"no-mentum" towards WOTY?

Benjamin Zimmer bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Wed Feb 20 20:06:07 UTC 2008


On Feb 7, 2008 9:47 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
>  From today's NYT (A29), the first hit on this word that shows up in a
> Nexis search.  This isn't to say that it really is the first
> occurrence in print, or that it will have staying power, but it's
> worth considering...
>
[...]
> ''It used to be you'd get momentum because you could live through
> many news cycles on a victory,'' he said. Now, he said, ''it's the
> world of 'no-mentum.' '' (He credited his Fox colleague, Brit Hume,
> for the term.)

Mickey Kaus counters that instead of "no-mentum" the primaries have
featured "reverse momentum" (at least for Hillary) -- or as he calls
it, "mutnemom"...

http://www.slate.com/id/2184672/nav/tap3/#mutnemom

--Ben Zimmer

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