A woman about a week ago called herself a 'FReepie'.
I like ta died.
Well, I suppose I shall do a little linguistic dance here, and stop using 'Free Republicans' in favor of 'members of Free Republic'--one hopes that offends no one, but assumes it might.
But I'll be hanged if I use a "cutesy" word to describe us.
I once worked with a 'liberated' woman, a Ms, 'gender-neutral' language and all that; she was upper-middle management (or lower-upper management), I was middle-middle management.
I was in charge of 'customer utilization bases' (plural of 'base'), numbers that took a lot of tracking down and analyzing.
I called them what they were; 'customer utilization bases;' some others called them simply 'cubs' or the acronym 'CUB' (see-you-bee), but this particular woman called them 'cubbies'--which to me seemed a rather childish way of referring to numbers.
She constantly interrupted me when I was giving reports, calling the thing that I gave by its real name, 'he means cubbies, you know.'
This same woman had the habit of adding consonaut-'ie' to a lot of words, as if learned from baby-talk or something.
This was a grown-up, liberated, woman doing this.
The normal person speaks at a rate of, perhaps, 200-300 words per minute; I speak at a rate of 20, maybe as fast as 30 words per minute. So under usual circumstances, 'customer utilization bases' already seems long.....but so as to irk her, I could drag that phrase out for a mile, making it ten miles long if I wished to.
Many times I was hollered at by her, 'WHY DON'T YOU GET WITH THE PROGRAM????', in reference of course to my refusal to baby-talk about serious numbers.
From other sources--I myself never went to her house--I learned this liberated woman had a 'thing' for teddy-bears (she was in her late 40s, and single), and the headboard over her bed was a half-circle some seven feet high, colored pink and lavish with ruffles and frills.
Such are those who use "cutesy" names for things.
Bah, humbug.