Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.
Remember that once a month we’re giving away Wordnik schwag to two randomly chosen players, to be announced the last Monday of the month, and as always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.
Welcome to this week’s Language Blog Roundup, in which we bring you the highlights from our favorite language blogs and the latest in word news and culture.
In lexicography scandals this week, The Guardian reported on a book which claims a former Oxford English Dictionary editor “secretly” deleted thousands of words, while Jesse Sheidlower, Ben Zimmer, and the author of the book, Sarah Ogilvie, all provided more context and put this non-scandal into perspective. In other dictionary news, Lifehacker offered an invaluable tech dictionary, while these rare dictionaries might go to auction for as much $1 million.
In other language news, Jen Doll at The Atlantic took a look inside the search for 2012’s word of the year (before she ranted politely about hyphens); Merriam Webster announced their choices, socialism and capitalism; and the OUP Blog discussed Place of the Year, Mars. Lynneguist requested nominations for British-English and American-English imports of the year, while the American Name Society asked for nominations for 2012 Name of the Year.
In other naming news, Laura Wattenberg, aka the Baby Name Wizard, explained the royal baby name process; we had fun with this Hobbit Name Game (ours is Rosie-Posie Chubb-Baggins); and, hey, did you catch our interview with professional namer Anthony Shore?
Ben Zimmer discussed the term fiscal cliff as well as how playwright Tony Kushner created “vintage 19th-century dialogue with contemporary vibrancy” in the film, Lincoln. Sally Thomason at Language Log took a look at the claim that English is a Scandinavian language. Johnson explored internet language, dictionaries and finding the right format, and Christmas cliches. Meanwhile, the OxfordWords Blog served up traditional Christmas foods.
At Lingua Franca, Geoff Pullum told us not to blame our bad moods on language and compared who and whom, while Allan Metcalf rounded up five rules for why new words survive. At Macmillan Dictionary blog, Gill Francis explored the funny side of omitted objects; Orin Hargraves discussed the language of internet dating; and Stan Carey compared anymore and any more. On his own blog, Stan considered the comma that muddles meaning, some howling ambiguities, and African American Vernacular English.
In words of the week, Erin McKean’s Wall Street Journal findings included spezzato, “a combination of jacket and trousers that’s not a matching suit”; exit host, a polite way of saying “bouncer”; and the bezzle, “the stock of undiscovered embezzled wealth that accumulates during the boom in a country’s business and banks.” Fully (sic) spotlighted the word ranga, a person with red hair, where ranga is “is an abbreviation of orang-utan (a primate with reddish-brown hair native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia).”
Word Spy spotted rooftopping, “taking photographs from the roof of a building, particularly one accessed illegally”; prepper, “a person who goes to great lengths to prepare for an emergency caused by a natural or man-made disaster”; misteress, “a man who has an extramarital affair with a woman”; and copyfraud, “a false or overly restrictive copyright notice, particularly one that claims ownership of public domain material.”
Fritinancy’s weekly word choices were nones, “a term used by religion scholars and pollsters to describe Americans unaffiliated with any religion – people who respond ‘none of the above’ in a survey about religious preference”; and Kabuki dance, “political posturing.” She also tried on the fashion word smoking slipper.
Other fashion words we learned this week were portmanteaus swacket, sweater jacket, and shacket, “blazer-meets-shirt,” for that “dapper casual” (dapsual?) look. Arnold Zwicky took a look at another word blend, replyallcalypse, the result of hitting “reply all” to 40,000 people.
Dialect Blog posted on “Americanized” non-American novels and French-English accents, and wondered: diphthong or L? In other accent news, we learned why some British singers sound American and why the brain doubt a foreign accent,
The Virtual Linguist explained the Pope’s Twitter handle, Pontifex. Superlinguo explored rude gestures and the origins of the phrase, [place] I am in you! Ozworders told us about schoolies and schoolies week.
This week we also had a quick Hinglish lesson, learned that World War I trench talk is now entrenched in the English language, and how to say Google in other languages. We loved these different names for eggs in toast, these favorite recipes of poets, these fictional foods, and these 30 Rock cocktails to celebrate Liz Lemon’s wedding. Speaking of which, we embraced geek and nerd as positive terms.
We were fascinated by these historical manias and this look at how the New York Times’ crossword puzzle is made. We loved these misheard lyrics and this Alice in Wonderland transit map. We felt old upon learning Schoolhouse Rock turned 40 this week, as Pong did last week. Then we had a Stabbing Robot and felt better.
Cheers!
[Photo: stock.xchng]
Taxi, cab, black cab, yellow cab, gypsy cab, hack – how many different words are there for that vehicle for hire? We decided to find out.
On this day in 1897, London became the first city to host licensed taxicabs. But vehicles for hire were around long before that.
The word hackney, referring to “a coach or other carriage kept for hire,” came about around 1664, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), but originally referred to a place “now well within London, it once was pastoral and horses apparently were kept there.” Eventually, the word came to refer to “a horse kept for riding or driving,” as opposed to a war horse, and then “a horse kept for hire.”
From the “ordinary horse” sense came other meanings: “a person accustomed to drudgery” (1546), and “a prostitute” (1579). It’s also where we get hack, “a drudge; one who is overworked; especially, a literary drudge; a person hired to write according to direction or demand.”
The word cab is newer than hackney, originating around 1826 as a shortened form of cabriolet, “a covered one-horse carriage with two wheels.” Cabriolet comes from the Italian capriolare, “jump in the air,” so-named for the vehicle’s “light, leaping motion.”
A black-and-tan was “a cab of the coupé type, introduced in New York in 1883,” and named for its colors. An 1885 New York Times article reported that “‘black and tan’ cab No. 257 was going slowly down Broadway when a snort of steam from an elevated train at Thirty-third-street startled the horse and sent him on a gallop down that street.”
Livery cab is chiefly a U.S. expression, says the OED, attested to 1896. However, the word livery is much older, originating in the 14th century, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, as “an allowance of food or other provisions statedly given out; a ration, as to a family, to servants, to horses, etc.,” and coming from the Old French livrer, “to dispense, deliver, hand over.” Livery car came later, in 1906, at the time that motorized taxicabs were introduced in New York.
London Black Cab, by stevelyon
[Photo: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 by stevelyon]
Black cab, how the taxicab is commonly referred to in British English, is first attested to 1914, says the OED, but didn’t seem to gain popularity until the 1970s. Gypsy cab, “a taxicab that is licensed only to respond to calls but often cruises the streets for passengers,” attests to 1964.
The word taxi, short for taxicab, came up around 1907. Taxicabs were first known as taximeter cabs, where taximeter was “a commercial name of an instrument for automatically recording and mechanically computing the tax or charge to be made for the use of a hired vehicle in accordance with a determined tariff for such charges.” Taximeter comes from the Middle Latin taxa, “tax, charge,” and the Greek metron, “measure.”
In the early half of the 20th century, taxi was a colloquial term for “a (small) passenger aeroplane,” says the OED, which gave us the verb sense of taxi, “to move slowly on the ground or on the surface of the water before takeoff or after landing.”
Taxi is also U.S. slang for “a prison sentence of between five and fifteen years,” says the OED, perhaps from the analogy between a short taxi ride and relatively short prison term. Taxi dancer, “a woman employed, as by a dance hall or nightclub, to dance with the patrons for a fee,” is recorded from 1930 and comes from “the fact that the dancers are hired, like taxis, for a short period of time.”
Taxi squad is an American football term meaning either “a group of professional players who are under contract to and practice with a team but are ineligible to play in official games,” or “the four extra players on the roster of a professional team who are prepared to join the team on short notice, as to substitute for injured players.” The term is from 1966, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, possibly “from a former Cleveland Browns owner who gave his reserves jobs with his taxicab company to keep them paid and available,” or else from the idea of “short-term hire or shuttling back and forth from the main team.”
Hindu Priest – India (LOC)
[Photo: No known copyright restrictions by Library of Congress]
Rickshaw, a sort of human-powered taxi, dates to 1887 and is an alteration of jinrikisha, which comes from the Japanese jin, “a man,” plus riki, “power,” plus sha, “carriage.” The word was popularized by Rudyard Kipling.
A pedicab is similar, except the passenger is drawn by rider on a tricycle. An autorickshaw, as its name implies, is a rickshaw with a motor. The tuk-tuk is a motorized rickshaw of Thailand, India, and other countries. The word is Thai in origin and named for the sound of the motor. The boda-boda in East Africa is “a bicycle or motorcycle used as a taxi.”
For even more on the history of the taxicab, check out this timeline from PBS, this photo series of New York City taxis, and this roundup of taxi related links from around the web.
“I do what I do because I hate ugly words,” says Anthony Shore of Operative Words.
Continuing our series on naming (check out our interviews with Nancy Friedman and : : CRONAN : :), we spoke with Bay Area-based professional namer and logophile, Anthony Shore. Anthony has a background in linguistics, typesetting, copywriting, software marketing, and product management, and has named products such as the Lytro camera, the Fanhattan entertainment app, and Pause beverages.
Anthony tells us how he got into naming, the method behind the madness of the process, and about one very badly named shoe.
You can also find Anthony on LinkedIn and Twitter.
What got you interested in the naming business?
The first book I became fascinated by was the American Heritage Dictionary, specifically the section on Proto-Indo-European roots. I’d spend hours going over these roots from a hypothetical language spoken 5,000 years ago that gave rise to Latin, Greek, English, German, Hindi, Sanskrit, all these languages. I was fascinated that one little root could end up meaning so many different things in so many different languages.
When I was college, I studied artificial intelligence and did some natural language processing and Lisp. From linguistics, I got into a different kind of obsession with words in typesetting. It’s not too far related from the world of computational linguistics in that typesetting, back when I was doing it, was photomechanical. You’d work on a terminal that was not WYSIWYG and would enter codes to format the type.
My obsession with the written word continued and I ended up getting another job at an ad agency who needed a typesetter. At that point I got my foot in the door doing copywriting and ad conceptualization, then moving on to desktop publishing. Later, I moved on to a wine distributor, typesetting wine list publications and looking at the taxonomy of wines and restaurants, helping to organize and present their wine lists.
Next I moved onto a software company, where I became a marketing communications generalist, and then Landor Associates. I started as a naming manager, and eventually became global director of naming and writing, responsible for all word work and expressing strategy.
What types of customers and clients do you work with?
I’ve worked with well over 200 companies, and in every possible industry there is. Consumer packaged goods, wine and spirits, industrial and manufacturing, insurance, healthcare, and a lot of technology. There’s a great need for names in technology because technology is so prolific. Obsolescence is built into the category. Because there’s so much creativity, generation, and production in technology, there are many naming opportunities.
How do you work with your clients in the naming process?
Coming up with the story and telling that story is in some ways the most important part of naming, because what you’re doing is looking for different ways to express the essence of a brand, company, or product.
An important element is what makes the company different, and what their personality is as a company. This is something you can only understand by paying attention to the people in the room. You can come up with a great name that has logic and rationale, but if it doesn’t reflect who the people are in the room, it’s never going to get adopted.
The name development will start very broad, a mile wide and an inch deep. The second round is an inch wide and a mile deep, and focuses on the types of names that are really going to resonate with [the client]. When you begin creative, you have some idea of what’s going to work for the client, but you never know exactly what their reactions will be until you present the names.
That’s also why it’s dangerous to have proxies on naming projects. If a VP has a senior manager or director stand in for them, that’s a very dangerous situation because that person doesn’t really know how their superior is going to react to a specific word.
Something else I do is show names that are both on strategy and that violate strategy. We may all agree what looks good on a white board strategically, but the reality is there may be a great name that takes a different approach. The name never lives in isolation. There’s always context around the name that can help support other strategic elements. A name might follow a strategy that is different than the one they thought they wanted.
What are some resources that you use?
I like using all kinds of resources, the more the better. I’ll use websites like Wordnik, OneLook, Rhyme Zone, and Word Menu software.
I’ve been doing a lot of work in corpus linguistics, using Sketch Engine for example. It’s the ultimate concordance of words. Typical databases have over a billion text entries in them. So if I’m looking for an idea like love, I can be exposed to 10,000 words that have appeared near the word love. There might be a series of syntactic structures like love of blank, and then suddenly you’ll find a whole list of things that people love, like music, the ocean, neighbor or laughter.
I’ll use Wordnik to help me find words related to things I’m working on. I recently named an interactive children’s book line Wanderful. In the exercise that eventually led to Wanderful, I was looking at the world of children. There are great lists on Wordnik that have to do with kids. Words my two-year old daughter says. All the names of My Little Ponies. I’ll start with one list on Wordnik, which might lead to ten new lists.
I might be looking for the word fun. I’ll open all the lists that contain the word that look interesting to me. From one of those lists, I might find a word like wonder, and look at all the lists that contain the word wonder. Then I’ll enter the word wonder into something like Rhyme Zone, looking for words that rhyme with wonder, such as thunder. I’ll put thunder into OneLook and find all the words that combine with thunder, like thunderclap. I’ll substitute wonder for thunder. Wonderclap. It’s a very generative approach to finding natural, fun, unique brand news. And it’s been very fruitful as a technique.
I try to algorithmize my work. Because I like computers and think analytically, and I’m a linguist and I like looking for rules of language, I create formulas that produce creative, good, natural names.
What are some mistakes you’ve seen companies make in terms of naming?
There are names out there that are thought to be very bad. There’s the story of the Chevy Nova. The myth goes that it means “It doesn’t run” in Spanish, but actually the Chevy Nova sold very well in Latin America.
Then there was the woman’s running shoe Reebok launched called the Incubus. An incubus is a demon that attacks women in their sleep, and so naming a shoe after this demon: bad idea. You hardly need a naming expert to tell you that.
It’s pretty easy to get a large group of people to agree on a word that doesn’t mean anything because there’s nothing to disagree with. The hardest words to sell are those with the greatest emotional resonance and affect on people.
The naming process is more than about taking a bunch of roots that mean love and tacking on prefixes and suffixes, although that’s also a part of the creative development process. The other part has to do with looking at words that are deeper and richer because those are the names that are going to give the client much more to work with and have much more emotional resonance.
Having a more memorable name means the client will need to spend less money on media to have their name remembered. Words that are polysemous, that have many meanings and associations with them, are the ones that are more memorable. But it’s also those words that are hardest to build consensus around.
I recently saw a company change their name from Watson to Actavis. Maybe they were legally compelled to change the name Watson, but Watson is fantastic. It’s human and rich. It has a history and a kind of mythology. This other name is pretty much an empty vessel. Maybe there’s some Latin root that you can latch onto. However, if there was a legal reason they had to change the name, I have compassion for that.
I also have compassion for the issue regarding international brand names. People feel differently about names in different parts of the world. Like Steve Martin said, the French have a different word for everything. For instance, in Europe they generally like these more empty-vessel, Latinate-sounding names. Those kinds of name speak to them more because English is not their primary language.
In Asia, the sound and the backstory of a name are more important than whatever obvious meaning is communicated by the word itself. You can spin any story, no matter how far removed it is from the name.
What are some other challenges namers might face?
Naming has become a specialized industry in part because of the proliferation of trademarks and the difficulty of finding a good name that you can use without infringing on another company’s trademark.
People have said all the good names are taken, and that’s absolutely not true. There are great names out there waiting to see the light of day. It’s only the obvious names that are taken. Finding the non-obvious names requires skill, diligence, and focus, as well as expertise in things like trademark screening – all of these have compelled the birth of this new industry.
I believe, however, that great names can come from anywhere. There are fantastic brands and brand names out there that were never developed by a naming expert, like Virgin, Google, Apple, and Yahoo! These weren’t developed by some naming geek but by creative people who found the right word that captures the essence and the spirit of their organization.
Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.
Remember that once a month we’re giving away Wordnik T-shirts to two randomly chosen players, to be announced the last Monday of the month, and as always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.
pong, by Trevor Pritchard
[Photo: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 by Terry Pritchard]
Forty years ago today, Atari released Pong, that ridiculously simple video game that paved the way for an entire industry and, for some, a lifestyle. In celebration, we’ve gathered ten of our favorite gaming words here.
chiptune
“Having germinated in the hacker stronghold of 1980s Scandinavia, chiptune music has become a worldwide scene with no clear geographical center. Perhaps the ultimate musical form for hackers, the international chiptune scene spawned directly from the cracking of copyright protection.”
Eliot Von Buskirk, “‘Chiptune’ Bands Blitz New York for Blip Festival,” Wired, November 28, 2007
Chiptune refers to “a piece of computer music in which the sounds are generated and mixed in realtime, common in the 1980s before the advent of mass storage for prerecorded sound.” The term seems to have originated in the 1970s or 1980s.
Other video game music genres include fakebit, Game Boy music, bitpop, Nintendocore, and skweee.
frag
“And how does it feel, Julia,” Oprah Winfrey soon purrs, “when you… what was that again? When you ‘frag’ someone?”
Wagner James Au, “Deathmatch: Julia Roberts-style,” Salon, June 23, 2003
To frag means “to kill (another player) in a deathmatch computer game.” Deathmatch refers to “a competitive mode found in first-person shooter games in which competitors attempt to assassinate one another.”
Frag probably comes from another sense of the word, “to wound or kill (a fellow soldier) by throwing a grenade or similar explosive at the victim,” which comes from fragmentation grenade, “a grenade that scatters shrapnel over a wide area upon explosion.”
griefer
“A griefer is a person who likes to cause problems for the sake of causing them. As the criminals of the virtual world, their goal is to make virtual life miserable for the other player. Depending on the environment, the mischief can come in the form of player killing, vandalism, player trapping or taunting.”
Nicole Girard, “Griefer Madness: Terrorizing Virtual Worlds,” Linux Insider, September 19, 2007
A griefer is “a player who plays a game primarily to reduce other players’ enjoyment of it.” The terms seems to have originated in 2000 or earlier, “as illustrated by postings to the rec.games.computer.ultima.online USENET group,” while griefing is older, dating back to the late 1990s. The word grief comes from the Old French grever, “to harm, aggrieve.”
Related is ganking, in gaming, “to kill, ambush, or defeat with little effort,” as well as “to swindle; to steal; to copy, reproduce, reuse, or save an image, idea, or work of another person, often in the context of materials posted on the Internet.”
hack-and-slash
“Using an improved version of the conversation mechanism from Mass Effect 2 and battles that demand strategic thought alongside the more usual hack-and-slash technique of repeatedly battering the ‘attack’ button, Dragon Age 2 manages an impressive story to complement its more involved combat.”
Nick Gillett, “This Week’s New Games,” The Guardian, March 11, 2011
Hack-and-slash refers to a game or movie that focuses on violence and combat. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the gaming term seems to have originated first, in the late 1970s, while the film term came about in the mid-1980s.
Slasher movie seems to be more specific than a hack-and-slash in that it depicts “the activities of a vicious attacker whose victims are slashed with a blade,” says the OED. Slasher originally referred to snuff films, and came to its more mainstream definition in the 1980s.
ludology
“Game studies (or ‘ludology,’ as it’s known, from the Latin for ‘game’), has spawned a new class of academics who devote themselves to analyzing how the wildly popular form of entertainment tells stories — and what it reveals about how we express ourselves.”
Nick Wadhams, “Academics Turn Their Attention to Video Games,” USA Today, February 13, 2004
Ludology is “the study of games and other forms of play,” and comes from the Latin ludere, “to play,” which gives us ludicrous, “laughable or hilarious because of obvious absurdity or incongruity.” Game comes from the Old English gamen, “game, joy, fun, amusement.”
Screenshot from machinima, Breathing
[Photo: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 by Lainy Voom]
machinima
“In the cash-strapped world of low budget movies, many see machinima as a cheap way of getting their ideas on screen. The technique involves recording footage from games consoles and editing shots together to tell stories.”
Peter Price, “Machinima Waits to Go Mainstream,” BBC News, October 16, 2007
Machinima, a blend of machine and cinema, “the rendering of computer-generated imagery using low-end (real time) 3D engines such as those found in video games, as opposed to the high-end, complex 3D engines used by professionals.” According to the OED, the word originated around 2000 and may be influenced by the word anime.
MMORPG
“Designing an MMORPG is a unique creative challenge. The initial game universe can take up to five years to build and often requires the formation of a complex mythology to provide and maintain its narrative thrust through future add-ons and expansion packs.”
Keith Stuart, “World of Warcraft Cataclysm,” The Guardian, July 15, 2010
MMORPG stands for massively multiplayer online role-playing game, “an online computer role-playing game in which a large number of players can interact with one another.” A precursor is the MUD, or multi-user dungeon, “a text-based command line online game in which players may jointly engage in role-playing.”
nerf
“Across the roster the Japanese company has resisted the temptation to nerf powerful characters (Sagat and Ryu), and instead tried to make established lower to mid tier characters more viable.”
“Super Street Fighter IV Preview,” Video Gamer, March 22, 2010
To nerf means “to water down, dumb down or especially weaken, particularly in the context of weapons in video games,” coming from Nerf brand foam rubber toys, known for being relatively safe. The opposite of nerf is buff, to make a character stronger.
pwn
“‘Some common [gaming] words originated as typos when people are typing fast during a game,’ says Chandronait. A popular word used by gamers is ‘pwn,’ which means ‘to own’–as in ‘you are better than’ or ‘own’ another player. Chandronait suspects ‘own’ probably turned to ‘pwn’ because the p and o keys are adjacent on a standard keyboard, and gamers, during their quick typing, simply hit the wrong key.”
Anna Vander Broek, “Gamer Speak for Newbs,” Forbes, April 23, 2009
Another popular theory of the origin of the word pwn is that “the term originated back in the 1930s in the world of chess when a Russian competitor’s accent changed ‘I will pawn to your knight’ to ‘evil pwn you tonight.’”
zerg
“In some multi-player games, ‘zerging’ has come to refer to a gamer who, often against the game’s rules, creates multiple accounts to get an unfair advantage over other players.”
Doug Gross, “‘Zerg Rush’ Chews Up Google’s Search Results,” CNN, April 27, 2012
To zerg is “to attack an enemy with a large swarm of units before he/she has been able to build sufficient defenses.” The word comes from the game StarCraft and its Zerg race of insects which operate “as a hive mind. . .[striving] for genetic perfection by assimilating ‘worthy’ races into their own, creating numerous different strains of Zerg.”
As for what typing “Zerg rush” into Google does to your search results, give it a try.
Welcome to Word Soup Wednesday, in which we bring you our favorite strange, obscure, unbelievable (and sometimes NSFW) words from TV.
awesome sauce
Jon Stewart: “Right there [Broadwell was] talking about how thick a coat of awesome sauce Petraeus is bathed in – the thing never crossed my [expletive] mind!”
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, November 12, 2012
Awesome sauce refers to something particularly awesome. The term seems to have originated around 2001 from the sketch comedy show, The Kids in the Hall.
boom carpet
Jon Hagstrum [regarding the Great Pigeon Race Disaster]: “It turns out they flew [the pigeons] across the English Channel just as the Concorde, which was leaving Paris, was going supersonic, and laying down a boom carpet that these pigeons were caught in.”
“What Are Animals Thinking” NOVA ScienceNOW, November 7, 2012
A boom carpet is the result of a sonic boom. An aircraft going supersonic fills out “a narrow path” – like a carpet – “on the ground following the aircraft’s flight path.” According to NASA, “the width of the boom ‘carpet’ beneath the aircraft is about one mile for each 1000 feet of altitude.”
boydle
Teddy: “And now I’m fat.”
Bob: “You’re not that fat, Teddy.”
Teddy: “I’m wearing a guy girdle. It’s called a boydle.”
“The Deepening,” Bob’s Burgers, November 25, 2012
Boydle is a blend of boy and girdle, “an elasticized, flexible undergarment worn over the waist and hips, especially by women, to give the body a more slender appearance.” Boydle may also be a play on goidle, the pronunciation of girdle in a stereotypical Brooklyn accent.
dabbling
Narrator: “Buffleheads are diving ducks, but this little female has spied something delicious beneath the surface. She’s not good at dabbling, but she can’t resist.”
“The Original DUCKumentary,” Nature, November 4, 2012
Dabbling is the act of “[bobbing] forward and under in shallow water so as to feed off the bottom.” Dabble comes from the Dutch dabben, “to strike, tap.”
high-frequency trading
Stephen Colbert: “In high-frequency trading, computers can move millions of shares around in minutes, earning a tenth of a penny off each share.”
The Colbert Report, November 14, 2012
High-frequency trading, or HFT, is “the use of sophisticated technological tools and computer algorithms to trade securities on a rapid basis,” and has taken place since 1999.
Iron Dome
Newscaster: “The Iron Dome, Israel’s homegrown defense shield. The system is designed to protect populated areas, allowing non-threatening short range missiles to drop into open fields or water, and intercepting those headed for cities.”
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, November 26, 2012
The Iron Dome, also known as the Iron Cap, is a “mobile all-weather air defense system developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems,” a defense technology company in Israel. The iron curtain was “the military, political, and ideological barrier established between the Soviet bloc and western Europe from 1945 to 1990.”
shanghai
Bob: “Linda, we’re being shanghaied!”
Linda: “Shanghai? Ooo, ancient Chinese vacation!”
“Mutiny on the Windbreaker,” Bob’s Burgers, November 11, 2012
To shanghai means “to kidnap (a man) for compulsory service aboard a ship, especially after drugging him,” or “to induce or compel (someone) to do something, especially by fraud or force.” The word is named for the Chinese city of Shanghai, “from the former custom of kidnapping sailors to man ships going to China.”
trepanning
Anthony Bourdain: “Back in the day, if you had a bad headache or were acting weird or were just out of sorts, a popular treatment [called trepanning] involved popping your head open like a beer can and letting the pressure out. Fun, huh?”
“Chicago,” The Layover, November 19, 2012
Trepanning is “the operation of making, with a trepan, an opening in the skull for relieving the brain from compression or irritation.” A trepan is “an instrument, in the form of crown-saw, used by surgeons for removing parts of the bones of the skull.” The word ultimately comes from the Greek trūpē, “hole.”
waggle dance
Tom Seeley: “Each bee that finds something comes back and announces her discovery by performing these waggle dances.”
“What Are Animals Thinking” NOVA ScienceNOW, November 7, 2012
A waggle dance is “a dance in the form of figure eight performed by the honey bee in order to communicate the direction and distance of patches of flowers, water sources, etc.,” first discovered by Austrian ethologist Karl von Frisch.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, waggle dance translates from the German schwänzeltanz, which appeared in a 1923 paper by von Frisch and translates literally as “tail wagging dance.”
wendigo
Nick [reading]: “I came upon the cave of the wendigo, rife with human remains and the scene of many murders and cannibalistic acts.”
“To Protect and Serve Man,” Grimm, November 9, 2012
A wendigo, also windigo, is “a malevolent, violent, cannibal spirit found in Anishinaabe, Ojibwe, and Cree mythology, which inhabits the body of a living person and possesses him or her to commit murder.”