Last night on NPR's Radio Open Source , the topic was The Word of the Year. The Oxford University Press announced the word of the year in November and it is the rather boring "carbon neutral" which 1) I am not entirely sure of the definition of and 2) is actually a phrase. No matter because the function of their Word of the Year hoopla is to introduce a word you may have heard in the past year but aren't quite sure what it means so you will go out and buy a dictionary.
Most of the program was not spent discussing the ins and outs of beign "carbon neutral" but rather about how language changes through usage. New words are invented all the time as new situations arise, and likewise other antiquated words fall out of circulation as the need to use them lessens. Their examples were the word "dwarf planet" which most of us have probably never heard before this year but will use more and more frequently going forward, and the word "buggy whip" which at one time was quite a useful word and now is less popular except probably in Amish country.
It got me thinking about language among social groups. My friends and I definitely have formed our own lexicon throughout the years. If a linguist studied us and used as as the measure of what words all people our age use, they would think that all young adults are inordinately fond of Sylvanus Thayer, use the gramatically incorrect phrase "It ain't right", throw around the words "psyched" and "awesome" constantly. We are also fond of abbreviations and in some cases use the abbreviations in place of the actual word, like an annoying man would become The Annoying Man and thus T.A.M. You would use it like "I was going to let him buy me a drink but then he turned out to be T.A.M".
The list goes on and on. I could write a dictionary based entirely on Braintree-speak.And I bet if you examine your social circle, you can come up with some words/phrases that are pretty exclusive to your group.
In any case the best thing I got out of listening to that program was discovering two new words: One is "Hummer House" which is used in place of McMansion/ annoyingly large houses that spring up everywhere for no reason. Another is "mooble" which apparently no one uses but I am going to be part of the effort to bring it back. Coined by the same man who brought is the word "blurb" in the early 20th century, a "mooble" is a person who is only semi-interesting.
Maybe you think I'm a mooble now after reading this post. Whatevs! I'm a word nerd.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
6 comments:
my wiffleball team actually has a written lexicon of words that we've made up. an actual lexicon. it's hilarious. it's called "WIFFLENOMICON". I was going to post a submission but they are so bizarre no one would understand - thus making it our person lexicon.
here's one that might go over ok.
word/phrase: "LOOKING FOR WORK"
definition: Drinking all day.
Note that Looking For Work also includes surfing the web, myspace stalking, checking the wiffleboard religiously, and anything else a cougar might do to procrastinate.
Person 1: "What did you do yesterday?"
Ryan: "I was looking for work."
Contributor: Rena
Behavioral Contributors: Commie Ryan, Kelly Who?
<3 danielle
thats amazing. i plan on looking for work all weekend long.
I'm a member of a group blog. We are all a bunch of old high school friends who stay in touch via our blog. We have a "blogtionary" comprised of blogging terms we've coined. One is "verifeasy" which is a simple to copy word verification. It's antonym is, of course, "verifard".
Oxford stinks. Who the heck uses "Carbon Neutral" in day-to-day speech? The American Dialect Society already elected their Word Of The Year already and it was(drum roll please) "Truthiness". Which I think is SO much more worthy of the honor. Go Colbert!
actually they mentioned Colbert a few times in the program and basically hated on him, saying that most people don't say the word truthiness without also mentioning Colbert so it is not a self sustaining word!
OOoo! Haters!
Post a Comment