This is Artest, if this had not been Artest you would have been instructed.....

[Rex W. Stocklin]

Okay, while not strictly within the starched Oxford cloths of this
domain, I had just coined a word, in the loosest of terms, and felt I
need to share it with those who might enjoy that process. Eh, dunno,
but, who cares, email is an evanescent commodity.


So how many of you folks are sports fans? Well the, if not, how many
hail from Hossierland? Sacromento or environs? Uh, Detroit. K.

I know puns are easy, you see them all the time in headlines of
magazines and even newspapers, and especially "The Daily Show". But I
am particularly proud to unveil mine:

Ronnybrook - a tumult that results when your very controversial
sports team player leaps across the play-view barrier and into
notoriety. Well, that's the classic definition, but a ronnybrook can
be ANY sports melee I suppose.

And if I need to spell it out for the still clueless, just Google
"Ron Artest" and "Detroit" and "David Stern" all in the same search.

I've done WAY more serious and less pun-driven coinages, but haven't
thought to burden the list with them.

An example:

"watercooling" - the art of gossiping, or discussing why it wasn't
the numbers, but Jack Bauer ploy that brought down that plane, around
the office Hinckley and Schmitt or Arrowhead bottle. I haven't
decided if a "watercoolant" is a topic of discussion or a
participant, but I am leaning towards the former, as in a
water-cooled item the coolant is the object of the cooling, or would
that be subject. Oh this hurts my head. Think I'll go get a drink of
water.

Now, I coined this maybe 12 years ago, but I looked around on the net
to see if I had been preceded and, I swear, the only uses of the term
or related terms (watercoolant, watercool) besides the "watercooler"
itself (which I think technically is two words) are in the computer
hardware cooling systems.

Therer WAS "gobbledygeek" - which, sadly, I've since discovered, via
Google, has already been coined even though I coined it maybe 30
years ago, when I was a student at Rose-Hulman Institute of
Technology. Sigh....


Have a loose day folks!
Rex Stocklin
Fishers

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org