[Ads-l] new to me: "goblin mode"

[dave@wilton.net]

I just did a search for "goblin mode" in the News on the Web (NOW) corpus over at english-corpora.org. The corpus includes date through yesterday.
 
There were 232 hits at the time I did my search, of these, 154 were in reference to various word of the year competitions (mainly Oxford, but the term appeared in pieces on Merriam-Webster and Macquarie). By the time I'm writing this email, there were 255, and I'm pretty confident that the new ones are all WOTY references too.
 
Something akin to the Streisand effect is going on here.
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: "Jonathan Lighter" <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: Tuesday, December 6, 2022 1:55pm
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] new to me: "goblin mode"



New to me too, even though I've spent much of my life in said mode.

And it sounded new to anchor Ana Cabrera when she reported the story just
now on CNN.

I must object, however, that in my understanding goblins are primarily
disconcerting and dangerous (as in Rossetti's "Goblin Market" and Riley's
"Little Orphant Annie").

Even OED calls them "mischievous" and "ugly," not "self-indulgent, lazy,
slovenly, or geedy." MW adds "sometimes evil and malicious."

Maybe the coiner was thinking self-indulgently of some non-Griphook breed
of goblin.

JL

On Tue, Dec 6, 2022 at 12:20 PM Andy Bach <afbach at gmail.com> wrote:

> Apparently, just me:
> "It's mindlessly binge-watching television without worrying about the time.
> It's eating snacks in bed without a care about leftover crumbs. And it's
> wearing the same pair of pajamas all week while working from home. Welcome
> to "goblin mode." The slang term is defined as a "type of behavior which is
> unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a
> way that rejects social norms or expectations." This year, Oxford
> Languages, the creator of the Oxford English Dictionary, titled "goblin
> mode" as the 2022 Word of the Year, meaning it best reflected the ethos and
> mood of the past 12 months.
>
> https://www.npr.org/2022/12/05/1140696560/oxford-word-2022-goblin-mode
>
> --
>
> a
>
> Andy Bach,
> afbach at gmail.com
> 608 658-1890 cell
> 608 261-5738 wk
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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