by - 1 Comment

Word Soup Wednesday

Welcome to Word Soup Wednesday! While the television show The Soup brings you “the strange, obscure and totally unbelievable moments in pop culture, celebrity news and reality TV,” Word Soup brings you those strange, obscure, unbelievable (and sometimes NSFW) words from talk shows, sitcoms, dramas, and just about anything else on TV.

analog books

Anderson Cooper: “In just a few weeks, you’ll be able to download e-books – is that what the kids do with the digital download? they download them? I still read analog books for the most part.”

“The RidicuList: Classic Novels,” Anderson Cooper 360, July 18, 2012

Analog books, or paper books, are the opposite of e-books. Analog or analogue refers to “a device in which data are represented by continuously variable, measurable, physical quantities, such as length, width, voltage, or pressure,” and is opposed to digital, “expressed in numerical form, especially for use by a computer.” Analog has come to refer to technology that is older or out-of-date.

anaphor

Jon Stewart: “By using the phrase ‘you didn’t build that,’ you create confusion by using the demonstrative singular pronoun, ‘that’ instead of the plural anaphor, ‘those,’ which of course would be referring to the antecedent, ‘roads and bridges’. . . .My butt is giving myself a grammar wedgie!”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, July 25, 2012

An anaphor is “a word (such as a pronoun) used to avoid repetition; the referent of an anaphor is determined by its antecedent.” The word anaphor ultimately comes from the Greek anapherein, “to carry back, to bring up.”

breastaurant

Anderson Cooper: “Still, the breastaurant owner – not my word, by the way, it’s on their website – wants to turn [the town he bought and renamed Bikinis] into a world-class destination, possibly with a bikinis hall of fame.”

“The RidicuList: Bikinis, Texas,” Anderson Cooper 360, July 25, 2012

Breastaurant is a blend of breast and restaurant, and refers to establishments such as Hooters and, in this case, a restaurant called Bikinis, in which waitresses wear skimpy uniforms that show off their breasts.

Claus-esque

Anderson Cooper: “Plus I think changing the shirt wasn’t really going to help in this case. He happens to be highly Claus-esuqe. What’s he going to do? Take off his face?”

“The RidicuList: Santa problems in Disney,” Anderson Cooper 360, July 26, 2012

Claus-esque means having qualities similar to Santa Claus. This story is regarding Disney theme park officials asking a visitor who resembled Santa Claus to tell children approaching him for pictures that he was on vacation and should be left alone. See Kafkaesque.

epidermicide

Smitty [to criminal robot Roberto]: “You’re under arrest for attempted epidermicide.”

“The Six Million Dollar Mon,” Futurama, July 25, 2012

Epidermicide is the act of skinning someone, or “killing” their skin or epidermis.

ethanol

Bruce Babcock: “About 35-40 percent of the [corn] crop normally goes to ethanol.”

Stephen Colbert: “So am I going to have to fight my Audi for lunch?”

Bruce Babcock: “Well, there is going to be a bit of a fight between ethanol plants and livestock producers about who gets that corn.”

The Colbert Report, July 24, 2012

Ethanol is “the intoxicating agent in fermented and distilled liquors; used pure or denatured as a solvent or in medicines and colognes and cleaning solutions and rocket fuel; proposed as a renewable clean-burning additive to gasoline.” The story above refers to the effect of an ongoing drought in the midwest on corn crops.

Glass-Steagall Act

Sloan: “After the Great Depression, Congress wanted to put a firewall between the investment banks and the commercial banks. They wanted to make sure that Wall Street could melt to the ground and the commercial banks couldn’t be touched. They passed a law, the Glass-Steagall Act. Now you could be Gordon Gekko or George Bailey, but you couldn’t be both.”

“Amen,” The Newsroom, July 22, 2012

The Glass-Steagall Act is also referred to as the Banking Act of 1933, and is “named after its Congressional sponsors, Senator Carter Glass (D) of Virginia, and Representative Henry B. Steagall (D) of Alabama.” The act was “repealed through the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 by President Bill Clinton.” Gordon Gecko is a character from the film Wall Street and is famous for his quote, “Greed is good,” while George Bailey is the main character from the film, It’s a Wonderful Life.

gotcharazzi

Stephen Colbert: “Of course the media gotcharazzi are saying that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is some sort of racial code word, as in white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. But Mitt’s campaign isn’t saying that he’s a WASP. They never said ‘white’ or ‘Protestant.’ They’re just saying that he’s an ‘AS.’”

The Colbert Report, July 25, 2012

Gotcharazzi is a blend of gotcha and paparazzi. The paparazzi, plural for paprazzo, “a freelance photographer who doggedly pursues celebrities to take candid pictures for sale to magazines and newspapers,” may say, “Gotcha!” as they catch someone in a compromising position.

insourcing

President Obama [regarding Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital]: “I don’t want to pioneer in outsourcing. I want some insourcing. I want to bring companies back.”

“Keeping Them Honest,” Anderson Cooper 360, July 16, 2012

Insourcing is “the obtaining of goods or services using existing in-house resources or employees,” and is the opposite of outsourcing, “the procuring of services or products, such as the parts used in manufacturing a motor vehicle, from an outside supplier or manufacturer in order to cut costs.” The word outsourcing originated around 1981, while insourcing seems to have come about shortly afterward. See also offshoring and inshoring.

meat puppet

Robot Hermes [regarding the puppet made from his human body parts]: “That meat puppet disgusts me. It’s time for the ultimate upgrade.”

“The Six Million Dollar Mon,” Futurama, July 25, 2012

Meat puppet, or meatpuppet, has multiple meanings. In Ursula Le Guin’s short story, “The Diary of the Rose,” it seems to refer to humans as unthinking bodies. A popular current definition is “one whose sole reason for participating in a discussion or forum is to support, or express agreement with, a friend.” The Chronicle of Higher Education describes a meat puppet as “a peculiar inhabitant of the digital world—a fictional character that passes for a real person online.”

In this episode of Futurama, meat puppet is being used both literally – Robot Hermes is referring to a puppet made of human meat – and as a derogatory term for a human.

oocephalus nectar

Professor Farnsworth: “Say why don’t you just have Kif get you some nectar? It comes from a flower on his home planet.”

Kif: “You mean it’s oocephalus nectar?”

“The Butterjunk Effect,” Futurama, July 18, 2012

Oocephalus means egghead, and comes from the Greek combining word for “egg,” and kephale, “head.” The nectar here is a steroid-like performance enhancer.

world charm offensive

Stephen Colbert: “He’s on the first leg of his world charm offensive, and Mitt really grabbed England by the crumpets when he was asked about the London games.”

The Colbert Report, July 26, 2012

A charm offensive is  “a campaign of deliberately using charm and flattery in order to achieve some goal; especially in a political or diplomatic field.” The phrase seems to have originated in the mid 1950s, with offensive as a military term meaning “an aggressive attitude or course of operations; a posture of attack.” See Tet Offensive.

A world charm offensive is a world-wide charming campaign, and in this context offensive has the additional meaning of “causing or giving offense.”

That’s it for this week! Remember, if you see any Word Soup-worthy words, let us know on Twitter with the hashtag #wordsoup. Your word and Twitter handle might appear right here!

by

A Wordnik welcome to Andy and Jeff

We’re happy to be welcoming two new Wordniks — Jeff Barbose, who joins Wordnik today, and Andy Loong, who has recently joined us full-time.

Welcome Jeff!

Jeff is a software architect and UX designer with more than twenty years of experience designing and creating user interfaces and applications; the last dozen have been specific to native iOS and Mac OS X app development. This included a stint as a Senior Application Architect at Apple Inc. He’d tell you what he was working on, but, well … you know.
He also participated in the first go-round of eBooks at NuvoMedia, helping to design and implement the RocketLibrarian for Mac which accompanied the Rocket eBook device.
The best software and user experience, in his opinion, delight the user and make interacting with devices so well-suited to the task that the user doesn’t recall the details of having used them.
Jeff also writes long-form fiction, keeps a blog, paints, sketches, and invents new creative outlets when required. His academic background in biological sciences has allowed him to anticipate advances in software engineering and best practices: our industry has yet to invent anything in software that life hasn’t already accomplished in nature.

Andy Loong joins Wordnik!

Before Wordnik, Andy worked at HP/Palm as Operations Manager overseeing the HP WebOS cloud services data centers, where he took on the challenge to architect and implement the first generation cloud services infrastructure for WebOS. Over three years, Andy built multiple data centers in the US, the EU, and China to support millions of Palm customers. All the data centers that Andy has built are “lights-out style,” meaning that everything is managed remotely and programmatically to engage servers into services, so six data centers (plus of development, QA and stress test environments) could be run with only a few system admin on staff.
Before Palm, Andy was at Mobitv where he built the network that is currently used by Sprint. Andy has also worked at Siemens Business Division, managing some of their high-security data centers.

We’re happy to have Jeff and Andy on the team!

by

WotD Perfect Tweet Challenge Roundup

Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.

Remember that once a month we’re giving away Wordnik T-shirts to two randomly chosen players, to be announced the last Monday of the month. Guess what today is! This month’s winners are Portia Chalifoux and long-time player Simon Lancaster. Congrats! We’ll be in touch soon to get your T-shirt sizes and addresses.

As always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.

Thanks to everyone for playing!

by

This Week’s Language Blog Roundup

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.

Ben Zimmer was a busy man, delving into Higgs boson metaphors, appreciating the Rolling Stones and their zeugmoids, and musing on how we talk about the “other” man or woman. He also discussed secret racist slurs, and at Language Log,  commented on Jon Stewart’s, um, grammar wedgie and Stephen Colbert’s “foray into Ango-Saxon rhetoric.” Meanwhile, Geoffrey Pullum wondered why people were fiddling with spelling shibboleths, and Mark Liberman looked at the Caribbean “What??!!” and the zombie nouns of Helen Sword’s piece in The New York Times.

The bloggers at Johnson revisited data are, voiced support for linguistics and technology, and discussed Danish pronunciation. At Lingua Franca, Lucy Ferris explored the phrase I’m good; Allan Metcalf corrected his mistake about the acronym BFD; William Germano asked us if we nome sane?; and Ben Yagoda opined on courtesy titles and the Britishism, white van man.

At Macmillan Dictionary blog, Gill Francis asked if we had an issue around issues around; Simon Williams and Jules Winchester taught us how to say sorry like we mean it; and Stan Carey admitted to being semi-attached to semicolons. In other punctuation news, Motivated Grammar assured us that comma splices are historical and informal, but not wrong, and the New Yorker’s Questioningly challenge gave us a new punctuation mark, the bwam, or bad-writing apology mark, which requires the writer “to surround a sentence with a pair of tildes when ‘you’re knowingly using awkward wording but don’t have time to self-edit.’”

John McWhorter reviewed Geoffrey Nunberg’s new book, Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years, and talked about how LOL is its own language. In words of the week, Fritinancy noted thanatourism, “travel to destinations involving death and tragedy,” and MOOC, “an acronym for ‘massive open online course.’” Erin McKean spotted garrigue, a word “used to describe wines from the Rhône”; Rednecksploitation, exploitative films featuring “rednecks” or “hicks”; bingsu, Korean shaved ice; and glass cliff, a phenomenon in which “when women get appointed to leadership positions in the corporate world, a disproportionate amount of time they’re facing a dire situation.”

Lynneguist told us the difference between bed sizes in American and British English, while Sesquiotica explained the difference between sofa and couch. The Virtual Linguist kicked around kickshaw and some minced oaths. Oz Words compared canetoads and cockroaches. io9 wondered if people of different races have different voices. The Dialect Blog discussed the “father-bother split” in New England accents; that phrase right thurr; the adverbial wicked; and the pronunciation mysteries of theater and cinema.

This week we also learned that students in east London schools will be taught Cockney rhyming slang; that autocorrect is creating a new Chinese slang; and internet words are being added to a revised Chinese dictionary. Collins Dictionary is inviting the public to submit new words, and as always, you can sbmit new words to Wordnik by adding a tag or a definition in the Comments field.

We loved this tiny lending library in New York, these libraries repurposed from unused structures, and these cleverly organized stacks of books. We laughed at the best of Ralph Wiggum, and wished that we had gone to these fictional schools. We’re not sure about this Jane Austen video game, and had flashbacks reading these bad endings of Choose Your Own Adventure books.

That’s it for this week!

by

Word Soup: The Ancient Greek Games

800px-Olympos

The summer Olympic Games began in London this week, and we’ve  already been enjoying all types of Olympian goodies. We learned about the British origins of the modern Olympic games; 27 things we didn’t know about the Olympics; 12 great Olympic nicknames; and how to talk like a Brit if we happen to be in London. In the meantime, we’ve also gathered 10 of our favorite words from the ancient Greek games, Olympic or otherwise.

agon

“The ancient Greek Olympics took place during a time of truce declared specifically for the Games. The competitions were called ‘agons’ (as in ‘agony’) and they sometimes involved fights to the death. There was no second or third place in the Greek Olympics, no silver or bronze medals. This was, like war, winner take all.”

Ronald R. Thomas, “What the Olympics teach us about the role of higher education,” The Seattle Times, February 17, 2006

Agon is “in Greek antiquity, a contest for a prize, whether of athletes in the games or of poets, musicians, painters, and the like.” Agon comes from agein, “to lead,” and gives us the word agony, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, as well as antagonist and protagonist. An agonistarch is “one who trained persons to compete in public games and contests.”

diaulos

“The inscription indicates that the Sebasta had standard Olympic events. The foot races were the stadion (on a track of about 190 meters), diaulos (two laps of the track), and a race in which runners wore a helmet and shin guards and carried a shield.”

Malin Banyasz and Mark Rose, “The Augustan Games of Naples,” Archaeology, April 30, 2008

Diaulos refers to “a double course, in which the racers passed around a goal at the end of the course, and returned to the starting-place.” The word translates from the Greek as “double pipe,” and also refers to “an ancient Greek musical instrument, consisting of two single flutes, either similar or different, so joined at the mouthpiece that they could be played together.”

discobolus

“If we may trust the old marbles, — my friend with his arm stretched over my head, above there, (in plaster of Paris,) or the discobolus, whom one may see at the principal sculpture gallery of this metropolis, — those Greek young men were of supreme beauty.”

“The Professor at the Breakfast-Table,” The Atlantic Monthly, December 1859

A discobolus is “a thrower of the discus; one engaged in the exercise of throwing the discus.”  When capitalized,  the word refers to “a famous ancient statue by Myron (fifth century B.C.), representing a man in the act of throwing a discus.”

Roma - Museo Nazionale Romano a Palazzo Massimo

Roma – Museo Nazionale Romano a Palazzo Massimo

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Cebete]

Discobolus translates from the Greek as “discus thrower.” Bolos is related to ballein, which gives us ballistic and hyperbole. Disco- is indeed related to disco, “popular dance music, especially of the late 1970s,” in that disco also referred to the discus-shaped “phonograph record.”

epinicion

“An Epinicion is an ancient song of victory sung at the conclusion of a triumphant battle. Greeks would sing the song as they walked through the battlefield sorting the wounded from the dead.”

“A celebration of 20th century music,” Lodi News-Sentinel, April 25, 1991

An epinicion is “a song of triumph; a poem in celebration of a victory; especially, in ancient Greece, a poem in honor of a victory in an athletic contest, as at the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, or Isthmian games.” Epinicion, also spelled epinikion, contains the Greek nike, “victory.” Nike refers to both a sneaker brand and “a type of U.S. defensive surface-to-air missiles.”

halma

“The ‘dolichos,’ or javelin-throwing, was added in 716; and as early as 708 B.C. with ‘pale’ (wrestling), ‘halma‘ (broad jump) and ‘disks’ (quoit), the ‘pentathlon,’ or ‘five events’ became complete.”

“Olympic Games, Old and New,” Albany Review, April-September, 1908

The halma, which translates from the Greek as “jump,” is “the long jump, with weights in the hands.” Halma is also “a game for two persons, played on a special board of 256 squares with 19 men apiece, the object of each player being to drive out his opponent’s men from their position and to replace them with his own.”

P1040016

A game of halma

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by dorineruter]

hederate

“No doubt the classic allusions to the laurel Apollo, the wig of Bacchus, and the rose of Venus, point to the three classes of poetry, Epic, Anacreontic, and Erotic; but is it known that the kings in that day ranked their poets thus, or one poet to pass through the subordinate steps before he won the laurel crown? I certainly never heard of Poets Hederate or Poets Roseate before, and should be much obliged by any relative to such appellations.”

Notes and Queries, July-December 1860

Hederate means “to adorn or crown with ivy, as a victor in the Olympian games.” The word comes from the Latin hedera, a type of ivy, which is related to the Greek khandanein, “to hold, contain.” Hederaceous means “pertaining to, resembling, composed of, or producing ivy.”

hellanodic

“Near the foot of the throne is a table, at which the scribe appears writing in the Olympic records of noble deeds the name, family, and country of the conqueror; near this table a victor in the foot-race, having already received a branch of palm, which he holds in his hand, crowned by an inferior Hellanodic; next him is a footracer who ran armed with a helmet spear and shield.”

The Penny Magazine, March 24, 1838

A hellanodic is “in Greek antiquity, one of the judges at the Olympic games, who awarded the prizes.” Hellanodic comes from the Greek Hellen, “Greek,”and dike, “judgment, justice, usage, custom.”

lampadedromy

“Herodotus compares this method to the Athenian lampadedromy, or torch race, a relay race in which the contestant who arrived first at the goal with his torch still burning won the prize for his side.”

“The Odd Measure,” Munsey’s Magazine, June 1918

A lampadedromy is “a torch-race,” in which “each contestant carried a lighted torch, and the prize was won by him who first reached the goal with his torch unextinguished.” The word comes from the Greek lampein, “to shine” (which also gives us lamp and lantern) and dromos, “a running.” Dromos also gives us syndrome, literally “running together”; palindrome, literally “running back again”; and dromedary, which comes from the Greek dromas kamelos, “running camel.”

Olympics

“It is understood the IOC was initially reluctant to allow the government the use of the word Olympics, which is protected by myriad copyright legislation, but agreed because the British Olympic Association (BOA) was to be the lead authority in co-ordinating and bringing together established well run competitions and adding to those to form regional and national Games.”

Jacquelin Magnay, “IOC gets caught in middle of ‘School Olympics’ dispute,” The Telegraph, December 19, 2010

The Olympics is short for the Olympic Games. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, Olympic came into English during the 16th century and referred to Olympos, a “town or district in Elis in ancient Greece, where athletic contests in honor of Olympian Zeus were held 776 B.C.E. and every four years thereafter.” This is “not the same place as Mount Olympus, abode of the gods, which was in Thessaly.” The ancient Olympic Games were part of the Panhellenic Games, “four separate sports festivals held in ancient Greece.” The modern Olympics were a revival that began in 1896.

An Olympiad is “an interval of four years between celebrations of the Olympic Games, by which the ancient Greeks reckoned dates.”

pankration

“Wrestling, boxing, and the pankration, a combination of the two, were known as ‘heavy’ events because, without weight classes or time limits, bigger athletes dominated. In the pankration, punching, kicking, choking, finger breaking, and blows to the genitals were allowed; only biting and eye gouging were prohibited.”

Donald G. Kyle, “Winning at Olympia,” Archaeology, July/August 1996

Pankration is “an Ancient Greek martial art combining aspects of boxing and wrestling, introduced in the Greek Olympic games in 648 BC.” Pankration comes from the Greek pan, “all,” plus kratos, “strength,” and may be a precursor to mixed martial arts.

by

WotD Perfect Tweet Challenge Roundup

Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.

Remember that once a month we’ll be giving away Wordnik T-shirts to two randomly chosen players. Winners will be announced at the end of the month. And to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.

Thanks to everyone for playing!

by

Word Soup Wednesday

While the television show The Soup brings you “the strange, obscure and totally unbelievable moments in pop culture, celebrity news and reality TV,” Word Soup brings you those strange, obscure, unbelievable (and sometimes NSFW) words from talk shows, sitcoms, dramas, and just about anything else on TV.

blind trust

Mitt Romney [on July 13, 2012]: “In order to make sure that I didn’t have a conflict of interest while I was governor, or while I was considering a run for national office, I had a blind trust established.”

Jon Stewart: “So Romney’s money was in a blind trust. I guess that’s a pretty good excuse, unless a blind trust is just a ruse.”

Mitt Romney [on October 18, 1994]: “The blind trust is an age-old ruse, if you will. Which is to say you can always tell the blind trust what it can and cannot do. You give a blind trust rules.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, July 16, 2012

A blind trust is “a financial arrangement in which a person, such as a high-ranking elected official, avoids possible conflict of interest by relegating his or her financial affairs to a fiduciary who has sole discretion as to their management.”

blunderbuss

Joseph Gordon-Levitt [regarding a movie still of him holding two guns]: “That’s what they call a blunderbuss, and that’s what they call a gat. They’re for two different types of assassins in the world of Looper.”

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, July 16, 2012

A blunderbuss is “a short gun or firearm with a large bore and funnel-shaped muzzle, capable of holding a number of balls or slugs, and intended to be used at a limited range without exact aim.” Blunderbuss is an alteration of the Dutch donderbus, which translates as “thunder (donder) gun (bus).” Gat is short for Gatling gun, named for its inventor, Richard Jordan Gatling.

exolinguistics

Leela: “The unlikely lovebirds met at Brown University. She, a brilliant exolinguistics major, he, a laid-back sewer surfer who didn’t even know the meaning of exolinguistics.”
Morris: “I still have no idea!”
Munda: “I’ve been telling you for 40 years! It’s the study of alien languages! Why can’t you listen?”

“Zapp Dingbat,” Futurama, July 11, 2012

Exo comes from the Greek prefix meaning “outside.” Exolinguistics is also known as xenolinguistics or astrolinguistics.

Fast and Furious

News announcer: “President Obama today for the first time exerted executive privilege to shield justice department documents with what’s become known as the Fast and Furious scandal.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, June 26, 2012

Fast and Furious refers to Operation Fast and Furious, one of the “gunwalking” sting operations run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives between 2006 and 2011. The operations were “done under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, a project intended to stem the flow of firearms into Mexico by interdicting straw purchasers and gun traffickers within the United States.” Operation Fast and Furious was named after the “successful film franchise, because some of the suspects under investigation operated out of an auto repair store and street raced.”

Executive privilege is “the principle that members of the executive branch of government cannot legally be forced to disclose their confidential communications when such disclosure would adversely affect the operations or procedures of the executive branch.”

live tease

Anderson Cooper: “A reporter in Michigan was doing what we in the television biz call a live tease. That’s right, we have our own lingo. You can ask Wolf Blitzer about it.”

The Ridiculist, Anderson Cooper 360, July 9, 2012

A tease in this context is “a preliminary remark or act intended to whet the curiosity.” A live tease is a tease that is broadcast live. The live tease Cooper is referring to is one which a cat jumped on the reporter’s shoulders during the broadcast.

media elite

Will: “Who are we to make these decisions? We’re the media elite.”

“The 112th Congress,” The Newsroom, July 8, 2012

The media elite, or elite media, refers to “newspapers, radio stations, TV channels and other media that influence the political agenda of other mass media.” According to Geoffrey Nunberg, “Spiro Agnew first put the phrase ‘media elite’ into wide circulation and joined it with descriptions like ‘effete snobs,’ which evoked the social meaning of the word.”

Mexiknish

Jon Stewart: “Note to self: A Jewish potato treat with the flavor of the southwest. I call it the Mexiknish.”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, June 25, 2012

Mexikinish, a blend of Mexican and knish, also means “somewhat Mexican,” and plays on Romney’s claim that his father’s being born in Mexico ties him to the Latino community.

presponse

Stephen Colbert: “Of course we conservatives are confident that the court majority will rule in our favor. How confident? Richard Mourdock, Indiana GOP Senate candidate and dark lord of the withered heath, pretaped his reaction to the eventual ruling last Thursday and accidentally posted his presponse on YouTube.”

The Colbert Report, June 25, 2012

Presponse is a blend of pre, the prefix for “before,” and response.

s-bomb

Mayor Bloomberg: “Who wrote this shit?”
Anderson Cooper: “One can assume the mayor knew his mike was hot when he dropped the s-bomb. Is s-bomb even a word? It is now.”

The Ridiculist, Anderson Cooper 360, July 9, 2012

S-bomb is a play on f-bomb, a euphemism for the expletive, fuck. F-bomb seems to have originated in the late 1980s, according to Jesse Sheidlower’s The F-Word.

study drug

News announcer: “High school kids face a lot of pressure in getting into college, but it turns out an increasing number of students are abusing prescription drugs Adderall and Ritalin to help them pass their tests. They call them study drugs. They say the drugs give students a boost of energy and increase their attention span.”

Stephen Colbert: “Yes, study drugs, a sure-fire way to improve your grades if you are too lazy to sleep with your teacher.”

The Colbert Report, June 25, 2012

Study drugs refer to “drugs, particularly prescription drugs, used to increase concentration and stamina.”

takedown piece

Will: “What did she do?”
Nina: “Nothing, it’s just a takedown piece.”
Will: “A what?”
Nina: “A takedown piece. I’m going to take her down.”
Will: “Why?”
Nina: “Because that’s what you do in a takedown piece, genius.”

“I’ll Try to Fix You,” The Newsroom, July 15, 2012

A takedown is “the act of humiliating a person.” Thus, a takedown piece is an article or other piece of writing that humiliates someone and damages their reputation.

That’s it for this week! Remember, if you see any Word Soup-worthy words, let us know on Twitter with the hashtag #wordsoup. Your word and Twitter handle might appear right here!