Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: a Harry Potter-esque wasp; the Jetsons meets the ‘50s; and losing your sympathy.

dementor wasp

“It’s no wonder that when given the chance to name the yet unnamed insect, visitors to Berlin’s natural history museum voted to call it Ampulex dementor, after the soul-sucking Dementor spirits of the ‘Harry Potter’ series.”

Amanda Schupak, “Meet the soul-sucking ‘Dementor’ wasp,” CNET, May 28 2015

The Ampulex dementor, otherwise known as the dementor wasp, paralyzes its prey by injecting a poison, then drags it back to its nest for a zombie-fied feast.

Ampulex refers to a genus of wasps while dementor comes from the Late Latin dementare, “to drive out of one’s mind.”

Googie architecture

“A Los Angeles diner celebrated as a classic example of mid-20th century Space Age-style Googie architecture was granted historic monument status by city officials on Wednesday, protecting it from the threat of demolition.”

Daina Beth Solomon, “L.A. diner famed for ‘Googie’ architecture saved from threat of demolition,” Reuters, May 21, 2015

Pseudo-futuristic Googie architecture originated in 1949 with Googie’s, a coffee shop in West Hollywood designed by John Lautner, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Another famous example of Googie architecture is the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign designed by graphic designer Betty Willis, who passed away this April at 91.

protodog

“Caspin ranks as a Protodog, a spontaneous pooch that bonds easily and can solve problems on its own or with people, according to dog intelligence measures created by scientists and trainers.”

Sue Manning, “Don’t let the slobber fool you, your dog could be a brainiac,” AP, May 13, 2015

HowStuffWorks defines the protodog as the “original dog type,” which “evolved from wolves to take advantage of the niche that humans provide.” The Dognition Assessment‘s Protodog, capitalized, is a pooch profile determined through 20 games that measure a dog’s “level of empathy, communication, cunning, memory and reasoning.”

Other profiles include the Ace, a problem-solver that is “socially elite,” bonds well, and is “good at almost everything,” and the Einstein, a dog that’s smart but socially awkward.

The prefix proto– comes from the Greek protos, “first.”

sneakernet

“In the not-so-distant past, when even medium-sized files could tax a network, many organizations resorted to ‘sneakernet’ — manually walking a disk, or later a thumb drive, from one computer to the next.”

Amanda Ziadeh, “Steering clear of ‘sneakernet’ at big data scale,” GCN, May 27, 2015

The term snearkernet originated around 1984, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

sympathectomy

“There is something Elna can think and do according to Dr. Drott, the surgeon– rather, something she could not do. It’s the simplest thing, and possibly more effective than the sympathectomy or drugs or anything else.”

Sean Cole, “Game Face: Frankly, Miss Scarlet,” This American Life, May 29, 2015

The sympathectomy, more formally known as Endoscopic Thoracic Sympathectomy, or ETS, is a surgery used to treat excessive sweating in the palms and face, as well as excessive blushing. The surgery involves the cutting of the sympathetic nerves that control those actions.

The OED’s earliest citation for sympathectomy is from 1900, and seems to have been used to treat glaucoma and Graves’ disease, and to “dilate arteries that have been stopped.”

The  –ectomy of sympathectomy comes from the Greek ektemnein, “to cut out.”

[Photo via Flickr: “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas,” CC BY 2.0 by ADTeasdale]

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: the sartorial lives of motorcycle gangs; a quiverful of scary; and Glam SAHM shenanigans.

aloha

“Some Native Hawaiians disapprove of the name of a movie filmed and set in Hawaii, saying that titling it ‘Aloha’ is a disrespectful misappropriation of culture and simplifies a word that’s rich with meaning.”

Jennifer Sinco Kelleher, “Some Native Hawaiians disapprove of ‘Aloha’ movie title,” AP, May 25, 2015

In simplest terms, aloha is a “traditional greeting or farewell” mostly used in Hawaii. However, according to Janet Mock, MSNBC show host and native Hawaiian, the word is more complicated than that.

Aloha comes from two Hawaiian words: alo, “which means the front of a person, the part of our bodies that we share and take in people,” and ha, the breath. “When we are in each other’s presence with the front of our bodies,” Mock says, “we are exchanging the breath of life.”

bottom rocker

“So they decided that they were going to wear the Texas bottom rocker—which is telling the Bandidos that they believe that this is their territory, and they’re willing to die for that claim.”

Leon Neyfahk, “A Former Informant Describes the Violent and Sartorially Complicated World of Biker Gangs,” Slate, May 18, 2015

A bottom rocker is a patch on the bottom back of a motorcycle gang vest that denotes the state to which the gang is claiming territory. The name might come from the shape of some of the patches and their resemblance to the “curved pieces upon which a cradle, rocking chair, or similar device rocks.”

kayaktivist

“They call themselves kayaktivists. They’re concerned about global climate change and the risk of an oil spill in the remote and icy Arctic Ocean. “

John Ryan, “Hundreds Of ‘Kayaktivists’ In Seattle Protest Shell’s Arctic Drilling,” NPR, May 18, 2015

Kayaktivists are activists in kayaks, canoes, and paddleboards who have who have gone after “a floating oil rig that Shell is taking to the waters off Alaska’s coast.”

Quiverfull movement

“But the Duggars are different than your standard evangelical Christians—they’re followers of a particularly scary fundamentalist sect known as the Quiverfull movement, which adheres to a deeply patriarchal and highly authoritarian set of beliefs about gender and culture.”

Jennifer C. Martin, “Quiverfull of Shit: A Guide to the Duggars’ Scary Brand of Christianity,” Gawker, May 25, 2015

Quiverfull is an extremely conservative evangelical Christian movement that began in the 1980s. Their name comes from Psalm 127 that states “as arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.”

wife bonus

“Further probing revealed that the annual wife bonus was not an uncommon practice in this tribe.”

Wednesday Martin, “Poor Little Rich Women,” The New York Times, May 16, 2015

In her observation of Upper East Side Glam SAHMs, writer and social researcher Wednesday Martin found that some received wife bonuses, or financial incentives dependent on “performance,” such was how well they managed the home budget and whether or not their children got into prestigious schools.

[Photo via Flickr: “San Marcos Alternatives,” CC BY 2.0 by Michael Witzel]

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: arachnid royal handwriting; a short-term business model; and the internet of NSFW things.

black spider memos

“The move follows a 10-year battle by the Guardian to expose the heir to the throne’s so-called ‘black spider memos’ to public scrutiny.”

Robert Booth, “Prince Charles’s black spider memos to be published on Wednesday,” The Guardian, May 12, 2015

The black spider memos — named for Prince Charles’s “black inky scrawl”– are 27 letters that were sent between the prince and ministers in UK government departments in 2004 and 2005. They were also “the subject of a Freedom of Information Act request by the Guardian journalist Rob Evans.”

The government has been trying to prevent the release of the letters due to their demonstration of “Charles’s ‘particularly frank’ interventions on public policy.”

drought shaming

“#droughtshaming is blowing up. And it’s shoving another of California’s problems—vast income inequality—into an uncomfortable spotlight.”

Maddie Stone, “California’s Wealthiest Are Being Drought Shamed on Social Media,” Gizmodo, May 17, 2015

Drought shaming is publicly shaming someone for using more than their fair share of water during California’s current drought and mandatory water restrictions.

Other types of public shaming include fat-shaming, slut-shaming, and drunk shaming.

dysfunctional expertise

“Dysfunctional expertise describes the ways a burglar thinks differently than a normal person.”

Bourree Lam, “The Mind of a Burglar,” The Atlantic, April 29, 2015

Dysfunctional expertise is like regular expertise but in something illegal or nefarious.

With practice, says The Atlantic, burglars refine their skill sets, such as learning “to automatically pick up cues in the environment that signify a successful burglary without even being aware of it.”

Hollywood model

“It’s probably not coincidental that the Hollywood model is ascendant at a time when telling stories, broadly speaking, is at the heart of American business.”

Adam Davidson, “What Hollywood Can Teach Us About the Future of Work,” The New York Times Magazine, May 5, 2015

The Hollywood model is a business model in which, according to The NY Times Magazine, “a project is identified; a team is assembled,” the team “works together for precisely as long as is needed to complete the task,” and “then the team disbands.”

In the more traditional corporate model, “capital is spent up front to build a business, which then hires workers for long-­term, open-­ended jobs that can last for years.” Then there’s the even shorter-term gig economy exemplified by Uber, in which “extremely short-­term tasks” are managed by one person, “typically in less than a day.”

teledildonics

“Once fringe products stuffed into dark corners of adult stores, teledildonics are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with social elements connecting couples and strangers alike.”

Molly McHugh, “Sex and love in the age of robots,” The Week, May 11, 2015

The internet of things has reached a whole new level. Teledildonics are remote-controlled, Wi-Fi-enabled sex toys that are “popular with long-distance couples,” says The Week.

The word teledildonic is made up of a few different parts: tele-, meaning “over a long distance”; dildo, referring to the sex toy; and the suffix –ic, which means “of or relating to,” but perhaps also echoes the –ic of electronic.

The word dildo, in case you were wondering, is over 400 years old, and might come from the Italian deletto, “delight.”

[Photo via Flickr: “Spider,” CC BY 2.0 by Peter Harrison]

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: don’t be ajerkalypse; do cry out loud; and what not to wear.

ajockalypse

“The Conservatives have been accused by a heckler of stirring up racism after claiming a Labour/SNP deal would result in chaos and an ‘ajockalypse’.”

“Conservatives accused of racism in ‘ajockalypse’ row,” The Courier, May 5, 2015

Ajockalypse comes from a remark from London mayor Boris Johnson, who  branded “a Labour government supported by the SNP” — or the Scottish National Party — “as ‘Ajockalypse Now’.” The word ajockalypse is a blend a apocalypse and jock, what some might consider a derogatory term for a Scottish person.

golden loaf

“The disappearance of the golden loaf has made it a symbol for something else: Ukraine’s inability to clear up the corrupt and dysfunctional state that Mr. Yanukovych left behind and reclaim the enormous sums that he and his associates allegedly stole.”

James Marson and Nick Shchetko, “Ukrainians Try to Solve the Mystery of the Golden Loaf,” The Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2015

The golden loaf refers to a gaudy ornament left behind in the office of Ukrainian ex-president, Viktor Yanukovych. The gilded bread has became a symbol for the excesses of Yanukovych’s regime, much like the vast shoe collection of Imelda Marcos, wife of Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

mo-cap

“He also worked with mo-cap master Andy Serkis — whose portrayals of Gollum and the Planet of the Apes simian Caesar were so revelatory that they sparked Oscars talk — to perfect his technique.”

Brian Hiatt, “The Hulk: The Last Angry Man,” Rolling Stone, May 4, 2015

Mo-cap is short for motion capture, the process of using sensors to record the movement of objects or people. Mo-cap is used in filmmaking — Andy Serkis’s portrayal of Gollum in Lord of the Rings is a prime example — as well as sports and robotics.

rui-katsu

“Rui-katsu seems to be popular not because Japanese people are big criers, but precisely because they aren’t.”

Patrick St. Michel, “Crying It Out in Japan,” The Atlantic, May 2015

Rui-katsu translates from Japanese as “tear-seeking,” says The Atlantic. Since 2013, communal rui-katsu events have been held in Japan, in which sad commercials, movie clips, and the like are played for audiences who weep as a form of stress relief.

But if you prefer to cry alone, a Tokyo hotel is offering women “crying rooms,” complete with a selection of sad movies like Forrest Gump (although we’d also recommend The Color Purple, Steel Magnolias, the first ten minutes of Up), sad manga, and, of course, plenty of eye makeup remover.

sumptuary law

“Perhaps the greatest distinction conferred by a person’s dress was social status, as reflected in sumptuary laws stating that only certain people could wear velvet, and that the lower classes were confined to drab wool or linen.”

Marc Bain, “Sex and gender aren’t perfectly binary. Why should clothes be?” Quartz, April 26, 2015

During the Elizabethan era in England, sumptuary laws dictated what you could and couldn’t wear. (Sumptuary means “regulating personal behavior on moral or religious grounds.”) For instance, only the King, the King’s relatives, and dukes could wear purple. Violators of such laws could be punished with “fines, the loss of property, title and even life.”

[Photo via Flickr: “SAKURAKO – Do not cry!” CC BY 2.0 by Miki Yoshihito]

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: the end of the mobile search world as we know it; it’s raining nipperkins; and (don’t) Poptarko us out to the ballgame.

Also, be sure to check out the updated Poptarko entry for additional discussion on not-so-great portmanteaus and trademarked names.

Chilesaurus

“The curious form of Chilesaurus is an extreme example of mosaic convergent evolution, where different parts of an animal adapt to the environment along the same path taken by other creatures.”

Iam Sample, “‘Bizarre’ Jurassic dinosaur discovered in remarkable new find,” The Guardian, April 27, 2015

The Chilesaurus is a dinosaur of the Jurassic period considered “bizarre” because of its “curious mixture of features from different prehistoric animals,” says The Guardian.

The remains were first discovered in 2004 by a Chilean couple fossil hunting in the Andes. Their son, Diego, found a fossilized bone “that turned out to belong to the new species.”

The dinosaur’s full name is Chilesaurus diegosuarezi, named for where it was found and who found it, 7-year old Diego.

mobilegeddon

“Some people are calling it Mobilegeddon. That’s a bit of a stretch. But for the Google search engine—something that’s such big part of our daily lives—it’s likely the biggest change of the past three years.”

Cade Metz, “Google’s Search Update Will Remake the Web in Its Own Image,” WIRED, April 21, 2015

Mobilegeddon, a blend of mobile and armageddon, refers to Google’s recent updates to its search algorithms, which will make a site’s “mobile-friendliness” a determining factor in how prominently, if at all, it’ll appear in mobile search results. In other words, if a site isn’t mobile ready, there’s a chance people won’t be able to find it via their phones.

Check out more armageddon blends and these apocalypse words.

Nipyata

“And then there will be a chapter for the Nipyata, a novelty party item that stuffs cardboard donkey piñatas with tiny bottles of booze instead of candy. Blindfolded, dizzy drunks swinging a beating stick in a crowd of people…what could go wrong?”

Neil Casey, “Meet The Nipyata: A Piñata Filled With Bottles Of Booze,” Gothamist, April 26, 2015

The Nipyata combines a piñata and booze, or nip, figuratively and literally. A nip is a small amount of liquor, like the little (hopefully shatterproof) bottles of Jesus juice that rain down when the Nipyata is busted open.

The word nip is short for nipperkin, a “quantity of liquor of a half pint or less.” Nipperkin is of Dutch or Low German origin. Piñata in Spanish literally means jug or pot.

Poptarko

“The Bombers, a summer collegiate league baseball team, unveiled their new concession concoction for 2015 – dubbed the ‘Poptarko’.”

Bill Broderick, “New food item for Bombers is the Poptarko,” Battle Creek Enquirer, April 24, 2015

Poptarko, while an excellent name, is a horrific-sounding Pop-Tart-taco combination. Specifically, it’s a “double-decker taco” with a soft shell wrapped around a hard shell, and inside the shell, pulled pork and a brown sugar and cinnamon Pop-Tart. Of course a taco wouldn’t be complete without toppings, in this case, crumbled bacon, cheese, and more pieces of Pop-Tarts.

UPDATE: Editor Dawn McIlvain Stahl, aka PurplePenning, made a really good point: why is it Poptarko with a “k” and not Poptarco or Poptartco?

Professional name developer Nancy Friedman suggests that the “co” from taco might be misinterpreted as “company” and that the “k” might be reminiscent of pork. In addition, she says, “The big problem here could be unauthorized use of POP-TART, a registered TM of Kellogg.”

SnorriCam

“It’s a visual effect you can chalk up to the SnorriCam, a special device that mounts the camera directly on the actor’s body.”

Jacob T. Swinney, “A Video History of the SnorriCam, the Ultimate Cinematic Shorthand for Disorientation,” Slate, April 21, 2015

The SnorriCam creates a disorienting effect in film by making it seem as though everything except the actor is moving — in other words, the actor seems to hold perfectly still while the world whirls dizzyingly around him.

Icelandic filmmakers Einar Snorri and Eidur Snorri developed the technique using a special rig that attaches to the body “so one can walk or run with the camera locked on to oneself, keeping the face as an example steady in the frame and focus.”

Snorri and Snorri, by the way, aren’t related, but work together under the name Snorri Bros, to make things extra confusing.

[Photo via Flickr: “Viva Piñata,” CC BY 2.0 by peasap]

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, in which we round up our favorite buzzworthy words of the week. The latest: Hodor-ing, haterbragging, and hater-cricketing.

avoision

“Tax advisers whose job it is to help clients steer through some of this muddle have already coined a term to sum up the confusion: ‘avoision’.”

Richard Dyson, “There’s nothing wrong with tax avoidance: we’re all forced to do it,” The Telegraph, April 18, 2015

Tax avoision is the “non-payment of tax that cannot clearly be seen as either tax avoidance, which is legal, or tax evasion, which is illegal.”

Some examples of tax avoidance from The Telegraph, a British publication, include saving in “Isas and pensions,” investing in “tax-free National Savings accounts,” and carefully recalling “the legitimate expenses with which to reduce taxable profits.” Tax evasion, says The Telegraph, is the deliberate concealment or understatement of income or assets.

Avoision is somewhere between “aggressive avoidance” and full-blown evasion. The word is a blend of avoidance and evasion.

chitlin’ circuit

“Stand-up comedy offered a way out of this dead end, even at the low pay he initially earned since he was relegated to the ‘chitlin’ circuit’ reserved for black comedians.”

Jeet Heer, “Don’t Forget What Richard Pryor Taught Us: Offensive Comedy Can Be Liberating,” New Republic, April 13, 2015

The chitlin’ circuit refers to “a circuit of nightclubs and theaters that feature African-American performers and cater especially to African-American audiences.”

According to NPR, “the entertainers called it the Chitlin’ Circuit because club owners sold chitlins and other soul food dishes out of their kitchens.” The name “may also have been a play on the Borscht Belt, a moniker given to the Catskills Mountain region in upstate New York where many Jewish families vacationed during the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.”

Chitlins are the boiled and fried small intestines of pigs. The word is a variant on chitterlings, which may come from the Old English cieter, “intestines.”

expressive aphasia

“Whether he intended it or not, Martin created a character who is a textbook example of someone with a neurological condition called expressive aphasia.”

Jordan Gaines Lewis, “Neuroscience explains why Hodor in Game of Thrones only says ‘Hodor,’” Quartz, April 13, 2015

Aphasia is “partial or total loss of the ability to articulate ideas or comprehend spoken or written language, resulting from damage to the brain caused by injury or disease.” In expressive aphasia, speech or writing specifically is severely impaired.

The word aphasia comes from the Greek aphatos, “speechless.”

haterbrag

“The haterbrag embodies a couple of typical complaints that people like Franzen lodge against social media culture: It’s a narcissistic overshare.”

Amanda Hess, “My Haters, Myself,” Slate, April 13, 2015

The haterbrag, says Slate, is kind like the “humblebrag’s evil (but funnier) stepsister.” Essentially, haterbragging is bragging about how much hate one gets, especially on social media. An example is celebrities reading mean tweets about themselves.

sledging

“While not an enthusiast of the sport by any means, Sledge inadvertently became forever associated with the game of cricket, with the term ‘sledging’ arguably derived from his name.”

“Percy Sledge: Soul singer’s link to cricket’s sledging,” Australian Broadcasting Corporation, April 15, 2015

Sledging refers to, in cricket, “the practice of a fielder making insulting or comical references to an opposition batsman with the aim of distracting him.”

So what does a British sports term have to do with an African American R&B singer? One theory is that it originated in the mid-1960s from Australian cricketer Grahame Corling, who teased another player about his wife having an affair by singing the Sledge tune, “When a Man Loves a Woman.”

Another theory says sledging has nothing to do with Percy Sledge: in the mid-1960s, a player “reacted to an incident ‘like a sledgehammer’, with all on-field insults and obscenities at opponents henceforth known as ‘sledging’.”

[Photo via Flickr: “Hodor sobre esse desenho: “Hodor?'” CC BY 2.0 by Bruna Schenkel]