I had no idea what the term “pause” meant, other than when I pressed the little button on my ipod. But thanks to a college student who emailed us this week, I now know it means “No Homo.” It doesn’t get me riled up, but it’s still interesting. The student had written us because he’s noticed various NBA players using the term in their Twitter feeds. One of them is New York Knick forward Wilson Chandler (confirmed to be Chandler via the Knicks’ official Twitter feed). And you get the full meaning of the term in context. From Chandler’s Twitter feed:
Watchin South Central classic ish… My Yankees went down (pause) but we’ll bounce right back!
Miami weather is ridiculous… Better enjoy this while I can (pause) about to go to my bro’s crib and chill up for a while
Congrads 2 the Yankees! Another win, pulled out at the end (pause)
Thanks 4 the updates! Man I needed the Dodgers 2 lose, well at least the Yankees doing their thing! I might check them boys out tom, pause!
Another is fellow New York Knick Nate Robinson:
At star dinner, get n my 2scramble eggs grits sausage patties pause and grilled cheese sandwich its crazy word aaappp
Man I’m sit n n my jeep listen n too one of the best R&B songs tyrese(give love a try) classic pause ! Word aapp
Now what am I suppose to do when I want n my world but how can I want u 4 myself when I’m allready someone’s girl(pause)
It’s tough for me to get too excited about this term. “No homo” didn’t upset me, and this colloquial term meaning “No homo”…I’m just not offended or upset about it. To me, the term means, “Hey I’m not gay.” It doesn’t mean, “I hate gays.” Does it? Am I missing something here?
BTW, anyone know what aapp and aaappp mean?
Interestingly, Chandler’s Twitter feed has been taken down. I’m not sure why, but it’s an interesting coincidence that it got taken down after all these “pause” posts.
on Nov 4th, 2009 at 2:27 PM
Yeah, I don’t find it offensive. It’s almost like “that’s what she said.” Or “I’m just sayin.”
on Nov 4th, 2009 at 4:14 PM
The usage of it in the tweets above absolutely makes no sense. Swapping in “no homo” for “pause”:
Miami weather is ridiculous… Better enjoy this while I can (no homo)…
Congrads 2 the Yankees! Another win, pulled out at the end (no homo)
What, rooting for the Yankees to win makes you gay? (Well, actually…
never mind) Enjoying good weather means you’re queer? So you have to clarify that you’re not? And to equate it with “Just sayin’”? Why not just SAY “Just sayin;”?
It’s not as bad as Larry Johnson’s usage of “faggot.” It’s certainly not as vile as the right-wing nutjobs who fight against equal rights — way to go, Maine
— but to just completely laugh this off and ignore it is ludicrous. There IS some homophobia in there, not to mention rampant stupidity and lack of grammar and spelling.
on Nov 4th, 2009 at 9:20 PM
Hm, it’s kind of like when you say “I love you, but not in that way”, which can be used between any mix of men or women. Though at the same time, it’s sad that anything we say can be interpreted as a double entendre, gay or straight.
Don’t quite understand the pause as the breakfast items were being rolled out……
on Nov 5th, 2009 at 12:27 AM
I think only people who are insecure & dimwitted would use “no homo.”
I don’t remember where I saw it, but some rapper would interject “no homo” about every other sentence. Obviously, he thought he was being cool. However, I thought it made him out to be a total dips**t.
on Nov 5th, 2009 at 5:09 AM
An interesting recent essay on Slate about this:
Does This Purple Mink Make Me Look Gay?
The rise of no homo and the changing face of hip-hop homophobia.
http://www.slate.com/id/2224348/
Excerpt:
No homo [...] allows, implicitly, that rap is a place where gayness can in fact be expressed by the guy on the mic, not just scorned in others. In the very act of trying to “purify” an utterance of any gayness, after all, the no homo tag must contaminate it first—it’s both a denial and a flashing neon arrow. This isn’t to suggest that saying no homo is a radical act, but there’s an appealing sense in which the phrase refuses to function as tidily as some of its boosters might like. This is especially striking in those cases when rappers add no homo to statements of sexual pleasure we’d otherwise have no reason to think of as gay. “No homo, I go hard,” Chamillionaire rapped on a recent mix tape, implying that an erection is inherently homosexual.
on Nov 5th, 2009 at 6:39 AM
And on the other hand, we are reading that lots of straight men are putting (x) kisses at the end of their text messages… to their guy friends.
NY Times: Phone Texting Reveals Sensitive New “Metrotextual”
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/11/03/technology/tech-us-britain-phone-metrotextuals.html
on Nov 5th, 2009 at 11:41 AM
i dont get the use of “pause” after the miami sentence, but after the “congrads 2 the yankees” sentence, he said, “pulled out at the end,” so i guess that’s what he’s talking about.
on Nov 5th, 2009 at 12:48 PM
Language is a many-splendored thing. But this “tweet” jargon is way beyond me.
Do folks go into an interview talking like this?
And I assume “app…” is a variation on “up” as in “What’s up with that?”, or “Word up!”.
It’s all Greek to me. But if makes them happy…
on Nov 5th, 2009 at 12:49 PM
It wouldn’t surprise me if both of the over-paid and overrated players were Gay. Probably Homo!
-Just saying!
on Nov 5th, 2009 at 1:18 PM
Only the paranoid will pause.
on Nov 5th, 2009 at 1:35 PM
I personally don’t give a damn what someone says over their own tweet account. This again is much ado about nothing.
on Nov 5th, 2009 at 2:56 PM
Looks to me as though it’s a version of “jinx” to innoculate anything you say which might be twisted into a juvenile double entendre.
on Nov 5th, 2009 at 10:52 PM
Sounds like its sometimes used to call attention to the double entendre rather than supress it, in which case it even comes off a bit gay friendly.
on Nov 6th, 2009 at 8:10 AM
So this “pause” thing must be a single key stroke otherwise it would seem to defeat the entire apparent purpose of an abbreviated language: brevity. I suppose, for young black guys especially, the alternative jargon is just another linguistic rebellion against the “slave tongue” forced upon their ancestors along with labor; a kind of pidgeon English. The Guardian has a multi-page section about how English is taught around the world – I assume to contribute to the quality of that instruction. They would probably have minor heart attacks reading “Tweets”. It could become International English.
on Nov 7th, 2009 at 3:50 AM
Perhaps (pause) is this decade’s yada yada?