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The Reverb App: Now Even More Collection-y

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You know that we at Wordnik love collections. After all, a dictionary is basically a huge collection of words, and lists — of which we have at last count almost 47,000 — are just mini-collections. So we’re extra excited that our sister product, Reverb, is now offering user collections.

In case you didn’t know, Reverb is a free iPad news reader designed to help you read more about what you like, and find new and interesting content, too.

While collections have always been a part of Reverb –  for instance, every day our editorial team brings readers a Top News collection — now everyone can make collections too.

How excited are we about this? We held our own collection making tournament in celebration.

To date, we have over 1,500 user collections, including this awesome Wearables collection from our own Erin McKean.

Not only can you make collections of articles you find in Reverb, you can collect those articles you’ve shared with your friends via Twitter and Facebook, just by connecting those accounts to Reverb.

If you follow us on Twitter, you know that we tweet our favorite language stories every day. Now because of Reverb we can easily gather them in a collection.

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Don’t have an iPad? No worries: you can view the collection on the web.

We like this feature so much, we’ll be sharing a beautiful favorite Language Stories collection every week!

And if you make a word-nerdy collection we like, we’ll send you some cool schwag. Just tweet your collection at Wordnik with the hashtag #

What are you waiting for? Download Reverb and start making your own collections now!

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Heathers, Much? Our 7 Favorite Slang Terms from ‘Heathers’

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We can hardly believe it but Heathers is turning 25 this year. We thought we’d celebrate with some slushies, croquet, and TNT, but that seemed like a lot of trouble so we’re rounding up our seven favorite slang terms from the movie instead.

EXPLETIVE ALERT: if you’re familiar with Heathers, you’re familiar with its, um, colorful expletives, two of which will be discussed at some length below.

damage

Veronica: “What is your damage, Heather?”

The writer of the film, Daniel Waters, says he stole the phrase, “What’s your damage?” — another way of saying, “What’s your problem?” — from “one of [his] little camper girls” for whom he was a camp counselor, presumably in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

What’s the damage?, meaning “how much will it cost?”, comes from the mid-18th century, says the Oxford English Dictionary. We couldn’t find a year of origin for What’s your problem? meaning “why are you upset?” However, according to the OED, that’s not my problem is from the late 1940s and that’s your (his, etc.) problem is from around 1951.

fuck me gently with a chainsaw

Veronica: “Why can’t we talk to other kinds of people?”
Heather Chandler: “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw. Do I look like Mother Theresa?”

Fuck me in this context is “an expression of surprise, contempt, outrage, disgust, boredom, frustration, or of dismay at undesired events happening to oneself.” The OED says the phrase has been around since at least the late 1920s, evinced in the following from The Middle Parts of Fortune by Frederic Manning: “‘Well, you can fuck me!’ exclaimed the astonished Martlow.”

Waters says that one of his college friends “used to say ‘F— me gently with a crowbar,” and that “apparently ‘f— me gently’ was at one time a common expression in England.” According to Speaking Freely: A Guided Tour Of American English From Plymouth Rock To Silicon Valley, as cited by this blogger, fuck me gently, meaning “don’t take advantage of me too much, don’t cheat me too blatantly,” gained popularity among the British troops during World War I.

megabitch

Veronica: “Why are you such a megabitch?”
Heather Duke: “Because I can be.”

Megabitch, which we were thrilled to find is in the online OED, refers to, figuratively, a really big bitch. The combining form mega– comes from the Greek megas, “great, large, vast, big, high, tall; mighty, important.” While mega often means large or great, in scientific terms it refers to “one million.” A megacorpse or megadeath (not to be confused with Megadeth) is one million deaths, a unit used in nuclear warfare.

Megabitch seems to have originated around 1985, says the OED, a few years before Heathers, in Adweek: “The Joan Collins/Alexis Carrington device here is inspired. She gets to play off the megabitch appeal of Alexis while adding a slapstick, comic twist.”

While mega is mainly used as an intensifier, in the mid-1980s it gained its own meaning of great or excellent: “The new Duran Duran album is so mega.”

pillowcase

Heather Chandler: “Goddamn, Heather, you were with me in study hall when I thought of it.”
Heather Duke: “I forgot.”
Heather Chandler: “Such a pillowcase.”

We’re assuming pillowcase refers to someone empty- or soft-headed, like a pillow or pillowcase. The term may play off basket case, someone in “a completely hopeless or useless condition.” Basket case has a gruesome origin: during World War I, it referred to a soldier who had had lost all of his limbs and had to be carried around in a basket.

Swatch dog

Veronica: “Betty Finn was a true friend and I sold her out for a bunch of Swatch dogs and Diet Coke heads.”

Swatch dog is a play on watchdog (and Diet Coke head on cokehead). A Swatch dog is presumably someone who’s a slave to the latest fashions, such as Swatch watches at the time.

Swatch, which we had always thought was a blend of Swiss and watch, is actually a shortening of Second Watch, with the idea of “watches as casual, fun, and relatively disposable accessories” (although we remember Swatch watches as being terrifically expensive).

very

Heather Chandler: “Come on, it’ll be very. The note’ll give her shower nozzle masturbation material for weeks.”

We assume very here means impressive, good, or just all around awesome, and like mega, is an intensifier that gained its own meaning.

We don’t know if the phrase has anything to do with this Keri “is so very” lotion commercial, but the term very certainly makes us think of it.

X much

Heather Duke [to Veronica]: “Jealous much?”

There has been much written about X much. The OED describes the phrase as “with a preceding adjective, infinitive verb, or noun phrase, forming an elliptical comment or question.”

In other words, “Jealous much?” means “You’re really jealous, aren’t you?” Earlier in the film Heather McNamara says to Veronica, “Drool much?” meaning, “You’re drooling a lot over that guy, aren’t you?”

X much was also often used in the television show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which came out after Heathers:

Excuse much!
Smell of booze, much.
Morbid much?

Kevin Sullivan at Language and Humor found a citation that predates Heathers by over 10 years, from Saturday Night Live:

TODD (points at Lisa’s chest and mock laughs to a pretend audience): Underdeveloped much?

Want even more Heathers? Check out these stories in The Atlantic and Flavorwire, as well as this very entertaining oral history in, appropriately, Entertainment Weekly.

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New Baby Buggy: When a Thing Isn’t “A Thing”

In case you missed it, a contestant on Wheel of Fortune had the most incredible — and luckiest — solve in “30+ years,” says host Pat Sajak. Here’s the video:

Now, what’s incredible isn’t his solving the puzzle with just two letters, but that he came up with, of all things, NEW BABY BUGGY.

New baby buggy? What the heck is that?

This question was posed on my Facebook wall after I posted the video, which made me realize I had no idea. I mean, I know what it is literally — an unused stroller as a (not so) helpful friend pointed out — but what was it? An idiom? A saying? A song lyric?

“It’s a thing,” the same pragmatic friend commented.

Yes, I know, technically it’s a thing, an object, a noun that is neither a place nor a person, but, and John Teti at AV Club would agree, it’s not a thing. It’s a thing but not a thing. Know what I mean?

Search Twitter for the phrase “it’s a thing” and you’ll find a variety of things referenced:

Hugs for hire? Yes, it’s a thing.
We rap country songs now, it’s a thing.
Torture by muffins I don’t have — is this a thing? I think it’s a thing.

These are things that don’t just exist, but as Urban Dictionary says, are phenomena “of some modern cultural significance,” even if ironically. New baby buggies certainly exist. You’ll find them on Diaper.com and Amazon, but are they a cultural phenomena? Unless Wheel of Fortune knows something we don’t know (which I highly doubt), I don’t think so.

While a new baby buggy isn’t a cultural phenomenon, the phrase it’s a thing certainly is. It’s a thing (see what I did there?) — people say it often to describe an unfamiliar occurrence that is familiar to others. For instance:

“I had noodles for my birthday yesterday.”
“Is that a thing?”
“Yes, it’s a Chinese tradition.”

(It was not my birthday yesterday by the way.)

According to this thread on Stack Exchange, the phrase has been in use since as early as the 1990s, specifically on Seinfeld, although no one can find any evidence of this. Linguist Ben Yagoda has an actual citation — a 2001 occurrence on That ‘70s Show:

DONNA: Oh! That’s 16 for me and Hyde and four for the losers! You guys ought to get a mascot … a big, green, furry loser!
ERIC: That’s … That’s not even a thing.

Like new baby buggy, a “big, green furry loser” is not a thing. It’s not a phenomenon nor does it have any cultural significance. It’s random.

So yes, new baby buggy is a thing by grammatical (and Wheel of Fortune) standards, but it’s definitely not a thing. However, one might argue that it’s gaining cultural significance right now, and if it does, my vote would be for it to mean “something presented as though it were thing but is not.” That’s a thing, right?

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Sochi Slang: Our Favorite Winter Olympic Lingo

We can hardly believe it but the Olympics are almost over. In addition to keeping up with the latest on problems in Sochi, Olympic fashion (our favorites include the Norwegian curling team’s pants, skeleton competitors’ wicked helmets, and this Mariachi ski uniform), and oh yeah events, we’ve been keeping our ears open for fun slang terms. Here are our 12 favorites.

chicken salad

“There’s more to the Winter Olympics than wongbangers, tucks and chicken salads.”

Lawrence Baretto and Aimee Lewis, “Snowboarder Looking for Love,” BBC, February 19, 2014

Chicken salad in this context is not a sandwich filler but “when a snowboarder puts their hands between their legs and grabs the heel-side edge of the board,” according to The Telegraph .

We have no idea where this phrase comes from (and neither does the internet, at least as far as we can tell). All we know is that the chicken salad is more difficult than the melon (short for melancholy) and may be combined with a roast beef (“Back hand grabs through the legs to the heel edge and put head through legs”) to make a beef carpaccio.

double Japan

“Then, left side double corked 1260 double Japan on the first booter, to switch right side dub 1080 tail grab, and a switch right side triple corked 1260 Japan on the big booter.”

Josh Brown, “Junio strong candidate to be Canadian flag-bearer for putting team first,” Guelph Mercury, February 13, 2014

Did you get all that? Let us help: a double Japan, according to NPR, is, in slopestyle, a “a grab with one hand behind your foot, one hand in front on the same ski.” A Japan — which also seems to be known as a Japan air — is “a type of grab (when a skier grabs his skis while in the air).”

Other grabs include the China or Korean air (depending if you’re on the west or east coast, respectively), which are apparently earlier versions of the Japan air, and the Taipan air, which has nothing to do with the James Clavell novel but is a blend of tail and Japan air.

flutz

“The skater must take off using the more difficult outside edge. If she doesn’t, the jump is considered easier and gets fewer points. We call that a ‘flutz.’”

Robert Samuels, “Your complete guide to Olympic women’s figure skating,” The Washington Post, February 19, 2014

A flutz, says Nancy Friedman, is “an incorrectly executed lutz jump” that has devolved into a flip jump. Hence, the word is a blend of flip and lutz. The lutz is named for Australian skater Alois Lutz, the inventor of the jump.

huck it

“As every snowboarder knows, when Morgan said he figured he would ‘just huck it,’ he meant that he decided to go all out with a big jump, throwing his body wildly down the hill.”

Ben Zimmer, “An Olympic Snowboarder said ‘Huck It,’ and the BBC Freaked out,” Slate, February 9, 2014

According to Zimmer, the origins of huck or huck it are unclear but huck “has been developing as a verb for at least 25 years in a number of outdoor sports, as a way of talking about hurling an object or one’s own body with great force.”

BBC thought British snowboarder Billy Morgan uttered another four-letter word that ends in u-c-k, cut short his interview, and apologized for Morgan’s “offensive” language.

K-Fed

“In the world of skiing, the ladies took to the Slopestyle course with a plethora of tricks up their wizard sleeves, including my new favorite sports trick ever named after my #1 yo-yo dieter and tank-topped love, the K-Fed.”

Michelle Collins, “Winter Olympics Day 6 Recap: Welcome to the Winterfell Games,” Vanity Fair, February 12, 2014

The K-Fed is a rail trick, or a trick performed on an obstacle such as a rail, specifically, “a front switch-up blind 270 out.” What the heck does that mean? Perhaps it’s best to take a look.

Although it’s unclear why, the K-Fed is named after Kevin Federline, “dancer, rapper, fashion model,” and erstwhile husband of pop diva Britney Spears. The Britney, by the way, is “a blind switch-up front 270 out.”

kiggle-caggle

“On keen days the concave keeps the ice well; and on dull ones the convex lends itself readily to ‘kiggle-caggle’ — or the oscillating motion which skilful players who want to reduce friction communicate to their stone on very baugh ice.”

John Kerry, History of Curling, 1890

Kiggle-caggle is curling term that seems to have been around since at least 1890, as per the History of Curling. While we couldn’t find an etymology (if anyone can enlighten us, please do so in the comments), we’re guessing the term is imitative in origin.

kiss and cry

“Long a cherished, finger-biting scene on telecasts, the kiss-and-cry zone holds skaters and their coaches captive beside the rink, with cameras in their faces, as they nervously wait for, and then receive, word of their fate from the judges.”

Mary Pilon, “With Team Skating, It’s Now Kiss, Cry, Squeeze In,” The New York Times, February 8, 2014

Kiss and cry, referring to the “the place where skaters waited with their coaches to receive their marks from the judges marks,” says Slate, “was coined by a Finnish skating official named Jane Erkko” in the 1970s. Erko and some young skaters “noticed that the competitors kissed and cried while waiting for their scores,” and the term “remained a joke among the skaters and with Jane as the place where the skaters would sit down after skating their programs.”

shred the gnar

“It’s also a powerful reality check for those who take their physically-intact bodies for granted — or assume people with disabilities can’t shred the gnar.”

Sam Laird, “Canadian Paralympics Ad is a Powerful Reality Check,” Mashable, February 4, 2014

Shredding the gnar refers to skiing a gnarly or difficult terrain, says NPR. To shred means “to ride aggressively.” In our cursory search, we couldn’t find a year of origin for this meaning, nor if it came before or after the meaning “to play very fast (especially guitar solos in rock and metal genres).”

Gnarly was originally a surfing term meaning “dangerous; challenging,” perhaps “with reference to the appearance of rough sea,” says the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The term originated in the late 1970s.

spoice

“In a sport that prides itself on linguistic innovation (Mr. Kotsenburg, for instance, is fond of the all-purpose approbation ‘spoice’), ‘stoked’ is an old standby to describe a snowboarder’s feeling of euphoria about a good run.”’

Ben Zimmer, “‘Stoked,’ From 1960s Surfers to Sochi,” Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2014

Spoice is apparently “an exclamation of gratitude towards life,” and has been popularized these Olympics by American snowboarder Sage Kotsenburg. We’re guessing the word is an alteration of spice, perhaps in reference to the expression, “variety is the spice of life,” which has been attributed to poet William Cowper.

twizzle

“If you have been watching figure skating throughout the 2014 Winter Olympics, it is impossible not to notice the term ‘twizzle’ that is constantly being dropped by Tara Lipinksi and Johnny Weir throughout the Sochi Games.”

Jose Sanchez, “Sochi Olympics, ice dancing: What is a twizzle?” Fansided, February 17, 2014

Originally referring to simply “a turning, twisting or spinning motion,” a twizzle is, in ice dancing, “three consecutive turns across the ice,” says The Wire. According to Pilar Bosley, a former competitive dancer:

Three turns in general aren’t considered one of the most difficult moves in skating, but when a twizzle is done properly the three turns are done so quickly that the naked eye can’t really tell that that turn is happening.

There are increasing degrees of twizzle-difficulty, such as the catch-foot twizzle, in which the skaters “hop into the first twizzle and then immediately catch their blade with one hand.”

The word twizzle may be an alteration of twissel, “double; twofold,” or else may be an imitative formation suggested by twist, says the OED.

Wagner face

“Ashley Wagner sparked memes and #wagnerface hashtags across the internet after she looked absolutely shocked when her score was revealed at the figure skating competition at Sochi Saturday.”

Brandi Fowler, “Move Over McKayla Maroney, Figure Skater Ashley Wagner Is ‘Not Impressed’ By the Olympics Either,” E! Online, February 9, 2014

While gymnast McKayla Maroney’s “not impressed” expression was the meme of choice for the 2012 London Olympics, Wagner face, referring to figure skater Ashley Wagner’s candid mein, is apparently the 2014 pick.

YOLO flip

“Whether it’s learning to ride a bike, walking in high heels on snow or doing a YOLO flip on the half-pipe, you have your cerebellum to thank.”

Brooke Horton, “Why Some Olympic Athletes Choke, While Others Are Unstoppable,” PolicyMic, February 19, 2014

The YOLO flip, “a double-cork 1440 — four full twists packed inside of two flips,” was invented and named by Swiss snowboarder Iouri Podladtchikov (who goes by the nickname I-Pod). It was also the trick that caused American Shaun White to lose the gold to the 25-year old I-Pod.

And in case you’ve been living in a snow bank all year, YOLO stands for “you only live once.”

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Stefan Krasowski]

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Language Blog Roundup: Amiri Baraka, words of the year, Satan’s bracelets

Welcome to this week’s Language Blog Roundup, in which we bring you the highlights from our favorite language blogs and the latest in word news and culture.

We were saddened by the passing of poet Amiri Baraka. Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones, was a long-time activist and former poet laureate of New Jersey.

In case you missed it, the American Dialect Society picked because as their Word of the Year (WOTY). At The Week, Arika Okrent took a closer look at because and other WOTY nominees such as catfish, –shaming, and binge-watch, and at Mental Floss gave us the words of the year from other countries. Meanwhile, the OUPBlog had their own round-up up of various WOTYs.

In other language news, the Academie Francaise is asking French people to drop ASAP from their lexicons, declaring the acronym “21st-century rubbish” (psst, it’s from the 20th century, the mid-1950s to be exact). However, the Finnish are fine with English loanwords such as spammata for spam, googlata for google, and prinata for print.

A Los Angeles library is offering high school diplomas; the National Book Critics Circle finalists were announced; and the Poetry Foundation looked back at the year in plagiarism. A word in the news this week was Mipster, a Muslim hipster who is striving to “break the stereotype of the hijab as a symbol of oppression.”

Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic told us about 19th century telegrapher “text speak.” Geoff Pullum argued against because as a conjunction. NPR’s Code Switch looked at the ugly and fascinating history of the word racism and the Shakespearean lineage of crib, slang for “house.”

Ben Zimmer told us where the phrase screw the pooch came from. Arika Okrent corrected some Klingon grammar; gave us 11 little-known words for family members; and discussed the listicle as literary form.

James Harbeck explained why it’s difficult to tell a Canadian accent from a Californian one, and then tested us on the proper use of myself. Lee Gale at Mind Your Language had some fun with collective nouns. Stan Carey introduced us to the awesome Indo-European Jones (“Grammar Nazis. I hate these guys”), and at Macmillan Dictionary blog, considered the amazeballness of amazeballs.

At Lingua Franca, Ilan Stevens examined the word quixotic, and Allan Metcalf got to the root of the word sophomore. At Language Log, Victor Mair celebrated the birthday of Zhou Youguang, the father of Chinese pinyin.

Barry Popik took on the term snow-trolling. Fritinancy’s words of the week were bodgery, “bungling, botched work,” and afterdrop, “a further cooling of core temperature [that] occurs after the victim is removed from the cold environment.” Fritinancy also took a look at some portmanteaus in brand names, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Word Spy spotted underbrag, “a self-deprecating comment that acts as a brag because it shows the person is confident enough to admit a failing or embarrassment”; life radius, “the distance from home or work within which a person performs most of their day-to-day activities”; and parcel mullet, “a lawn that is short and well-maintained in the front of a house, but overgrown and wild in the back.”

At Slate, Richard Hudson recounted a brief history of one of our favorite activities, diagramming sentences; Kathryn Schulz at at Vulture named the five best punctuation marks in literature; and Arrant Pedantry guided us through the pronunciation of Smaug.

This week we learned that terms like highbrow, lowbrow, and shrink came from phrenology, the study of brain shape and head reading; about the next trend in selfies, the selfeye; and the strange and fascinating story of Flowers in the Attic author, VC Andrews. We also laughed ourselves silly over the New Yorker’s parody of a recent dialect quiz (we’ll be calling rubber bands Satan’s bracelets from now on).

That’s it until next time!

(Photo: Amiri Barka via Poetry Foundation)

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Language Blog Roundup: WOTY news, banished words, mooing with an accent

Happy new year, everyone, and welcome to the first Language Blog Roundup of 2014!

The biggest end-of-2013 word news is of course the words of the year. While the American Dialect Society votes on their choices this week, others have already made their selections.

At The New York Times, Grant Barrett unleashed a wordnado of words, and at The Wall Street Journal, Ben Zimmer uncorked the words that popped this year. Tim Walker at The Guardian rounded up his own choices; The Economist‘s Robert Lane Greene discussed his; and at Macmillan Dictionary blog, Stan Carey picked his own because reasons.

Misty Harris of Canada.com discussed cronuts, selfies, and twerking with a variety of word experts including Ben Zimmer, Grant Barrett, Nancy Friedman, and our own Erin McKean. Meanwhile, Lake Superior State University gave us their annual “banished words” list.

Remember the Hawaiian woman with the last name considered too long for a driver’s license? Well, transport officials changed their policy and she managed to get her name on her license after all.

This week we learned about the evolution of forbidden language, the language of Indian courts, and a mysterious law that predicts that size of cities. We found out about a creepy 15th century language experiment, the right and wrong ways to spell whoa, and the latest in Twitter lingo.

The neurological word of the week was mitempfindung, the phenomenon of scratching one place on your body only to feel it somewhere else, while the selfie variation of the week was felfie, a self-portrait in front of one’s farm.

At Language Log, Victor Mair discussed the difficulty of writing sneeze, hiccup, and cough in Chinese, and South Korea’s issue with a generic Chinese word for kimchee. At Macmillan Dictionary blog, Liz Potter gave the stories behind Boxing Day and Hogmanay.

Stan Carey dished on the Scottish clishmaclaver and the gender-neutral henchpersons. Jen Doll discussed language peevers and peeving. Fritinancy picked for words of the week ephemeral, short-lived, and retcon, which is short for “retroactive continuity” and refers to “reframing past events to serve a current plot need.”

Barry Popik traced the history of economedian, economist plus comedian, and Neiman Marxism, a term similar to limousine liberalism. Word Spy spotted anti-vaxxer, “a person who does not vaccinate their children in the belief that vaccines are harmful.”

We love that the Bay to Breakers’ mascot is named Ape Hashbury; these 19 regional U.S. words; and this Abedpedia, an A-to-Z guide to Abed’s pop culture references on TV show Community. Finally, we didn’t think it was possible but this podcast of Sir Patrick Stewart mooing in different accents made us love him even more.

See you next time!

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Jelle]

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Best of Word Soup 2013

Welcome to the second annual Word Soup Awards!

We at Wordnik not only watch TV, we listen for interesting, hilarious, ridiculous, and sometimes NSFW words and round them up right here. Now it’s time to the recognize the best of the best.

Best Use of a Favorite Word

The Mindy Project, defenestrate

We liked this show from the start. It’s funny, clever, and the actors are great. Then star and creator Mindy Kaling broke out with one of our favorite words to describe someone being ejected out a window, and our like turned to love.

Best Made-Up Collective Noun We Should All Begin Using Immediately

embarrassment of boobies, Bob’s Burgers

Of course there shouldn’t be anything embarrassing about boobies — unless you’re a 12-year old boy — but is it worse than a drunkship of cobblers? How about a bloat of hippopotami? A superfluity of nuns? Check out this list from Oxford Dictionaries for even more crazy collective nouns.

Best Old-Timey Word That Should Be Brought Back into English

pixilated, Boardwalk Empire

The Steve Buscemi vehicle set in 1920s Atlantic City has plenty of wonderful old-timey slang — bunco artist, Mickey Finn, and zozzled are just a few — but our favorite this season was pixilated.

Pixilated, meaning eccentric, whimsical, or intoxicated, shouldn’t be confused with pixelated, which refers to images with pixels large enough to be seen. Pixilated may come from a blend of pixie and the suffix –lated.

Best Star Trek Reference

The Colbert Report, Gorn

Back in March, Barack Obama dared to confuse Jedi mind trick and Vulcan mind meld. Stephen Colbert had one thing to say to the president: “You are such a Gorn.” A Gorn, in case you didn’t know, is a humanoid reptile from the Star Trek universe.

Most Ridiculous Portmanteau

cliffpocalypsemageddonacaust, The Daily Show

Last year’s winner, 30 Rock’s unwindulax, is a tough act to follow, but Jon Stewart piled on the ridiculousness and the word-parts and ended up with cliffpocalypsemageddonacaust, a blend of fiscal cliff, apocalypse, armageddon, and holocaust.

Runner-up: crotcherazzi, The Mindy Project. Crotcherazzi is a blend of crotch and paparazzi, and refers to photographers who capture, whether by design or mistake, crotch shots of female celebrities who inadvertently flash whomever might be watching.

Most Ridiculous Portmanteau-Eponym

Changnesia, Community

Community kills it with eponyms (that is, words derived from names of people). Their term, Ferris Buellerian, won last year’s prize for Best Eponym, while Britta as a verb meaning to “make a small mistake” has entered the lexicon.

This year they outdid themselves with the ridiculous portmanteau eponym, Changnesia, a blend of the surname Chang and amnesia. Changnesia is “the complete loss of memory caused by sudden trauma that was, itself, also forgotten.” It’s also known as “Kevin’s Disease.”

Best Use of Portmanteaus

Veep

The Daily Show and Colbert Report tied last year, but this year there’s one clear winner.

Veep won us over with blends like co-POTAL, relating to a shared presidency; gestictionary, a dictionary of coded gestures; and the anxiet, weight loss due to anxiety. We can’t wait to see what else they come up with when Selina tries to go full-POTAL next season.

The We’re Ashamed to Admit We Get Our Education from TV Award – TIE

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report

Of course we keep up with the news, but sometimes it’s nice to have someone explain certain terms and put them into historical context. And that’s what just what Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert do on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

We learned about the Southern strategy, a Republican party tactic to get votes in the South by “appealing to racism against against African Americans”; border surge, an increase of security along the U.S-Mexican border; narcoterrorism, “terrorism carried out to prevent interference with or divert attention from illegal narcotics trafficking; and many more.

Best Show About a Serial Killer That Also Has Interesting Words

Hannibal

Hannibal, a sort of prequel to Silence of the Lambs, was one of the most fascinating shows of the year. Not only did it sucker us into sympathizing with a serial killer, it gave us some interesting words, from the psychological (folie à deux), to the gruesome (blood eagle, Colombian necktie), to the random (tyromancy).

We’re looking forward to the next course.

Best Québécois-ism

l’affaire est ketchup, Parts Unknown

Leave it to chef, traveler, and writer Anthony Bourdain to introduce us to this Québécois idiom that roughly translates as “everything’s cool.” It’s almost enough to forgive Quebec for pastagate (almost).

The We’re So Glad We Finally Know the Difference Award

catsup versus ketchup, Mad Men

Speaking of ketchup, Peggy claimed the difference between that and catsup was that “catsup has more tomatoes, comes in a bigger bottle, is cheaper, but tastes just like ketchup.” However, according to Slate, there’s no difference between catsup and ketchup (and catchup for that matter).

These catsup variations may come from Amoy, also known as Xiamenese, a Chinese dialect. Ketchup caught on, says Slate, when Heinz changed “Heinz Tomato Catsup,” to “Heinz Tomato Ketchup” to distinguish it from competitors.

Best Inside Joke for New Yorkers

Second Ave subway, Mad Men

When Peggy’s realtor assured her that her York Avenue apartment would “quadruple in value” once the Second Avenue subway was finished, we had to laugh: plans for constructing a the Second Avenue subway began in 1929 and almost 90 years later, is nowhere near completion.

Best Show for British Idioms When Downton Abbey Isn’t On

Call the Midwife

Downton Abbey hasn’t been on since February, at least for those of us in the U.S. Thank goodness for Call the Midwife.

Set in London’s East End in the 1950s, the show has no shortage of terms and sayings that are probably completely familiar to many people but new to us. Push the boat out, for instance, meaning to do something extravagantly; put the tin hat on it, “to bring something to a [usually unwelcome] close or climax,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and with origins in World War I terminology; and tickety-boo, meaning correct or satisfactory, and perhaps coming from the Hindi phrase ṭhīk hai, “all right,”

Best Term Coined by an Actor about His Own Show

nerd glaze, Peter Dinklage

When Peter Dinklage of Game of Thrones uttered these two words describing either an expression of daze and awe as a result of binge-watching a favorite TV show, or awe-struck fandom in general, Jon Stewart knew he was onto something.

“If somebody doesn’t have nerdglaze dot com right now,” Stewart said, “you have to register that.” Nerdglaze.com was indeed registered shortly after the episode, and is now a cool site about nerd culture.

Euphemism of the Year

send someone on a trip to Belize, Breaking Bad

As we’ve mentioned, this season’s Breaking Bad was all about euphemisms, banal phrases said in place of, in this show’s case, horrific, unspeakable acts. Send someone on a trip to Belize, uttered by colorful phrase-maker and attorney Saul Goodman, means to have someone killed.

In response, the Belize Tourism Board offered free trips to the show’s creators and stars. From the director of marketing and industry relations: “We saw this as a great opportunity to spin the story and introduce a new audience to Belize as a potential vacation destination.”

Understatement of the Year

Red Wedding, Game of Thrones

SPOILER ALERT.

Like many who hadn’t read the books, we didn’t know what we were in for when we sat down to watch the second to last episode of this season’s Game of Thrones.

We sensed tension at the end of the wedding between Edmure Tully and Roslin Frey, but surely everything would be all right. Peace would be restored between the Starks and the Freys, Talisa would give birth to Robb’s child, and Arya, at long last, would be reunited with her mother and brother. But we quickly learned that this would not be the case, and along with the rest of the internet, we promptly lost our sh*ts.

The wedding, which by the way was inspired by two real-life events, was a red wedding to say the very least.

What were some of your favorite words from TV this year?

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by kreetube]