Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for the most interesting words of the week. The latest: that storm was da bomb; more than just cozy; a shitty word of the year.

bomb cyclone

“At its peak, the storm resembled something like a hurricane: a ‘bomb cyclone’ spinning around a central eye.”

Brian Resnick, “Winter storm 2018: almost the entire East Coast is covered in snow,” Vox, January 5, 2018

A bomb cyclone, says Vox, is a kind of winter weather storm “defined by a very specific and very extreme drop in atmospheric pressure — 24 millibars in 24 hours,” which means it “will pack a powerful punch, with winds that could whip at hurricane-force strength.”

koselig

“I pointed out that Norwegians embrace the idea of koselig, or ‘coziness’—that making the conscious effort to light candles and fires, drink warm beverages and snuggle under blankets can be enjoyable and relaxing.”

Kari Leibowitz, “The Mindset that Keeps Norwegians Cheerful through one of Earth’s Coldest, Darkest Winters,” Quartzy, January 5, 2018

Koselig might be thought of as the Norwegian version of the Danish hygge. A Frog in the Fjord describes koselig as more than just “cozy.” Basically any thing or person can be koselig if it “makes you feel a sense of warmth very deep inside in a way that all things should be: simple and comforting.”

Banting

“In the 1860s, the LCHF diet became widely known as a Banting diet, after British undertaker William Banting, who wrote the first bestselling diet book based on his LCHF conversion experience.”

Gary Taubes, “Minimal carbs, lots of fat, incredible dieting results – but not enough science,” The Globe and Mail, December 22, 2017

A kind of precursor to the Atkins diet, Banting is “a method of reducing corpulence by avoiding fat, starch, and sugar in food, based on a pamphlet by William Banting published in 1864,” says the Oxford English Dictionary.

shitpost

“Shitpost is an example of how people used the internet, in a year that made clear just how powerfully the glut of online information can be weaponized against democracy.”

Corinne Purtill, “It’s official: ‘Shitpost’ is the word that best describes the internet in 2017,” Quartz, January 7, 2018

The American Dialect Society has named shitpost the Digital Word of the Year for 2017. It refers to the “posting of worthless or irrelevant online content intended to derail a conversation or to provoke others.”

hypocoristic

“Australian English is a jumble of abbreviations, diminutives, and what are called hypocoristics.”

Dan Nosowitz, “How Australian Nicknaming Conventions Turn an Afternoon Into an ‘Arvo’,” Atlas Obscura, January 4, 2018

A hypocoristic is a nickname, but, says Atlas Obscura, it doesn’t work like other nicknames. It doesn’t necessarily shorten a name or word but is often the same number of syllables and sometimes even longer. The word hypocoristic ultimately comes from the Greek hupokorizomai, “I speak in the language of children.”

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for the most interesting words of the week. The latest: a rally not a con (thank goodness), messy yet delicious, let lying dogs lie.

Santa Claus rally

“President Donald Trump’s signing of a major tax overhaul bill will distort the so-called Santa Claus rally.”

Berkeley Lovelace Jr., “GOP tax bill will likely distort the ‘Santa Claus rally,’ Art Cashin warns,” CNBC, December 26, 2017

According to Investopedia, a Santa Claus rally is “a surge in the price of stocks that often occurs in the last week of December through the first two trading days in January” possibly due to “tax considerations, happiness around Wall Street, people investing their Christmas bonuses and the fact that the pessimists are usually on vacation this week.”

Sunion

“But now, Sunions, the world’s first tearless onions, are apparently here to take away our pain.”

Olivia Harrison, “This New Type Of Onion Promises Not To Make You Cry,” Refinery29, December 20, 2017

Sunion, a sweet, “tearless” onion, may be a blend of the words sun (the “bulbs require around 15 hours of sunlight to grow,” says Refinery29) and onion, or perhaps sweet and onion.

nyotaimori

“It’s called nyotaimori, a word I’ve seen translated as ‘female body arrangement.’”

Dave Davies, “Fumo fest has pretty raw sushi station,” WHYY, December 22, 2017

Nyotaimori is said to have originated in the samurai period of Japan although Kotaku points out “there isn’t much info on the practice in the National Diet Library.”

dog’s breakfast

“Yes, ‘a dog’s breakfast.’ If you had no idea what that meant, you weren’t alone.”

Keith Wagstaff, “‘A dog’s breakfast’ explained for everyone confused by that CNN alert,” Mashable, December 28, 2017

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), dog’s breakfast is British slang for “a confused mess.” Also, dog’s dinner. The OED’s earliest citation for dog’s breakfast is from 1892.

lie doggo

“It’s late 19th century slang, used mostly in the phrase ‘to lie doggo,’ indicating lying low or flying under the radar.”

Ephrat Livni, “2018 is the year of the doggo and the demise of the doge,” Quartz, December 28, 2017

Speaking of British slang terms about dogs, to lie doggo is another one. The OED’s earliest usage is from a March 25, 1882 issue of a publication called The Sporting Times: “He had been a guest, after lying doggoh for some time, at one of Blobbs’ quiet little suppers.”

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for the most interesting words of the week. The latest: Oxford Dictionary’s stylish word of the year; a special flu for men (supposedly); our idea of bookish heaven.

youthquake

“‘Youthquake’ is the Oxford word of the year—but it’s not a new one.”

Hilary Weaver, “How a 52-Year Old Word Invented by a Vogue Editor Became 2017’s Word of the Year,” Vanity Fair, December 15, 2017

Youthquake, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, refers to “the series of radical political and cultural upheavals occurring among students and young people in the 1960s,” and now also means any “significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people.”

According to Vogue, the word was coined in its pages in 1965 by editor Diana Vreeland: “The year’s in its youth, the youth in its year. Under 24 and over 90,000,000 strong in the U.S. alone. More dreamers. More doers. Here. Now. Youthquake 1965.”

senescence

“The first was that the octopuses were going through what’s called senescence—essentially, they had gone senile.”

Sarah Gibbens, “Unsolved Science Mysteries From 2017,” National Geographic, December 18, 2017

Senescence comes from the Latin senescere, “to grow old.”

man flu

“Part joke, part lived experience, the man flu has now reportedly been validated by science, sort of.”

Eleanor Cummins, “One Hasty Study Doesn’t Mean That ‘Man Flu’ Is Real,” Slate, December 12, 2017

Other “man” terms include man cave, manscaping, and mankini.

chirping

“Doughty is known for his competitiveness and his tendency to talk to opponents, or ‘chirping,’ as it’s called in hockey circles.”

Curtin Zupke, “Expect plenty of chirping when Kings’ Drew Doughty faces an old friend, Flyers’ Wayne Simmonds,” Los Angeles Times, December 18, 2017

In hockey, trash talking is known as chirping, although where the term comes from isn’t clear.

Jolabokaflod

“It’s called Jolabokaflod, and, as you might’ve guessed, it comes to us from Iceland.”

Liel Leibovitz, “Forget Chinese Food: Our New Christmas Tradition Should Be Jolabokaflod,” Tablet, December 18, 2017

Jólabókaflóð, which translates from Icelandic as “Christmas book flood,” refers to the inundation of new books in Iceland during the months before Christmas.

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for the most interesting words of the week. The latest: the greeting police, not that ultraviolet, don’t make yourself at home.

bonjour hi

“The unofficial greeting in the bilingual Canadian city of Montreal has long been a friendly ‘Bonjour, Hi!’”

“Canada province urges shopkeepers to stop saying ‘Bonjour-Hi’,” BBC, December 1, 2017

A motion was recently passed “mandating store clerks to greet customers only in French” and not with the French-English hybrid, bonjour hi, says the BBC. While not a law, the move, introduced by the “fiercely Francophile Parti Quebecois,” reaffirms “French as the primary language in the province, where use of English can be controversial.” Quebec’s premier “called the debate ‘ridiculous’.”

ultra violet

“The color of the year for 2018 is ‘ultra violet,’ according to Pantone Color Institute, a color consulting company that each year chooses a color that symbolizes design trends and cultural mood.”

“Pantone’s 2018 Color of the Year Is ‘Provocative and Thoughtful’,” Time, December 7, 2017

According to Leatrice Eiseman, Pantone’s executive director, ultra violet, a kind of purple, “communicates originality, ingenuity, and visionary thinking that points us towards the future.” Ultraviolet also refers to the “range of invisible radiation wavelengths from about 4 nanometers, on the border of the x-ray region, to about 380 nanometers, just beyond the violet in the visible spectrum.”

hostile architecture

“Hostile architecture is where architectural elements and the public realm are used to control human behavior.”

Andrea Lo, “The debate: Is hostile architecture designing people out of cities?” CNN, December 7, 2017

Hostile architecture, says CNN, is “a controversial type of urban design aimed at preventing people from using public spaces in undesirable ways.” Examples include “spiked or sloped benches,” “bolts installed on shop doorsteps and windowsills,” and “water features that operate at surprising intervals on flat surfaces.”

curvature blindness illusion

“In a new article published in the journal i-Perception, researcher Kohske Takahashi presents a new optical illusion, which he calls the ‘curvature blindness illusion.’ It’s pretty trippy.”

“A New Optical Illusion Was Just Discovered, And It’s Breaking Our Brains,” Digg, December 8, 2017

The curvature blindness illusion occurs when looking at a set of wavy gray and black lines against white and gray backgrounds. The curvy lines look smoother against the white background and sharper against the gray.

molly house

“A whole molly underworld found its home in London, with molly houses, the clubs and bars where these men congregated, scattered across the city like stars in the night sky.”

Natasha Frost, “How the 18th-Century Gay Bar Survived and Thrived in a Deadly Environment,” Atlas Obscura, December 8, 2017

Molly house is an old-timey term for what is essentially a gay bar. “In 18th and early-19th-century Britain,” says Atlas Obscura, “‘molly’ was a commonly used term for men who today might identify as gay, bisexual or queer.” Sometimes the term was used as a slur, and sometimes as “a more generally used noun, likely coming from mollis, the Latin for soft or effeminate.”

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for the most interesting words of the week. The latest: words of the year from Japan and Australia, and a heck of a lot of Hedwigs.

sontaku

“The committee said … that sontaku was the most-searched term on the online Japanese dictionary goo for four straight months.”

Isabella Steger, “The Japanese words that perfectly sum up how the country felt this year,” Quartz, December 1, 2017

Japan’s word of the year, according to “publisher Jiyukokuminsha and a panel that includes, among others, an academic and an actress,” is sontaku, says Quartz. The term refers to “people who perform pre-emptive acts to ingratiate themselves to their superiors,” and came up “this year with reference to a scandal relating to a nationalist-school operator that implicated [prime minister Shinzo] Abe and his wife.”

Insuta-bae — a blend of Instagram and haeru, “to shine or stand out” — came in second place, and “is used to describe the manner in which individuals and businesses alike all chase the perfect Instagram photo and ‘likes.’”

kwaussie

“One of its earliest citations labelled Russell Crowe a kwaussie, calling him ‘what you get when you cross a Kiwi who can’t decide whether they’re a Kiwi or an Aussie’.”

Tiger Webb, “‘Kwaussie’ named 2017 word of the year by Australian National Dictionary Centre,” Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), December 3, 2017

A kwaussie is someone “who is a dual citizen of Australia and New Zealand, a New Zealander living in Australia, or a person of Australian and New Zealand descent,” says ABC. The word gained “newfound prominence” due to the “dual citizenship crisis that has so far prevented six senators, one deputy prime minister, a senate president, and one MP from holding office.”

Kwaussie is a blend of the nicknames for someone from New Zealand and Australia, Kiwi and Aussie, respectively. While the latter is shortening of Australia, the former seems to come from the name of the flightless bird native to New Zealand. Kiwi the bird comes from the Maori kiwi and might be imitative in origin.

third wave coffee

“What it means is that more people are drinking coffee that comes at a higher price premium and could help buoy what’s known as third wave coffee.”

Simran Sethi, “A Surprising New Trend in Coffee,” Forbes, December 1, 2017

Third wave coffee refers to the “understand[ing] that an espresso isn’t just made by a barista,” but that “the producer and roaster also receive credit,” says Forbes. Moreover, the coffee “is distinct from the commodity market, celebrated for unique flavors, specific origins and the absence of defects.”

The earliest meaning of the term third wave, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), is “the last and most forceful of three successive arguments or propositions,” while the definition, “a period of major economic, social, and cultural change,” is from 1980.

midnight zone

“The dark and chilly depths of the ocean’s so-called ‘midnight zone’ thousands of feet below the surface are home to numerous species of bizarre-looking and fearsome fish.”

Mindy Weisberger, “Now, That’s Deep! Mariana Trench Fish Lives 5 Miles Down,” LiveScience, November 30, 2017

The midnight zone might also be referred to as the bathyal zone.

irruption

“An irruption results not so much because food is scarce, but rather from an abundance of lemmings, their main prey, in the Arctic the prior summer.”

Alexander Gonzalez, “‘Irruption’ of Snowy Owls Brings Birds Far South This Winter,” WNYC, December 1, 2017

An irruption is a sudden increase in the population of a particular animal. A snowy owl irruption is expected in “parts of the Northeast, including New Jersey and New York, over the next several weeks,” says WNYC.

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for the most interesting words of the week. The latest: a prison lingua franca, an urban ruins explorer, not procrastination.

full understand

A: yes, one man is come for alibaba my ausweis. I am speak him finish. after he is finish. understand?
B:  full understand.

Matt Broomfield, “‘Full understand’: The new language of the Lesvos refugee camp,” NewStatesman, November 20, 2017

Full understand is an example of “the lingua franca of Moria prison camp and its environs,” says NewStatesman, “spoken between asylum-seekers from formerly-colonised states as disparate as Iraq, Uganda, Pakistan and Burma.” A lingua franca is “a medium of communication between peoples of different languages.”

haikyoist

“Shane Thoms is what’s known as a ‘haikyoist.’”

Chris Weller, “Photos of abandoned Japanese ruins reveal an eerie, post-apocalyptic world,” AOL, November 24, 2017

A haikyoist is an urban explorer and comes from the Japanese “haikyo,” says AOL, “which literally means ‘ruins’ but can also mean urban exploration.”

Viking weave

“Using copper wire, she creates what’s called a ‘Viking weave.’”

Ben Calwell, “Edgewood Summit sponsoring annual Santa’s Workshop,” Kanawha Metro, November 24, 2017

A Viking weave involves a “long piece of wire” woven “around a dowel rod,” according to Kanawha Metro. It seems to be so called because of the use of a lucet, a tool believed to date back to Medieval and Viking times.

purposeful delay

“Pychyl would similarly argue that a purposeful delay is not procrastination.”

Lila MacLellan, “The concept of productive procrastination is a myth,” Quartz, November 28, 2017

Unlike procrastination, which is unwanted, not deliberate, and doesn’t always have positive outcomes, purposeful delay is deliberate and has positive outcomes, says Quartz. It’s “commonly required when a person needs to … think about an issue or creative work before getting down to the act of writing or producing something.”

levidrome

“Levi decided to invent one, and thus, ‘levidrome’ (pronounced ‘leh-vee-drome’) was born.”

“What is a ‘levidrome?’ Merriam-Webster recognizes new word in honor of little boy,” Fox 4, November 27, 2017

While a palindrome is a word that’s spelled the same backward and forward, a levidrome — named for its 3-year old inventor, Levi Budd — is a word that forms a new word when spelled backward. A synonym for levidrome is semordnilap, which is “palindrome” spelled backward and was first used around 1961.

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for the most interesting words of the week. The latest: the turducken of sea hunting, another leak, forced gardening.

kleptopredation

“The term ‘kleptopredation’ was introduced to the world by marine biologists from the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Portsmouth in the UK, writing in the journal Biology Letters on Nov. 1.”

Ephrat Livni, “Kleptopredation is a new scientific term for super-sizing a meal at sea,” Quartz, November 2, 2017

Kleptopredation, says Quartz, is “when a predator eats prey that has just hunted and has a full belly—such that the predator ends up eating its prey’s prey as well.” The practice combines kleptoparasitism, food theft, and direct predation. The word comes from the Greek kleptes, “thief, a cheater,” and the Latin praedari, “to rob, to plunder.”

Paradise Papers

“The leak, called the Paradise Papers, was revealed when the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and its dozens of collaborating news outlets on Sunday published investigations related to them.”

Jackie Wattles and Jill Disis, “What you need to know about the Paradise Papers,” CNN Money, November 6, 2017

The Paradise Papers refer to “13.4 million leaked files from offshore service providers and company registries obtained by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.” According to CNN Money, they “purport to show financial ties between Russia and a member of President Trump’s cabinet” and “how state-run Russian companies funded large investments in Twitter and Facebook.” In addition, the papers name the “world’s biggest businesses, heads of state and global figures in politics, entertainment and sport who have sheltered their wealth in secretive tax havens,” says The Guardian.

The “paradise” of the name might refer to Bermuda, the location of Appleby, the law firm the leak focuses on. The Panama Papers were another leak which centered on Mossack Fonseca, a law firm in Panama.

crofting

“Her father was a fisherman, and her family fed itself by crofting—age-old, small-plot, subsistence farming.”

Michael Kruse, “The Mystery of Mary Trump,” Politico Magazine, November/December 2017

The word croft is Old English in origin, and corresponds with the Dutch kroft, krocht, meaning “prominent rocky height, high and dry land, field on the downs,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

lunch shaming

“He says he also likes provisions that expand opioid education in schools and end what’s called ‘lunch shaming’ by requiring schools to provide a meal to a student who requests one.”

“Wolf to Let Schools Bill Become Law, Despite Reservations,” U.S. News & World Report, November 3, 2017

Lunch shaming is the practice by some U.S. school districts of punishing students “because a parent or guardian has fallen behind on paying their child’s school meal bill.” Students are often publicly singled out and forced to wear wristbands, are assigned chores, and even have their meals taken away “from them after it has been served.”

gardening leave

“Because you’re good at what you do they put you on what’s called ‘gardening leave’ instead of making you work your notice.”

Nils Leonard, “How to take gardening leave,” GQ, November 4, 2017

According to the OED, gardening leave is a British term that refers to “suspension from work on full pay during a notice period, typically to prevent an employee from influencing the organization or acting to benefit a competitor before leaving.” The dictionary’s earliest citation is from 1981: “There are too many senior officers on permanent ‘gardening leave’.”

Why gardening? It’s not clear although some guess it’s because the employee “can’t come in to work and they can’t work for anyone else,” and all “they can do is work in or sit in their garden.”

Check out this post from Fritinancy for more on the term.