anti-WOTY blogging

[Michael Quinion]

Benjamin Zimmer wrote

> "Plutoed" was noted on ADS-L on Sep. 12, when Arnold Zwicky forwarded
> the "Urban Word of the Day" email from urbandictionary.com. The quoted
> entry dates to Aug. 24, the day of the IAU vote demoting Pluto:
>
> http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pluto
>
> Also on Aug. 24, Scott Hove created a blog called plutoed.com and
> provided a similar definition for the verb in his first post:
>
> http://plutoed.com/plutoed_our_first_post/index.html
>
> Granted, it's still basically a stunt word, but now it's being
> perceived (by some) as *our* stunt word...

It was mentioned in the World Wide Words newsletter for 2 September: "At
the risk of boring you all speechless with more about the Great Demotion,
there's some small amount of evidence that the name of what we must now
learn to call a dwarf planet has turned into a derogatory verb meaning
that a person has been downgraded or sidelined in some way: 'I thought the
girls liked me, but they've plutoed me completely.' You may feel - as I do
- that its lifetime will be short."

See http://www.worldwidewords.org/backissues/wbi060902.txt


--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: wordseditor at worldwidewords.org
Web: http://www.worldwidewords.org

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