Category Archives: Word Soup

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Word Soup: The Favorite Words of AWP 2013

Wordnik schwag

Last week Wordnik headed out to snowy Boston to attend the AWP annual book fair. With over 10,000 attendees and 600 booths, AWP’s is one of the biggest writers’ conferences in the country, and we met tons of interesting people.

We also held a contest: give us your favorite word and we’ll randomly draw three people to win a set of Pocket Posh dictionaries. Congratulations to Lawrence Eby whose choice was the underrated gulch; Nicholl Denice who chose the awesome onomatopoeia; and David Fishkind who went with the lovely gambol.

Now what about all those favorite words? We collected 186, from akrasia to zeugma, and while we can’t cover them all here, we’re excited to give you some highlights. (And because we’re Wordnik, we made a list of all 186 words.)

We received positive words such as happiness, love, and please; beautiful color words such as azure and vermillion; and words having to do with light and shadow like illuminate, luminous, chiaroscuro, and, well, shadow. Crepuscular, “pertaining to or resembling twilight,” was another favorite, as well as dailygone, a Scots word also meaning “twilight,” a new word for us.

A couple of words were meta, such as dictionary and, you guessed it, word, and many simply sounded great, like gobbledygook, kerfuffle, bamboozle, catawampus, ishkabibble, and kerplunk! (which the submitter insisted “had to include an exclamation point”).

Others had to do with specific definitions, such as cataract (“The waterfall, not the degenerated cornea”), and monstrance, which has nothing to do with monsters but is, in the Roman Catholic Church, “a receptacle in which the host is held” (although monstrance and monster are etymologically related).

We received a few anatomy words (alveoli, flange, patella, and phalanges, though we have a feeling that has less to do with finger bones and more with the pseudonym of a certain sitcom character), and a couple of fear words, namely triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number 13, and hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, the fear of very long words, which the submitter pronounced perfectly (“I practiced for hours”). Impressive!

A couple of people felt the pressure of choosing one favorite word and went with the reliable cat. Others were hungry for lunch and picked yogurt, tapioca, chocolate, clementine, persimmon, pomaceous, and the terrific hangry, to be angry from hunger. Still others chose the simple and emphatic no, including five-year old Jonah who wrote the word in all caps (“NO”).

One attendee’s favorite was habiliments, with which she won a spelling bee, while another attendee’s least favorite word was colonel, with which she lost a spelling bee (“I got too excited and spelled kernel instead”). Another attendee picked orange, because “nothing rhymes with it.”

Some words received multiple votes like defenestrate, to throw out the window; diaphanous, “transmitting light; permitting the passage of light; transparent; clear”; interrobang, a blended question mark and exclamation point; and, for some reason, elbow.

A few are definite word of the day contenders, like cacoethes, compulsion, mania; eldritch, strange or eerie; lour, “to be dark, gloomy, and threatening, as clouds”; and flitch, a wooden plank or slab, or a slab of bacon.

Several people’s favorite words were from other languages. In French we had malheureusement, “regrettably, unfortunately,” and pamplemousse, a grapefruit. In Spanish we got igualmente, “likewise”; sonrisa, “smile” but also “sunrise”; and jubilacion, “retirement” but also “jubilation.”

We received the German gemütlichkeit, “coziness more or less,” and in Finnish another vote for “orange,” oranssi. In Mandarin Chinese we got lao wai, literally “old foreigner” but also any foreigner, and from Jamaican English, ku yah, “But see here!” which we’ll begin using immediately.

Finally, we know we shouldn’t play favorites but we can’t help it: the neologisms. There was the Philadelphia slang widorwidout, “with or without (cheese, onions, etc)”; that old favorite, frenemy; and puh-leeze, of which we were assured is “now accepted by the OED” (and even if it weren’t, we would still love it).

There was hyperbolate (“If it’s not a word, it should be” – we agree!), and scrumtrulescent, which was coined by James Lipton (as played by Will Ferrell): “Match Game was absolutely scrumtrulescent.”

Again, check out all the favorite words of AWP 2013.

We hope to see you all next year!

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Coupon Lingo: 10 (Not So) Extreme Couponing Words

low prices everyday

Low Prices Everday, by _tar0_

Daylight saving time – or “spring forward” – begins this Sunday. While we’re not sure how “losing” an hour saves us anything, we were inspired to explore another way one may save: through coupons. Our explorations opened a whole world of couponing lingo. Our 10 favorites are here.

blinkie

“Next comes a bag of cherry tomatoes and three jars of Peter Pan creamy peanut butter, free with a doubled coupon—called a blinkie because it was dispensed from one of the blinking coupon boxes installed in grocery store aisles.”

Matt Schwartz, “Bargain Junkies Are Beating Retailers at Their Own Game,” Wired, November 29, 2010

Blinkies are a type of coupon dispensed from a machine in a store aisle or at checkout. The machine generally has a blinking red light designed to get shoppers’ attention.

A blinkie is also “a small animated graphic for use on a webpage, usually taking the form of picture or phrase with blinking lights around it.”

BOGO

“They decide which numbers will be most enticing, and whether ‘50% off’ sounds better than ‘buy one get one’ offers—known as ‘BOGO,’ in industry parlance.”

Carl Bialik, Elizabeth Holmes, and Ray A. Smith, “Many Discounts, Few Deals,” The Wall Street Journal, December 15, 2010

BOGO stands for “buy one get one (free).” The earliest citations we could find for BOGO were the early 1990s, although the acronym could be older than that.

catalina

“If you’ve shopped for groceries at a large supermarket, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the long ‘string’ of coupons that print out at the register along with your store receipt. These checkout coupons, or ‘Catalinas,’ as coupon shoppers commonly call them, are incredibly valuable to coupon shoppers.”

Jill Cataldo, “How ‘Catalina’ Coupons Help You Save,” The Eagle Tribune, May 7, 2010

A catalina coupon is printed at the register after purchase, and is named for the marketing firm behind the idea.

extreme couponing

“The advent of extreme couponing, popularized by the TLC show of the same name about people who clip coupons obsessively, is sparking a backlash as some manufacturers and retailers complain that the pursuit of a big bargain has an ugly side.”

Allison Linn, “Extreme Couponing Sparks Backlash,” NBC News, September 15, 2011

A Wall Street Journal article from March 8, 2010 seems to be the first to mention the term extreme couponers, or “discount devotees [who] have formed vast online communities that collectively unearth and swap digital, mobile-phone and paper coupons,” combining “dozens of coupons and [going] from store to store buying items in quantity, getting stuff free of charge.” The TLC reality show, Extreme Couponing, debuted in December 2010.

Extreme couponing is a play on the phrase, extreme sport, a sport featuring a level of exertion and danger. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), extreme sport originated in 1989 in Skiing Trade News, although a book called Seventh Grade: Most Extreme Climbing was published in 1974.

Coca-Cola is credited with issuing the first coupon

meal ticket

“The government was down to its last bean and wondering where the Heck its next meal-ticket was coming from, when in blows Mr. Man, tucks up his shirt-sleeves, and starts the tables.”

P.G. Wodehouse, The Prince and Betty, 1912

While we now mainly think of meal ticket in its figurative sense – “a person or thing depended on as a source of financial support” – it originally referred to “a card or ticket entitling the holder to a meal or meals,” often at a discount.

Meal tickets originated around 1870 and seemed to be given out to single men and women known as mealers, those who ate in one place and lodged in another. The figurative sense arose around 1899.

peelie

“Try to find one with the sticker coupon (also called a ‘peelie’) to save 50 cents and get it free after doubled coupon.”

Michelle Dudas, “Smart Savings: Clip Coupons, Save for Education,” Fay Observer, December 31, 2011

A peelie is a coupon peeled from the item’s packaging. According to the OED, peelie, or peely-wally, is Scottish slang for “thin; gaunt; pale.” Peelie may be an alteration of pale.

rain check

“So often the store will run out of a sale item and issue a rain check to be used at a later date. . . .The stores certainly honor rain checks, but will not accept the now-expired coupon.”

Jan Leasure, “Store’s Rain-Check Policy Makes Coupon Useless,” The Telegraph, December 8, 1993

The earliest meaning of rain check originated around 1884 and referred to tickets or coupons given to spectators at rained-out baseball games. The figurative meaning of “a promise that an unaccepted offer will be renewed in the future” arose around 1899, says the OED.

The consumer meaning – “an assurance to a customer that an item on sale that is sold out or out of stock may be purchased later at the sale price” – is the newest, coming about around 1955. (The time after World War II led to “mass consumption frenzy.”)

stackable

“With fast-ending sales, stackable coupons and online-only discounts, in-store shoppers often have good reason to question whether the price they see is really the best deal out there.”

Kelli Grant, “App Savvy,” CBS News, April 2, 2012

Stackable coupons are those that can be combined with other coupons and discounts.

stockpile

“We get a glimpse at the couponer’s stockpile. The warehouse-like space usually contains 1,568 bottles of soap, 934 frozen dinners and 6,237 bags of kitty litter. . . .Frightening? Yep. But it’s also a little appealing, especially when you watch the show’s featured couponers pay double digits for a stockpile with a triple-digit price tag.”

Sonya Sorich, “Extreme Couponing on TLC Is a Little Too Extreme,” Ledger-Enquirer, September 27, 2011

Stockpile originated as a U.S. mining term in 1872, says the OED, and referred to “a pile of coal or ore accumulated at the surface after having been mined.” In the early 1940s, the word came to mean “a supply stored for future use,” as well as specifically “an accumulation of nuclear weapons.” Stockpile may also be used as verb meaning “to accumulate and maintain a supply of for future use.”

twofer

“The twofer deal involves a certain expense to producers in the matter of distribution of ‘coupons’ redeemable at the box office on the basis of two tickets for the price of one.”

“Public Likes Bargain Price,” Beaver County Times, October 21, 1974

Twofer, short for “two for (a dollar, etc.),” originated around 1911 as U.S. slang for a cheap cigar, according to the OED, “a cigar sold at two for a quarter.” The coupon meaning, attested to 1948, at first referred specifically to tickets for a play, but now seems to refer to any two for one discount, as well as “an offer, a deal, or an arrangement in which a single expense yields a dual return.”

Twofer used to mean “one who belongs to two minority groups and can be counted, as by an employer, as part of two quotas,” arose around 1969.

[Photo: “Low Prices Everyday,” CC BY 2.0 by _tar0_]

[Photo: “Coca-Cola,” Wired Magazine]

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Word Soup Wednesday: crotcherazzi, jookin’, secessionist

Every week we watch tons of TV for weird and interesting words so you don’t have to. Check out our latest selections.

The Catfish's Eye

The Catfish's Eye, by Michael Bentley

catfish

Stephen Colbert [regarding fake MTV and BET Twitter hacks]: “Yes, we were totally catfished. They made us fall in love with the fact that we were duped by vertically integrated platform synergies.”

The Colbert Report, February 21, 2013

Catfish “refers to a person who creates a fake online profile in order to fraudulently seduce someone,” and comes from the movie of the same name in which a man discovers the woman with whom he’s had an online relationship isn’t young and single but in her 40s and married. For even more on catfishing, check out Ben Zimmer’s piece in The Boston Globe.

crotcherazzi

Mindy: “You’ll have to get to know bodyguard, Denelle. And there might be crotcherazzi.”

“Mindy’s Minute,” The Mindy Project, February 19, 2013

Crotcherazzi, a blend of crotch and paparazzi, refers to photographers who capture, whether by design or mistake, crotch shots of female celebrities (usually going commando) as they awkwardly get out of vehicles and inadvertently flash whoever might be watching.

The origin of go commando is obscure. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the phrase may have to do with “commandos‘ reputation for action, toughness, or resourcefulness rather than to any specific practice.”

dash cam

Newscaster: “Motorists have turned to dash cams for self-protection, visual proof to fend off charges from possibly corrupt police officers and from insurance scammers who often stage accidents like this one captured here.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, February 19, 2013

A dash cam is a video camera that sits on the dashboard of one’s car. According to Wired, “a combination of inexpensive cameras, flash memory and regulations passed by the Interior Ministry in 2009 that removed any legal hurdles for in-dash cameras has made it easy and cheap for drivers [in Russia] to install the equipment.” Enjoy the craziest Russian dash cam videos of 2012.

diaper pattern

Appraiser: “And then it’s all beautifully engraved with these diaper patterns, every inch of it. This thing was a very complicated method of manufacture. What they used to do was build up one layer of lacquer, then they had to let it dry under ideal conditions. And then they polished it, and it was another layer, and another layer, and another layer, and another layer.”

“Myrtle Beach,” The Antiques Roadshow, February 25, 2013

A diaper pattern is a repeated pattern of squares, rectangles, or lozenges. Diaper in this sense comes from the Old French diaspre, “ornamental cloth; flowered, patterned silk cloth.” The sense of “underpants for babies” originated around 1837, says the Online Etymology Dictionary.

Jabot

jabot

Appraiser: “Well, it’s a beautiful French Art Deco brooch. I would date it circa 1925. And it’s called a jabot.”

“Myrtle Beach,” The Antiques Roadshow, February 25, 2013

A jabot is “an ornamental cascade of ruffles or frills down the front of a shirt, blouse, or dress,” often held in place with a pin or brooch, evidently also referred to as a jabot. Jabot may come from the French meaning of the word, “crop of a bird.”

jaternice

Andrew Zimmern: “A Czech sausage with a funny name – jaternice – combines some of my favorite flavors and makes great use of a few underappreciated parts of the pig.”

“Iowa,” Bizarre Foods America, February 25, 2013

Jaternice is a Bohemian style liver sausage, and translates from Czech as “pork sausage.”

jookin’

Stephen Colbert: “For the people out there who are not as hip or fly as I am, what is jookin’?”
Lil Buck: “We call it Memphis jookin’ because it’s a dance that originated almost 30 years ago in Memphis, Tennessee. It started with a line dance called the gangsta walk. . . .It was like a really confident line dance. . . .Gangsta walkin’ evolved into jookin’.”

The Colbert Report, February 21, 2013

According to the book Jookin’: The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture by Katrina Hazzard-Gordon, the origin of the word jookin is obscure. It seems to be the same jook, or juke, as in jukebox or juke joint, where juke means to play dance music, to dance, or “to deceive or outmaneuver a defender by a feint.” The word may come from the Gullah word juke or joog meaning “wicked, disorderly.”

Gangsta walking is also known as g-walk, buck jump, rollin, and buckin.

Lupercalia

Stephen Colbert: “The true meaning of Valentine’s Day is all about the L-word. Lupercalia! The mid-February Roman fertility feast that St. Valentine’s Day is based on. As I’m sure you know, Lupercalia is named for Lupa, the she-wolf who suckled Rome’s twin founders, Romulus and Remus.”

The Colbert Report, February 14, 2013

Lupercalia is an ancient Roman festival celebrated in the middle of February. According to the Century Dictionary, the origin of the festival “is older than the legend of Romulus and the wolf,” and “was originally a local purification ceremony of the Palatine city, in which human victims were sacrificed.”

Later “the victims were goats and a dog, and the celebrants ran around the old line of the Palatine walls, striking all whom they met with thongs cut from the skins of the slaughtered animals.” This was “reputed to preserve women from sterility.”

maquette

Appraiser: “These are in fact the maquettes for posters. These are the original artwork that was done from which posters would have been created.”

“Myrtle Beach,” The Antiques Roadshow, February 18, 2013

A maquette is “a usually small model of an intended work, such as a sculpture or piece of architecture.” The word is French and comes from the Italian macchietta, “sketch.”

plein air

Appraiser: “This painting is done in a plein air style. It’s impressionistic. He used a heavy brushstroke in his compositions.”

“Myrtle Beach,” The Antiques Roadshow, February 18, 2013

Plein air, which in French means “(in) the open air,” is “a style of painting produced out of doors in natural light.”

secessionist

Larry Kilgore: “I ran for Senate in 2008 on a secessionist platform and received 225,000 votes.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, February 21, 2013

The word secessionist originally referred to, in U.S. history, “one who took part in or sympathized with the attempt of the Southern States, in 1860–65, to withdraw from the Union,” and now refers to anyone who favors secession, the act of separating or withdrawing from a religious or political organization.

Larry Kilgore is “one of the most prominent supporters of Texas secession,” and during his Senate run in 2007, “advocated the death penalty for abortion and adultery, and flogging for vulgar language and transvestitism.” He also “believes that Abraham Lincoln was the American equivalent of Hitler.” Kilgore legally changed his middle name from Scott to SECEDE (all caps his) in 2012.

tramp art

Appraiser: “The tramp art frame itself is fantastic. They made these out of little thin pieces of wood, as you know… could have been cigar boxes. And tramp art. . .weren’t necessarily made by tramps, they were just made by anonymous people.”

“Myrtle Beach,” The Antiques Roadshow, February 25, 2013

Tramp art is art made from “discarded materials, especially cigar boxes, in the period following the American Civil War through the 1930s.” Tramp art wasn’t necessarily made by tramps or hobos but by “untrained, mainly poor artists from a broad range of nationalities, using meager tools.”

[Photo: “The Catfish’s Eye,” CC BY 2.0 by Michael Bentley]

[Photo: “Jabot,” Public Domain by Dan Rusch-Fischer]

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Downton Soup: The Words of Downton Abbey, Season 3

If you’re like us, you’ve been closely following the trials and tribulations of the Granthams and those who serve them. Like last season, Ben Zimmer and Ben Schmidt have been busy catching the anachronisms. Zimmer recently noticed a doozy – steep learning curve – while Schmidt found such out-of-place terms as ritual humiliation and shenanigans.

We’ve also been collecting words and phrases from the show, some perfectly ordinary, others more unusual, and all with interesting stories about how they came to be.

Spoilers may follow.

UPDATE: Two terms from the season finale have been included. See cock-a-hoop and chippy gippy tummy. Thanks to everyone who let us know it was gippy and not chippy!

blimey

Sybil: “Mary, you know what I said about the baby being Catholic. I’ve just realized the christening will have to be here, at Downton.”
Mary: “Blimey.”

Episode 4, January 27, 2013

Blimey is a British expression many of us are familiar with. It’s used to express anger, surprise, excitement, etc., and originated around 1889 as a corruption of “(God) blind me,” says the Online Etymology Dictionary. Gorblimey is another variant.

Chu Chin Chow

Mrs. Hughes: “Then your dinners would be grand enough for Chu Chin Chow.”

Episode 6, February 3, 2013

Chu Chin Chow is a musical comedy based on Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves in which “the wealthy merchant Kasim Baba (brother of Ali Baba) [gives] a lavish banquet for a wealthy Chinese merchant, Chu Chin Chow, who is on his way from China.” The show premiered in London in 1916 and ran for five years.

cock-a-hoop

Hugh: “Nield is cock-a-hoop.”

Episode 8, February 17, 2013

Cock-a-hoop means “exultant; jubilant; triumphant; on the high horse,” as well as “tipsy; slightly intoxicated.” The term comes from the phrase “to set cock on hoop,” which literally means “to turn on the tap and let the liquor flow,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and figuratively, “to drink festively.”

Cock in this context refers to “a faucet or valve by which the flow of a liquid or gas can be regulated,” while a hoop is “a certain quantity of drink, up to the first hoop on a quart pot.”

Debrett’s

Cora: “Not everyone chooses their religion to satisfy Debrett’s.”

Episode 5, February 3, 2013

Debrett’s is a British publisher of etiquette guides and Debrett’s Peerage & Baronetage, a “genealogical guide to the British aristocracy,” or as Patsy Stone of the TV show Absolutely Fabulous calls it, the “Who’s Who in what’s left of the British aristocracy.”

gippy tummy

O’Brien: “Something different. I could fancy that.”
Wilkins: “Not me. All sweat and gippy tummy.”

Episode 8, February 17, 2013

A gippy tummy is, according to the OED, “diarrhœa suffered by visitors to hot countries,” where gippy is slang for Egyptian. Gippy tummy may also be an anachronism: the OED lists the earliest use of the term as 1943, 23 years after this episode takes place.

hobbledehoy

Carson: “Miss O’Brien, we are about to host a society wedding. I have no time for training young hobbledehoys.”

Episode 1, January 6, 2013

A hobbledehoy is “a raw, awkward youth.” The word is very old, originating in the 16th century. The first syllable hob probably refers to “a hobgoblin, sprite, or elf,” while –dehoy may come from the Middle French de haye, “worthless, untamed, wild.”

in someone’s bad books

Daisy [to Mosely about O’Brien]: “I wouldn’t be in her bad books for a gold clock.”

Episode 2, January 13, 2013

To be in someone’s bad books means to be in disgrace or out of favor. The phrase originated around 1861, says the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

An earlier phrase (1771) is to be in someone’s black book. A black book was “a book kept for the purpose of registering the names of persons liable to censure or punishment, as in the English universities, or the English armies.” So to be in someone’s black book meant to be in bad favor with that person (or on their shitlist, as we Yanks say).

As you may have guessed, to be in someone’s good books means to be in favor. That phrase originated around 1839, says the OED, in Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby: “If you want to keep in the good books in that quarter, you had better not call her the old lady.”

in the soup

Daisy [to Mosely]: “You’re in the soup.”

Episode 2, January 13, 2013

To in the soup means to be in in a difficult, according to the OED. The phrase was originally American slang, originating around 1889.

Johnny Foreigner

Robert: “But there always seems to be something of Johnny Foreigner about the Catholics.”

Episode 3, January 20, 2013

Johnny Foreigner is a derogatory term for “a person from a country other than those which make up the United Kingdom.” We couldn’t find an originating date or first use of the phrase. If anyone has information, let us know!

left-footer

Robert: “Did you hear Tom’s announcement at breakfast? He wants the child to be a left-footer.”

Episode 6, February 3, 2013

Anachronism alert! Left-footer, which is slang for a Roman Catholic, didn’t come about until 1944, according to the OED, 24 years after this episode takes place.

The term seems to come from the belief that “in the North of Ireland that Catholic farm workers use their left foot to push the spade when digging, and Protestants the right.” Kicks with the left foot is another slang term for Catholic, while kicking with the wrong foot “is used especially by Protestants of Catholics and vice versa.”

plain cook

Mrs. Bird: “She says there’s plenty of work for a plain cook these days.”

Episode 4, January 27, 2013

A plain cook, says the OED, is “a cook who specializes in, or most frequently prepares, plain dishes.” Plain dishes are “not rich or highly seasoned,” and have a few basic ingredients.

rich as Croesus

Mary: “He’s as rich as Croesus as it is.”

Episode 1, January 6, 2013

Croesus was, in ancient Greece, the last king of Lydia “whose kingdom, which had prospered during his reign, fell to the Persians under Cyrus.” Croesus came to refer to any rich man by the late 14th century.

squiffy

Robert: “I’m very much afraid to say he was a bit squiffy, weren’t you, Alfred?”

Episode 6, February 3, 2013

Squiffy means tipsy or drunk, and is of “fanciful formation,” according to the OED. Other ways to say drunk.

stick it up your jumper

Anna: “They’ll have to give Thomas his notice.”
Bates: “Mr. Barrow.”
Anna: “Mr. Stick It Up Your Jumper.”

Episode 6, February 10, 2013

The full phrase is oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumper!, and is “an expression of contempt, defiance, rejection or dismissal.” It may have originally been “a meaningless jingle chanted jocularly or derisively” from the 1920s. The phrase makes a famous appearance in the Beatles’ song, I Am the Walrus.

tuppence

Isabel: “She couldn’t give a tuppence about Ethel.”

Episode 6, February 10, 2013

Tuppence is an alternation of twopence, two pennies or a very small amount. One who doesn’t give a tuppence doesn’t care at all.

Can’t get enough Downton Abbey? Check out our favorite words from the first two seasons.

[Photo: Carnival Films via The Chicago Maroon]

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Word Soup Wednesday: despertainment, fart patio, hogcock

Every week we watch tons of TV for weird and interesting words so you don’t have to. Check out our latest selections.

cooler

Jess: “Nick, I’m gonna admit it. I might be your cooler. . . .But to be fair, you are your own cooler 70% of the time.”

“Cooler,” New Girl, January 29, 2013

A cooler here is someone who ruins another’s luck in romance, perhaps playing off another meaning of cooler: in gambling, someone who is supposedly bad luck and makes other players lose. The Cooler was a 2003 film with William H. Macy in the titular role.

Marilynn's Place, Shreveport, LA

NOLA Roast Beef Po-Boy with debris and au jus.

debris

Anthony Bourdain: “Now we’ve been talking about debris and po’boys. I do not see the word po’boy or debris on this menu.”

“New Orleans,” The Layover, January 28, 2013

Debris here refers to beef shredded into tiny pieces, resembling the original meaning of debris, “the scattered remains of something broken or destroyed; rubble or wreckage.” (A debris-cone, in case you were wondering, is “a mound or cone built up by the accumulation of erupted, fragmental products about the vent of a volcano.”)

The po’boy is a kind of sandwich native to the U.S. Gulf Coast. A shortening of poor boy, the phrase either comes from the French pourboire, drink money, or was coined by New Orleans restaurant workers in 1929 who called the railroad strikers they gave free sandwiches to “poor boys.”

despertainment

Stephen Colbert: “This pioneering form of despertainment is sure to be such a hit that other networks are gonna have their own spin-offs, like Meal or No Meal, Americans, Idle, and Are You More Employable Than a 5th Grader?”

The Colbert Report, February 5, 2013

Despertainment, a blend of desperate and entertainment, refers here to the reality show, The Job, in which unemployed contestants compete for the chance to win “a dream job at their dream company.”

dwell time

Anthony Bourdain: “Dwell time, that’s the period after you get through security [at the airport] and before you board.”

“Seattle,” The Layover, February 4, 2013

Dwell time is chiefly an engineering term that means “the period of time that a system or element of a system remains in a given state,” and seems to refer the amount of time a plane or train remains in station after arrival and before departure. The phrase also has the military sense of “the amount of time that service members spend in their home nation between deployments to war zones.”

The earliest citation we could find for dwell time meaning the amount of time a person waits at the airport after security and before boarding is from May 21, 2001:  “From its airy and vaulted departure hall. . .to its four-block-long retail area that looks like any suburban mall. . .Terminal 4 seems intent on changing the airport phenomenon euphemistically called ‘dwell time’ into something more pleasant.”

fart patio

Waitress at vegan restaurant [to couple]: “We’ve been getting a lot of complaints. If you do need to flatulate, we have a designated area.”
[Cut to sign, FART PATIO, THIS WAY.]
Woman: “Ah! Now I’m all loosey-goosey!”

Episode 4, Season 3, Portlandia, January 18, 2013

A fart patio is, well, a patio where one goes to fart, and may be likened to a designated smoking area.

A common misconception is that a vomitorium was a designated area for ancient Greeks to vomit after feasting when it was actually “a passage located behind a tier of seats in an amphitheatre used as an exit for the crowds.” Vomit comes from the Latin vomere, “spew forth, discharge.”

Thanks to Nancy Friedman for showing us the fart patio.

gaffer

Appraiser: “Now, Martin Bach Sr. did not blow glass. He was a chemist. So he knew all the secret formulas and all of the different colors and chemicals used to create something that looked like this. But he didn’t have a gaffer.”

“Boston,” Antiques Roadshow, January 28, 2013

A gaffer is a glass blower in general, a master glass blower, or the head glassmaker. The word may be a contraction of grandfather, and also refers to an old man or the boss or foreman of a work crew, which may have given rise to gaffer meaning “an electrician in charge of lighting on a movie or television set.”

hogcock

Liz: “I just thought I’d check in on you because you’re the emotionally fragile one.”
Jack: “Hogcock, which is a combination of hogwash and poppycock.”

“Hogcock!/Last Lunch,” 30 Rock, January 31, 2013

Hogwash, slang for nonsense, first referred to “the refuse of a kitchen or brewery, etc., given to swine as food.” Poppycock, also slang for nonsense, probably comes from the Dutch pappekak, “soft dung,” where the last element, kak, comes from the Latin cacere, “to excrete” (which also gives us caca).

For even more slang words for nonsense, check out this list.

kotiate

Appraiser: “It’s a war club. . . .[f]rom the Maori.. . .called a kotiate. And a kotiate means ‘split liver’. . . . I think it probably comes from the shape of the item. It almost looks like the two lobes of the liver.”

“Boston,” Antiques Roadshow, January 28, 2013

The kotiate is a traditional hand weapon of the Maori of New Zealand. Other Maori weapons include the mere, the patu, and the taiaha.

lion rampant

Appraiser: “On the left we have ‘Arms of the lion rampant’ by the name ‘Phillips.’ And on the right side we have ‘Arms of the lion rampant’ by the name ‘Jackson.’”

“Boston,” Antiques Roadshow, February 4, 2013

Rawr

Rawr

A lion rampant refers to, in heraldry, a lion “rearing on the left hind leg with the forelegs elevated, the right above the left, and usually with the head in profile.” A counter-rampant is “rampant in opposite directions: said of animals used as bearings.”

Plantagenet

Stephen Colbert: “He’s also an important historical figure because he was the last king of the Plantagenet line. For those not familiar, Plantagenet means he was descended from a plant.”

The Colbert Report, February 5, 2013

Plantagenet was the “family name of a line of English kings from Henry II to Richard III,” whose bones were recently found under a parking lot in Leicester, England.

[Photo: ” NOLA Roast Beef Po-Boy,” CC BY 2.0 by Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau]
[Photo: “Rawr,” CC BY 2.0 by Stuart Caie]

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Dickensian Soup: 11 Words from Charles Dickens

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Charles Dickens

Two hundred and one years ago today, English writer Charles Dickens was born. The prolific author’s inventive character names have given rise to many words now common in the English language, and he has been credited with the coining of dozens of words.

While some of these words have been antedated – for example, an earlier citation of boredom, long credited to Dickens, has been found – there’s no denying the author’s role popularizing words that may have disappeared into obscurity. Today we round up 11 of our favorites.

abuzz

“The court was all astir and a-buzz, when the black sheep—whom many fell away from in dread—pressed him into an obscure corner among the crowd.”

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859

Dickens was one of the first authors to use abuzz, “characterized by excessive gossip or activity.” Another “early adopter” of the word was George Eliot, who used it in her 1859 novel, Adam Bede: “I hate the sound of women’s voices; they’re always either a-buzz or a-squeak.”

creeps, the

“She was constantly complaining of the cold, and of its occasioning a visitation in her back which she called ‘the creeps‘.”

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850

You may be surprised to know the modern-sound phrase, the creeps, “a feeling of fear and revulsion,” was coined by Dickens. He may have been influenced by the sense creepy, “chilled and crawling, as with horror or fear,” which originated around 1831.

devil-may-care

“Not that this would have worried him much, anyway—he was a mighty free and easy, roving, devil-may-care sort of person, was my uncle, gentlemen.”

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1837

Devil-may-care, meaning “reckless; careless,” or “jovial and rakish in manner,” seems to come from the saying, “The devil may care but I don’t.”

flummox

“And my ‘pinion is, Sammy, that if your governor don’t prove a alleybi, he’ll be what the Italians call reg’larly flummoxed, and that’s all about it.”

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1837

To flummox means “to confuse; perplex.” The origin is probably an English dialectal word which Dickens brought back into popularity. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the formation of the word “seems to be onomatopoeic, expressive of the notion of throwing down roughly and untidily; compare flump, hummock, dialect slommock sloven.”

gonoph

“He’s as obstinate a young gonoph as I know.”

Charles Dickens, Bleak House, 1853

Gonoph is slang for a pickpocket or thief. The word comes from gannabh, the Hebrew word for “thief.” Dickens’s seems to be the earliest recorded usage of the word in English.

gorm

“It appeared, in answer to my inquiries, that nobody had the least idea of the etymology of this terrible verb passive to be gormed; but that they all regarded it as constituting a most solemn imprecation.”

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850

Gorm is “a vulgar substitute for (God) damn,” according to the OED. In the television show, Firefly, gorram is a common expletive,  presumably a corruption of goddamn. Whether or not the show’s creators were influenced by Dickens is unknown.

lummy

“To think of Jack Dawkins—lummy Jack—the Dodger—the Artful Dodger—going abroad for a common twopenny-halfpenny sneeze-box!”

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, 1839

Lummy is slang for “knowing; cute,” or “first-rate,” and probably comes from lumme, a corruption of “(Lord) love me,” according to the OED. Lummy is another Dickens-coined word that has fallen into obscurity, though we would like to see it make a comeback.

on the rampage

“When I got home at night, and delivered this message for Joe, my sister ‘went on the Rampage,’ in a more alarming degree than at any previous period.”

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1860

The phrase on the rampage comes from the earlier verb form of rampage, “to act or move in a ramping manner; spring or rush violently; rage or storm about.” The word rampage may come from ramp, “to rise for a leap or in leaping, as a wild beast; rear or spring up; prepare for or make a spring; jump violently.”

red tapeworm

“If in any convenient part of the United Kingdom, (we suggest the capital as the centre of resort,) a similar museum could be established, for the destruction and exhibition of the Red-Tape-Worms with which the British Public are so sorely afflicted, there can be no doubt that it would be, at once, a vast national benefit, and a curious national spectacle.”

Charles Dickens, Household Words, 1851

A red tapeworm is, according to the OED, “a person who adheres excessively to official rules and formalities.” The phrase plays off red tape and tapeworm, and was coined by Dickens in Household Words, a weekly magazine he edited.

Red tape, slang for “the collection or sequence of forms and procedures required to gain bureaucratic approval for something, especially when oppressively complex and time-consuming,” comes from the English practice of using red or pink tape to tie official documents. The figurative sense arose around 1736, says the OED. A tapeworm is a ribbonlike parasite.

Some call a phrase like red tapeworm a sweet tooth fairy, “three words where the first and second form a known expression and the second and third form a known expression and all three together make a credible expression.”

sawbones

“‘What! Don’t you know what a sawbones is, sir?’ inquired Mr. Weller. ‘I thought everybody know’d as a sawbones was a surgeon.’”

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1837

Sawbones is slang for a surgeon or doctor. Before the advent of anesthesia in 1846, speed was of the essence for surgeons. With a saw like the one pictured in this article, Victorian physicians could amputate a leg in half a minute.

whiz-bang

“‘Present! think I was; fired a musket—fired with an idea—rushed into wine shop—wrote it down—back again—whiz, bang—another idea—wine shop again—pen and ink—back again—cut and slash—noble time, Sir. Sportsman, sir?’ abruptly turning to Mr. Winkle.”

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1836

Whiz-bang in this example means something “very rapid and eventful; rushed,” and is imitative  of something that moves quickly, or whizzes, and perhaps lands with a bang.

During World War I, whiz-bang came to refer to “the shell of a small-calibre high-velocity German gun, so called from the noise it made,” according to the OED. By 1916, the term referred to “a resounding success,” and in 1960, a type of firecracker.

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by USM MS photos]

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Word Soup Wednesday: baller, Benghazi flu, Tuiasosopo

Welcome to Word Soup Wednesday, in which we bring you our favorite strange, obscure, unbelievable (and sometimes NSFW) words from sitcoms, dramas, news shows, and just about anything else on TV.

Midnight Game

Midnight Game, by Jonathan Kos-Read

baller

Andy: “You are officially a baller.”
Tom: “I’ve been a baller since birth, son. Now I’m an athlete.”

“Women in Garbage,” Parks and Recreation, January 24, 2013

Baller has two meanings here: “one who plays basketball,” and “one who lives an extravagant, money-driven lifestyle.” The first meaning originated around 1867, says the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and referred to a player of any ball game.

The second meaning is much newer, coming about around 1990, also according to the OED, perhaps “with reference to the perceived tendency of successful basketball players to spend ostentatiously.”

Benghazi flu

Jon Stewart: “Secretary Clinton was supposed to have testified back in December but kept postponing it for ‘health issues’ which came to be referred to by ‘medical professionals’ as [the Benghazi flu]. . . .The Benghazi flu turned out to be a cerebral blood clot.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, January 24, 2013

Benghazi flu was coined by Rep. Allen West, a Republican from Florida, who claimed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was faking illness in order to avoid testifying about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya in September. It was later revealed that Clinton had been suffering from a “blood clot near her brain.”

drone

Missy Cummings [Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT]: “The professionals in the field prefer to call [drones] unmanned aerial vehicles because the word drone connotates a kind of stupidness, and they’re definitely getting smarter.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, January 23, 2013

Drone meaning “a pilotless aircraft operated by remote control” is from 1946, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. The aircraft was perhaps named for its similarity in purpose and/or appearance to the male honeybee. The Ryan Firebee was an early drone model.

The meaning that Cummings is referring, “a kind of stupidness,” arose from the idea of the drone bee being stingless, preforming no work, and producing no honey, and whose “only function is to mate with the queen bee.” This gave rise to drone meaning “an idle person who lives off others; a loafer,” or “a person who does tedious or menial work; a drudge.”

gaslight

Jake: “I thought you and Marley were friends now.”
Kitty: “Duh, we are. I’m still gonna gaslight her every chance I get.”

“Sadie Hawkins,” Glee, January 24, 2013

To gaslight someone means “to manipulate [them] psychologically such that they question their own sanity.” This usage gained popularity in the 1960s, says the OED, and comes from Gaslight, a 1944 film “in which a man psychologically manipulates his wife into believing that she is going insane.”

narcoterrorism

Edward Berenson [Professor of History, NYU]: “Think of these groups as a kind of combination of Mexican drug organization and an Islamic terrorist group. . . .So what you’ve got is narcoterrorism in a way in Mali.”

The Colbert Report, January 24, 2013

Narcoterrorism is “terrorism carried out to prevent interference with or divert attention from illegal narcotics trafficking.” The term originated in the early 1980s, says the OED.

norovirus

News announcer: “British researchers have created a projectile vomiting robot that mimics that symptoms of norovirus. Researchers created the projectile robot to test how far the dangerous contagions spreads every time someone throws up.”

The Colbert Report, January 21, 2013

The norovirus is also known as the winter vomiting bug. The name norovirus is derived from Norwalk virus, originally named after Norwalk, Ohio, where “an outbreak of acute viral gastroenteritis occurred among children at Bronson Elementary School in November 1968.”

orange fog warning

News announcer: “In China, hazardous record-high pollution levels in Beijing have prompted what’s called an orange fog warning.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, January 24, 2013

An orange fog warning doesn’t have to do with the color of the fog but with its density. Blue is the least serious, followed by red, orange, and finally yellow as the most serious. Some have dubbed this recent bout with air pollution in Beijing as airpocalypse.

pogo

Schmidt: “A pogo is what your friends talk about when you leave the room.”
Cece: “Oh. Like your barnacle toenails?”

“Pepperwood,” New Girl, January 23, 2013

Pogo in this context is a nonce word, “a word occurring, invented, or used just for a particular occasion.” Nonce comes from the Middle English phrase for the nones, “for the occasion.”

Randian

Stephen Colbert: “The Atlasphere.com is the best place for Randians to find the one they love other than their bathroom mirror.”

The Colbert Report, January 23, 2013

Randian means pertaining to the writer Ayn Rand, who created objectivism, a philosophy that asserted that “the proper moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness (or rational self-interest),” among other tenets.

straw man

Paul Ryan: “. . .that rhetorical device [that] he uses over and over and over. . .a straw man.”
Jon Stewart: “I think a straw man is when you create or falsely characterize an opponent’s argument so that you can then easily dismantle the new fictional argument. . . .I think the President is throwing your own words back in your face without naming you. Passive-aggression, that’s what he’s using.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, January 23, 2013

A straw man is “an argument or opponent set up so as to be easily refuted or defeated.” The idea of a straw man as an “imaginary opponent” is recorded from the 1620s.

Tuiasosopo

Jon Stewart: “Al, I think you’ve been had by Hawaiian uber-prankster Ronaiah Tuiasosopo.”
Al Madrigal: “What? No. I got Tuiasosopoed? No!”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, January 21, 2013

Ronaiah Tuiasosopo is supposedly the man behind the Manti Te’o girlfriend hoax. To be Tuiasosopoed means to be fooled by such a hoax. The word is both an eponym, a word derived from a person’s name, and anthimeria, using a word from one part of speech as another part, such as a noun as a verb.

[Photo: CC BY-ND 2.0 by Jonathan Kos-Read]