all the rage

Arnold Zwicky zwicky at STANFORD.EDU
Sat Nov 15 18:30:54 UTC 2008


"wrap rage" made the front page of the NYT today, in a story about
those annoying "clamshell packages".

on ADS-L i think it was first mentioned on 19 December 2007, in a
posting by David Bowie nominating it for WOTY (Bowie noted that it had
been around since at least 2005, on the Colbert Report).  it made it
to the 2007 finals in the "most useful" category, but was edged out by
"green-".

"X rage" sightings have appeared frequently on ADS-L.  since 2000, at
least the following:

   X = air (also: airplane), desk, dot-com, ferry. freelance, hotel,
pop-up, rec (also: recreational), restaurant, road, roid, sandwich,
sideline, spam, sports, wrap

the OED has "roid rage" from 1987 (its first "X rage" attestation) and
"road rage" (apparently the basis for most of the other formations,
and quite possibly the original in speech) from 1988.  the "rage"
entry has:

   X = alarm, cash machine, cycle, golf, pavement, road, roid, trolley

meanwhile, the Language Loggers have coined:

   X = colon [the punctuation mark], font, language, spelling, wiki,
word

(and cited "spam rage").

arnold

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