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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07.29.08
Posted in neology, ugly words at 6:24 am by Bill Brohaugh
I love a well-constructed neologism. Made-up word. Coinage. Nonce word. Sniglet. Call it what you will. Bop about the web, and you’ll find any number of similar neophiles, from Word Spy to Word Fugitives to the Wordlustitude blog (any blog devoted to neologism must be neologistically named).
To reiterate, I love a well-constructed neologism. In that light, I’m hoping that Swedish home furnishings retailer IKEA is better at building furniture than it is at building words. DM News recently published an article about IKEA’s mobile marketing campaign—here’s a snapshot:
I don’t know specifically, but I’m assuming that that clunky word textvitations is IKEA’s creation, as DM News is unlikely to lower itself to such awkward word-play. Textvitation is a “portmanteau word,” described by Lewis Carroll, the phrase’s creator, as “two meanings packed into one word.” Portmanteau is a type of luggage. IKEA might sell luggage. If so, it must be constructed out of wrought-iron handles Super-Glued to silk baggies. In other words, textvitation doesn’t cut it as a neologism. It bears only jury-rigged resemblance to its source words—text and invitation; it saves almost no space in having one word rear-end another; it involves damn little poetry or panache; and it rolls off the brain the way gravel rolls off the bed of an accelerating pick-up truck with the tailgate down. Neologism should involve flow, not duct tape.
Oh, wait. IKEA doesn’t build furniture. It sells furniture kits and components. The retailer leaves the actual assembly to people outside their walls. It works for kitchen cabinets, IKEA. Now make it work for words.
(For a more palatable marriage of the concepts of “Swedish” and “neologism” (and, um, “well-constructed,” too—and I doubt that she’s Swedish, but play along here), wander over to this campy discussion of Sniglets at “Hot for Words.”)
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05.27.08
Posted in abbreviations, neology, ugly words at 6:09 pm by Bill Brohaugh
This is a thought I’ve expounded upon before, but I must address it here, in an early installment of the nascent Everything You Know About English Is Wrong web-log:
Technically, I suppose you could call this a “blog.” You could. I won’t. As a word person, I look skeptically at the word blog. Which is a polite way to say I despise it.
Certainly, I honor the word mechanism that created it, as I do all mechanisms of English neology. It’s an interesting specimen of word-creation, too—an abbreviation that shortens the original phrase (”web-log”) from the front, while most abbreviations lop off the end (such as info for information). Variations occur, of course, such as flu from influenza—lopping off both middle and end.
The mechanism is sound. The result is grating. Blog has all the beauty of other words that start with the same B-L consonant combination, words that have remarkable affinity to the word blog: blather, blab, blabber, blah, blase, blob and bloney. Well, just kidding about that last one.
So, this is not a blog. It’s just blah blathering blabber.
Navel-Gazing Side Note Alert: To be slightly more succinct, I could have tightened my first sentence by writing “expounded on” as opposed to “expounded upon.” But concision is a matter of mental length as well as physical length. “Expounded on” sounds almost unnatural, in that a word as pompous as expounded nearly cries out to be followed by something equally pompous. The phrase is shorter, but mentally longer. And that’s today’s Write Tight moment. End Navel-Gazing Side Note Alert.
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