According to Cynthia Pasquale, writing for the Denver Post: "Humans like to be creative, mashing words together... sometimes the word is old but the meaning reconstituted. Such terms often describe a change in lifestyle, a fad, or in some cases, a manufactured substitute for reality." The New Oxford American Dictionary introduced more than 2,000 new words onto its pages in 2005, and the Web site wordspy.com offers daily entries for those who want to keep up.
Santagnostic: (for those who will never know if Santa is real).
Blirting: Using a Blackberry to send flirtatious messages. People who can't put their Blackberry away call it "crackberry" because of its addictive nature.
Duppies: Young, formerly high fliers who have to subsist on unemployment insurance or low-paying jobs. Short for depressed urban professionals.
Fauxhemian: Those people who adopt aspects of the appearance and trappings of the Bohemian lifestyle without actually straying too far from social conventions.
Fresh to Death: Clothing termed thusly in the hip- hop fashion world is so hot that it will stay cool until the wearer is long dead.
Hiyunka: A word describing hefty handbags, clunky shoes, and jawbreaker-sized beads.
ICE: Emergency phone numbers programmed into a mobile phone's address book (in case of emergengy).
Indie-yuppie: Young urban professionals who shop in the trendiest stores, and devour the hottest, cutting-edge music and film. Indie refers to independently made movies or music not backed by big-money companies.
(And this one is really good) Kippers: Adult children reluctant to fly from the nest, or Kids In Parents Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings.
Lifehack: A more efficient way of completing an everyday task.
Meanderthal: A person who walks slowly and aimlessly, often toting cell phones and delaying pedestrian or motor traffic.
Spamalanche: An avlanche of junk e-mails.
Vlogs: Video logs on the internet that broadcast events or a person's views on subjects.
Can you come up with any of your own? Must be useful. We don't want miniscule, left-handed monkey wrenches in the dictionary tool-box. Words have to be good descriptors of the world.
2 comments:
I asked Rich Hall to come up with some a while ago. I don't know if he ever got around to it. Maybe "Mike" will get onto that.
Both good friends of mine.
Post a Comment