my personal woty

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

I suppose the reason that "roadside bomb" is not in dictionaries is that it 
is almost totally transparent. If you know what "roadside" means and what 
"bomb" means, you know what "roadside bomb" means. "Dog food" gets 2.400,000 Google 
hits, but it isn't in NOAD.


In a message dated 1/11/06 10:26:24 PM, debaron at UIUC.EDU writes:


> Speaking of truthiness, when NCTE gave Jon Stewart the George Orwell 
> Award for Excellence in Analyzing public discourse, he totally 
> ignored us, so whatever you think of truthiness, at least Stephen 
> Colbert acknowledged the gesture. My own candidate for WOTY for the 
> past 2 years running has been roadside bomb, a suggestion that no one 
> picks up on (not found in dictionaries, btw). See the following for 
> the google count (as of mid-December) and the Lexis/Nexis count for 
> Nov-Dec.:
> 
> Roadside Bomb: The Word of the Year for 2005
> 
> by Dennis Baron
> 
> The word of the year for 2005 – actually a phrase –  is roadside 
> bomb. It was my choice for word of the year for 2004, and in the 
> absence of an exit strategy for the war in Iraq, it looks to be the 
> word of the year for 2006 as well.
> 
> Although it’s not in any dictionary, roadside bomb is not a new 
> phrase. It appears in a 1979 AP story about Basque terrorists, and 
> roadside bombs were popular with insurgents in Lebanon and Bosnia. 
> “Roadside bomb” may not be as old as the related “car bomb,” used in 
> Northern Ireland in 1972, or “suicide bomber,” with a destructive 
> history going back at least to 1941. Nor is it as popular on the 
> Internet. Googling “roadside bomb” nets 1,010,000 hits, a three-fold 
> jump since last year. But car bombs are stronger, at over 3 million, 
> and suicide bombers lead the hit parade, with more than 3.74 million 
> served.
> 
> But unlike car bomb and suicide bomber, roadside bomb has a ring to 
> it that is both catchy and paradoxical. It combines the peaceful 
> image of the roadside café, the roadside stand, and the roadside rest 
> with the element of surprise provided by the explosion that typically 
> follows. And the explosion does follow: roadside bombs have become 
> the weapon of choice for Iraqi insurgents.
> 
> Like other wars, the war in Iraq affects not just the lives of 
> individuals and the course of history, it also changes the language 
> landscape. The two World Wars embedded terms like “Kilroy,” and 
> “radar” into English, not to mention catch phrases like “making the 
> world safe for democracy” and “peace in our time.” The first Gulf War 
> brought Saddam Hussein’s warning that American invaders would face 
> “the mother of all battles,” which proved a dud. But the phrase lived 
> on.
> 
> The second Gulf War also started with a slogan, “shock and awe,” 
> which backfired when the peace in Iraq proved deadlier than the war 
> it followed. GW II did bring “regime change” to Iraq – though we’re 
> still waiting to see what the regime will change into. “Spider hole,” 
> a vintage term from WW II, popped up briefly when Saddam Hussein was 
> found hiding in one, then faded away. But “weapons of mass 
> destruction,” a phrase that has proved more visible than the weapons 
> it refers to, is a keeper.
> 
> Roadside bombs deserve special recognition this year because in a 
> relatively short time they have carved out a deep niche – actually a 
> scar – in our lexicon.  Roadside bombs explode regularly in the news 
> as well as by the roadside.  According to Lexis/Nexis, roadside bombs 
> made the papers on twenty-six of the past thirty days, and it 
> wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a roadside bomb on today’s front page.
> 
> It’s the pervasive roadside bombs, car bombs, and suicide bombers, 
> not WMD’s, that are actually killing people.  According to the 
> Washington Post, they’re now causing half the American deaths in 
> Iraq.  The American military, which brought us “snafu” – situation 
> normal, all f***ed up – lumps these weapons of limited destruction 
> under the umbrella acronym IED, for “improvised explosive device.”  
> IED’s in turn lead to “hillbilly armor,” an improvised defensive 
> device – bits of scrap metal and ballistic glass – used by soldiers 
> to “uparmor” their trucks. Although Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld 
> clearly wants an army that doesn’t complain about snafus and 
> unprotected humvees, he admitted to the army that he has that even 
> real armor can’t stand up to roadside bombs.
> 
> It would be wonderful if roadside bombs proved as evanescent as the 
> weapons of mass destruction they replaced.  But with our troops 
> embedded in Iraq for the foreseeable future, “roadside bomb” is 
> assured not just a continuing place in the headlines, but also a 
> permanent place in the dictionary.
>