Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: politics get creepier; a plurality of husbands; South Park’s, uh, ode to a genre of anime.

know-nothingism

“This shift in expectations is the antidote both to the statist vision of the Democratic left and the incoherent policy know-nothingism of some GOP candidates.”

Glenn Hubbard, “It’s Time for Candidates to Get Serious About the Economy,” Politico, November 1, 2015

The know-nothings were a “political party in the United States during the 1850s that was antagonistic toward recent immigrants and Roman Catholics.” The name comes from the fact that, if asked about this secret society, members were supposed to answer,  “I know nothing.” The know-nothings eventually merged with the Republican Party.

neuropolitics

“Many political parties and campaigns are loath to talk about their forays into neuropolitics, with many disavowing them or saying they did not believe the research was widely used.”

Kevin Randall, “Neuropolitics, Where Campaigns Try to Read Your Mind,” The New York Times, November 3, 2015

Neuropolitics is the practice of using voter data and insights to tweak political campaigns. It’s a take on neuromarketing, which uses “technologies like facial coding, biofeedback and brain imaging” to push “the boundaries of marketing and product development.”

During his campaign, the current president of Mexico used “tools to measure voters’ brain waves, skin arousal, heart rates and facial expressions.” In Turkey, the prime minster used a neuromarketing company who, based on factors such as brain waves and heart rates, discovered that the official “was not emotionally engaging voters in his speeches.”

polyandry

“Polyandry has been practiced before in China, particularly in impoverished areas, as a way to pool resources and avoid the breakup of property.”

Didi Kirsten Tatlow, “Not Enough Women in China? Let Men Share a Wife, an Economist Suggests,” The New York Times, October 26, 2015

Polyandry is a “plurality of husbands” — in other words, having more than one husband at a time. The word comes from the Greek polyandria, where poly- means “many” and –andry is from aner, “man, husband.”

womenomics

“Abe’s ‘womenomics’ policy aims to put more women to work to counter a chronically low birthrate and shrinking workforce, but a business culture in which long hours are routine makes it more difficult for women to get ahead.”

Mari Yamaguchi, “‘Womenomics’ makes small chips in Japan’s glass ceiling,” AP, October 27, 2015

Womenomics, a blend of women and economics, is the idea that gender equality in the workforce will lead to economic growth.

yaoi

“On Monday, the folks at South Park asked fans to submit ‘romantic’ artwork of Tweek and Craig, as this week’s episode would revolve around Asian Students drawing ‘yaoi’ of the boys.”

Chet Manley, “‘South Park’ Decided To Bring Attention To Yaoi, And The Internet Reacted Accordingly,” Uproxx, October 29, 2015

Also called Boys’ Love, yaoi is a genre of Japanese anime and manga that focuses on romantic relationships between male characters, and is popular among girls and women. The term is apparently a shortening of the Japanese Yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi, “no climax, no point, no meaning,” which seems to refer to the manga’s loose and untraditional narrative structure.

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: a new name for d’ough!; not just small, not just cute; fine young cannibal stars.

dollarydoo

“Either way, one Australian citizen’s petition to change the name of the Australian currency to ‘dollarydoos’ has hit a chord, gaining more than 50,000 signatures in just five days.”

Georgie McCafferty, “Yes, Australians are really petitioning to change their currency’s name to the ‘dollarydoo,’” Quartz, October 20, 2015

Petition organizer Thomas Probst wants to boost the Australian economy by changing the country’s currency from the far less exciting “Australian dollar” (or probably just “dollar” in the land down under) to the Simpsonian dollarydoo.

Dollarydoo is from a 1995 episode of The Simpsons, in which Bart places a collect call to a boy in Australia, racking up a bill of nine hundred dollarydoos. Perhaps the show’s writers were inspired by the didgeridoo, a musical instrument of Australia’s indigenous peoples.

Dvorak scale

“Shortly after the research plane left, satellite estimates of Patricia’s intensity broke the Dvorak scale, peaking at 8.3 on the 8.0 scale.”

Eric Holthaus, “Patricia, Strongest Hurricane in History, Makes Landfall in Mexico,” Slate, October 23, 2015

The Dvorak scale measures tropical cyclone intensity, specifically Mean Wind Speed in knots and miles per hour. The Dvorak scale and technique are named for Vernon Dvorak, an American meteorologist.

smol

“Here’s a new word that’s been showing up online: smol. It’s an alternative version of small, but it doesn’t just refer to size—it’s more about something or someone being really cute.”

Gretchen McCulloch, “Smol: The New Social Media Word That’s ‘Small’ But Cuter,” Mental Floss, October 21, 2015

Smol apparently means something very small and cute (perhaps like the Japanese anime term chibi) and may also have the figurative meaning of “adorable” and not necessarily small in size, like “calling a romantic partner baby,” says Gretchen McCulloch at Mental Floss.

As for the spelling, McCulloch suggests that the “o might evoke a cuter pronunciation, while dropping the l could simply be to make the word, well, smaller.”

vampire star

“Unlike ‘vampire stars’—when the smaller star in a binary system sucks material away from the larger one—the stars in VFTS 352 are nearly identical in size.”

Adam Epstein, “Scientists think ‘kissing’ double stars will either merge or become black holes,” Quartz, October 22, 2015

Vampire stars (not to be confused with star vampires) are also known as cannibal stars and blue stragglers, so-called because of their color and because they seem to “straggle” behind other stars in terms of age, appearing, like an aging celebrity returned from vacation, inexplicably younger and hotter.

Yamaguchi-gumi

“The Yamaguchi-gumi has always tried to cultivate good relations with the locals, hosting an annual rice cake-making event at the start of the year in which the gang distributes food and booze to the locals.”

Jake Adelstein, “Japan’s Yakuza Cancels Halloween,” The Daily Beast, October 25, 2015

At odds with its whimsical name, the Yamaguchi-gumi is Japan’s largest organized crime group, which recently split into “two rival factions.” The organization is named for its founder Harukichi Yamaguchi while –gumi translates as association or group.

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: sleeping while learning; snubbing while phoning; pubbing while corporate.

despeciation

“The work, published in Ecology and Evolution, suggests that this tropical warbler had undergone speciation in reverse, or despeciation.”

Janet Fant, “Malagasy Songbird Is Rare Instance Of Evolution Working ‘Backwards,’” IFL Science, October 8, 2015

Despeciation is the “rare instance where multiple species [have] merged back into one,” and occurs “under certain circumstances, such as human alteration of habitat.” It’s thought that the ancestors of the tetraka, a songbird from Madagascar, “became separate species when the climate was drier, and then came back together when the forests linked up again.”

More common than despeciation is speciation, the “evolutionary formation of new biological species, usually by the division of a single species into two or more genetically distinct ones.”

Dyson sphere

“The idea of a Dyson sphere began as a thought experiment, based on the idea that technological civilisations gradually look to harness more energy.”

Andrew Griffin, “‘Giant alien megastructure found in space’: What is a Dyson sphere, and what else could we have found?” The Independent, October 15, 2015

A Dyson sphere is “a huge shell structure that would sit entirely round a star, collecting all of the energy that comes out of it,” and is named for Freeman Dyson, “a theoretical physicist who popularised the idea but has said that he wished it didn’t have his name.”

Scientists have recently spotted what some say might be “alien megastructures” around a star, but which might merely be a huge cloud of space dust.

hypnopaedia

“Scientific consensus soon concluded that the sleeping brain was incapable of absorbing outside information, and hypnopaedia was consigned to the realm of quackery.”

Kenneth Miller, “Night school,” Aeon, October 2, 2015

Hypnopaedia is learning or teaching while sleeping. The idea has gone back “at least to biblical times,” says Aeon, but the term seems to have been coined by Aldous Huxley in his 1932 novel, Brave New World: “The principle of sleep-teaching, or hypnopædia, had been discovered.” The word combines the Greek hypnos, “sleep,” and paideia, “education, child-rearing.”

Aeon also says that hypnopaedia was all the rage about 100 years ago, “ending only after neuroscientists determined it was physiologically impossible.” But now research has suggested that hypnopaedia may have some validity after all.

phubbing

“The team developed the ‘Partner Phubbing Scale,’ which they believe is significant for demonstrating that phubbing is ‘conceptually and empirically different’ from attitude toward cellphones, partner’s phone use, phone conflict and phone addiction.”

Katrina Pascual, “What Is ‘Phubbing’? Here’s How This Cellphone Habit Can Ruin Your Relationship,” Tech Times, October 3, 2015

Phubbing is the act of ignoring someone in favor of perusing one’s mobile device — in other words, snubbing by phone. The term was coined in 2012 by an ad agency with the purpose of marketing the Macquarie Dictionary of Australia.

Phubbing has resurfaced recently due to a study from the Hankamer School of Business of Baylor University, which found that phubbing may damage romantic relationships and increase depression.

pubco

“Though British pubcos tend to assume names suggestive of either boozy bonhomie (Punch Taverns, Faucet Inns) or basic vigour and drive (Enterprise Inns, Admiral Taverns) they are as a rule cheerless, lumbering concerns.”

Tom Lamont, “The death and life of the great British pub,” The Guardian, October 13, 2015

Pubcos are large pub-owning companies that came into dominance in the 1990s. The term plays off telco, a large telephone company, which originated in the late 1970s.

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: a fake generation; a rich one; and how not to be like a fish on a bicycle.

becomer

“The New York Times reported that the Disney-owned cable channel will undergo a radical rebrand in January, with a new name (Freeform) and a new target audience (‘becomers,’ or the generation below their former target, millennials).”

Vinnie Mancuso, “Oh, Golly! ABC Family to Rebrand as ‘Freeform,’ Will Stop ‘Chasing Millennials,’” Observer, October 6, 2015

The term becomers was coined by ABC Family execs to refer to “youths and young adults in the 12-34 age range,” which as the Observer points out, “is basically still millennials” (emphasis theirs). Millennials are generally defined as people born between 1980 and 1995. ABC Family, now Freeform, does note that becomers are not so much a generation “as a life stage.”

dowser

“As a dowser, she uses tools as simple as a stick to determine where to place a well.”

Lois Parshley, “Climate of doubt,” Aeon, October 5, 2015

A dowser is someone who uses a divining rod to try and find underground water or minerals. The origin of the word dowse, which also means to plunge into water, is unknown. The Online Etymology Dictionary says it’s from the 1690s and is a “south England dialect word, of uncertain origin.”

fuerdai

“As portrayed in the local press, fuerdai are to China what Paris Hilton was to the U.S. a decade ago, only less tasteful.”

Christopher Beam, “Children of the Yuan Percent: Everyone Hates China’s Rich Kids,” Bloomberg, September 30, 2015

Fuerdai translates from Chinese as “second-generation rich,” and are viewed as pampered and spoiled, in stark contrast with the first generation of Chinese entrepreneurs, who grew up during the Cultural Revolution. “[Fuerdai] know only how to show off their wealth,” claims an article from a Chinese government body, “but don’t know how to create wealth.”

Some fuerdai are trying to rebrand their image, says Bloomberg, having dropped fu, “wealthy,”and calling themselves chuangerdai, “second-generation entrepreneurs,” or simply erdai, “second generation.”

shoaling

“Shoaling is the byproduct of the increasing popularity of cycling, an ostensible net positive that longtime riders nevertheless seem to secretly resent.”

Lauren Evans, “What Is Shoaling And Should Cyclists Stop Doing It?” Gothamist, October 6, 2015

Shoaling is the act of swerving around other cyclists at a red light “to get to the head of the pack,” says Gothamist, rather than waiting behind them, with the idea that one is faster than the other cyclists and will need to pass them eventually anyway.

This cycling term is based on shoal meaning a school of fish, says NPR. The word shoal might come from the Old English scolu, “band, troop, crowd of fish,” or the Middle Dutch schole, “multitude, flock.”

YURP

“Katrina had a gentrifying effect on a lot of the city. First came the YURPS, or Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals.”

Sean Cole, “Lower 9 + 10,” This American Life, August 28, 2015

YURP plays off yuppie, “young urban professional,” which originated in the early 1980s, and beat out in popularity similar terms such as yumpie, “young upward-mobile professional,” and yap, “young aspiring professional.”

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: a cheating apparatus, brewery-inspired sushi, and papal exuberance.

Burning Mouth Syndrome

“The symptoms of Burning Mouth Syndrome are pretty much summed up by the name. The cause is still a mystery. So is the fact that the syndrome stops whenever you fall asleep.”

Esther Inglis-Arkell, “Burning Mouth Syndrome Is Real, But We Don’t Know Why,” io9, September 28, 2015

Burning Mouth Syndrome, not to be confused with Burning Man Syndrome (which, by the way, does not involve getting naked and making art in the desert), is a condition in which “your nerves turn against you,” says io9, “insisting that something painful is happening to you, even when nothing’s wrong.” As a result, sufferers feel a burning pain in the lips, tongue, and gums — sometimes for years — and only get a respite during sleep. Some patients also experience a metallic taste and a “crawling sensation” in the mouth (eek!).

Burning Mouth Syndrome is often treated with antidepressants and antianxiety medication with the aim of reducing nerve activity.

defeat device

“The company admitted that it had programmed 11 million of its diesel cars…to cheat on their emissions tests, using something called a ‘defeat device.’”

Kevin Roose, “The Volkswagen ‘Dieselgate’ scandal is a new low in corporate malfeasance,” Fusion, September 23, 2015

Last week it was piggate, this week it’s the much more serious Dieselgate. In this latest scandal, Volkswagen used a defeat device to reprogram their diesel vehicles’ software to allow them to pass nitrogen oxide emissions tests by temporarily switching them into “low-emission mode.” After the tests, says Fusion, the cars went back to “pumping out up to 40 times as many pollutants as the law allowed, while appearing to stay under the legal limit.”

Why? Cost, fuel efficiency, and driving performance, says Green Car Reports. Diesels are apparently cheaper to build than gas hybrid-electric vehicles. Moreover, hybrids and electric cars are sometimes thought to be “slow, unpleasant to drive, and strange-looking.”

The term defeat device originated in the Environmental Protection Agency’s 1963 Clean Air Act.

kaiten-zushi

“Introduced in the late 1950s, ‘kaiten-zushi’ restaurants feature a revolving belt with small plates of sushi. Diners can grab whatever passes them and looks appetizing; the bill is tallied by the number of stacked, empty plates (often color-coded to represent different prices).”

Dan Frommer, “A Japanese sushi chain is getting rid of its conveyer belts,” Quartz, September 27, 2015

Kaiten translates from Japanese as revolving or rotating, and zushi means, well, sushi. The kaiten-zushi system was developed by Yoshiaki Shiraishi, a former sushi chef who was inspired by “beer bottles on conveyor belts at a brewery.”

kapparot

“The source of the odor was the chickens that men wearing aprons and shower caps were slaughtering by the dozen under bare bulbs on a makeshift stage taking up 50 feet of sidewalk for the ritual offering of kapparot.”

Nathan Tempey, “Activists & Hasidic Jews Face Off At Ritual Chicken Slaughter,” Gothamist, September 22, 2015

Kapparot, also spelled kaparot, is a custom practiced by some Jews before Yom Kippur. In the custom, says the Jewish Virtual Library, “the sins of a person are symbolically transferred to a fowl,” which is “held above the person’s head and swung in a circle three times” as the person recites a prayer. The hen or rooster is then handed off “to have its throat slit as a reminder that death could be nigh and he should repent,” says Gothamist.

In New York recently, animal activists clashed with Hasidic Jews over the ritual.

stralimitata

“He struggled for a moment to find the right word to capture his stop in New York. According to the Associated Press, he just ended up inventing a new one: stralimitata.”

Jaime Fuller, “Pope Francis Forced to Invent New Word to Describe His Trip to New York,” New York Magazine, September 28, 2015

Stralimitata translates from Italian as something like “beyond all limits.” The New York Times chose to eschew this papal neologism and provide their own far less exuberant translation, “a bit exuberant.”

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: flow’s up, dude; yet another –gate; and if a Zamboni and Dalek had a thirsty baby.

flow theory

“Rogers developed Ocean Therapy with psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory in mind.”

Matt Skenazy, “Can Surfing Reprogram the Veteran’s Brain?” Outside, September 15, 2015

In psychology, flow refers to a “heightened state of consciousness,” while flow theory is the idea that “the physical exertion and intense focus required to surf” can produce a flow state, which floods the brain with “neurochemicals like anandamide and serotonin, the same substances found in antidepressants,” and alters the balance of “epinephrine and dopamine to the levels achieved during meditation.”

Guevedoce

“Guevedoces are also sometimes called ‘machihembras’ meaning ‘first a woman, then a man’.”

Michael Mosely, “Growing a penis at 12: the ‘Guevedoce’ boys of the Dominican Republic,” The Telegraph, September 20, 2015

Guevedoce translates from Spanish as “penis at twelve,” and refers to children in the remote Dominican Republic village of Salinas who are born resembling females but at puberty develop a penis and testicles. Occurring in one in 90 boys, Guevedoce is caused by an enzyme deficiency and is thought to have been allowed to persist through generations due to the villagers’ isolation.

piggate

“#Piggate was trending on social media Monday after the Daily Mail published a bizarre claim that British Prime Minister David Cameron put ‘a private part of his anatomy’ into a dead pig’s mouth during a student initiation ceremony at the University of Oxford.”

Jane Onyanga-Omara, “Twitter lampoons David Cameron over #piggate claim,” USA Today, September 21, 2015

Piggate joins a long line of –gate compounds that refer to something scandalous or controversial. Another recent –gate is Deflategate (also known as Ballghazi), in which Tom Brady and the New England Patriots were accused of deflating footballs in an attempt to improve grip. In 2007, the Patriots were embroiled in another cheating scandal dubbed Spygate, in which a video assistant was caught “illegally videotaping Jets coaches’ defensive signal.”

Piggate is eerily similar to an episode of the British series, Black Mirror, in which a fictional prime minister is forced to perform porcine fornication on live television in order to save a kidnapped princess.

rose gold

“Christina Warren, writing at Mashable, wondered whether Apple had opted for the appellation of ‘rose gold’ as a way to avoid using the overtly girly ‘p’ word. ‘I’m just going to say it: it’s pink,’ she wrote.’”

Rebecca Mead, “The Semiotics of ‘Rose Gold,’” The New Yorker, September 14, 2015

In jewelry making, says The New Yorker, rose gold refers to “an alloy of gold to which copper has been added,” and while the phone is new, the color has been around for a while. Since 1708 to be exact, at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Slamboni

“When the ‘Slambonis’ first debuted, it was estimated that using them saved about 10 minutes of play for each interrupted game.”

Michelle Young, “Cities 101: The US Open Tennis Court ‘Slamboni’ Crew Dry Up Courts After Rain,” Untapped Cities, September 10, 2015

The Slamboni, a blend of the slam of Grand Slam and Zamboni, is a machine designed to (sloooowly) vacuum up excess water from tennis courts. The term has been in use since at least 2004, according to Barry Popik. The Zamboni, which resurfaces ice in an ice rink, is named for its inventor, Frank J. Zamboni.

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: a fetus after my own heart; a monster of a virus; and a troellau tafod of a Welsh town name.

compulsive decluttering

“Unlike hoarding, which was officially reclassified as a disorder in 2013, compulsive decluttering doesn’t appear as its own entry in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM); instead, it’s typically considered a manifestation of obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

Leslie Garrett, “The Opposite of Hoarding,” The Atlantic, September 7, 2015

Compulsive decluttering, as the title of the article says, is the opposite of hoarding and more than just “tidying up.”

Some of those afflicted go as far as to “eschew lamps” and live in “semi-darkness.” One psychologist describes her patients as “jittery and irritable,” and “not comfortable until everything in [her office] is in order.” Some patients say that “if they see things that should be thrown out” they experience a “tightness in their chest,” alleviated only “by getting rid of the offending objects.”

It’s suggested that the affliction often goes undiagnosed due at least in part to the recent rise of the decluttering movement.

fetal microchimerism

“Fetal microchimerism has been found in a number of mammal species, including dogs, mice and cows. It’s likely that fetal cells have been a part of maternal life for tens of millions of years.”

Carl Zimmer, “A Pregnancy Souvenir: Cells That Are Not Your Own,” The New York Times, September 10, 2015

Discovered in the 1990s, fetal microchimerism refers to when fetal cells “escape from the uterus and spread through a mother’s body.” Scientists named the phenomenon after the chimera, a fire-breathing lion-goat-dragon combo-monster from Greek myth.

So what happens to these fetal cells? While some eventually disappear, some travel to the heart and become heart tissue. Others end up in the brain. Recent studies have found that microchimerism affects women’s health one way or another, either driving cancer (fetal cells are often found in tumors) or protecting women from the disease.

(H/t Edward Banatt.)

Frankenvirus

“The virus is called Mollivirus sibericum, which means soft Siberian virus, but lay observers have quickly dubbed it ‘Frankenvirus’.”

Marcus Strom, “Prehistoric ‘Frankenvirus’ Mollivirus sibericum uncovered in Siberian permafrost,” The Sydney Morning Herald, September 9, 2015

This giant virus, which had “lain frozen under the Siberian tundra for 30,000 years,” was recently revived by scientists. Mollivirus sibericum is a “monster” compared to other viruses: it has 523 genetic proteins as opposed to the flu virus’s paltry 11.

However, unlike the flu virus, the Frankenvirus isn’t harmful to humans or animals, although the fact that it could be “easily revived from prehistoric permafrost should be of concern in [the] context of global warming,” scientists say.

The prefix Franken- comes from Frankenstein, synonymous with Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, a kind of golem made up of different body parts. While Frankenvirus uses Franken- to suggest bigness, the prefix is often used to imply a mishmash of unlike elements. For example, Frankenfood refers to genetically modified food; frankenword, a blend or portmanteau; and Frankenstorm, otherwise known as Hurricane or Superstorm Sandy, a devastating “winter storm hybrid.”

Homo naledi

“That gap was all that separated them from the bones of a new species of ancient human, or hominin, which the team named Homo naledi after a local word for ‘star.’”

Ed Yong, “6 Tiny Cavers, 15 Odd Skeletons, and 1 Amazing New Species of Ancient Human,” The Atlantic, September 10, 2015

Homo naledi is “a creature with a baffling mosaic of features,” says science writer Ed Yong. Some of these features are “remarkably similar to modern humans” while others are more like those of apes.

What’s astonishing about this recent find is the magnitude: about 1,550 fossil fragments belonging to at least 15 skeletons. Finding one complete skeleton of a new human species “would be hitting the paleoanthropological jackpot,” while finding 15 of is the equivalent of “nuking the jackpot from orbit.”

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgoger ychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

“Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch in Wales was recently one of the warmest places in the U.K. but the presenter for Channel 4 News executed the pronunciation of the tongue-twister town like a boss.”

Jessica Durando, “Weatherman pronounces tongue-twister U.K. town,” USA Today, September 10, 2015

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, a town on the Welsh island of Anglesey, was once known as the shorter Llanfairpwllgwyngyll but, according to travel maven Rick Steves, was lengthened as a joke in the 1880s in an attempt to attract tourists. The name translates as “St. Mary’s Church in the hollow of white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio near the red cave.”

While Llanfair PG, as it’s often shortened, is the longest town name in Europe, says Steves, it’s not the longest in the world. That honor belongs to a town in Thailand: Krungthepmahanakornamornratanakosinmahintarayutthayamahadilokphopnop- paratrajathaniburiromudomrajaniwesmahasatharnamornphimarnavatarnsathitsakkattiyavisanukamprasit.

Finally, don’t forget about our Kickstarter campaign! Won’t you help us find a million missing words?