Oxford University Press has declared the word of the year to be “selfie.” Merriam-Webster says it’s “science.” But if those stuffy dictionary types weren’t such pussies, they’d acknowledge that the words of the year are “cunt punt.”
No turn of phrase captured the nation’s imagination as powerfully as this, featured in University of Maryland student Rebecca Martinson’s rageful manifesto about her Delta Gamma sorority sisters’ lack of game with the brothers of Sigma Nu. Martinson’s letter, which went viral after landing on Gawker, alleged that the ladies were “so fucking BORING,” “fucking WEIRD at sports,” and possibly “fucking retarded.” But what elevated Martinson’s email into viral infamy was her use of “cunt punt”—as in, “I’m going to fucking cunt punt the next person I hear doing something like that” at a recreational sports event.
It’s a curious phrase—one that raises questions of its literal or figurative meaning, as well as issues of feminist rhetoric and the reappropriation of subjugating language. It also fucking rhymes.
Martinson resigned from Delta Gamma shortly after she introduced the world to cunt-punting and has been trying to parlay her infamy into literary success. The ex-sister, unfortunately, seems to have been a one-word wonder: The only catchphrase in her latest essay, for Vice, was the far more pedestrian “double blowjob.”