Greetings, Fellow Lexicographers,
All things considered, words are a pretty crummy way to
communicate. We only use them because, slippery as they are,
there is nothing better. You can make a good case that many
politicians have the skill of saying things that appear perfectly
plain, but remain meaning free. There is a sort of surrealism
that comes into play hearing some politicians speak, since you
know that the fine phrases they are spouting have no more meaning
than a piano in a painting by Salvador Dali. A pink piano. With
breasts.
But it is so very easy to be misunderstood, even when people
aren't consciously trying to mislead. Words are often so vague
that it is even easy to mislead yourself. Take this simple,
direct statement:
"A Maori chief in New Zealand died suddenly of
mysterious causes. Why did they bury him on the side
of a hill above the village?"
Medical experts would demand to know the symptoms,
criminologists would think the reason might be the nature of the
crime, anthropologists would point to the local tribal customs,
historians would bring up other examples of hillside entombment,
environmentalists would point out that burial on the hillside
makes sense in conserving farmland and reducing the impact on
nature, and so on.
And all would be misdirected by their particular field of
expertise. They'd miss the true, simple answer:
They buried the Maori chief on the hillside because he
was dead.
As the world spins around, and cultures change, meanings of
words and phrases also shift. This has begun to happen so fast
that it is nearly impossible to keep up. Meanings are changing
at a furious rate, but words seem to die much more slowly. This
explains the incredibly vast vocabulary of English, which has
stolen from any language it has ever touched. Many people have
the belief that a word is only valid when it is included in an
"official" dictionary, which is far from the truth. A word is
valid only when it conveys meaning. The full implication of this
rule, of course, is that many politicians are only exhaling, not
speaking real words. Keep that in mind when you vote this
November.
One word that continues to maintain a pretty consistent
meaning is gratitude. Thanks this week to our friends and
contributors: Jerry Taff, Junji Taniguchi (& Miki & Hitoshi,
too), Charles Beckman, Jack Gervais, Jim Clayton, Jan Michalski,
Mike Fagan & Tomoko Naito, Carol J. Becwar, Candice St. Jacques,
Steve Berman, Bernie & Donna Becwar, Kerry Miller, R.J. Tully,
Tim McChain and Yasmin Leischer. Thanks for all of the great
contributions, one and all.
Bear in mind that you can become famous, even reaching a
kind of immortality, by inventing words, as Dr. Seuss (Theodor
Geisel) did when he invented the word "nerd." But even unpopular
words can contribute to your fame. Although words sometimes
remain unchanged for millennia, there are those words and phrases
that never seem to catch on. A prime example is
ZENZIZENZIZENZIC, a long-obsolete mathematical term for the 8th
power of a number. This word is close to death, so far gone that
the massive Oxford English Dictionary only has one citation for
it, from a famous work by the Welsh-born mathematician Robert
Recorde, "The Whetstone of Wit," published in 1557.
And when I send them this SUNFUN, there will be two
citations. And we'll be famous.
Have A Well-Defined Week,
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
NEWEST ENTRIES IN THE SUNFUN VIRTUAL DICTIONARY...
-----------------------------------------------
ASSOLINE - Rather crude term for biofuel methane made from
cattle manure used as a fuel.
ANECDOTAGE - That age where all one does is relate stories about
"the good old days."
BAD TONGUE DAY - A day in which a person frequently
mispronounces words and stumbles over sentences.
BAKED POTATO - A person who watches television or videos while
drunk.
BONKBUSTER - "A type of popular novel characterized by frequent
explicit sexual encounters between the characters.
Popularized by the British writer Sue Limb, writing
under the pseudonym 'Dulcie Domum', in her humorous
newspaper column 'Bad Housekeeping' (1990-2001)." This
definition from the online edition of the Oxford
English Dictionary also points out that the word is
derived from the common British slang word "bonk" for a
sexual encounter, combined with blockbuster.
BROKER - What my broker has made me.
BULL MARKET - A random market movement causing an investor to
mistake himself for a financial genius.
BUMPF - Obvious or blatant propaganda, usually disguised as
advertising or position papers, and usually issued by a
government, a political organization or a large
company. It's an expressive and pithy word for all the
dross that comes in the mail.
It was originally British English, possibly public
school slang, traceable back to at least 1889. The
word's source is usually taken to be the much older
term "bum-fodder." The sense of this is that useless
or tedious printed information had only one sensible
usage: to be torn up, hung up on a nail in the privy
and used as toilet paper. The full term was first
recorded in the period of the Commonwealth in Britain,
about 1650.
CASH FLOW - The spinning movement your money makes as it
disappears down the toilet.
CEOnistas - Chief Operating officers of failed companies who are
willing to use extreme, guerilla tactics in desperately
trying to stay out of jail.
CPW (Celebrity Perp Walk) - The recent parade of business
executives and celebrities marched into court in
handcuffs with hoards of photo-crazed journalrazzi.
DAISY CUTTER - The monster, BLU-82 bomb that is about the size
of a small car. Used recently by the US Air Force in
Afghanistan, and this year's winner of the Most Euphemistic
Phrase Award.
DEAD CAT BOUNCE - Rarely used term before the recent stock
market jiggles, this term applies to stocks or
commodities that have gone into free-fall dives and
then rallied briefly. The sense of the term is that,
if you threw a dead cat off a 50-story building, it
might bounce when it hit the sidewalk. But don't
confuse that bounce with renewed life. It is still a
dead cat. Language scholars have traced the term back
as far as the mid-1980's
DOCUSOAPS - "Reality" TV shows that come pre-frabricated with
the standard characters of a soap opera. These
characters likely include: the jock, the girl-next-
door, the wimp, the nice guy, the moron, the bitch and
the slut. While currently all dolled up in TV newness,
this basic cast dates back at least to the first radio
soap operas, and probably as far as Greek comedies of
the 4th-century BC.
DOT SNOT - A young person with an arrogant and self-important
manner because he or she has become rich by creating a
dot com company. Vast numbers of these dot-communist
entrepreneurs have returned to the McDonald's fry lines
from whence they came. (Also: MILLIONERD)
DOWNSHIFTER - A person who quits a high-stress job in an effort
to lead a simpler life.
DRIVE-BY EDITING - Ruining part or all of a story by quickly
editing it without checking facts or consulting with
the writer or another editor.
DWY - Abbreviation coming into use on police reports in the
description of accidents. Based on the drunk driving
term DWI (Driving While Intoxicated), DWY is causing an
accident while talking on a cellphone or Driving While
Yakking.
EGO WALL - A wall on which a person has hung their degrees,
certificates, and awards, as well as photographs in
which they appear with famous people.
ELECTROSMOG - The increasing level of radio frequency noise
resulting from the millions of cell phones, door
openers, cordless phones, wireless headphones and other
remote control and communications devices used today.
We are reaching the point where it will soon be
possible to hear Britney Spears on the average toaster.
ECHO BOOMER - Consumers born between the late 1970s and the
early 1990s, mostly the children of the aging Baby
Boomers. The advertising industry, obsessed with
finding fresh groups to sell things to, insists on
assigning such demographic groups names that are more
or less meaningless. This is one of the more recent
categories to come from the marketers' imaginations.
ENRONOMICS - A fiscal policy or business strategy that relies on
dubious accounting practices, overly-optimistic
economic forecasts, and unsustainably high levels of
spending. (Also: ENRONIC. A verb form for becoming
bankrupt, to ENRON, has also been sighted.)
EURO-CREEP - Not only a reference to Jean Claude Van Damme, but
a financial term for the move to the new euro currency
even in countries where it is not the official cash.
This is especially true in Britain, as many shops there
now take euros as well as pounds.
EUROETTES - Proposed name for the nameless penny end of the new
European currency. Rather than shopkeepers saying
'Here is 0.45 of a euro', they can say 'Here are 45
eurolings / euroettes or eurowhatevers.
FAD SURFING - In business, to adopt one fashionable management
buzzword style after another. Go into any large
bookshop and take a long, hard look at the
business/management section. You will see books there
with flavor-of-the-month titles such as Managing
Without Management, Peanut Butter and Jelly Management
and the simplistic parable Who Moved My Cheese? (by the
author of The One-Minute Manager).
FUME DATE - The date on which a dying Dot-Com company runs out
- or is expected to run out - of cash. When it finally
becomes dot-compost, the tech company is said to be
SNEAKERS-UP.
GOMER - An undesirable (drunk/stupid/hostile) hospital patient.
There is a serious debate whether this medical folk
term derives from. It may refers to Gomer Pyle, the
terminally dim-witted and often irritating gas station
attendant character on the old "Andy Griffith Show," or
from the acronym "Get Out Of My Emergency Room."
GROCERANT - Another word deriving from our high-speed, always
rushing, no-time-to-stop lifestyle. One of the newer
solutions for people who want to eat but don't have
time to cook is this recent American invention.
Essentially it's a restaurant inside a supermarket, a
natural enough progression from in-store bakeries or
delis and a subtly different take on the take-out food
outlet. No longer do you go to the store only to buy
the ingredients to cook with. Now you can buy the
complete cooked meal, freshly prepared and ready to eat
either there in the supermarket, at your place of work,
or to serve to the family at home.
HIMBO - A man who is good-looking, but unintelligent or
superficial. A male bimbo.
INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR - Past year day trader who's now spending
some stress-free time locked up in a nut ward.
IRRITABLE MALE SYNDROME - This term refers to claims that men
of any age who suffer stress can experience sudden
drops in testosterone level, making them bad-tempered,
nervous, or easily reduced to anger. One suggestion is
that testosterone replacement therapy may restore men
to their usual state (whatever that is). Most women
have responded to this as follows: Q: What do you call
a man who is always tired, miserable and irritable?
A: Normal.
JOY-TO-STUFF RATIO - A symptom of the disease called
"affluenza," where a person spends so much time working
to get the money to buy entertainment items (large-
screen TV's, home theaters, fancy sound systems, etc.)
that they no longer have the time for such
entertainment.
MALE ANSWER SYNDROME - Alleged tendency for men to answer a
question even when they don't know the answer.
MARKET CORRECTION - What happens the day after you buy stocks.
MCMANSION - Those huge, opulent mini-mansions now being built on
under-sized lots at the edge of every city in America
(Also: MANSIONIZATION, STARTER PALACE).
ME-MOIR - An auto-biographical memoir that is exceptionally
self-centered. Even more than usual for such fare...
NUTRICEUTICALS - Active chemicals sold as cosmetics or food.
These escape most government purity and effectiveness
regulations, and may contain as many harmful or useless
ingredients as the company making it can get the
suckers to pay for. Those used as wrinkle creams,
baldness cures, etc. are often called COSMECEUTICALs.
ORGANIC - US Department of Agriculture classification for food
grown using no pesticides, chemicals or artificial
ingredients. The use of sewage sludge or animal manure
as fertilizer, and naturally occurring, peach pit
cyanide for insects may be OK, however.
PHONECIAN - A person who always has a cell phone stuck on their
ear
PIN-DROP SYNDROME - The tendency for office workers to overreact
to the least environmental noise in their modern,
extremely quiet offices. After complaints from their
accounting department that the tomb-like silence of
their new working space was unsettling, Britain's BBC
recently spent over $4,000 for a machine that played
distant sounds of adding machines, copiers, people
talking and occasional, random bursts of laughter.
Naturally, it would never have occurred to management
to provide the sounds organically by encouraging the
office workers to speak to each other.
RHINESTONE VOCABULARY - Words or phrases chosen only because
they appeal to a particular person or group.
Politicians employ a rhinestone vocabulary in which key
phrases such as 'family values', 'equal rights', and
'lower taxes' are substituted freely according to the
audience. These words never seem to have any meaning
when employed this way.
RUBBER-CHICKEN CIRCUIT - The round of political fund-raising
dinners attended by party contributors. Refers to the
standard taste-free, rubbery chicken served at such
dinners.
SPINNISH - The language used by spin doctors and other political
operatives. The advanced form, known as ZEN SPIN, is
to spin a story by not spinning it.
STAGE-PHONING - Attempting to impress nearby people by talking
on a cell phone in an animated, theatrical manner.
Frequently seen in cafes, coffeehouses and airports,
the fake big-deal-maker speaks loudly and appears to
prefer captive audiences. Related term: CELL JERK.
Most amusing is when a male stage-phoner is trying to
impress a captive audience of eligible females, only to
have his cover blown when his cellphone rings in mid-
impress.
STANDARD & POOR RATING - Your life in a nutshell.
STUCKHOLDER - Increasingly common term for a person or company
owning a stock whose price has dropped so far that they
can no longer afford to sell it.
SUV DEMOCRAT - A politician, particularly one who is a member of
the U.S. Democratic Party, who talks about energy
conservation while owning and driving a
fuel-inefficient sport utility vehicle. Also: LEXUS
LIBERAL
SYNTHESPIAN - Artificial, computer-created characters in a movie
or video game. Some of these are impressive and
excellent (Woody & Buzz from "Toy Story"), but many are
twitchy and irritating (Jar-Jar Binks from Star Warts
IV)
TABLOIDIFICATION - The tendency of news to become ever more
blood and guts, bleed-to-lead, high-speed chase driven.
This is cheaper than actually finding real news, of
course.
TOXIC BACHELOR - An unmarried male who is selfish, insensitive,
and afraid of commitment. Generally averages about 150
first-dates per year.
TRUSTAFARIAN - A jobless person who has access to money -
especially a trust fund income - and who affects a laid
back, Bohemian lifestyle. These people tend to be the
leather-pants-with-designer-ski-sweaters crowd that
infests many Starbucks in upscale urban neighborhoods.
VALUE INVESTING - The art of buying low and selling lower.
WAL-MARTIAN - A person who does most of their shopping at
Wal-Mart, or a person who works at Wal-Mart.
WATERCOOLER MOMENT - A moment in a TV show specifically designed
to shock or to be otherwise memorable, so people will
talk about it at the office the next day. Closely
related to the "HEY MABEL" EFFECT.
WHISTLE NUMBER - A figure so impressive that it makes you
whistle in response.
WORDROBE - A person's impressive vocabulary.
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
© 2002 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.
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