from Fr. ‘a prank or trick,’ from Sp. escapada ‘a prank, flight, an escape,’ from escapar ‘to escape,’ from V.L. *excappare (see escape). Figurative sense (1814) is of ‘breaking loose’ from rules or restraints on behavior.”
Just make sure that the next time you need to escape via a text (over a few drinks), that you’re sending the illicit message to the right person. Otherwise, you might wake up with a textual hangover and have to jump right into damage control mode. And remember, always have safe textcapades.
Do you have textcapades? Just leave your comment as anonymous…I’ll never tell….
Tagged: @mrjoezee, joe zee, textcapade, tweet, twitter, word on the tweet