Bright young thing, firecracker, whip-smart: compliments that may be backhanded negs.

Bright young thing, firecracker, whip-smart: compliments that may be backhanded negs. If wunderkind implies you need

There’s firecracker. You need to be known as a firecracker, I believe? Should you’re a lady, this means the speaker approves individuals. He (it’s often a he) finds you feisty, energetic, opinionated, and honest. Additionally you might be around the petite side, just like a compact paper cylinder full of explosives. The thing is, it’s cute whenever you yell! (Meanwhile, should you’re a guy and someone calls a firecracker, you’re either the singer Miguel or John Fletcher, a persons Firecracker, who over many years of performances has lit greater than 600,000 fireworks off his body.) Likewise, while lots of guys have been referred to as “whip-smart”—including Andrew Sullivan, a “whip-smart voice of reason within the racket that’s the dunia ngeblog,” George Clooney, and also the all-guy band OK Go—the word is much more frequently mounted on people from the second sex: Ellen Page, Gail Collins, Elizabeth Warren, Rachel Maddow, modern moms, a sensible-cracking dominatrix, Lisbeth Salander. This gender imbalance might have something related to Liz Phair’s 1994 album Whip-Smart, which gave the adjective an enduring feminine shine. But this may also connect with the way the compliment, whilst not backhanded exactly, suggests an amount of inexperience or unrealized potential that’s absent from more masculine terms like wunderkind.Bright young thing, firecracker, whip-smart: compliments that may be backhanded negs. lady, this means the speaker Look out for the wunderkind: He’s a genius, and that he’ll eat your lunch. The whip-smart new hire appears rather less threatening—unproven and rough round the edges. If wunderkind implies you need to bow lower, then whip-smart states “don’t count her out at this time.” She might not seem like much, but possibly she’ll end up being greater than the most recent vibrant youthful factor.

Resourse: http://slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2015/01/04/

Good Intentions 3: Compliments (Stand-up comedy)