Word (Phrase?) of the Year (so far)?; Rambo'd

ADSGarson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Thu Jan 31 18:39:37 UTC 2013


Below is an example of a movie character being transformed into a
verb. Of course, Rambo was a sequel title and a character.

Date: Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 6:20 PM
Subject: She 'Keyser Soze'd' me - spoiler warning

Here is a somewhat specialized but entertaining vocabulary item seen in a tweet.
Spoiler warning for the film "The Usual Suspects":

[Begin tweet]
Peter Sohn @PEETSOWN
My 2 1/2 yr old daughter just told me a riveting story and now I
realized she used the pictures in the room. She "Keyser Soze'd" me.
    29 Retweets
    16 Favorites
4:44 PM - 3 Nov 12
[End tweet]

The Wikipedia entry for "The Usual Suspects uses the spelling Keyser
Soze with an umlaut over the o. Jonathan Lighter sent a message to the
list on June 2, 2011 about the "Keyser Soeze syndrome" that is
somewhat similar.  Dan Goncharoff sent a message about the "Keyser
Soeze syndrome" which concerns twist endings for films

Garson

On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 1:04 PM, Ben Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Word (Phrase?) of the Year (so far)?; Rambo'd
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 11:31 AM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>>
> [...]
>> Also, UD has the following:
>>
>> Rambo'd 2 up, 9 down
>> When you have a large machine gun in a First Person Shooter video game, and
>> you hear an enemies footsteps, so you run around the corner and shoot left
>> to right in a chainsaw fashion and yell/type RAMBO'D!!!!
>>
>> Some slang dictionaries also have "to go rambo on"
>
> Thread synchronicity! We can add this to the list of movie-titles-turned-verbs:
>
> http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/when-life-imitates-the-movies-from-gaslighting-to-catfishing
>
> --bgz
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
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