ADS WotY: bailout

Seeing bailout win the Word of the Year vote is kinda like seeing the regular season leader win the championship: it's a deserved but boring win. It already won the Merriam-Webster championship. So at least the ADS gives us some other categories to keep it interesting.

MOST USEFUL: Barack Obama

It's not a political statement. It's about the words. Barack the vote. Can you smell what barack is cooking? Obamanation. Obamania. &c.

Among the nominees: Palinesque—pertaining to a person who has extended themselves beyond their expertise, thereby bringing ridicule upon a serious matter. The birth of a legacy.

MOST CREATIVE: 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. I hadn't heard this one but I think the idea of general recombobulation could stick.

MOST UNNECESSARY: moofing (Mobile Out of OFfice)

Shouldn't that be Mooo? Or Mooo-ing? Or Moooficing? In her tweet report Erin McKean calls it a stupid PR-created word. Agreed.

Bromance was nominated and got some votes but I like the word. It's relevant and it sounds right and it's got some miles put on it. Brian— Casey— you guys make this one work.

MOST OUTRAGEOUS: terrorist fist jab

E. D. Hill is an idiot.

MOST EUPHEMISTIC: scooping technician

A pooper scooper (agent, not instrument).

The runner up, age-doping, doesn't seem too euphemistic to me. Had I been there, I would have voted for thought showers, used in place of brainstorming out of respect to epileptics. I'd roll my eyes but that might be offensive too.

MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED: shovel-ready

It's a term used to describe infrastructure projects that can be started quickly when Obama's economic stimulus package is enacted writes Ben Zimmer rooting for this word. The problem I have with it is that I keep imagining that the shoveling refers to something else. Phrases like get your shovel ready or you're gonna need a shovel have contaminated this term. To me it sounds almost like the opposite of what it means.

LEAST LIKELY TO SUCCEED: PUMA (Party Unity My Ass)

An appropriate category for Hillary's bitter supporters

NEW CATEGORY: ELECTION-RELATED WORDS: maverick

Anything but.

Hockey mom was nominated and I'd say it's as good as soccer mom considering kids in the states don't play either.

ADS WotY: subprime

The press release is out. What I like best about the ADS list is the categories. It makes for good discussion. That said: I nominate the new real estate/mortgage/loan words category as least necessary and least likely to succeed. Though I do like the play on 'loanwords' in there.

So here I post without further comment the writeup of this year's winners taken directly from the press release (I exclude the voting tally):

WORD OF THE YEAR WINNER: subprime
green- prefix/compounding form Designates environmental concern, as in greenwashing.
surge an increase in troops in a war zone.
Facebook all parts of speech.
waterboarding an interrogation technique in which the subject is immobilized and doused with
water to simulate drowning.
Googlegänger A person with your name who shows up when you google yourself.
wide stance, to have a To be hypocritical or to express two conflicting points of view. When Senator Larry Craig was arrested in a public restroom and accused of making signals with his foot that police said meant he was in search of a anonymous sex, Craig said it was a misunderstanding and that he just had a wide stance when using the toilet.

MOST USEFUL
WINNER: green- prefix/compounding form Designates environmental concern, as in greenwashing.
bacn Impersonal email such as alerts, newsletters, and automated reminders that are nearly as annoying as spam but which one has chosen to receive.
celebu- prefix Indicates celebrity, as in celebutard.
connectile dysfunction Inability to gain or maintain a connection.
wrap rage Anger brought on by the frustration of trying to open a factory-sealed purchase.

MOST CREATIVE
WINNER Googlegänger Person with your name who shows up when you google yourself.
boom An instance of a military explosion in the phrases left of boom, which describes the US military’s efforts to root out insurgents before they do harm, and right of boom, which describes efforts to minimize attacks with better equipment, systems, and medical care.
lolcat On the Internet, an odd or funny picture of a cat given a humorous and intentionally ungrammatical caption in large block letters. From LOL + cat.
tapafication The tendency of restaurants to serve food in many small portions, similar to tapas.

MOST UNNECESSARY
WINNER Happy Kwanhanamas! [Kwanza + Hanukka + Christmas] Happy holidays!
truther Someone who espouses a conspiracy theory about the events of 9/11.
vegansexual A person who eats no meat, uses no animal-derived goods, and who prefers not to have sex with non-vegans.

MOST OUTRAGEOUS
WINNER toe-tapper A homosexual. Senator Larry Craig was arrested in June for an encounter in a public restroom in which toe-tapping was said to have been used as a sexual come-on.
nappy-headed ho An expression used on the Don Imus radio show, and repeated by the host, about the women’s basketball team at Rutgers University.
make it rain To drop paper money on a crowd of people, especially in strip clubs, nightclubs, or casinos.

MOST EUPHEMISTIC
WINNER human terrain team A group of social scientists employed by the US military to serve as cultural advisers in Iraq or Afghanistan.
shmashmortion/smushmortion Abortion.
va-j-j Also va-jay-jay or vajayjay The vagina.

MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED
WINNER green- prefix/compounding form Designates environmental concern, as in greenwashing.
global weirding An increase in severe or unusual environmental activity often attributed to global warming. This includes freakish weather and new animal migration patterns.
Super-Duper Tuesday Feb. 5th, the day 23 US states will hold primary elections. Also known as Tsunami Tuesday.
wide stance, to have a To be hypocritical or to express two conflicting points of view. When Senator Larry Craig was arrested in a public restroom and accused of making signals with his foot that police said meant he was in search of a anonymous sex, Craig said it was a misunderstanding and that he just had a wide stance when using the toilet.
locavore someone who eats food that is grown or produced locally. Nominated by Dick Bailey.
texter a person who sends text messages.

LEAST LIKELY TO SUCCEED
WINNER strand-in Protest duplicating being stranded inside an airplane on a delayed flight.
Billary/Hill-Bill Bill and Hillary Clinton.
earmarxist A congressman or senator who adds earmarks — money designated for a particular person or group — to legislation. Coined by the blog Redstate to refer to Democrats.
quadriboobage The appearance of having four breasts caused by wearing a brassiere that is too small.

NEW CATEGORY: REAL ESTATE/MORTGAGE/LOAN WORDS
WINNER subprime Used to describe a risky or poorly documented loan or mortgage.
exploding ARM An Adjustable Rate Mortgage whose rates soon rise beyond a borrower’s ability to pay.
liar’s loan/liar loan Money borrowed from a financial institution under false pretenses, especially in the form of a “stated income” or “no-doc” loan which can permit a borrower to exaggerate income.
NINJA No Income, No Job or Assets. A poorly documented loan made to a high-risk borrower.
scratch and dent loan A loan or mortgage that has become a risky debt investment, especially one secured with minimal documentation or made by a borrower who has missed payments.

Jaded on Safire

Barry Popik has an unapologetic agenda against William Safire. It's only partly personal. It's mostly decent scholarship. On the ADS-L he has identified the amateur linguist's most recent lapse.

Safire in his "On Language" column for The New York Times Magazine this week makes the following observation:

The warm old phrase you’re welcome is rapidly disappearing from the language of civility. Though the word welcome first appeared in “Beowulf,” the O.E.D. notes that the whole phrase surfaced in print in 1907. We have now come to the 100th anniversary of the birth of our acknowledgment of someone’s expression of gratitude.

I was driven to send the following message to him. He'll ignore it I'm sure.

...Beowulf may be the first documentation of the word. To argue otherwise would take more time and effort than a simple missive should require.

But I must take issue with your claim that 1907 was the earliest that the entire phrase "you're welcome" was cited. The OED does cite the line "You're quite welcome" in W W Jacobs work, Short Cruises. And that phrase does include the entire lexical bank of "you're welcome" though the extra quite interrupts the continuity of the phrase. No matter. We will accept this as an example of the entire phrase plus one word. This does however move us to acknowledge those citations (in the same OED entry) that predate the 1907 example. 300 years before Jacobs, Shakespeare wrote "O Apermantus, you are welcome" in Timon of Athens. About 600 years before that Caedmon's Satan contained the line you "sind wilcuman" which is perhaps too early to be easily recognizable. But clearly the phrase was around well before 1907.

I do understand that you then intend to identify the phrase as a salient (if waning) response to that most common expression of gratitude: "thank you." In that case a quick look at only the OED supports your claim. But you should not be so hasty to trust even such a lofty tome to be your only source. It is not a regularly updated work. You need not lower your sights to find an example that predates the OED's 1907 citation. Look to the Bard good sir. In Othello you will find the following exchange between Lodovico and Desdemona:

Lod. Madam, good night; I humbly thank your ladyship.
Des. Your honour is most welcome.

Use this information as you wish.

I'll let Mr Popik's comments sum up the judgment.

So what Safire is really saying here is that this is not the "100th anniversary of 'you're welcome,'" but that this is a poor researcher relaying obviously outdated information to an uninformed general public. This is a joke.
...
Doesn't The New York Times have any journalistic standards?

[Update:
Mr. Verb is also fed up. Read some of his thoughts on Safire over at his space.
]

Damn to you!

An AP story reports that a flight was canceled due to language. Before the plane took off, the pilot flew into a rage while on his cellphone.

'Passengers who were boarding the aircraft could hear his end of it,' Gregor said.

Las Vegas police were sent Friday to McCarran International Airport to investigate, Gregor said. Authorities were told that the pilot cursed one passenger who confronted him, Gregor said.

After reading this I posted a little note to the American Dialect Society. Here I include a small bit of the exchange.

In my first post I wrote

Inanimate objects are cursed all the time, but with a human object I would expect to find 'cursed at' or some other syntactical indication of a dative form.

This transitive use of 'cursed' sounds like a case of nefarious magic to me. How common is this form?

Benjamin Zimmer offers a helpful response:

'Curse' = 'swear at' is fairly common. Here are some more news articles in which people are "cursed" with obscene epithets rather than evil spells:

And the examples clearly support his point.

Dennis Preston writes

'Cursed (cussed) at' sounds odd to me. The completely idiomatic form of this in my vernacular (with a human object) is 'cuss out.'

I pissed off old Hatfield and he cussed me out something awful.

'Cussed at me' would be unusual for me here.

I agree. But would he say or expect to hear "cussed me"?

Charles Doyle challenges the premise of my question more directly.

I don't understand why there's an 'issue' here; most of the OED's historical examples of transitive 'curse' have human (or anthropomorphic) objects (was Job supposed to 'curse AT God and die' or 'curse God OUT and die'??). I don't find anything odd about simply CURSING a person!

So I had to respond.

Remind me not to get on your bad side.

What caught my attention wasn't the stark syntax. The semantics were peeking around the corner and that's what I noticed.

Clearly the form is common enough not to be conspicuous or interesting to most readers. Sure--Job probably did curse. But as I read that, the character truly does intend a curse. He isn't just saying 'damn you' to his deity out of anger--he is actually uttering a curse of _effective_ ill will (now that's chutzpah). The use of 'to (curse|cuss)' as a simple expression of anger or frustration is common enough. I guess my ears are slow to catch on to its transitive use.

I should have made it more clear in my original observation that since I hear the meaning changing slightly I was just unsure of how common the usage is without the semantic distinction (which I now see no one else hears).

Having read the AP story Mark Liberman offers an amusing suggestion over at Language Log.

ADS Word of the Year Winners

The American Dialect Society has announced its choice for Word of the Year. According to some the ADS WotY is the most prestigious of all WotY awards. At least it is so among ADS members. Unlike the Merriam-Webster or Dictionary.com awards this one is not chosen by the public. Nominations were accepted from anyone, but open on-line voting was not used to decide. As Benjamin Zimmer wrote on Language Log, the free ballot "simply prove[s] that fans of Stephen Colbert and truthiness will swamp any such competition."

There were winners in several categories.

Word of the Year Pluto, verb: as in to pluto or to be plutoed. To demote or be demoted as was the planetary body. Nominees: climate canary, murse (man's purse), surge, prohibited liquids, flog (commercial/fake blog), YouTube, macaca/macaca moment.

Most Useful Climate Canary, noun: an organism or species whose poor health or declining numbers hint at a larger invironmental catastrophe on the horizon. Nominees: data Valdez (a massive information leak), flog, sharrow (an arrow marking a bicycling route), boomeritis (Baby Boomers' afflictions or injuries).

Most Creative lactard: a person who is lactose-intolerant. Nominees: Fed-Ex (Kevin Federline), julie (verb, meaning to organize an event like Julie on The Love Boat), snowclone.

Most Unnecessary SuriKat: the scientolobaby. Nominees: the decider (with definite article indicates a micromanager), Fox lips, (colored and lined to make more prominent as of female anchors on Fox News).

Most Outrageous Cambodian accessory: Angelina Jolie's adopted child. Nominees: sudden jihad syndrome (sudden outburst of violence from a seemingly stable and normal Muslim), firecrotch, macaca, tramp stamp (tatoo on the back just above the wasteline).

Most Euphemistic waterboarding: interrogation technique of pretending/threatening to drown a detainee. Nominees: surge, lancing (forced 'outing' of closeted celebrity), lyric malfunction.

Most Likely to Succeed YouTube verb: to use the website. Nominees: carbon (in combining forms used as shorthand for air pollution), the decider, macaca moment, m-/man-/men- (known as "man-fixes" in compounds and blends such as moobs, manboobs, murse, man purse, mancation, man crush, manmaries, menaissance etc. They left out "manssière" aka "the bro".

Least Likely to Succeed grup: a Gen-Xer who does not act his or her age. Nominees: pwn, stay the course.

New Category: Pluto-Related Words pluto or plutoed verb. Nominees: dwarf planet, pluton, small solar sytem body (SSSB)



I must say the winner in the Most Creative category sounds juvenile. I'm guessing it's based on the root tard: slow. The root when taken as a clipped form of the noun retard is one of those brazen insults that is often a conscious challenge to Political Correctness. It's usually used in familiar conversation when the game is "who can be more offensive?" It goes something like this:

"Differently abled? What does that mean? Everyone is differently abled!"
"Yeah. It's not like 'special' isn't an insult anymore anyway."
"Why not just go back to calling them handicapped. It's saying the same thing."
"Or even 'retard.' That's a technical term. It's accurate isn't it?"
"Or how about 'tard.' I think that's what we should start saying."

And everyone laughs/groans in disbelief because it's so egregious.