Below are some of the latest entries to the Oxford Dictionary; the authoritative repository of the English language lexicon. - chill pill a notional pill taken to make someone calm down - chillax calm down and relax turducken a roast dish consisting of a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey - bargainous costing less than is usual or than might be expected; cheap or relatively cheap - staycation holiday spent in one’s home country - fussbudget a fussy person - vuvuzela long horn blown by fans at soccer matches - national treasure someone/thing regarded as emblematic of a nation’s cultural heritage - buzzkill a person or thing that has a depressing or dispiriting effect - social media websites and applications used for social networking - microblogging the posting of very short entries on a blog - netbook small light laptop - dictionary attack an attempt to gain illicit access to a computer system by using a very large set of words to generate potential passwords - paywall an arrangement whereby access is restricted to users who have paid to subscribe to a website - freemium a business model, especially on the Internet, whereby basic services are provided free of charge while more advanced features must be paid for - automagically automatically and in a way that seems ingenious, inexplicable, or magical - carbon capture and storage the process of trapping and storing carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels - geoengineering manipulation of environmental processes in an attempt to counteract the effects of global warming - toxic debt debt which has a high risk of default - deleveraging the process or practice of reducing the level of one’s debt by rapidly selling one’s assets - overleveraged having taken on too much debt - quantitative easing the introduction of new money into the money supply by a central bank - exit strategy a pre-planned means of extricating oneself from a situation - overthink think about (something) too much or for too long - catastrophizing view or present a situation as considerably worse than it actually is - soft skills personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people - matchy-matchy excessively color-coordinated - LBD little black dress - frenemy a person with whom one is friendly despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry - cheeseball lacking taste, style, or originality - cool hunter a person whose job it is to make observations or predictions about new styles and trends - hikikomori the abnormal avoidance of social contact, typically by adolescent males (in Japan) - steampunk a genre of science fiction that typically features steam-powered machinery rather than advance technology - tweetup a meeting organized by means of posts on Twitter - bromance a close but nonsexual relationship between two men - wardrobe malfunction an instance of a person accidentally exposing an intimate part of their body as a result of an article of clothing slipping out of position - defriend another term for unfriend (remove someone from a list of friends or contacts on a social networking site) - interweb the internet - hater negative person
August 30, 2010
Each year Beloit College publishes its “Mind Set” for the freshman class, as a way to put in perspective the generation gap as well as aid instructors to not make too many assumptions concerning “ancient” and current frames of reference. The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014: Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992. For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead. 1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive. 2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail. 3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.” 4. Al Gore has always been animated. 5. Los Angelinos have always been trying to get along. 6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other bloodsuckers at Hemery High. 7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo. 8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities. 9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend. 10. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority…unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet. 11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis. 12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry. 13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation. 14. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine. 15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause. 16. Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways. 17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection. 18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess. 19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone. 20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed. 21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn. 22. Cross-burning has always been deemed protected speech. 23. Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes in cars. 24. “Cop Killer” by rapper Ice-T has never been available on a recording. 25. Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing networks. 26. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides. 27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive. 28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day. 29. Reggie Jackson has always been enshrined in Cooperstown. 30. “Viewer Discretion” has always been an available warning on TV shows.
August 23, 2010
Where did “Best Man” at a wedding originate? A Best Man is really for the groom -he generally chooses his best man -usually a good friend. The tradition of a best man has its origin with the Germanic Goths, when it was customary and preferable for a man to marry a woman from within his own community. When women came into short supply “locally,” eligible bachelors would have to seek out and capture a bride from a neighboring community. As you might guess, this was not a one-person operation, and so the future bridegroom would be accompanied by a male companion who would help. Our custom of the best man is a throwback to that two-man, strong-armed tactic, of course the future groom would select only the best man he knew to come along for such an important task. The role of the best man evolved. By 200 A.D. his task was still more than just safeguarding the ring. There remained a real threat that the bride’s family would attempt to forcibly obtain her return, so the best man remained at the groom’s side throughout the marriage ceremony, alert and well-armed. He continued his duties after the ceremony by standing guard as sentry outside the newlywed’s home. Much of this is German folklore, but is not without written documentation and physical artifacts. There are records indicating beneath the altars of many churches of early peoples (the Huns, Goths, Visigoths, and Vandals) there lay an arsenal of clubs, knives, and spears. The indication is that these were there to protect the groom from possible attack by the bride’s family in an attempt to recapture her.
Hmmmmm..... will return soon!
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