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define "new"... define "like"  shall we arbitrarily say that coined in the 20th century qualifies as new? (which would mean that words like 'verbicide' and 'frumious' and 'vorpal' and 'illth' are not new!) anyway, here are some: grok (Heinlein '61) booboisie (Mencken '22) bibliobibuli (Mencken ??) grotty (Burke '64) pataphysics (Jarry '45) pataphysical (?Lennon & McCarney '71) senior moment (c. '98) boondocks (?U.S. Marines '44) backslash (BYTE '82) garbology (Rathje c. '76) logophile (??) I hasten to add that I don't particularly *like 'senior moment'; it's just that I'm of an age where the phrase has a certain... je ne sais quoi. 
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enthusiast
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since i asked the question myself (in a different thread), i guess i ought to answer. actually it's a tough one. phrases are out because they usually use old words to create new meanings.
happify is apparently out(!)
how about "vegan"? but it's not a word you could actually like.
what about "jazz"? some people don't like the music (for some bizarre reason), but the word is hardly offensive.
i'll keep thinking, but unfortunately, having a slightly pickled brain, it takes a looooong time for anything to come out.
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#6215
09/11/2000 11:36 PM
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since i asked the question myself (in a different thread)...
What!? Tsuwm is YARTing?
To quote Jackie (pet peeves, July 25):
"ALL RIGHT--WHO ARE YOU, AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE W/ TSUWM?"
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#6216
09/11/2000 11:41 PM
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I'm kinda fond of "cyber." I used to know who coined it. Extremely useful word/modifier.
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Well, I finally thought of one, thanks to your Mencken
quote in your other thread. It can be very accurate, which is why I don't particularly like it, and also why I do like
it (she said enigmatically)!
"Trophy wife".
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"cyber" - William Gibson always gets credited with coining "cyberspace" in 1984, but he certainly didn't invent "cyber" as I'm old enough to remember Dr Who and the Cybermen from c.1970. I guess it all stems from "cybernetics", however old that is.....
"trophy wife" - I also love that one because it is SO emotive and instantly redolent of familiar themes. It also never ceases to amaze me how common it is, particularly on one side of the pond.....
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one I've recently noticed is "pear shaped", as in it's all gone pear shaped, ie horribly wrong. I think it originates as a UK expression - does it have currency in the US? In Oz there's the expression "She'll be apples" for "Everything will be fine". Perhaps they're connected???
( - perhaps this post should be in the apples and pears thread?!!)
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...I meant the apples and oranges thread
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someone please explain senior moment to me...
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#6222
09/13/2000 11:44 AM
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someone please explain senior moment to me...
Sure... it's, ah... what was the question again?
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Pooh-Bah
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>Sure... it's, ah... what was the question again?
I'm sure that my children could identify with that one!
My favourite is "lost the plot" - another familiar refrain.
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old hand
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We might as well include biodiversity here, as an example of a word freshly created for a disappearing entity
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Just got these in from Word Flex. The first is certainly
apt for me! (BTW I had not heard of any of these before.)
MOUSE POTATO:
The on-line, wired generation's equivalent of the "couch potato."
OHNO-SECOND:
That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a really, really big mistake.
SALMON DAY:
A day you've spent "swimming against the current," only to discover at the end of it that, at least as far as that day's concerned, all you've done is died!
STARTER MARRIAGE:
A short-lived first marriage that ends in divorce with "no kids, no property, and no regrets."
STRESS PUPPY:
A person who seems to thrive on telling everybody how much stress he or she has been feeling. (Think that'll take the place of "cheese and whine parties"?)
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I like 'yomp', because the sound of it (and the feel of it if you say it) fit so superbly with the meaning.
Not sure if this word has made it out of the UK yet?
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I like 'yomp', because the sound of it (and the feel of it if you say it) fit so superbly with the meaning.
Very true. Since I first heard it as a 14 year old watching TV coverage of the Falklands conflict, I have loved the way "yomp" rolls off the tongue, and it is very evocative. That could be largely by association, but the word brings back vivid images, and seems to hint at the exertion involved in yomping.
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#6228
09/17/2000 12:53 PM
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>Not sure if this word has made it out of the UK yet?
this is the first I've heard of it... and it doesn't turn up at all in OneLook. but the OED has it, so it will soon be covered by WWFTD (and therefore OneLook)!
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Old hands will know all ropes. New hands struggle: for example in this string I've seen ref to 'Onelook', 'WWFTD', and 'Word Flex', all of which are not yet known to me.
Is there already (or otherwise could we build) a simple index to word-related sites AWAD subscribers have found as a useful resource? I recently got posted a superb such collection of library-orientated research sites.
Which leaves only the drudgery of having to live off-line in the intervals...:)
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AUGH-GH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I HATE the word "orientated"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Jackie, I think that's standard Britspeak. They do like the extra syllable, y'know: witness "aluminium" and "speciality" (awaiting word from across the Pond....)
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maverick, I think that's a splendid idea. In fact, I started such a thread way back when in "Miscellany" but it didn't take.... perhaps our word guru tsuwm would be so kind to re-start it with these word-related sites (one of which is his baby) and we can contribute others.
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old hand
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I like 'yomp', because the sound of it (and the feel of it if you say it) fit so superbly with the meaning.
Very true. Since I first heard it as a 14 year old watching TV coverage of the Falklands conflict, I have loved the way "yomp" rolls off the tongue, and it is very evocative. That could be largely by association, but the word brings back vivid images, and seems to hint at the exertion involved in yomping.
I've never heard this word before, and I can't figure out what it means, either. Perhaps I'm not picking up the clues, but I'm visualizing a yawn mixed with a chomp, but I truly doubt that's the meaning. Could you please enlighten me?
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I've never heard this word before, and I can't figure out what it means, either. Perhaps I'm not picking up the clues, but I'm visualizing a yawn mixed with a chomp, but I truly doubt that's the meaning. Could you please enlighten me?
My Chambers defines it this way: "yomp, (esp. mil. coll.) v.i. to carry heavy equipment on foot over difficult terrain. [Poss. imit.]"
A quick search at Google reveals that the verb is now used very widely in British English to refer to hiking and tramping generally.
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#6235
09/18/2000 10:19 PM
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(awaiting word from across the Pond....)
I'm across the other Pond, but "orientate" jars on me as well. My Chambers makes no reference to any particular variant being responsible for "orientate", but it sounds to me like a back-formation from "orientation" more than an example of the British fondness for extra syllables. My grandparents were sticklers for British pronunciation (trait=tray, mall=mell), and they would never let me get away with "orientate." Interestingly, Merriam-Webster's site tells us that "orientate" first surfaced in 1849, and dictionary,.com has some interesting specimens of its use. Just my $0.02
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for OneLook, etc. see 'online dictionaries' thread in miscellany
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I remember when, about 35 year ago, I was laughed at by a native English-speaker when I translated the German "orientiert" by "orientated"! In the meantime it seems to have become accepted because something more vague than "oriented" was needed. You can say "oriented WSW", but "orientated" covers half the horizon .
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Pooh-Bah
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In fact, it would be hard to translate Helmut Ziegert's 1980 article, entitled "Objektorientierte und problemorientierte Forschungsansätze in der Archäologie" in any other way!
Said she intellectually!
We do like our extra letters.
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#6239
09/19/2000 11:54 AM
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, I was laughed at by a native English-speaker when I translated the German "orientiert" by "orientated"!
GRR, she said, bristling up! It is VERY RUDE to laugh at
someone's innocent mistake. Just goes to show what kind of person they were, muttermuttermutter...
BTW, I hear that horrible word here, all too often.
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I'd say that 'yomp' is more akin to 'slog' and doesn't schlep the negative baggage of 'schlep'.
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My husband uses the term 'hump' for what I think yomp means.
For ex., he'll say the scouts humped the canoes over the
portage, or he and somebody humped the desk up the stairs.
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okay, specifically yomp was used in the Falklands to indicate a forced march with heavy packs; now I think it is used in Britain generally for hiking with a pack...
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Pooh-Bah
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Hump
You might not wish to know what "hump" means here.
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>You might not wish to know what "hump" means here.<
Oh, I think gutter-dwelling Jackie would wish to know!
But the difference between 'yomp' and 'hump' (in Jackie's sense) is that yomp is intransitive and hump is transitive.
I feel like heading back to 'Dried Words' - this is another case where the one word has more than one meaning inherent in it. To be hiking and to be heavily laden. No object required. One just yomps acros the countryside and an overfilled backpack appears as if by magic in the listener's (reader's) mind's eye.
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gutter-dwelling Jackie??? HEY!! I resemble that remark! And yes, jmh-who-posted-a-saying-I-am-too-emmbarrassed-to-even-type, I DO just so happen to know the other meaning! I think my husband picked up the term from the Vietnam veterans he used to work with. Ack--just re-checked this. You've got me stuttering with emm-barrassment! I'm not even going to change it! Gee-mi-NEE, I could NEVER tell anyone that!!!
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I like sitcom, since it applies so well to myself. Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage.
TEd
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#6248
09/27/2000 10:30 AM
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>I like sitcom<
I find it entertaining, but I haven't been aware of it being used in day-to-day speech. It still seems to be one that has to be 'explained' - I think this means it is still in the throes of birth as a word! (at least in this part of the world)
Nimby, on the other hand, I think has made the crossover. And I like it because it reminds me of namby-pamby and I do think the nimbies are very namby pamby. (Like meat-eaters who can't bear to kill or gut or skin an animal - there's an inherent contradiction between what they want to enjoy and their unwillingness to endure what is needed to get there.)
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...and nimby reminds of the also acronymic posslq /poz el cue/
(Person of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters)
| There's nothing that I wouldn't do,
| If you would be my Posslq,
| You'd live for me and I for you
| If you would be my Posslq.
| ...
| ...
| .
| .
| .
| We'd live forever, you and me,
| In blessed posslq-ity!
-Charles Osgood
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#6250
10/12/2000 11:16 PM
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I know this is very late in the day/thread but...
I think "cybernetics" was a term invented by Turing, the computer genius/visionary and man largely responsible for breaking the Enigma code. He also first conceived of AIs, which is really where the phrase comes in to its own, as it is meant to mean "steersmanship".. or perhaps self-steering.
Or something.
Derived from an ancient Greek mythical figure I recall.
And I remember the Cybermen too! Now, THEY used to have me hiding behind the couch.
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Cybermen, Ice Warriors, Yeti, Alpha Centauri, Leila, K9, Sarah Jane Smith: those were the days.
Bingley
Bingley
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I like the Yeti best. It's funny, when you see re-runs it just looks like a load of cardboard boxes, a few egg cartons, a bit of tin foil and some sticky back plastic. It made Thunderbirds look hi-tec but at the time it was so scary.
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