Perineal agriculture?

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Jack Maloney sent in a link to a talk at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute about "Plant Soil Microbiomes in Perineal Agriculture":

Switching from an annual agriculture system to a perineal agriculture system that most closely resembles natural prairies will include changes to the way we manage soil, the lifespan of the plants, and the diversity of the crops there. KU Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Ben Sikes will talk about how each of these changes will influence diseases and the beneficial partners that live in the soil.

Presumably "perineal" in this context is a Cupertino for "perennial". Jack's comment:

'Perineal agriculture': not a subject I even want to think about, much less attend a lecture about!

The obligatory screenshot:



22 Comments

  1. CL Thornett said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 3:30 pm

    Presumably raising vaginal flora?

    [(myl) No, I'm sure that perineal agriculture is a gender-neutral enterprise.]

  2. Dan Lufkin said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 3:48 pm

    It certainly eliminates the need for artificial fertilizer.

  3. CC said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 4:03 pm

    Obviously a subheading under "Manscaping."

  4. Theophylact said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 4:08 pm

    Surely the Republicans have been cultivating assholes recently.

  5. Jan Freeman said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 5:21 pm

    Bryan Garner and I recently had a Twitter exchange about encounters with accidental "perineal."

    His tweet and mine, from Dec. 19:

    Garner: RIP Judge Myron Bright of the 8th Cir. A blooper appears in today's Mpls Star Tribune obit: “perineal” for "perennial.” Don't look it up.

    Jan Freeman ‏@BryanAGarner I once saw a department store ad offering a sweater in "perineal blue." (Before the monkey w/such coloring was discovered.)

  6. Chris C. said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 5:40 pm

    How horrible to find the title of one's lecture thus tainted.

  7. Adrian Morgan said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 5:47 pm

    This rings a bell. Click here and search for the word "grass" to arrive at the relevant part of the text. You see? There are no original ideas.

  8. David Morris said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 5:47 pm

    I think some asshole did it deliberately.

  9. Bob Moore said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 6:35 pm

    I doubt that is a strict Cupertino, in the sense that a word processor autocorrected "perennial" to "perineal", since the Google books corpus suggests that "perennial" is at least five times more frequent than "perineal". If the author did not type "perineal", he or she likely typed a misspelling that had a smaller edit distance to "perineal" than to "perennial".

  10. Andrew Usher said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 6:59 pm

    Perhaps the word was transcribed from the speech of someone with the pin/pen merger? Either manual or auto- correction could transform any spelling with 'i' in the second syllable to 'perineal' (stressed on the third syllable I believe; but how many people are sure?).

    I notice that this is Kansas, where there are likely significant numbers both with and without the merger, and that the merged vowel almost always sounds like 'pin' to non-mergers.

    k_over_hbarc at yahoo.com

  11. Emily said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 8:48 pm

    Was Shakespeare referring to this form of agriculture in "Venus and Adonis"?

    Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry,
    Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.
    Within this limit is relief enough,
    Sweet bottom-grass and high delightful plain…

  12. Emily said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 8:49 pm

    Also gives a whole new meaning to "your ass is grass."

  13. Reinhold {Rey} Aman said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 9:08 pm

    @ Chris C.:

    How horrible to find the title of one's lecture thus tainted.

    That was sneaky!

    @ [(myl) No, I'm sure that perineal agriculture is a gender-neutral enterprise.]

    It usually refers to females. See taint.

  14. Adrian Morgan said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 9:14 pm

    @Emily I have never heard that phrase except in the short story that I linked to above.

    [(myl) Standard 1969 U.S. Army drill sargeant phrase: "Your ass is grass, and I'm the lawnmower."]

  15. Chris C. said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 10:11 pm

    @Adrian Morgan — It's a somewhat obsolete expression, which is why you encountered it in a 55 year old short story but not a more recent source. One heard it from time to time in my youth, back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth.

  16. Chris C. said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 10:14 pm

    *Or not. I got it confused with a different story by the same title. Still, it can't date to much later than 1980.

  17. Anthony said,

    February 3, 2017 @ 11:08 pm

    But Love has pitched his mansion in
    The place of excrement (Yeats)

  18. Rachael said,

    February 4, 2017 @ 6:51 am

    Bob Moore, that's exactly what a Cupertino is. It comes from people mistyping cooperation as cooperatino, which gets corrected to Cupertino. It's not about correctly-spelled words getting autocorrected.

  19. Robert Coren said,

    February 4, 2017 @ 10:45 am

    @Jan Freeman: I'm interested in your parenthetical "Before the monkey w/such coloring was discovered". I assume this refers to the vervet or black-faced monkey, of which I saw many in Tanzania in 2008 (and which our guide jokingly claimed was also known as the blue-balled monkey). Is its "discovery" recent, as in within the lifetime of anyone now living?

  20. Jan Freeman said,

    February 4, 2017 @ 11:12 am

    @Robert Coren: Not a monkey expert! But I believe the blue-bottomed monkey I refer to is the lesula, "discovered" (says Wikipedia) in 2007. At least one source called its coloring "unique," perhaps referring to the extent of the bright blue patch. I last referred to it in this Boston Globe column — but as you can see, it was just an aside. (I think I mentioned the mistake, but not the monkey, in a 2007 column, now paywalled or disappeared.)

    http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/theword/2008/12/addie_mock_meet.html

  21. Perineal agriculture? "'Perineal agriculture': not a subject I even want to think about, much less attend a lecture about!" said,

    February 5, 2017 @ 4:25 am

    […] Perineal agriculture? "'Perineal agriculture': not a subject I even want to think about, much l… […]

  22. F said,

    February 6, 2017 @ 8:13 am

    "Presumably "perineal" in this context is a Cupertino for "perennial"."

    Either that, or "annual" should read "anal".

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