Decoder Ring | Mailbag: Drug Names, Cow Abductions, and the āAss-Intensifierā
In this episode weāre opening our mailbag to answer three fascinating questions from our listeners. How did āass,ā a word for donkeys and butts, become what linguists call an āintensifierā for just about everything? How do pharmaceuticals get their wacky names? And why do we all seem to think that aliens from outer space would travel to Earth just to kidnap our cows?
In this episode, youāll hear from linguistics professor Nicole Holliday, historians Greg Eghigian and Mike Goleman, and professional ānamerā Laurel Sutton.
This episode of Decoder Ring was produced by Willa Paskin, Max Freedman, and Katie Shepherd. Our supervising producer is Evan Chung. Merritt Jacob is Slateās Technical Director.Ā
If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at
[email protected], or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.
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Sources for This Episode
Bengston, Jonas. āPost-Intensifying: The Case of the Ass-Intensifier and Its Similar but Dissimilar Danish Counterpart,ā Leviathan, 2021.
Collier, Roger. āThe art and science of naming drugs,ā Canadian Medical Association Journal, Oct. 2014.
Eghigian, Greg. After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon, Oxford University Press, 2024.
Goleman, Michael J. āWave of Mutilation: The Cattle Mutilation Phenomenon of the 1970s,ā Agricultural History, 2011.
Karet, Gail B. āHow Do Drugs Get Named?ā AMA Journal of Ethics, Aug. 2019.
Miller, Wilson J. āGrammaticalizaton in English: A Diachronic and Synchronic Analysis of the "ass" Intensifier,ā Masterās Thesis, San Francisco State University, 2017.
Monroe, Rachel. āThe Enduring Panic About Cow Mutilations,ā The New Yorker, May 8, 2023.
A Strange Harvest, dir. Linda Moulton Howe, KMGH-TV, 1980.
āUnited States Adopted Names naming guidelines,ā AMA.
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