Rappel; Cracktress

[Grant Barrett]

> CRACKTRESS
>
> This term is on Gawker.com this weekend.
>
> What's it mean? An actress who's gone crackers? An actress who's on
> crack?

Actress who is on crack, or acts like she is.

Nick Denton, the publisher of Gawker (formerly more known for the
news-collator Moreover), has specifically encouraged the editors of
Gawker--Liz Spiers, Choire Sicha, and the newest editor, Jessica Cohen,
in order of tenure--to coin, use, or otherwise expand the gossip
dialect. Choire, who is a passing social acquaintance, told me that.
They have done an admirable job, at least as far as volume and
frequency are concerned: somewhere here I have an aborted "Gawker
lexicon" I put together that has 300 or so terms in it. I've not done
much with it because, 1., none of their coinages appear to have spread,
and, 2., much of the gossip lingo is made of obvious blends and
unremarkable synonyms for perfectly good ordinary words.

Grant Barrett