Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: cutting the literal and figurative cords; a Pig Latin-y carny term; and addiction to footwear.

Chicago Sunroof

“The way Jimmy sees it, that Chicago Sunroof was the start of all of his problems.”

Kevin P. Sullivan, “‘Marco,’” Entertainment Weekly, April 6, 2015

The term Chicago Sunroof, which means pooping through the sunroof of a car, seems to have originated in the show, Better Call Saul. The practice might be an alteration of the earlier Chicago stoop, the act of defecating on someone’s stoop and pouring honey all over the result.

cord-never

“Cord-nevers, you’re in luck. . . .When the hit shows return in the next few days, they will be available for streaming online with no cable or satellite subscription.”

Anick Jesdanun, “Cord-Nevers in Luck as ‘Mad Men,’ ‘Game of Thrones’ Hit Web,” AP, April 3, 2015

A cord-never is someone who has never had cable television and watches TV via the Internet only. The earliest citation we could find for cord-never is this 2011 post by Mark Taylor, a content and media professional.

Cord-never plays on cord-cutter, someone who once had cable but has gotten rid of it. Cord-cutter earlier referred to someone who has foregone a telephone landline in favor of a mobile phone. The landline meaning has been around since at least the early 2000s.

Of course cutting the cord originally referred to cutting a baby’s umbilical cord, and by figurative extension, cutting off a source of support. Cord cutting in regard to technology has both literal and figurative connotations, referring to actual telephone and cable television cords, and to people’s dependence on such utilities.

duff

“If you’re a Duff, let me just say, from one Duff to another, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being the Duff.”

Adrienne Tam, “Oh great, there’s a new word for the not-so-pretty, geeky schoolgirls,” The Daily Telegraph, March 25, 2015

Duff, which stands for Designated Ugly Fat Friend, is actually not so new: the Urban Dictionary entry is from 2003. But The Daily Telegraph is right that it was recently brought into the limelight again with a 2011 novel and a 2015 movie based on the book.

The word duff has several other meanings. It can refer to “a stiff flour pudding boiled in a cloth bag or steamed”; decaying leaves or branches; a worthless thing or person; and the buttocks. Up the duff means to be pregnant.

kayfabe

“I knew about what’s called kayfabe [the suspension of disbelief in staging wrestling as ‘real’].”

Arnold Pan, “Fact and Fiction: The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle on Wrestling and the Creative Process,” PopMatters, April 6, 2015

Kayfabe may have originated as carny slang referring to “old tricks, from three card monte to cure all elixers [sic] and, of course, magic acts.” A kayfabe violator “exposed the secrets behind these practices.” The word may be Pig Latin of words like fake (“ake-fay”) or the phrase, be fake (“e-bay ake-fay”).

sneakerhead

“Sneakerheads, as these avid, obsessive sneaker collectors are called, don’t consciously try to be of the same breed as those who fixate on Roseville pottery or antique clocks.”

Marc Bain, “Sneakerheads are secretly just as nerdy as yesterday’s antique collectors,” Quartz, April 6, 2015

The suffix –head in this context means fan or enthusiast. The earliest of these kinds of words might be Deadhead, a fan of the Grateful Dead, which originated in the early 1970s, says the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Gearhead meaning car enthusiast is from 1975, and in 1989 came to mean gadget or tech enthusiast. Metalhead, a fan of heavy metal music, is from 1982.

The “enthusiast” meaning of –head plays off the addict meaning in words like hophead, pothead, and crackhead.

[Photo via Flickr: “Nike Sneaker pileup,” CC BY 2.0 by Dan Hankins]

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: the elusive “magic rabbit”; performance binge eating; and space-time-aging mind meld.

Ili pika

“Meet the Ili pika (Ochotona iliensis), an extremely elusive, cuddly creature that is rarely seen by human eyes.”

Jenny Zhang, “Adorable Teddy Bear-like ‘Magic Rabbit’ Spotted for the First Time in Two Decades,” My Modern Met, March 26, 2015

This cuddly China native “has been spotted only a handful of times in the Tianshan Mountains” of Xinjiang province, says My Modern Met.

Dubbed the “magic rabbit” by those who study it, the Ili pika was named by its discoverer, conservationist Li Weidong. Ili is short for “iliensis,” while pika is a small, tailless, furry mammal that belong to “the order of lagomorphs,” which includes rabbits and hares. Pika might come from the Russian pikat’, “to squeak.”

mukbang

“The demands on Ahn and other mukbang stars like her are high — she can’t just eat, she must eat ferociously.”

Elise Hu, “Koreans Have An Insatiable Appetite For Watching Strangers Binge Eat,” NPR, March 24, 2015

Mukbang, which translates from Korean as “eating broadcast,” involves a broadcast jockey loudly and enthusiastically chowing down on an inordinate amount of food on livestream video.

As many as 45,000 Korean viewers watch mukbang during dinnertime. One mukbang “star” says that her mostly female fans are probably dieting and eating vicariously through her.

See also food porn.

notel

“Lee Seok-young, a defector from the North, said he smuggled 18,000 Chinese-made notel into the country last year.”

James Pearson, “The $50 device that symbolizes a shift in North Korea,” Reuters, March 27, 2015

The notel — the word combines “notebook” and “television” — is a small portable device that can play media via DVDs and USB sticks. It’s “easily concealed,” and therefore “easily smuggled into the country and passed hand to hand.” Up to “half of all urban North Korean households” have one.

[H/t Erin McKean.]

SPOT

“The TSA has insisted on keeping documents about SPOT secret, but the agency can’t hide the fact that there’s no evidence the program works.”

Jana Winter and Cora Currier, “Exclusive: TSA’s Secret Behavior Checklist to Spot Terrorists,” The Intercept, March 27, 2015

SPOT is a backronym that stands for “Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques.” (A backronym is when the acronym is formed first and the corresponding words picked to fit the letters.)

Some example “observations” that signal you might be a terrorist are exaggerated yawning, excessive complaints of the screening process, excessive throat clearing, and whistling.

[H/t Edward Banatt.]

telomere

“Scientists expect that radiation, weightlessness, changes in diet, and other features of life on the ISS will also make Scott Kelly’s telomeres shorten more quickly than his brother’s.”

Gideon Lichfield, “Astronaut Scott Kelly will return from a year in space both older and younger than his twin brother,” Quartz, March 27, 2015

Telomeres, says Quartz, are “sections of DNA found at the end of every chromosome in your body.” They sort of act like “the end caps on a copper wire that stop it from fraying,” and shorten “each time a cell replicates and copies its DNA into a new cell.” When they get too short, “replication stops, making the body susceptible to decay or cancer.”

So while Scott will be chronologically younger than his six-minute older twin — over 342 days, he “will become 25 microseconds a day younger” — he’ll be physiologically older.

[Photo via My Modern Met: By Li Weidong]

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: hooray for Cholliwood, an unexpected distress call, and checkered chihuahuas.

Cholliwood

“So, yes, ‘Cholliwood,’ as it’s been dubbed (‘Chollima’ is the name of the flying horse you see everywhere in North Korea), is not quite Cinecittà.”

Pico Iyer, “A Rare Glimpse Inside North Korea’s Pyongyang International Film Festival,” Vanity Fair, March 2015

Cholliwood refers to North Korea’s film industry, which is mostly, if not all, propaganda.

The flying horse Chollima originates from Chinese classic works and translates as “thousand-mile horse.” It’s said the horse is “too swift and elegant to be mounted” by humans. The North Korean football team is known as Chollima, as well as their economic movement which is similar to China’s Great Leap Forward.

Other Hollywood blends include Bollywood, the film industry of Bombay, now Mumbai; Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s amusement park; Wellywood which refers to Wellington, New Zealand, the home of Peter “Lord of the Rings” Jackson’s production company; and many more.

kiss squeak

“Another interesting aspect of this research is that it proves kisses aren’t all about romance and sweetness in the primate world. The calls that de Boers and his colleagues studied are known as ‘kiss squeaks.’”

Jennifer Viegas, “Orangutans Use Hands to Help Create Fake Voices,” Discovery News, March 18, 2015

The kiss squeak is a distress call the orangutan makes when humans or dangerous animals come near, says Discovery News.

Kiwi collier

“For example, the Chihuahua-Australian shepherd-Jack Russell terrier-collie became a ‘Kiwi collier’; a Yorkshire terrier and beagle mix became a ‘Yorkle’; and a golden retriever-miniature pinscher-Chihuahua was proclaimed a ‘golden Chinscher.’”

Sue Manning, “DNA tests help California shelter speed up dog adoptions,” AP, March 18, 2015

The Kiwi collier, while an adorable name and, we’re sure, an adorable pup, is a bit of a misnomer: Kiwi is the nickname for someone from New Zealand, not Australia.

Check out more hybrid dog names.

range anxiety

“Even with a string of Superchargers along my route, I felt the creep of range anxiety (mostly expressed as sweatiness), because the projected range suggested by the car didn’t always hold up.”

Alex Davies, “Tesla’s Plan to Kill Range Anxiety with a Software Update,” Wired, March 19, 2015

Range anxiety is the fear that a vehicle’s range, or “maximum distance that can be covered…with a specified payload before its fuel supply is exhausted,” is not enough to reach its destination. Especially said of electric cars since car battery chargers are not readily available everywhere.

technofossil

“The boom in human population and consumption of everything from copper to corn after 1950 or so. . .roughly coincides with this nuclear marker as does the advent of plastics and other remnants of industrial society, dubbed technofossils by Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester.”

David Biello, “Mass Deaths in America Start New CO2 Epoch,” Scientific American, March 11, 2015

Technofossils are “the fossil traces of technologies used to perform tasks,” according to The Economist. For example, technofossils “from about two million years ago” left behind by pre-human primates include “simple wood or stone ‘tools’ to pound, dig or cut.”

[Photo via Flickr: “Zoo Negara,” CC BY 2.0 by Phalinn Ooi]

Welcome to our latest installment of Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up five buzzworthy words. This week: red hot chile peppers; smartwatches in the night, exchanging glances; them’s fightin’ genes.

chemesthetic

“Capsaicin, unlike other compounds found in food, is a chemesthetic (a chemical that activates receptors associated with pain and touch) so it produces a burning sensation, rather than a taste or smell.”

Leslie Stephens, “All About Chiles,” Food52, February 25, 2015

Chemesthetics don’t just result in pain but also, for example, the cooling feeling of minty mouthwash and the stinging of carbonated drinks.

duang

“Jackie Chan might still be popular in China, but nowadays the pro-Beijing actor is as well-known as fodder for jokes as he is for his gritty martial arts and slapstick humor on screen. His latest contribution to the country’s mass culture and entertainment: ‘duang.’”

Didi Tang, “‘Duang!’ Chinese poke fun at Jackie Chan with nonsense word,” AP, March 5, 2015

The Chinese word duang, says AP, means something like “ta-da!” or else “special effects.” In a 2004 shampoo commercial, Chan claimed no ‘duang’ was used “to make his hair look blacker, shinier and softer,” which authorities later deemed false advertising.

Duang is an example of onomatopoeia.

glances

“Apple has not yet trademarked the term, but you will hear a lot about ‘glances’ and ‘glanceable content’ in the coming days as Applespeak begins its migration into the vernacular.”

Stephen Hutcheon, “Apple Watch launch 2015: Attention deficit is coming on an industrial scale,” The Sydney Morning Herald, March 11, 2015

Apple defines a glance as a “a browsable collection of timely and contextually relevant moments from the wearer’s favorite apps,” says The Sydney Morning Herald. In other words, a glance is glancing at your watch to check the weather or a stock price.

There will be two types of glances, the Long Look, which you can scroll, and the Short Look, which you can’t.

The word glance comes from the Old French glacier, “to slip, make slippery.”

Munchausen by proxy by Internet

“Some argue that Spears was exhibiting an even newer form of Munchausen than had previously been identified: ‘Munchausen by proxy by Internet.’”

Amanda Hess, “Sick of the Internet,” Slate, March 9, 2015

Münchausen syndrome is a psychiatric disorder in which the afflicted pretend to be ill to gain attention and sympathy. In Münchausen syndrome by proxy a parent or other adult caregiver exaggerates or induces illness in a child to gain attention.

In 2000 psychiatrist Marc Feldman coined Munchausen by Internet, a form of Munchausen syndrome in which people post about feigned illnesses online. Now, in light of a woman who’s accused of slowly poisoning her child with salt and documenting his “illness” on Twitter, some are suggesting yet another variation: Munchausen by proxy by Internet.

The disorder and its variations are named after Baron Münchhausen, a fictional character in German literature loosely based on real-life baron, Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen, who had a habit of telling tall tales.

warrior gene

“About 30% of men have this so-called warrior gene, but whether the gene is triggered or not depends crucially on what happens to you in childhood.”

“Are murderers born or made?” BBC News, March 9, 2015

The warrior gene refers to the absence or a variant of a gene that produces the enzyme, MAOA, “which regulates the levels of neurotransmitters involved in impulse control,” says BBC News.

Those without this gene or with the “low-activity” variant are predisposed to violence, according to a 1993 study of a Dutch family. In the family, all the men had a history of violence and were also all missing this gene.

However, just because you’re missing this gene doesn’t mean you’re necessarily violent. A University of California professor who discovered “a surprisingly large number of murderers in his family tree,” had himself genetically tested and found “he had an awful lot of genes that have been linked to violent psychopathic behaviour,” although he himself hasn’t displayed such tendencies.

He chalks it up to his happy childhood and suggests that “a genetic tendency violence” plus an abusive childhood is the deadly combination.

[Photo via Flickr: “Viking warriors ready for the fight,” CC BY 2.0 by Hans Splinter]