06.02.09
Posted in acronyms, assorted weird crap at 5:53 am by Bill Brohaugh
Bing doesn’t sing.
That’s because Bing is dead. Bing Crosby, that is—as the fans of “White Christmas” and of the hilarious “Road” movies with Bob Hope will recall.
Bing also doesn’t sing as the new name of Microsoft’s search engine, once sporting the now-non-live “Live Search” name. Writes The New York Times:
Microsoft’s marketing gurus hope that Bing will evoke neither a type of cherry nor a strip club on “The Sopranos” but rather a sound — the ringing of a bell that signals the “aha” moment when a search leads to an answer.
The name is meant to conjure “the sound of found” as Bing helps people with complex tasks like shopping for a camera, said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s online audience business group.
And if Bing turns into a verb like, say, Xerox, TiVo or, well, Google, that would be nice too. Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, said Thursday that he liked Bing’s potential to “verb up.”
“The sound of found”? Well, then, aha . . . haha. Ha ha.
OK, it’s meta-Bing time. A search for “Bing” on Bing. The number-one result under “News about Bing” as I write this? “Bing’s communications director resigns.” OK, maybe the search engine’s name is kinda silly, but resigning because of it seems a little severe. Oh, wait. That Bing is Dave Bing, Mayor of Detroit. Totally different story.
The number-one regular result points to bing.com. Didn’t realize the mayor had his own site. Oh, wait. That’s the search engine this time. In the top 9 non-news-specific results (the first screenful that I see), Bing the search engine gets four results, Bing the Crosby gets two, Bing the energy drink (never heard of it, myself) gets two, Bada Bing the fictional bar on The Sopranos gets one. (At least the latter is a better/bettah/bada use of Bing.)
Finally, I can’t write a topper to this story any better than the Times did: “Meanwhile, some tech people were already noting that Bing is also an unfortunate acronym: ‘But It’s Not Google.’”
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01.13.09
Posted in acronyms, jargon, ugly words at 7:18 am by Bill Brohaugh
I already have a nomination for the American Dialect Society (ADS) 2009 Word of the Year, in the “Most Useless Word” category. This past year, ADS awarded that category to moofing (Mobile Out of OFfice-ing). My nomination is very much in line: nanobot.
Interesting word, and it’s been around for a time. It denotes microscopic robots—”wannabe proteins,” as Urbandictionary.com puts it—the stuff of science fiction. Nanobots injected in your body, for instance, could give you x-ray vision by deploying microlenses in your eyes, or recomb your hair without you having to reach all the way up there, or somesuch.
But that’s not the word I’m blasting. Nanobot is a well-constructed contraction of the prefix nano- (indicating something very small, a generalized use of its technical meaning of 10 to the minus ninth power, or one billionth, or at least I think, but then again, everything I know about math is wrong, too), and robot (a word itself introduced in science fiction: Karel Capek’s 1920 play, R.U.R.). I’m referring to the clumsy, difficult-to-remember, huh?-inducing acronym for Nearly Autonomous, Not in the Office, doing Business in their Own Time Staff. People who set their own hours while working at home. (Or PWSTOHWWAH, if you will.)
Empowered by their mobile devices and remote access to the corporate network, nanobots put in long hours, sometimes seven days a week—just not at their desks.
So write David Pauleen and Brian Harmer in Away From the Desk . . . Always,” in MIT Sloan Review
A Wall Street Journal Report podcast discusses (a bit drily, I must advise) how to evaluate and motivate this breed of out-of-office employee. I have one motivational tip: don’t refer to such employees with a word meaning “ultra-tiny, invisible robot.” Doesn’t look good on a business card.
Besides, wouldn’t Nearly Autonomous, Not in the Office, doing Business in their Own Time Staff lead to nanitodbitot? And, now that I think about it, wouldn’t Mobile Out of Office lead to mooo?
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01.12.09
Posted in acronyms, euphemisms, future of the language, ugly words at 7:33 am by Bill Brohaugh
When the American Dialect Society (ADS) announced bailout as the organization’s Word of the Year (WOTY) 2008 last Friday, did a conference-roomful of corporate execs race up to the stage to accept the honor the way teams of producers sometimes scramble en masse to the presenter at the Oscars or the Tonys? Or were they tired from doing so when they accepted bailout’s word-of-the-year nod from Merriam-Webster?
It’s a pretty lackluster word of the year, this bailout. And even the American Dialect Society recognizes it. When announcing the results of ADS voting, Grant Barrett, chair of the ADS New Words Committee and co-host of public radio’s A Way with Words, said: “You’d think a room full of pointy-headed intellectuals could come up with something more exciting.”
Though it’s not a glitzy word, it was indeed important in its use, and in the frequency of its use, in 2008. And bailout beat out a number of interesting nominees (phrases are considered, as well). Some that particularly caught my eye (and the definition listed in the recent ADS WOTY press release):
- recombobulation area: An area at Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee in which passengers that have just passed through security screening can get their clothes and belongings back in order.
- long photo: A video of 90 seconds or less. Used by the photo-sharing web site Flickr.
- thought showers: Coined by a British city council because the synonym “brainstorming” was said to be offensive to epileptics.
Just who thought-showered that latter gem?
Recombobulation area took first place in the ADS “Most Creative” category. Other category winners (again, with notes from the ADS release, and snarks in parentheses from yours truly):
- Most Useful Barack Obama: Both names as combining forms. (Barack Obama has found that phrase useful for many years now.)
- Most Unnecessary: moofing: From “mobile out of office,” meaning working on the go with a laptop and cell phone. Created by a PR firm. (In fact, most such acronums are proving themselves increasingly unnecessary and unused, waning from the heyday of yuppie and nimby. More on that tomorrow.)
- Most Outrageous: terrorist fist jab: A knuckle-to-knuckle fist bump, or “dap,” traditionally performed between two black people as a sign of friendship, celebration or agreement. It was called the “terrorist fist jab” by the newscaster E. D. Hill, formerly of Fox News.
- Most Euphemistic: scooping technician: A person whose job it is to pick up dog poop. (Seems a pretty lame selection after we’ve endured sanitation engineer for garbageman lo these many decades.)
- Most Likely to Succeed: shovel-ready: Used to describe infrastructure projects that can be started quickly when funds become available. (I disagree. You won’t hear it used more than three times in 2010, if that. Speaking of shovels, the phrase will be grave-ready once projects are underway.)
- Least Likely to Succeed: PUMA: An acronym for Party Unity My Ass, used by Democrats who were disaffected after Hillary Clinton failed to secure a sufficient number of delegates. It was later said to stand for Party Unity Means Action. (And soon to stand for Pretty Ugly Manipulative Acronym.)
- New Category: Election-related Words: maverick: A person who is beholden to no one. Widely used by the Republican Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates, John McCain and Sarah Palin. Also in the adjectival form mavericky, used by Tina Fey portraying Palin on Saturday Night Live. (I put it in a different “new category”: Most Abused Word, and select it as the winner.)
Overall, I stick with my previous choice for 2008 word of the year: susurration, because nobody used it this year past year, and they should have. It’s a beautiful word, one to be spoken quietly in the middle of thought showers.
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12.21.08
Posted in acronyms, grammar, verbal stupidity at 5:03 pm by Bill Brohaugh
Following is an ad that appeared on one of my Yahoo emailbox web pages. I have no idea what the ad is for. And I will do nothing to find out—in particular, I refuse to click on the damn thing. FUBAR may be a product, may be a slogan, may be an unfortunate acronym for the Federation of Ultimate Bastions of Altruistic Reward. I doubt it, as I know the actual origin of the word fubar*. That origin coupled with the spammish illiteracy of “a insider” have Fouled Up Bill’s Attitudinal Response.
(* Fubar is an acronym of “Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition,” in case you haven’t encountered it—with Fouled generally considered to be another word in the F-initial family, one that I hesitate to use only because it’s the holiday season and I’m feeling double-F family-friendly.)
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