[lg policy] The Words That Made the Year

[Harold Schiffman]

The Words That Made the Year

The old and new puns, slang and jargon that we lived with this year.
Compiled by Grant Barrett.

Pop Culture

belieber: A fan of Justin Bieber, the Canadian pop singer who also spawned ...

the Justin Bieber: A haircut also known as the flip and switch, the
flow, or the twitch. Now driving parents crazy everywhere.

G.T.L.: For “gym, tan, laundry,” the life philosophy of the Situation,
otherwise known as Mike Sorrentino of the reality TV program “Jersey
Shore.” You laugh, but it’s worked for him.

i-dosing: A supposed digital drug. Certain soundwaves, the claim goes,
give listeners a high. Skeptics abound, watchful parents are
everywhere.

star whacker: The latest in celeb coinage. In October, the actor Randy
Quaid and his wife, Evi, begged for asylum in Canada, claiming fear of
star whackers, people who had already killed other famous people and
were out to get them, too.

Communicating

coffice: In South Korea, a coffee shop habitually used as an office by
customers, who mooch its space, electricity, Wi-Fi and other
resources. Presumably, they pay for the coffee.

halfalogue: Half of a conversation, like an overheard phone call. The
term was coined in the research paper “Overheard Cell-Phone
Conversations: When Less Speech is More Distracting” in the journal
Psychological Science.

sofalize: A British marketing term created for people who prefer to
stay home and communicate with others electronically.

mansplainer: A man compelled to explain or give an opinion about
everything — especially to a woman. He speaks, often condescendingly,
even if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about or even if it’s none
of his business. Old term: a boor.

social graph: The structure of personal networks, who people know and
how they know them, especially online. The term probably came from the
internal lingo at Facebook, but it has spread widely among technology
companies.

Politics

demon sheep: The political ad that captured critics everywhere for
being “baaad,” as The Wall Street Journal put it. The Senate campaign
of Carly Fiorina used and retired the ad, but other campaigns quickly
created their own parodies.

mama grizzly: Coined by Sarah Palin, “mama grizzly” is the
conservative woman’s battle cry, referring to mothers who ferociously
defend their children or policies that benefit them. Often used with
humor. In her new book, Ms. Palin wrote that it’s “bear propaganda” to
insist that these bears are cute and cuddly.

poutrage: False outrage, usually put on for personal, financial or
political gain.

refudiate: Another Palinism, this time a blend of refute and
repudiate. Now used with an eyebrow raised.

shellacking: President Obama’s preferred way to describe what happened
to Democrats in the midterm elections. Some might call it a knock-down
punch.

Travel

cuddle class: Economy-class airplane seats that unfold into a bed or
couch, as proposed by Air New Zealand, which calls them “Skycouch”
seats.

porno scanner: A full-body security scanner that provoked outrage at
airports and on blogs. Also called strip-search scanners and, more
politely, by the Transportation Security Administration, advanced
imaging technology.

enhanced pat-down: Frisking in which security workers slide the palms
of their hands down a person’s body in a search for contraband or
weapons.

Economy

double-dip recession: What economists talked about, and what every
Obama administration official feared.

flash crash: The mystery of the financial markets this year: a May 6
market drop of almost 1,000 points.

peak water: Like “peak oil,” a theory that humans may have used the
water easiest to obtain, and that scarcity may be on the rise.

QE2: Not the ocean liner, but the abbreviation for the Fed’s latest
round of quantitative easing, its purchase of Treasury bonds. The term
is usually used by critics derisively, and often in combination with
another disaster, the sinking of the Titanic.

robo-signer and put-back: Even for people who never read their
mortgage documents, these terms became inescapable as the foreclosure
crisis hit. For the record, a robo-signer approves mortgage
foreclosure notices without verifying its contents. A put-back is a
mortgage sold back to an institutional seller because of problems with
documentation.

The Oil Spill

containment dome: After the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater
Horizon, everyone became an engineer. The containment dome? Yes, that
seals the leak.

junk shot: Plugging the leak with old tires, golf balls and other debris.

static kill: Sealing the well by pumping in a synthetic mud from the top.

bottom kill: The same technique, only many thousands of feet further
down the well through a relief well. How we got this education: the
24-hour spillcam that broadcast the leak.

Things

inception: Popularized by the movie “Inception,” the word expanded
from its usual meaning and now refers to ideas planted in the dreams
of other people.

double rainbow: A phrase from the hugely popular YouTube video by Paul
Vasquez, featuring his breathless amazement at the sight of two
rainbows at Yosemite National Park. It spawned parodies, television
commercials, dance mixes, Auto-Tune versions, parties and Halloween
costumes, and is now used to refer — ironically and not — to something
amazing.

E.V.: An electric vehicle. While the term has been around for decades,
there are now more cars like the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt, which
makes it more than an environmentalist’s pipeless dream.

G.Z.M.: An acronym for ground zero mosque — the shorthand term for a
controversial Muslim community center proposed near the site where the
World Trade Center was attacked.

vuvuzela: The South African plastic trumpet that invaded, like
locusts, the World Cup matches in Johannesburg. Television viewers, as
well as participants, couldn’t escape the buzzzzz.

Weird: Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic, an
acronym and criticism of the typical subjects in studies by behavioral
scientists. That is, they tend to be the easiest to recruit:
undergraduates.

Grant Barrett is a lexicographer specializing in slang and new words.
He is a host of the public radio program “A Way With Words” and vice
president of the American Dialect Society, devoted since 1889 to the
study of English in North America.


--http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/weekinreview/19sifton.html?hpw
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