shorthand

“Touch grass” has become a generation’s cultural shorthand to describe both the isolation and cure for people who seem so deep into a virtual world that the real one has lost meaning.

His turn in “Indecent Proposal” as the wealthy man who offers to rent his employee’s wife lives on as shorthand for tycoons who assume they can buy whatever, and whoever, they want.

The occasional times West spoke directly about the film were often in shorthand, referencing movies like “The Aviator” and “There Will Be Blood,” portraits of men whose genius curdles into obsession and madness.

Timing and temperature got their own shorthand with “BTBRTS” — Bring to Boil, Reduce to Simmer.

The fabric has long been shorthand for rugged individualism and the everyday workwear mythos of the American frontier — in other words, a different, portable performance of Americana.