[Ads-l] WOTY candidate: "octochamp"

[Ben Zimmer]

I just wrote about the octo(-)champs for The Atlantic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/05/scripps-spelling-bee-wasnt-ready-octochamps/590749/

Before they were able to anoint themselves with the title, "Octochamps"
turned up in the Twitter feed of former Bee contestant Amber Born. She used
it at 11:21 p.m. Eastern time, right after it was announced that there
could be up to eight co-champions -- Born correctly predicted that they all
would win:

https://twitter.com/Amber_R_Born/status/1134298814620360704
"You’ve heard of Octomom, now get ready for Octochamps. #spellingbee"

--bgz

On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 11:23 AM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> ‘One of eight who tie for a championship’.  An auto-coinage by the eight
> winners of last night's annual Scripps Spelling Bee; unclear whether it
> should include a hyphen.
>
> "Three of the champions are from the Dallas area, perhaps the most
> competitive region in the country: Sohum, Abhijay and Rohan. New Jersey had
> two champs, in Christopher and Shruthika. Rishik, from San Jose,
> California, was the only one of the self-proclaimed “octo-champs” from the
> West Coast."
>
>
> https://www.huffpost.com/entry/national-spelling-bee-winners_n_5cf0eb74e4b0e346ce7c312c
>
> Maybe it won’t have the necessary staying power, but….
>
> If you google it, you’ll come across a different kind of octochamp,
> referring to a competitor (or team) that has won eight times (eight heats,
> eight different championships, etc.), in particular with reference to the
> British TV game show “Countdown”.  Clearly a case of polysemy.
>
>

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