Family Guy Vocabulary: Amniotic Attica

This is part two of our first vocabulary list, from Season One, Episode Three of Family Guy, Chitty Chitty Death Bang. Stewie has learned of his upcoming first birthday party, and suspects that there’s treachery afoot.  So Stewie runs to his crib, determined to figure out what trick his mother is planning against him:

Dear Diary,

It seems the domestic overseers are plotting against me. Their plans somehow relate the anniversary of my escape from the womb. I’m still haunted by the memories of how I came to be incarcerated in that amniotic Attica.

[inside a sperm cell] As I recall, it was every potential man for himself. I alone had reached the target objective, thanks to the peerless intrepidity I developed at testicular boot camp. But it was a trap! I was imprisoned in that uterine gulag for nine grueling months.

[in flashback] Day 171: I’ve sprouted an odd finger, counting the one from yesterday, I’m up to 11.

As the months of solitude passed, I began to go insane. It seemed my prison cell was getting smaller and smaller. I was quite sure that soon I would be dead. But then, a miracle! There was a light at the end of the tunnel. I rushed to freedom, but suddenly I was ambushed by a mysterious man in white.

The man in white! Of course! He must be the hired professional of whom they spoke. He failed to thwart my escape into the outside world and now, one year hence, he’s returning to rectify his mistake and put me back in the womb.

Domestic means related to the home. The word is useful for referring to the bad-old-days, women were expected to stay home all the time and clean the house, change diapers, and cook. As in, “Women should tend faithfully to their domestic duties.” You’ll also hear the word domestic when you’re watching the news. So when Mr. Borger at CNN says Obama is staking his presidency on his domestic policy, he means Obama is concentrating on problems here at home in America.

Overseer simply means manager or supervisor. His choice of the word overseer here, rather than, say caretaker, is part of the irony of Stewie’s personality. It implies distance between Stewie and Lois, and suggests that he’s oppressed by her. This is, of course, one of the recurring themes of the show.

Amniotic Attica is priceless. In English teacher terms, it’s an alliterative allusion. Alliteration is when you repeat the same consonnant sound at the beginning of several words for poetic effect. ~eminem is pretty good at this~ An allusion is a reference to something –say, a book, a place, a movie, an historical event– you already know about so you can connect meanings together in your head. Family Guy is loaded with allusions, but if you don’t know what is being alluded to, then you have nothing to connect with.

Amniotic fluid is the fluid inside a woman’s womb when she’s pregnant. It nourishes and protects the baby, but Stewie connects it with Attica, which is an infamous prison in a town by the same name in New York. But this isn’t just any prison. Attica is known mainly for the riot that took place there in 1971, in which prisoners demanded better living conditions from their overseers. You can watch an interesting documentary about the Attica prison riot here, here, and here. Incarcerated, of course, means imprisoned.

Your peers are those in the same standing as you, so when Stewie refers to his peerless intrepidity, he’s saying nobody can match his intrepidity. But what is intrepidity? Intrepid means bold, fearless. ~i guess that’s why they named those cars intrepid. they hoped you’d be fooled into thinking a car could make you fearless.~

Gulag is yet another reference to prisons. Gulags were forced labor prisons in the former USSR. Grueling means trying or taxing to the point of exhaustion. ~did you notice the near alliteration there?~

Solitude refers to the state of being alone. Poor Stewie. If you’ve ever played Halo, you should know that ambushed means attacked from a place of hiding. One year hence is simply an archaic way of saying, one year later, or one year from that time. ~using archaic words here and there can make you sound educated~

Rectify means to make right. Notice how rectify, rectory, rectangle, and rectum all have the same root? They are all derived from the Latin rectus, which means straight. So the doctor has come to set straight his mistake. The rectory is where the priest lives, the guy who walks the straight and narrow path. A rectangle is made up of four straight lines. And your rectum is also known as your straight intestine. These are the things you learn from reading the dictionary.

Now that you’ve learned some new words from Stewie, you can go back to your regularly scheduled loafing.