A “Frisco,” I recently learned, is “something that outsiders spontaneously say that secretly marks them as outsiders unbeknownst to them.”

[from a “The Far Side” comic by Gary Larson]

The concept, which came to my attention via Hanno Sauer (Utrecht), is related to the concept of a shibboleth, a linguistic term distinctive to a particular group, but kind of its opposite. Coined by Dan Engber, its name comes from the supposed fact that “people from all over the country think it’s cool to call San Francisco ‘Frisco,’ but no genuine native San Franciscans would ever use the word to describe their city.”

Several years ago we had a discussion of what we called “shibboleth names” in philosophy, that is, names the common mispronunciation of which marks speakers as inferior in some way. Maybe we should have called them “Frisco names.”

In any event, the domain of philosophical friscos—let’s just go all in and call them phriscos—goes beyond names and mispronunciations.

A classic example of a phrisco, offered by Scott Hill (Innsbruck) in response to Sauer, is using “begs the question” among philosophers to mean “raises the question” rather than “assumes the very thing it sets out to prove.” (Yes I know some of you think we should give up on this one, but nonetheless it still functions as phrisco.)

Here’s another phrisco: using “refuted” when one means “disagreed with”.

I think we could have a little fun, and at the same time provide a valuable service to philosophical novices, by identifying these phriscos.

The post Phriscos first appeared on Daily Nous.