THE GEEKS HAVE A WORD FOR IT...

Salutations, All!
     I can't believe it...  Another year of SUNFUN has flitted
by, meaning that this has been going on for four years and a week
(and a few odd minutes) as you read this.  Cranked through a
printer, all of the Funnies together now run over a thousand
pages.  Odd how I didn't see that coming.  For one thing, I'd
have bought more paper company stock.
     Given the number of words we slop onto the page every month,
it seems appropriate to keep up with the latest new words and
phrases, a feature called the "SUNFUN Virtual Dictionary."  With
the supersonic pace of change in technology and instant reporting
of events from all around the world, the rate of word creation
has exploded.  It has gotten to the point where printed
dictionaries are doomed to be hopelessly out of date before ink
hits paper.  So we've done this occasional feature since February
of 1998 (The first was "Brave New Words" on 2/22/98) to help keep
up.
     Now, even THE dictionary has begun to realize that they can
no longer stay current with a strictly dead tree edition.  By THE
dictionary, I mean the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which may
be a little stodgy, but is always the final arbiter on whether a
word truly exists or not.  At 22,000 pages in 20 volumes, it is
about as all-inclusive as possible.  Recently, overwhelmed by the
flood of language creation, the OED went online (at www.oed.com)
and invited amateur lexicographers to submit certifications for
new words and phrases to be included in the next revision, due
out in 2010.  Nobody said they were fast.
     The OED editors really want to know if you read about any
"authority figures" before 1954.  Or, could you have "been there,
done that" before 1983?  Those are the earliest uses of those
phrases that have been documented, so far.  The dictionary
editors harvest words from printed sources and catalog them to
produce THE comprehensive index of the English language.  For
example, they give 7,167 certifications of quotes containing the
word "remain," as in, "you have to remain crazy to look up that
many quotations for such a simple word."  It's a warm and fuzzy
feeling to know that the distinguished OED is now following in
the tracks of this little rag by collecting words online.
     If they start doing "stupid criminal stories," I'll be
forced to sue.
     Thanks this week to the folks who help us collect all the
words, particularly:  Carol J. Becwar, Alison & Mark Becwar,
Jerry Taff, Chuck Maray, Beth Butler, Jerry Taff, Laura Hong Li,
Kerry Miller, Tim McChain, Brian Siegl, Jack Gervais, Fumiko
Umino, Howard Lesniak, Joshua Brink, Sharon Nuernberg, R.J.
Tully, Jan Michalski, Bruce Gonzo, Lydia Cheong Chu-Ling, Peter
J. Adler and Nnamdi Elleh.  Thank you for the words - especially
the kind ones.  Of all of the words we hear, those are the ones
that we treasure.
     Have A *Prodigious Week,

 [* Yes, it means great. ]
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GET 'EM WHILE THEY'RE FRESH...
---------------------------
     As mentioned in the intro, the Oxford English Dictionary is
out there mining for words on the web.  And while that
supertanker of dictionaries, the OED, isn't due out for a decade
or so, the new Oxford Compact English Dictionary has hit the
streets with a load of up-to-date words and definitions.
     How about chuddies?  Or, lookism?  Or, wearing a shrug?  All
are new listings in what passes for the pocket edition of the
OED.  A shrug, by the way, is a new term for a tight-fitting
cardigan sweater and chuddies is a recent slang word for
underpants.  Not to be left out, lookism is simply discrimination
based on a person's appearance.
     As always, fashion and technology are the two biggest
engines of language change.
     On the technology side, cybersquatting (registering a www
Web name in the hope of selling it) made the cut, as did
flexecutive, meaning a worker whose hours and place of work are
not fixed because of new technology.  Oh, and dot.com is now an
official English word, too, making it the first listing in the
OED that carries a full-stop period in the middle.  So, according
to the folks from Oxford, it is now completely grammatical to
write a single sentence with two periods.
     What would your old English teacher say about that? 
(Reuters) 


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RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED
----------------------
     Here are the latest listings for the virtual dictionary...


   - ASTROTURF CAMPAIGN - A fake grass-roots political campaign. 
     A potential future problem in net-based "issue" campaigning,
     in which massively phony mailings are easier to create than
     ever before.

   - BALDERDASH - A rapidly receding hairline.

   - BAMBI - What game- and talk-show staffers call someone who
     freezes when the cameras are turned on (like a deer caught
     in headlights).

   - BARFOGENESIS - That seasick feeling some people get with
     virtual reality headsets.

   - BEGATHON - A TV or radio fund-raiser for a charity,
     religious organization, or public broadcasting station that
     employs every known form of guilt, sweet talking, and
     outright begging to get people to fork over dough.

   - BITSLAG - All the useless rubble on the Net one has to plow
     through to get to the rich information ore.  Proof that the
     Net still needs more refining.

   - BOGOSITY - The degree to which something is bogus, stated as
     the ratio of reliable information to that which you perceive
     as total baloney.  The agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the
     microLenat.

   - BOZOTIC - Resembling or having the quality of a bozo; that
     is, clownish, ludicrously wrong, unintentionally humorous.

   - BUSTARD - A very rude bus driver

   - BUSY SIGNALING - Rapid hand movements indicating that what
     the person on the phone is saying is more important than
     whatever coworkers are trying to distract you with. 

   - CARCREAK - Those crackling, tinkling, creaky noises your car
     makes after you park and shut off the engine.

   - CAREENA - A mangled or missing piece of highway guard rail.

   - CHEAPONIUM - A fabrication material selected for reasons of
     economy rather than quality.  For example, Yugos contained
     such high levels of Cheaponium that they began to fall apart
     even before they got off the ship.

   - CINEMUCK - The gloppy amalgam of popcorn, soda, and melted
     chocolate that covers the floors of movie theaters.

   - COMETIZED - The effect of Netscape when it freezes or jams.
     [ Because you are stuck looking at the "shooting star" or
     comet that appears on the Netscape button, in the upper
     right corner of the browser.]

   - COMPUTER-DAZED TRAINING - Any computer-based education
     seminar lasting longer than 15 minutes.  More than that and
     about half of the population zones out to the point that
     they don't recognize their own names.  See Screen-saver
     face.

   - CORNEA GUMBO - A Web page that is a visually noisy, over
     designed, Photoshopped mess. 

   - CRUMMIX - The leftover breakfast cereal in the box that is
     too little to eat and too much to throw away.

   - CUDDLETECH - Describes the iMac, the VW Beetle, the Chrysler
     PT Cruiser and other products marketed as "cute and
     friendly."  A related term is iCandy, referring to the
     bright colors being used on such products.

   - DENTIST - An auto technician who repairs dents, hail damage,
     and other minor dings on automobiles.

   - DIAPER CHANGE - One of several daily visits by a tech
     support person to the desk of a particularly cranky, lazy,
     or technically incompetent user.  "Sorry I was late, but I
     had to do a diaper change down in Accounting."

   - DOPELER EFFECT - The tendency of moronic ideas to seem
     smarter the faster they come at you.

   - DROOL-PROOF - Documentation that has been dumbed-down to the
     point where only a cretin could bear to read it, treating
     the customer as a complete dummy.  Engineers say this low IQ
     documentation should be printed on `drool-proof paper.'  For
     example, this is an actual quote from Apple's LaserWriter
     manual: 
        "Do not expose your LaserWriter to open fire or flame."
     Well, duh!

   - EXASPIRIN - Any bottle of pain reliever with an
     impossible-to-remove plastic cap.

   - EXECUGLIDE - To propel oneself about an office on a roller
     chair without getting up.

   - FENDERBERG - The large glacial deposits of accumulated snow
     that form on the insides of car fenders during snowstorms.

   - FLOPCORN - The unpopped kernels of popcorn at the bottom of
     the pan or bag.  (Known in less politically correct times as
     "old maids").

   - GAPIANA - The unclaimed strip of land at state lines between
     the "You Are Now Leaving ..." and "Welcome To ..." signs.
     Neither international agreements nor the U.S. Constitution
     make clear who has sovereignty to this unclaimed land.

   - GIZMOTRON - A non-specific reference to a high-tech device
     or system.  A Gizmotron is more complex than a gadget.

   - HEIGHT TECHNOLOGY - Silly engineers' term for "ladder."

   - HOSE AND CLOSE - A pattern of behavior exhibited by phone
     tech-support people.  They spout a bunch of jargon you don't
     understand, ask you to perform a bunch of procedures you
     can't follow, and then hang up.

   - INTERNOT - A busy signal from your Internet service
     provider.

   - JARGONAUT - A person goes out of their way to use every
     buzzword or techie slang phrase they can to impress you with
     how much they know.  A sure sign of an idiot.

   - KAWASHOCKI - The act of starting to pull into a parking spot
     only to discover a motorcycle already there.

   - KEYFRUIT - The one apple, pear, or tomato in the stand that,
     when removed, causes all the others to tumble onto the
     floor.

   - KODAK COURAGE - An extra dose of courage and the tendency to
     go beyond one's usual physical limits when being filmed or
     photographed (from action sports such as skateboarding,
     snowboarding, and extreme skiing).

   - LEAKY REPLY - Sending a message using the 'Reply to All'
     option in an Email program.  Leaky replies seem much more
     likely to contain information that was not supposed to
     escape.

   - MAGGITS - The hundreds of subscription and free offer cards
     that fall from the pages of many magazines.

   - MAGNACARTIC - Any automobile that, when left unattended,
     attracts shopping carts.

   - MALIBUGALOO - The peculiar dance that people do while
     walking barefoot over hot sand.

   - MICROCHIPS - Those little tiny broken pieces of potato chip
     that trickle to the bottom of the bag or bowl.

   - MISSION-CRYPTICAL - When management knows an application is
     important, but doesn't have a clue what it does.

   - MUSQUIRT - The yellow-y water that comes out of a squeeze
     mustard bottle before the mustard does.

   - MUSTGO - An item of food that has been sitting in the
     refrigerator so long it has become a biology experiment.

   - NEGATILE - An uneven area of the bathroom floor where,
     somehow, the scale registers you as five pounds lighter.

   - NERD RUSTLER - The person in a corporate personnel
     department responsible for hiring computer people.

   - NEUTRON PEAS - Tiny green objects in TV dinners that remain
     frozen even when the rest of the food has been microwaved
     beyond recognition.

   - NUGLOO - Single continuous eyebrow over both eyes.  Also
     known as a Unibrow.

   - OYSTER - A person who habitually sprinkles his conversation
     with Yiddish expressions.

   - PARTY BARGE - A large, old car owned by a teenager.  Good
     for carrying up to 10 friends plus assorted refreshments and
     supplies.

   - PETRIBAR - A sun-bleached, prehistoric candy that has been
     sitting in the window of a vending machine for far too long.

   - PIYAN ("Plus, if you act now") - A miscellaneous item
     included in those late-night television ads to get you to
     place an order immediately -- before you have time to
     appreciate how crummy the product really is.  Operators are
     not standing by.  They are sitting down.

   - PRIMPO - A person who cannot pass a mirror without stepping
     back to check their appearance, presumably to reassure
     themself that they still exist.

   - PUKE-O-VISION - the trendy "Blair Witch Project"-style of
     'cinema verite' camera work; instead of using a tripod or
     Steadi-Cam, it appears as if the camera operator shoots
     everything in closeup, holding the camera in one hand while
     skateboarding over broken rock.  The resulting constant
     camera motion results in audience seasickness in the name of
     art.

   - RECONSTORE - The process of completely recreating whatever
     it was you neglected to back-up before accidentally deleting
     it.

   - REINTARNATION - Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

   - REPETITIVE BRAIN INJURY - The psychological damage that can
     be done to telephone tech support personnel who have to
     answer the same dumb questions over and over again.

   - RICHARD PETTY SYNDROME - The overuse of sponsor buttons and
     banners on a Web site.  Refers to the logo-festooned
     jumpsuits of auto racers.

   - SCREEN-SAVER FACE - That blank, bored-silly look a person
     gets when the brain is on the verge of shutting down. 
     Common at company meetings about finances.

   - SHOVELWARE - A CD-ROM title that contains mostly
     pre-existing material piled in to fill the 640 megabytes of
     CD space.

   - SLEEP CAMELS - Ultra-workaholics who go continuously for
     days on end and then power-sleep most of the weekend in an
     attempt to store up rest for the week ahead.

   - SLURM - The slime that accumulates on the underside of a
     soap bar when it sits in the dish too long.

   - SPAMOUFLAGE - Bulk Email messages delivered from generic
     addresses and with innocuous subject headers in order to
     confound filtering programs and spam-hating readers.

   - SUCKOCITY INDEX - The ratio of known good entities to those
     that really suck.

   - TASKBAR LINT - The annoying little icons that show up in the
     system tray of the Windows taskbar after installing any
     software.

   - TORCH MODE - TVs or computer monitors that are set very
     bright, or very blue, at the factory, most often to mask
     their lousy quality.

   - TWEAK FREAK - A computer techie obsessed with finding the
     root of all problems, regardless of the relevance.  A tweak
     freak might spend hours trying to track down something that
     could instantly be fixed by reinstalling the software.

   - TWITCH GAME - A computer or arcade game that's all hand-eye
     and little brain.

   - UNOBTAINIUM - A material with exactly properties that you
     need for a given use, but that does not quite exist within
     the present laws of physics and chemistry.

   - VEGILUDES - Individual peas or kernels of corn that you end
     up chasing all over the plate with your fork.

   - WAW (Waiter-Actor-Webmaster) - Used to describe fly-by-night
     graphic designers and Web consultants trying to cash in on
     the Web boom. 

   - WORD OF MOUSE - Gossip spread via Email on the digital
     grapevine.


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© 2000 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.