Language and Humor Blog

Last month U.K. dictionary publisher Collins (site) came out with its ninth edition, including some recent words.

Now U.S. dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster (site) has released its 2007 update.

The U.K. words don’t move me one way or the other, but a few of the U.S. words bothered me. To wit:

Hardscape (benches and such in landscaping): Aren’t trees pretty hard? And have you heard of rocks?

Microgreen (celery shoots, etc.): What’s wrong with shoots? They don’t even seem small enough to deserve “micro.”

Viewshed: Is this actually different from view or vista?

I’ve never heard or seen any of these words used. We’ll see how common they become.

Here are two youth-slang quizzes you can try:

• a U.S. one and
• a U.K. one.

On the U.S. one, I missed two out of twenty. On the U.K. one, I missed eight out of ten. I’m familiar with some of the U.S. words, but I’ve never heard of any of the U.K. ones. But then, I’m fairly new to being aware of the latter’s established slang like chuffed (“very pleased”) and knackered (“exhausted,” “damaged”; via The Office [UK]).

U.S. youth slang

• a beat box: Why, I remember back in the olden days of the early ’90s when we called this a human beat box, as opposed to a beat box (“portable stereo”).
• to chunk the deuce: I get the “two” fingers, but “chunk”?
• a dot-gone: probably for the post-teen crowd
• fives
• to gank
• ginormous adj.: This has become pretty common.
• a grade digger: I don’t like this because it sounds like it comes from “grave digger,” not “gold digger.”
• Hasselhoffing n.
• a jabroni
• a January joiner
• LOL: This is well established. But if you aren’t laughing out loud, aren’t you smiling?
• sauce adj.
• a serial chiller
• to shop naked
• a soul patch: This was recently added to America’s Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.
• to tag
• Texas tea: This is used in the theme song to the 1962 TV show The Beverly Hillbillies. Is the term making a comeback?
• to trip: This is another dephrasing of a phrasal verb (trip out), like cave (cave in, figuratively), freak (freak out), chill (chill out), crank it (crank it up), etc.
• unprotected sleep
• to wig: This is yet another dephrasing of a phrasal verb (wig out).

U.K. youth slang

• bare adj.
• to bosh
• chenzed adj.
• confuzzled adj.
• dekecking n. I’m guessing keck means “trousers.” (Nope, it’s kecks.)
• fetch adj.: From the U.S. movie Mean Girls. I assume the word is from the old-fashioned fetching.
• a flim
• a grimmer
• gopping adj.
• hollage n.
• a McFittie
• a meg
• moobs n.
• p . . . [followed by] . . . orn adj. [Sorry, I get enough of that kind of spam-comment here already without including such terms in posts.]

For British youth slang, see also:

• From the mouths of teens
• BBC – Lancashire – Fun Stuff – Ludicrous lists

Word of the year

The overall winner of Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year contest (see prior post: Vote for 2006 Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year) has been announced.

May I have the envelope, please?

For being “the most valuable contribution to the English language in 2006,” the winner is . . .

muffin top
(bulge of midriff fat accentuated by tight pants/trousers or skirt).

Muffin top may originally be an Australianism that has spread far and wide.

Winners in categories and discussion

If you don’t follow the Word of the Year awards season closely, you may be unaware that muffin top was a nominee for the 2005 American Dialect Society Word of the Year back in January 2006, in the category Most Creative (PDF file).

Muffin top lost back then to the admittedly stronger contender whale tail (visible thong underwear from a low-slung waistband). Never discount the appeal of rhyming. But muffin top applauded heartily when the winner was announced, at least when the cameras were on it.

After whale tail then lost the overall 2005 award to truthiness, muffin top and whale tail were seen at a gala after-party in good spirits (and wines), chatting away about their mutual interests: drawing attention to the midsection of the body and world peace. Then they went and found truthiness‘s car and slashed the tires.

See also my posts:

American Dialect Society Word of 2006

Webster’s (and Webster’s) 2006 Word of the Year

Australian English Monthly Surveys

The Macquarie Dictionary also wants to survey Australian English speakers every month about their use of Australianisms: Survey 1. I’m curious whether milk run is an Australianism. I think it’s a broader World War II Allies term for a bomber mission or other trip finished without incident.

If you missed out on other 2006 word of the year votes, there’s still time in Australia. Macquarie Dictionary has voting in various categories until midnight on Sunday, January 21, 2007 (presumably Sydney’s Australian Eastern Daylight Time, GMT +11).

Look for “the most valuable contribution to the English language in 2006 in each category.”

I don’t want to influence your voting, but I have to point out a one thing.

Spaghettini? That’s been around for years and years. Is it new to Australia or in the news there? It’s in America’s 2002 Webster’s New World College Dictionary (4th ed.). While we’re on the subject, I found out the thickness goes spaghetti (“little cords”) as the thickest, then spaghettini (“little little cords”), then vermicelli (“little worms”), then angel-hair pasta.

I posted a few months ago (Standard Appalachian English) about the English dialect of the Appalachian Mountains of the Eastern United States. A new article (citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061217/LIVING07/612170301/1031/ENT) [EDIT (5/30/10): dead link] has the same themes of linguistic prejudice and preservation but also contains some Southern Appalachian vocabulary.

Observations

“Dropped consonants: Going becomes goin’ or a’goin’.”

There’s no dropped consonant here (except in writing). The sound that is a back-of-the-mouth (soft palate/velum) nasal is instead a front-of-the-mouth (gum ridge/alveolar ridge) nasal. Nothing is missing with the pronunciation -in’ any more than anything is missing with the standard pronunciation of “phone book” as “phome book.” We just don’t have a letter for ng because it started out as merely the pronunciation of n before g (finger).

“Holped: Helped.”

Help is a regular verb in Modern English (help-helped-helped), but it used to be irregular (help-holp-holpen), as it still is in Modern German (helfen-half-geholfen). They’ve just regularized it with the -ed.

“Afeared: Afraid.”

Afeared was used in Shakespeare. As with holped, a form that has dropped out of the emerging standard has been retained by another variety of the language.