All the ADSers that're fit to print

[Laurence Horn]

For those who don't get the Times...

(I assume the reference in the second paragraph to the AHD "Fourth
Edition" coming out in April is a typo for "Fifth".)

larry
=============

The New York Times
February 24, 2002, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section 1; Page 1; Column 6; Metropolitan Desk

HEADLINE: A NATION CHALLENGED: LANGUAGE;
Words of 9/11 Go From Coffee Shops To the Dictionaries

BYLINE:  By JANNY SCOTT

   Every catastrophe begets its own linguistic fallout -- words and
phrases forged by the awful novelty of the moment or catapulted from
obscurity into everyday speech. Sept. 11 is no exception: its
neologistic progeny have infiltrated the language of public discourse
and private conversation. And now, in a few cases, they are headed
into the dictionary.

  When the American Dialect Society, a group of scholars who study
American English, recently held its annual voting on the top new, or
newly reconditioned, words of the previous year, 9/11 was voted the
expression most likely to last. The nominees in various categories
included weaponize, ground zero, theoterrorism, daisy cutter, facial
profiling and debris surge, among quite a few others. At Houghton
Mifflin in Boston, the editors of the American Heritage College
Dictionary, Fourth Edition, due out in April, recently went back in
after their editorial deadline and added an entry for 9/11.
(Alphabetized by the spelling of the first digit, it is to appear
between nine days' wonder and ninepin.) They also added burka,
Taliban, weaponize and hawala. Madrassah and Wahhabism were already
in. "It's so funny," said Steve Kleinedler, a senior editor for the
dictionary. "No one asks about chad anymore."

  Words enter the language or leap to prominence when there is
something new to describe; they stick around if there is some
continuing reason to describe it. Many fade quickly, their longevity
directly proportional to the longevity of the phenomena they name.
Catchiness helps. But some new terms are too clever to last.

  "Shoeicide bomber, that's pretty awful," said Allan Metcalf, a
professor of English at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., and
executive secretary of the American Dialect Society. He was citing a
phrase, traced by some to Jay Leno, that the society voted most
creative. "It is so in-your-face clever that I think it's probably
gone even now."

  In the category of most inspirational, the society voted unanimously
for the immortal words of Todd Beamer, used to rally passengers
against the hijackers on United Airlines Flight 93: "Let's roll."
President Bush has adopted the phrase, and a foundation set up in Mr.
Beamer's name to help children of Sept. 11 victims is seeking
trademark protection of the expression to try to ensure that any
profits from its reuse benefit victims' families.

  Immediately after Sept. 11, words and expressions began piling up.
Wayne Glowka, a professor of English at Georgia College and State
University in Milledgeville who edits a column on new words for the
journal American Speech, was keeping track. Envelopes stuffed with
clippings containing candidate words regularly arrive in his mail,
sent by correspondents nationwide.

  First there was 911 and 9/11, used to signify not just the date, but
everything that happened on it and afterward. There were terms like
ground zero, evildoers, Al Qaeda and Taliban. Then there was
post-Taliban and anti-Taliban and Sept. 10 "as an adjective meaning
oblivious to danger or naive," Professor Glowka said. "I nearly drove
off the road when I heard Rush Limbaugh reading an article someone
had passed him about the Osamaniacs," he said. The word was being
used for women infatuated with Osama bin Laden. The professor said he
grabbed a tissue and scribbled Osamaniacs on it. Later, he said, he
happened upon a related term, Osamaphiles.

  He has also noticed the occasional use of bin added to a name for a
kind of all-purpose demonization, not necessarily because the person
in question supported Al Qaeda. "When you listen to talk radio,
people will call in and say, 'I don't like this Johnny bin Walker
guy,' " he said, recalling a reference to John Walker Lindh.

  In Hyde Park, N.Y., David K. Barnhart, editor and publisher of the
Barnhart Dictionary Companion, a quarterly publication of new words,
made his own list of 2001 words in preparation for the dialect
society's vote. He included anthrax anxiety, Goliath syndrome,
religio-terror, shoe bomb, Talibanize and World Trade Center cough.

  In January, the society held its annual meeting in San Francisco. In
the voting on the word of the year, 9/11 and its variants overwhelmed
burka, homeland (as in homeland security), theoterrorism and ground
zero. The word or phrase of the year is meant to be the one that best
reflects public preoccupations. The winner for 1991, in the Persian
Gulf war era, was "mother of all. . . ."

  There were other, not entirely scientific, categories. As "most
euphemistic," the society chose "daisy cutter," the dainty term for a
15,000-pound United States bomb that explodes just above the ground.
It edged out "women of cover," defined by the society as a "Bushism
for Muslim women who wear traditional dress."

  Lexicographers are obliged to be a little more selective. "Part of
our duty is to figure out what has staying power," said Mr.
Kleinedler of American Heritage. Weaponize, which had been around
before but was under the radar, probably should have been in the
dictionary all along, he said. Though most political groups do not
get in, he said, the editors made an exception for the Taliban
because of the group's impact on American history.

  The editors opted not to include 911 as a variant of 9/11 or 9-11
because of concerns that it could be confused with the emergency
number and because that style was not common in print. They did not
add the new meaning to their entry on ground zero, choosing to wait
and see whether the phrase will turn out to merit its own sense, Mr.
Kleinedler said.

  At the Oxford English Dictionary, Jesse Sheidlower, the principal
editor of the North American editorial unit, said weaponization and
weaponized were already in the dictionary and they would add
weaponize as a verb. "Burka is already in. Theoterrorism we currently
don't have the evidence for. Ground zero is probably too specific,
though it's a possibility. We have it in the nuclear sense."

  (For those who need a refresher on the recent developments in
vocabulary, hawala is an informal system of remittance used in much
of the Arab world; a madrassah, also spelled madrasa, is an Islamic
school; Wahhabism is a strict form of Islam.)

  Mr. Sheidlower said he doubted that Sept. 11 and its aftermath would
have much lasting effect on the language. Professor Glowka suggested
that that remained to be seen. It would depend, he said, on how
important it all seemed years from now.

  Mr. Barnhart, meanwhile, was off stalking a newer new word.
"Incidentally, I did discover some evidence of the term Enronese," he
wrote in a letter last week. "It is very skimpy evidence at this
point, however. What the appearance of this term reveals is that in
the view of some observers, Enron's collapse has begun to generate
enough unique vocabulary to warrant a cover term ending in -ese."
   http://www.nytimes.com

  GRAPHIC: Photos: Since Sept. 11, the term "ground zero" has been
applied to nonnuclear devastation, and words like "burka" have
cropped up in conversations. (Ruth Fremson/The New York Times);
(Tyler Hicks)(pg. 12)