Beyoncé's name set to be added to French dictionary - USA TODAY - Dictionary

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Beyoncé's name set to be added to French dictionary  USA TODAY

Council Conservatives Got Their Precious Audit, but Still Won't Talk About Progressive Revenue - The Stranger - Dictionary

According to a recent in-depth review of the City budget, council central staff attributes 79% of the City of Seattle’s increased spending between 2019 and 2024 to inflation and the rising cost of labor associated with it. 

One would think that such a finding would challenge some of the new conservative council members' assumptions that the previous City Council ripped the projected $241 million hole in the 2025 budget by reckless spending and, in turn, would bolster the argument for new, progressive revenue to pay workers and expand social services. So far that’s not the case.

No one in the committee meeting gave a clear indication of whether the audit has swayed them one way or the other on taxes in last week’s meeting. But there’s plenty of time before the fall budgeting process when the council will have to balance the budget. For now, the council will meet once a month this summer to continue examining the 224-page report in what Budget Chair Dan Strauss calls his “Select Summer Budget Series.” Strauss says the council will go through the budget trends department by department to inform which of their limited levers they should pull to balance the budget—lay off staff, cut services, take from already-earmarked funds, or increase revenues. 

Council Members Rob Saka, Joy Hollingsworth, Maritza Rivera, Cathy Moore, Bob Kettle, Tanya Woo, and Sara Nelson did not respond to The Stranger’s request for comment about the audit. 

I’m used to it, but this is especially frustrating because the council newbies avoided questions about the budget deficit during their 2023 campaign by calling for a budget audit before they took a stance on new revenue or major cuts. The promise of an audit served as a bat signal to their supporters at the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Seattle Association because it endorsed an underlying assumption that the previous council suffered from a “spending problem” and detracted from the ongoing conversation about new streams of revenue the City could use to fill its looming budget shortfall. 

The council quickly realized they could not conduct as thorough an audit as they would like, but Strauss thinks that the central staff’s analysis fits the dictionary definition of an audit. 

Some of the council newbs seem satisfied, others not so much. Kettle said he “loves” the report in the committee last week. But Rivera said she and Strauss will have to “agree to disagree” on the definition of an audit in a council briefing Monday. 

Whether this achieves their campaign promise or not, every council member knows the report is as close to an audit as they are getting this year. They can still punt the conversation by saying they need to wait until the council finishes the Select Summer Budget Series. 

That’s kind of what Strauss did on the phone with The Stranger when he avoided advocating for more revenue or specific cuts based on the high-level presentation of the audit that central staff gave last week. He said, so far, the audit provides “no obvious decisions anywhere” for solving the looming deficit because the council is still “looking under every couch cushion and under every rock.”

That’s sort of his style, annoying as it is to journalists, voters, and the girls who love the gossip. But he did praise JumpStart, a payroll tax on the biggest businesses in Seattle, for saving the budget and countless City jobs. And he ran on a loudly pro-progressive revenue platform in 2023, so he may start making more noise for taxation when the real budget negotiations begin in the fall. 

But the austerity has already started. Last month Seattle Public Libraries announced 1,500 hours of service cuts between April 12 and June 2 because of staffing shortages exacerbated by the Mayor’s hiring freeze. Instead of jumping to save the public amenity by taxing the rich or corporations, Libraries, Education, and Neighborhoods Committee Chair Rivera blamed the unions and the markup on ebooks. Expect more of those kinds of arguments as the Select Summer Budget Series continues.

Unsurprisingly, the only council member to take the audit’s findings as a sign of the City’s need for new progressive taxes is Council Member Tammy Morales, the only reliable progressive in the bunch. In an email statement, Morales said, “We need to pass new progressive revenue that ensures corporations are paying their fair share. Cuts to working-class services like libraries, community centers, and food assistance are not the answer.”

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How Jon Fosse Teaches Us to Acknowledge Our Own Vulnerability - Literary Hub - Translation

My father was born and raised in Norway, and I’ve spoken the language since living there for seven months when I was 12. In 2003, while visiting family in Oslo, my Dad’s cousin and her husband (who I consider my aunt and uncle) introduced me to the work of Jon Fosse. I read Fosse’s play Vinter (Winter) in his original New Norwegian (nynorsk), and later that night went to see the National Theater’s production at Torshovteatret in Oslo. I was blown away.

From a formal written aesthetic perspective, Fosse’s play was unlike anything I had ever read before, and it moved me deeply. It looked like poetry on the page, with lots of white space, no punctuation, and clear musicality. The story was a simple, everyday encounter between two people, but it resonated on a universal scale in all its complex silences. The text begged to be spoken aloud and was imbued with layers of subtext; the pauses were clearly just as important as the words. I felt I’d stumbled across the most important writer of our time. When I saw the performance that night and read in the program that Fosse had already been translated into over 40 languages and produced all around the world, I couldn’t understand why no one had brought his work to the U.S. yet.

Fosse’s acknowledgment of time and our own vulnerability illuminates our existence and creates real possibility for positive change.

When I got back home to New York, armed with Fosse’s complete works in Norwegian, I searched the NY Public Library for an English translation to share with potential producers and collaborators and found only one: a British translation of Natta Syng Sine Songar (translated into: Nightsongs—which I found strange, because the original title is inherently poetic in its literal translation: the night sings its songs.) I reached out to Jon Fosse over email and boldly asked for the rights to produce and direct his U.S. debut production. To my surprise, he answered enthusiastically within two hours.

As we continued our conversation, Fosse acknowledged the challenge of translation and encouraged me to consider translating specifically for production in New York. He sent me two other attempts at American-English translations of Natta Syng Sine Songar. I read the first few pages of each, but one felt too literal and highlighted the foreign nature of the work while the other felt like it was trying too hard to sound American. I remember looking back at Jon’s original text in nynorsk and then reading the first few pages of the British version. And suddenly I realized that none of them were articulating quite what I saw and felt when I read his work in nynorsk, or when I saw it on stage in Oslo.

To our American ears, the British translations render Fosse’s characters higher class than how he writes them. I had initially thought it could be ok to replace a few British idioms with American ones, but as I skimmed those first few pages of the British text, I saw implied class differences everywhere, in every character.

For example, in the second scene of Natta Syng Sine Songar / Night Sings Its Songs (which is how I would later translate it), The Young Man says to his father, The Old Man: “Du må berre setje deg ned,” which the British version translated as “Do sit down.” This might work well for a British audience, but for New Yorkers, this would sound stuffy and pretentious. While the characters clearly had some awkward family dynamics in the room, my understanding from the nynorsk was that this family was not nearly so formal. I asked myself: why on earth would we put this delicate poetic text through a British sensibility in order to reach us on this side of the pond? [Later, I would decide to translate this line as: “Have a seat.”]

Instances like this presented themselves on every page of the play, in the syntax of so many common phrases. If Fosse’s work was going to resonate with my New York audience, it would be vital that his characters read as everyday people. They needed to feel like you or me.

So I returned that British translation to the library, deleted the other two electronic files that Fosse sent me, decided to only look at his original text in nynorsk from that moment on, and with the encouragement of Fosse and my dad, I became a translator. Although I had never translated much more than emails from family, let alone one of the world’s most produced playwrights, as a director, I knew what it takes to make text work onstage and how to create a good piece of live performance—with moments of surprise and tension, moments that are full of possibility. So I threw my heart and soul into the task at hand.

From a technical perspective, Fosse uses words sparingly, with no punctuation except for line breaks and the choice between beginning each line with a capital letter or a lowercase letter. Words, phrases, and ideas are repeated in variations. Sparse dialogue builds slowly, repeats, connects, shifts slightly, and accumulates to create suspense and a powerful sense of rhythm. His poetic form makes every word vital and extremely active. The most common words sometimes convey vast existential ideas.

One such word that appears again and again (over 150 times, in fact) in Natta Syng Sine Songar is “ja”—I had noticed that this repetition was missing in the British translation, and instead the translator had chosen to replace each “ja” with what he thought it meant in each given moment—which often meant “yes” and sometimes deleting it entirely, when it seemed like filler word. But the repetition felt critical to me for several reasons: 1) the everyday quality of the word as it is spoken, not written, 2) the way this “ja” could function to build tension between live performers, 3) and how it unites the characters despite the vast space between them.

I spent a lot of time workshopping how to best translate this one small word. The first time I gathered some actors to read the play out loud, I gave them a piece of paper that had a list of all the words they could insert when they saw the word “yeh” in their script. To my surprise and delight, they all chose to play with the repetition rather than find alternatives. From my final translation notes:

Norwegian “ja” = yes = yeh

Yeh = the most common version of an American “yeah”, only not so nasal, and not necessarily enthusiastic.

Yeh = yep, hmm, ok, so, well, fine, oh, sure, yeah, uh-huh, tsk, ugh…basically all the filler words—how we speak, not how we write.

This is part of what is revolutionary about Fosse’s work—he finds the simplest way to say something, and within this everyday speech, there is deep complexity through repetition and slight variations. It is both simple and complex, both realistic and very heightened at the same time.

This is the reason I was so attracted to Fosse’s work—the way that potential hangs in the air, the way his characters represent all of humanity in the turn of a phrase, the way the past merges with the present and the future. Standing still is a primary action and “moving towards each other” is what happens next. Location is immaterial, but every breath, every turn of phrase, and slight physical action is important. So is the wind, the rain, and the sea. Death is always present, and its constant proximity challenges characters and the audience to assess their humanity. Fosse’s acknowledgment of time and our own vulnerability illuminates our existence and creates real possibility for positive change. Every time I entered Fosse’s world , I was reminded that we are only on this planet for a short time and must be brave enough to take action while we are here.

Sometimes I would sit with a few lines for days, and then discuss with my brilliant dramaturgs (one Norwegian and one American) all the possibilities of what could happen during this particular moment in performance. It was a group effort, and eventually we would land on what felt like the closest to Fosse’s nynorsk, acknowledging that we would never get there completely—it was an impossible task, like moving towards infinity. Always getting closer to both the specificity and the openness.

And so I came to embrace an idea that stems directly from Fosse’s text and would define my translation (and directorial and overall artistic) approach: specific ambiguity. The goal was always to be as specific as possible with every word/phrase I chose, but to create enough room for multiple interpretations from any person who receives it—whether that be actors on stage, or people in the audience. Onstage, this meant directing the actors to consider all the possibilities of which action they could take in any given moment, and then keep all those choices alive in their body even after making a choice.  It also meant encouraging actors to keep their choices to themselves and be comfortable with disagreeing with their scene partners about what was happening in a given moment. This was not always easy, but it meant that the audience was confronted with their own mysterious piece of art, and they had to translate it through their own sensibility in order to take in and make sense of what was happening.

I learned to listen—to the silences between people, to what’s happening in a breath, and to the more than human world.

The first time I met Jon in person as I was halfway through the translation process of Natta Syng Sine Songar / Night Sings Its Songs, with a solid draft, but not honed yet. I shared my directorial vision with him, and the lines in the play upon which my vision was hanging, when The Young Woman, in a moment of crisis is searching and says:

DEN UNGE KVINNA                               THE YOUNG WOMAN

Veit du det                                                   You know
at alltid skjer berre eit eller anna          that something or other always happens
Eg liker ikkje at noko skjer                      I don’t like it that something happens
Alt skal helst vere roleg                            I’d rather everything stayed calm
og berre det vante                                     and that only the usual things
det ein kjenner til                                       things that you’re used to
skal skje                                                        would happen
Men så skjer jo alltid noko uvanleg      But something unusual always happens
Alltid                                                             Always

 He looked at me and said (something like): Du forstar stykket. (You understand this work). His confidence—that I could translate his singularly spiritual perspective and capture it in my own theatrical language, finding simple words and actions to convey his vast existential ideas—that faith powered me through so many of my early days and made my commitment to creating the best possible translation and production even stronger.

Then during that first rehearsal process, whenever I would write to Fosse with a question—often about what was happening in a certain moment—he would usually respond: “You know the answer, Sarah.” As a young artist at the beginning of a new millennium, I was searching: what did I have to say? Fosse’s unwavering trust in me meant that I had to trust myself. I had to slow down and tune into my vision for the work, translating the play Norwegian to English, then page to stage—as I saw it, heard it, and felt it.

Through the process of working with six of Fosse’s masterful texts over the next 11 years with him as a friend and collaborator, I found my voice as an artist. I learned to slow down and be still. I learned to listen—to the silences between people, to what’s happening in a breath, and to the more than human world. I learned about philosophy, duration and time, scale, resilience, and survival.

All of this learning fed directly into my next decade of artistic practice. My project, 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea, was created over nine years on six continents from 2013-2022, and was a different act of “translation,” but very much informed by my ethereal Fosse productions. Moved by Hurricane Sandy’s impact on New York City, I felt an impulse to translate the seemingly abstract concept of sea-level rise into an embodied experience. It began as a small poetic gesture—I walked out into the sea to listen to water as it rises with the tide—and this turned into a series of large-scale participatory performances and video works made with communities around the world. Hundreds of people joined me standing in water and thousands witnessed from land and through livestream. Whether they know it or not, what everyone experienced was an intentional act of specific ambiguity—tiny vulnerable humans standing still in a vast landscape, looking towards the sea, flirting with danger, helping to create an open-ended image that contains layers of meanings, inviting the participants and audience alike to reflect on their own humanity. Just as Fosse asked of me.

*

MAY 6, 2024: 11am-9pm at the Segal Theatre in the Graduate Center, CUNY

Join Us! Oslo Elsewhere reunites 20 years after the U.S. debut of Fosse’s work. For an all-day event to hear experimental readings of five plays by 2023 Nobel Laureate Jon Fosse, in Sunde’s American English translations.

Featured image: Tom A. Kolstad/Det norske samlaget via Creative Commons 4.0

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Tween and Teen Slang Dictionary for Parents - Parents - Dictionary

Teens in each generation develop a unique language of their own. After all, language is something people use in order to communicate, but also to show that we belong.

Over the years, parents have heard terms ranging from "outta sight" and "phat," to things like "sick" and "gag me with a spoon." Every decade has been marked by its special phrases, but there's more to these words than just their direct meaning. Language has history, and the current "slang" phrases of Gen Z and Gen Alpha are no different.

Why Kids Use Slang

Trying to figure out what teens are saying is increasingly challenging, as the explosion of social media, memes, digital communication, and the ever-present cell phone means teen-speak is evolving faster than ever. Once you think you've mastered a few phrases, you're probably already out of touch again.

Of course, slang isn't unique to teenagers—humans of all ages gravitate toward language that allows them to feel part of a group. But as teens are developing their identities and trying to figure out who they are, the tendency to lean into "slang" words might feel stronger.

Be Smart

It's important to educate yourself about common teen slang so that you understand what your teen is talking about—both online and IRL.

It's important to keep in mind that many of the phrases you hear from your teens have origins in Black culture, as well as Black queer culture. Lots of popular terms that have become mainstream, including "slay," "extra," "period," "cap," and more, are derived from African American Vernacular English (AAVE). To categorize these words as solely Gen Z or Gen Alpha slang would be to misrepresent their history, and would also over-simplify the way in which language evolves and grows. These words aren't created by today's teens, but they have become embedded in youth culture all the same.

With that in mind, here are some things you might be hearing your teen saying around the house—and what they mean.

General Terms

Below are some common words you might hear: 

• AF - Stands for "as f**k," used to emphasize a statement (i.e. "she's cool AF")
• Ate - To succeed at something. "She ate..." as in "ate that up"
• Cap - Something that is not true or a lie
• Cheugy - Something that is out of date or a person who is trying too hard
• Cringe - Word to describe embarrassing or awkward behavior
• Dead - Something is so funny that the speaker has "died" of laughter
• Dope - Cool or awesome
• Extra - Over-the-top, extreme
• Fit - Short for outfit
• Fire - Hot, trendy, amazing, or on point (formerly "straight fire")
• GOAT - "Greatest of All Time"
• Go Off - A phrase said to encourage someone to continue, usually when they're ranting about something (can also be sarcastic, as in, "but go off, I guess")
• Gucci - Good, cool, or going well
• Hits Different - Something that "hits different" lands differently than usual
• IRL - In real life, as opposed to online
• IYKYK - Stands for "if you know, you know"
• Lit - Amazing, cool, or exciting
• Low-Key - Added to a feeling or desire to downplay it (i.e. "I'm low-key freaking out")
• Mood - A word to signify agreement or a specific vibe
• OMG - An abbreviation for "Oh my gosh" or "Oh my God"
• ONG - Basically the equivalent of "I swear to God"
• Preppy - High end and stylish, connoting wealth. Can also go negative, as in conformist, with "Preppy Nation"
• Rizz - Short for charisma. Someone who's charming, or has "game"
• Salty - Bitter, angry, agitated
• Sic/Sick - Cool or sweet
• Sigma - A male who is popular, but is also a loner who separates himself from the crowd
• Slay - To be extremely stylish or successful
• Sleep On - To be ignorant to something or someone's value (i.e. "Don't sleep on the new Ariana single")
• Snatched - Looks good, perfect, or fashionable; the new "on fleek"
  
• TBH - To be honest
• Tea - Gossip, situation, story, or news
• Thirsty - Trying to get attention
• Vanilla - Boring/Beige
• Yassify - A dramatic makeover, or to apply several beauty filters to a picture until the person is totally unrecognizable
• Yeet - To throw something in anger
• YOLO - "You Only Live Once" (often used ironically)

People or Relationships

Relationships are an important aspect of adolescence. In the teen years, kids develop their own identities and explore who they are outside of their families. Interactions with their peers are a key component of this process—and they often create unique words to describe their friendships and romantic relationships.

Here are some slang words your teen might use when talking about other people:

• Bae - "Before anyone else," babe, or baby; is used to describe a romantic partner or good friend
• Basic - Boring, average, or unoriginal
• BF/GF - Boyfriend/girlfriend
• BFF - "Best friends forever"
• Big Yikes - Extra cringe
• Bruh - Bro or dude (all three terms are gender-neutral)
• Cap - Fake or a lie
• CEO - To be the "CEO of" something is to excel at it
• Curve - To reject someone romantically (related to "ghosting")
• Emo - Someone who is emotional or a drama queen
• Fam - Group of friends
• Flex - To show off
• Ghosted - To end a relationship by cutting off communication
• It's giving - a comparison "It's giving 80s vibes..."
• A Karen - A disparaging way to describe a petty middle-aged woman, who is rude and entitled. (For example, saying, "What a Karen," about someone who returns their drink at a restaurant for not having enough ice)
• No cap - Totally true or no lie
• Noob/n00b - A person who doesn't know what they're doing or who is bad at something; in other words, a newbie
• OK, Boomer - Usually said in response to a person or idea that seems outdated
• Periodt - End of statement emphasizer. For example: “That’s the best ice cream, periodt.”
• Pop Off - To react angrily
• Ratio'd - From social media, more negative feedback than positive
• Serving - Looking good
  
• Ship - You might "ship" two people together, as in you think they should be a couple; derived from the word relationship
• Shook - To be incredibly shocked or shaken up
• Simp - Someone who does way too much for the person they like; to have a huge crush on someone
• Spill the Tea - Asking someone to spill gossip
• Squad - Group of friends that hang out together regularly, used ironically
• Stan - An overzealous fan of a particular group or celebrity
• Sus - Suspicious, shady, not to be trusted
• Throw shade - To disrespect or trash-talk someone
• Tight - In a close relationship or friendship
• Tool - Someone who is stupid, obnoxious, rude, and/or embarrasses themselves, often a jock type

Compound Slang

New words are sometimes created by combining two other words together. To understand what they mean, you need to know the definition of each word.

Here are some examples of compound teen slang:

• Crashy - Crazy and trashy, like a trainwreck
• Crunk - Getting high and drunk at the same time, or crazy and drunk
• Hangry - Hungry and angry
• Requestion - Request and a question, or to question again
• Tope - Tight and dope

Parties, Drugs, and Sex

Teens are prone to experiment and push boundaries—and also to talk a big game. So, sometimes slang words will simply be used in fun or boasting. However, sometimes they may indicate risky (or potentially risky) behavior.

For the most part, teen get-togethers are a fun rite of passage and aren't automatically anything to be concerned about. However, parties (and related teen slang) can raise concerns over supervision, appropriate behavior, the use of illegal substances, alcohol, peer pressure, bullying, and unprotected sex.

Whether or not your child is involved in any inappropriate or dangerous activities, you'll want to know what they're talking about and be attuned to any words that might indicate possible trouble.

Below is a list of some social slang to be aware of:

• 53X - Sex
• Body count - The number of people someone has slept with
• CU46 - See you for sex
• Dayger - Party during the day
• Function/Func - Party
• Gyat - Big butt, as "Girl, your *ss thick" or the reaction, "goddamn"
• Kick back - Small party
• Molly - Ecstasy (MDMA), a dangerous party drug
• Netflix and chill - Used as a front for inviting someone over to make out (or maybe more)
• Plug - Someone who can hook you up with drugs
• Rager - Big party
• Smash - To have casual sex
• Sloshed - To be drunk
• Throw down - To throw a party
• Turnt - To be high or drunk (formerly "turnt up")
• X - Ecstasy
• WTTP - Want to trade photos?
• LMIRL - Let's meet in real life

Key Takeaways

Aim to balance safety with privacy and independence for your teen. Talk with your teen about the concerns you have, your family rules and expectations, as well as safe and healthy social media usage.

Teenagers need to be able to have private conversations with their friends. And clearly, you can't monitor what your teen is doing or talking about all the time. Still, you may want to monitor your teen's social media feeds at times, and pay attention when they're chatting with their pals. If you see or hear conversations that worry you—or that you can't decode—be ready to take action as needed.

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Beyoncé earns entry into France's Petit Larousse Dictionary - FOX 8 Local First - Dictionary

(WVUE) - Beyoncé will be immortalized in the Petit Larousse Illustré, a notable French dictionary that updates its entries annually, according to the UK’s The Times. She joins a select group of 40 influential figures from around the world chosen for inclusion this year.

The dictionary describes her as an “American singer of R&B and pop.” The definition also acknowledges her Louisiana Creole roots. However, it omits mention of her recent ventures into country music.

Beyoncé's inclusion was not automatic; a jury selects about 150 words and notable individuals each year who resonate with the French-speaking public.

Other celebrities added to the dictionary this year include Cate Blanchett, LeBron James, and filmmaker Christopher Nolan of “Oppenheimer” fame.

Carine Girac-Marinier, head of dictionaries and encyclopedias, emphasized that the updates reflect the Larousse founder’s dedication to “excellence and promotion of French culture.”

See a spelling or grammar error in our story? Click Here to report it. Please include the headline.

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Copyright 2024 WVUE. All rights reserved.

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'The Sympathizer' Recap, Episode 4: Give Us Some Good Lines - Vulture - Translation

The Sympathizer

Give Us Some Good Lines

Season 1 Episode 4

Editor’s Rating 2 stars **

Next Episode »

Photo: Hopper Stone/HBO

The Captain has a new job. He’s heading to Hollywood for four months to work as a cultural consultant on a film about the Vietnam War. Recruited by Niko Damianos, the director of The Hamlet, the Captain is tasked with ensuring the film’s authenticity, a near-impossible gig, as his suggestions are often dismissed or entirely undermined by the director himself. The Hamlet is centered around six Green Berets who get stranded in a Vietnamese hamlet. The Captain interprets it differently, of course, explaining it as “a story of a small farming community who is forced to take in a bunch of uninvited guests.” It leads you to wonder: Why did he accept the job then? What purpose does this side quest serve?

For Man, his handler, it’s a chance to “give [the North Vietnamese] some good lines” in a major Hollywood production and to undercut American propaganda from the inside. The General similarly sees it as a means to reignite American support for the South. But the Captain’s motives, as we later learn, are more sentimental. He’s driven by a deep nostalgia for home, though a Hollywood production set in the Napa Valley strikes me as an unconvincing and unbelievable substitute for Vietnam. The Hamlet is written and directed by Damianos, a white “auteur” modeled after the real-life director of Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola. Robert Downey Jr.’s Damianos is an impudent and priggish artiste who refuses to budge on his creative vision. At the episode’s start, the Captain is asked to present his greatest misgivings with the script. He’s concerned that no Vietnamese characters have any lines. They don’t even qualify as characters. The villagers are mere accessories to the setting, while the Viet Cong is the antagonizing force that sets Damianos’s plot into motion. Damianos, of course, dismisses this as a creative choice intended to highlight the plight of the Vietnamese people.

The Hollywood subplot is a mystifying departure from the previous episode’s noir-ish murder plot. The Major’s ghost occasionally reappears to haunt the Captain on set, but overall, it doesn’t make sense to lower the stakes after the last episode’s adrenaline rush. Whatever emotional charge the series has accumulated thus far sputters to a halting stop with the change of pace and scenery. It also comes at the expense of us getting to know the Captain. As Damianos, RDJ is downright absurd and distracts from the Captain, who’s once again slotted into a second-in-command role. I’ve said it before: the script repeatedly sells the Captain’s complexity short. Damianos’s brutish condescension and bizarre exclamations upstages the Captain’s reserved frustration. He’s unable or unwilling to fully emote on set. Instead, he inhabits a posture of awkward discomfort, which fails to convey his veiled contempt for Damianos and Hollywood writ large. In Damianos’s office, the Captain suggests some lines for the Viet Cong in a rare outburst of rage. He slams the script on the table, shocking the director, and yells: “Confess, you fucker!” It’s a satisfying outburst, delivered with an intensity that I wish was replicated in a later scene when the Captain gets fired … but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

While driving to set, the Captain finds Lana hiding out in his trunk. She wants to tag along and he reluctantly allows her to accompany him. In this episode, we see the Captain develop feelings for Lana as he presides over her without the General around. Yet there’s a disappointing lack of chemistry between the two. They interact more like siblings than potential lovers. At the pre-filming party, Lana fawns over Jamie Johnson (Maxwell Whittington-Cooper), a Green Beret actor and popular soul singer, while the Captain meets the crew and other Green Beret actors, including James Yoon (John Cho) and the volatile method actor Ryan Glenn (David Duchovny), who insists on being addressed as Captain Shamus.

The Captain is given a tour of the production by Monique (Marine Delterme), the film’s set designer and Damianos’s girlfriend. He is stunned by her attention to detail. “I can almost smell my mother’s cooking,” he says approvingly. The Captain has one small request for her: a gravestone with his mother’s name, Que Linh, since his family couldn’t afford one when she died. The Captain soon treats it as a makeshift altar, lighting incense and displaying fruits as an offering to his mother. These details offer some insight into the Captain’s past but are not a satisfactory substitute for his middling characterization. As a spy, his motivations are still quite obscure (or underdeveloped) to us. While the script has been quite faithful to the novel, it hesitates to frame the Captain as an anti-hero — a failure that a more mature actor might’ve redeemed. Instead, the Captain’s countenance oscillates between passivity and pathos, with none of the shrewd intellect expected of a spy.

The Captain is on set to solve hijinks. On the first day of filming, for example, he realizes that most of the background actors are not Vietnamese. Damianos allows him to replace the extras with real Vietnamese people, so he recruits Bon and a few familiar faces from the South Vietnamese army to enlist in minor roles. The Captain manages to squeeze in a few lines of anti-American dialogue and increase the actors’ pay if they pose as Viet Cong. On set, the Captain notices that Bon is less depressed and enjoys acting in scenes where he’s being killed. Lana, too, is eager to volunteer as an extra and cozies up to Johnson.

There’s one scene in The Hamlet that makes the Captain especially uneasy. Yoon’s character is captured and tortured by the Viet Cong. While everyone praises Yoon for his acting (I’m biased, but John Cho always delivers), the Captain thinks of the torturous interrogations he’s participated in. But things begin to unravel as Glenn’s commitment to method acting leads him to a mental spiral. The actor has become boisterous and erratic to the other cast members, specifically Johnson, who he accuses of not taking the role seriously. At one point, the Captain envisions a scene between Glenn and Damianos, which leads the director to make significant changes to the script. “I’m recounting something I didn’t witness myself,” the Captain confesses in a voiceover. “Some of the dialogue is conjecture but it helps to explain the events that follow.”

A quick aside: I actually think the episode would have benefited from more expositional voiceover in this manner. Imagine, for instance, a hypothetical scene where the Captain berates and physically assaults Damianos and then pauses to admit that didn’t actually happen. It was just wishful thinking. Instead, we get some comedic improv between RDJ and Duchovny that is entertaining but unnecessary. And later, there’s a semi-horny scene between Damianos and his set designer girlfriend about to get it on, in which the Captain jokes, “If this offends you, please skip ahead.”

Damianos adds a grisly scene where a female villager gets raped by a Green Beret. To make matters worse, the villager is named after the Captain’s mother, Que Linh, and will be played by Lana. When the Captain learns of this, he angrily confronts Damianos in his office. It’s an anticlimactic confrontation where he hoarsely yells, “You don’t know a thing about my mother!” (Yawn.) It may be his weakest scene so far. It’s hard to believe that the Captain, who’s murdered and tortured prisoners of war, will back down in the face of a sniveling “radical director” just because he was fired. The Captain sticks around out of concern for Lana. A few days before the scene, Glenn goes missing and returns with a slain deer draped across his shoulders, which only adds to the Captain’s concerns.

In the scene, Johnson’s character rushes in and rescues Que Linh/Lana while she is assaulted by Shamus/Glenn. Fearing for Lana’s safety, the Captain interrupts the scene and ruins Damianos’s singular take. Lana stalks off, angry at his interference, and the Captain is forcibly removed from the production. On his way out, he stops by his mother’s “grave.” Unaware that Damianos intended to blow up the false cemetery as a conclusive climax to the film, the Captain injures himself in the explosion. It’s a confusing move: Ending an episode filled with low-stakes drama with an explosion doesn’t quite alter the stakes. The best meta-commentary on this Hollywood detour was provided by the North Vietnamese commander, whom the Captain is recounting his tale: “Can you not see how you are corrupted by the most crass Hollywood indulgences? The very same indulgences you tried to change?” The same can be said for this very episode, which was regrettably bereft of any good lines.

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Why 'Beyoncé' is the perfect word to add to the French dictionary - inews - Dictionary

Beyonce is being introduced into a French dictionary – which has a notoriously stringent selection criteria (Photo: Francis Specker/PA)

“I’m not bossy, I’m the boss”: a characteristically skilful sentence from the singer-songwriter and businesswoman Beyoncé, who used it in a campaign to quash the gendered use of “bossy” for any woman who is simply ambitious. This week, she has been bossing a totally different arena, thanks to the announcement of the inclusion of her name in Le Petit Larousse, a French dictionary which has a notoriously stringent selection criteria.

It’s certainly not the first time the star has made her mark: the Destiny’s Child song “Bootylicious“, co-written by her, dramatically pushed that adjective into the mainstream in the early noughties. But to have one’s very name included in the dictionary is a recognition many would aspire to, for this is immortalisation of the linguistic kind.

Granted, Le Petit Larousse is an encyclopaedic dictionary, and Beyoncé’s entry is biographical rather than a word with its own definition. To achieve the latter is rare indeed, reserved for the likes of Shakespeare and Dickens – centuries on an event might still be “Shakespearean” in its tragic proportions, while rental conditions might be positively “Dickensian”.

But it is not impossible in modern times: in 2001 Delia Smith saw “Delia” enter the Collins English Dictionary as a byword for a particular cooking style. Similarly, “Tarantinoesque”, after the director Quentin Tarantino, has found a place within the Oxford English Dictionary for a style of cinema characterised by violence and sharp dialogue. “Boris bike”, a colloquial term for the hireable bikes that were introduced when Boris Johnson was Mayor of London, was also given definition in a few current dictionaries, even if some might prefer Johnson’s legacy to be couched in rather different terms.

In fact, a competition akin to I’m a Celebrity, Get me in the Dictionary would not be short of contestants. From Billy No Mates to Flipping Ada and every Tom, Dick, and Harry, English is chock-full of personalities. And some of them belong to real individuals, whose exploits or achievements have percolated through time so that their name has come to signify one thing.

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The original Jack the Lad, for example, was a notorious thief and folk hero in 18th century London. Brought up in a Bishopsgate workhouse, Jack Sheppard fell into crime at an early age, but his lasting fame rests on his many and spectacular escapes from prison despite increasingly elaborate attempts to keep him there, including being handcuffed and manacled to the floor. He subsequently became known to the authorities as Jack the Lad.

To the poorer classes, Sheppard was a daring hero and irrepressible champion; when his crimes finally caught up with him and he was hanged at Tyburn, a crowd of some 200,000 spectators came to witness it.

Another criminal who unwittingly found his way into the dictionary was Aleck Hoag, a notorious pimp, thief, and confidence man in 19th century New York who was dubbed “smart Aleck” by the NYPD because he considered himself smarter than the rest of them. The epithet has endured as a jibe for a smart-ass know-it-all.

More positively, when we describe ourselves as being “happy as Larry”, we may be giving a silent nod to Larry Foley, a renowned 19th century Australian boxer who retired at 32 and collected a purse of £1,000 for his final fight, presumably making him very happy indeed.

Admittedly there is another contender for the expression’s etymology, namely an old dialect word “larrikin”, meaning a mischievous child – but that wouldn’t be quite as much fun.

We do know that the original “maverick” was a Texan cattle rancher of that name, who consistently refused to brand his cows. Both Samuel Maverick and his animals came to be seen as outliers who didn’t conform to the norm. The name has come to signify just that ever since.

In some cases, the original inspiration for a biographical expression has been lost in time. We have, for example, no idea as to the identity of one Mickey Bliss, but his name became the foundation of the rhyming slang for “taking the mickey”: taking the Mickey Bliss/piss.

The same goes for Nelly Duff, the muse for the expression “not on your Nelly”, in which “not on your Nelly Duff” was part of a complicated rhyming slang formula for “Duff/puff/puff of life” – hence “not on your life”.

The list of dictionary personalities will certainly not end there. Beyoncé reportedly hopes that “bootylicious” will not be her only contribution to the English language. Perhaps her inclusion in Le Petit Larousse is the first step towards the use of her name for something transcending her time and place, with a meaning all of its own. If “Amazonian” has survived the centuries as an adjective for a legendary female warrior, then there is perhaps a chance for her.

For now, we must let democracy do its thing and let language go where the majority wants it to. When it comes to dictionaries, we are all the boss.

Susie Dent is a lexicographer and etymologist. She has appeared in Dictionary Corner on Countdown since 1992, and co-hosts with Gyles Brandreth the podcast Something Rhymes with Purple

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