Community ·
Word of the day ·
Random word
Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. If we like it, your tweet will appear on our blog.
Here are our favorites from last week:
Thanks to everyone for playing! You’ll have another chance this week to perfect your word of the day perfect tweets. To get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.
As you may know, every day, along with our Word of the Day, we tweet a List of the Day, or LOTD. Sometimes we pick lists based on a theme, like words from Scottish culture for Scots Week, and words from Star Trek for Science Fiction Week. Other times we picks lists just because we like them, like this one on coin collecting terms or this one on smelly synonyms (and who could resist the title, Stink Different?).
Now it’s your turn. For the month of February, nominate your favorite list to be a List of the Day. This can be your own list or someone else’s. You can also nominate as many lists as you want. If we pick your list, you’ll get a Wordnik T-shirt.
Here’s what we need from you:
You can put the info in the comments of this post or email it to wordnik@feedback.com with the subject line, “List of the Day nominee.”
Have yet to make a list? First you’ll want to signup for a user account (don’t worry, it’s free), after which just click on your user name in the top right hand corner. From the drop down menu, click New List. Then start adding away!
Here’s even more info on lists, a whole bunch of lists at once, and the Community page which has the newest lists.
We look forward to seeing your nominations!
Welcome to this special Super Bowl installment of Word Soup!
While some of you will be rooting for one team or the other this Sunday, what we’re excited about are the ads, and those funny, interesting, and ridiculous words associated with those ads. To celebrate, we’ve rounded up some words from Super Bowl ads of the past.
1984
Announcer: “On January 24, Apple computer will introduce Macintosh, and you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”
“1984,” Apple Macintosh, 1984
1984 refers to George Orwell’s dystopian novel of the same name, which takes place in “a world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public mind control.” Citizens “are subordinated to the totalitarian cult of personality of Big Brother, the deified Party leader who rules with a philosophy that decries individuality and reason as thoughtcrimes.” In contrast, the Macintosh symbolizes freedom, independent-thinking, and individualism, ironic today considering the proliferation of Apple products and the cult of personality around Steve Jobs.
In 2007, a controversial internet ad mashed up the original Apple commercial with a speech from Hilary Clinton, casting Clinton as Big Brother.
cat herder
Cowboy: “Being a cat herder is probably about the toughest thing I think I’ve ever done.”
“Cat Herders,” Electronic Data Systems, 2000
Herding cats “refers to an attempt to control or organize a class of entities which are uncontrollable or chaotic,” and “implies a task that is extremely difficult or impossible to do, primarily due to chaotic factors.” The term may have originated in the technology industry in the mid 1980s. “Managing senior programmers is like herding cats.”
connectile dysfunction
Announcer: “You know the feeling. You can’t take care of business the way others do. It’s called connectile dysfunction, a condition caused by inadequate broadband coverage.”
“Connectile Dysfunction,” Sprint, 2007
Connectile dysfunction plays on the medical term, erectile dysfunction, “the inability of a man to obtain or sustain an erection.”
creamed
Joe Namath: “I’m so excited. I’m gonna get creamed!”
“Joe Namath and Farrah Fawcett,” Noxzema, 1973
The word creamed here has a double-meaning: “badly beaten; lost by a considerable margin” and having cream applied to one’s person.
drinkability
Woman: “I do get a hint of drinkability right away.”
Man: “Does my pen have writability?”
“Meeting,” Budweiser, 2009
Drinkability is “the extent to which something is drinkable,” and prior to this Budweiser campaign may have referred mainly to wine. The ad campaign may poke fun at wine tasting and formal terms such as drinkability and ageability, or aging potential.
fandemonium
Announcer: “Monster.com and the NFL are searching for a fan amongst fans to become a part of NFL history. The director of fandemonium will announce the pick at the NFL draft.”
“Director of Fandemonium,” Monster.com, 2009
Fandemonium is a blend of fan and pandemonium, and refers to the “wild uproar or noise” created by fans. Fan may be a shortening of fanatic, “a person affected by zeal or enthusiasm, particularly on religious subjects,” which ultimately comes from the Latin fanum, “temple.” But the word fan may also be influenced by the fancy, “all of a class who exhibit and cultivate any peculiar taste or fancy,” especially for prize fighting, and is attested by 1735.
Pandemonium comes from Pandæmonium, the capital of Hell in Paradise Lost, the epic poem by John Milton. The word contains the Greek pan, “all,” and the Latin daemonium, “demon.”
Force, the
“The Force,” Volkswagen, 2011
The Force is “a binding, metaphysical, and ubiquitous power in the fictional universe of the Star Wars galaxy created by George Lucas.” An ability of the Force is telekinesis, “movement of or motion in an object, animate or inanimate, produced without contact with the body producing the motion.” The word force comes from the Latin fortis, “strong.”
G
Man: “G to me means greatness.”
“Talking Heads,” Gatorade, 2009
Ozzy Osbourne: “Welcome to 4G!. . All aboard the 5G train!. . .How many bloody G’s are there?”
“Ozzy Osbourne and Justin Beiber,” Best Buy, 2011
In the Gatorade commercial, G has a variety of meanings that have to do with endurance and perseverance, while in the Best Buy commercial, G has no meaning. 3G and 4G referred to third or fourth generation wireless technology, but are essentially meaningless marketing terms.
magic chip
“The Magic Chip,” Doritos, 2009
magic fridge
Dude: “Guys, hurry up! The magic fridge is back!”
“The Magic Fridge,” Bud Light, 2006
These two commercials use the term magic to make ordinary things like corn chips and beer seem other-worldly and powerful, while simultaneously poking fun at this idea.
milk-a-holic
Baby Girl: “And that milk-a-holic Lindsay wasn’t over?”
“Jealous Girlfriend,” E-Trade, 2010
A milk-a-holic (a blend of milk and alcoholic) is someone who is addicted to milk. As Erin McKean stated in a Boston Globe piece, the “-holic suffix is used for any addiction” (chocoholic, shopaholic, workaholic). Actress Lindsay Lohan sued E-Trade over this ad, claiming that the baby Lindsay referred to her and her reported problems with substance abuse.
office linebacker
“Terry Tate: Office Linebacker,” Reebok, 2003
Office linebacker plays on the idea of superfluous jobs created in the name of pseudo-efficiency and faux-continuous improvement.
super human
Announcer: “Your inner hero is calling. Answer at the one place we can all feel super human again.”
“Calling All Heroes,” Universal Orlando Resort, 2009
To feel human means to feel like oneself and not part of a machine. The ad plays on this phrase by adding super, implying that the product will make one feel even more human, and therefore even better, as well as like a superhero.
tranny
Announcer: “Truckers know towing 10,000 pounds up a steep grade ain’t good for your tranny.”
“Killer Heat,” Toyota, 2009
Tranny here is short for transmission. Tranny is also short for transvestite, “a person who dresses and acts in a style or manner traditionally associated with the opposite sex.”
vroom vroom
Conan O’Brien: “Vroom vroom party starter.”
“Swedish,” Bud Light, 2009
Vroom is “the loud, roaring noise of an engine operating at high speed.” The word is imitative in origin and attests to 1967. The earliest citation we could find was February 1967, in a Boston Globe article: “When I tried a sudden ‘vroom’ up to 50, the extra speed came slowly.” The ad’s use of vroom vroom may be a play on Mazda’s zoom zoom ad campaign.
wardrobe malfunction
“I am sorry that anyone was offended by the wardrobe malfunction during the halftime performance of the Super Bowl,” Timberlake said in a statement. “It was not intentional and is regrettable.”
“NFL, FCC upset by halftime show; CBS apologizes,” USA Today, February 1, 2004
While wardrobe malfunction does not originate from an ad (though the phrase did inspire at least one commercial), we thought no post about Super Bowl words would be complete without it. The phrase was coined by Justin Timberlake’s management to describe the incident that occurred during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, in which Janet Jackson’s breast was accidentally bared. The phrase implies that no one was at fault except Jackson’s wardrobe; malfunction implies mechanical rather than human error.
The incident has also been referred to as boobgate and nipplegate. Gate refers to Watergate, “a series of scandals occurring during the Nixon administration in which members of the executive branch organized illegal political espionage against their perceived opponents and were charged with violation of the public trust, bribery, contempt of Congress, and attempted obstruction of justice.” Adding gate to a word signals a scandal or controversy.
wassup
Various dudes: “WASSUP!”
“Wassup,” Budweiser, 2006
The wassup commercials first ran in 1999 and were “based on a short film, entitled ‘True’, written and directed by Charles Stone III, that featured Stone and several of his childhood friends” sitting around “talking on the phone and saying ‘Whassup!’ to one another in a comical way.” Other versions of the commercial include “What are you doing?” for yuppies and “How you doin’?” for “Jersey guys.”
The word wassup is a corruption of the phrase what’s up. Other variations include whazzup, what up, and ‘sup. What’s up is commonly thought to have originated from the Bugs Bunny catchphrase, “What’s up, Doc?” first used in 1940. However, an earlier citation can be found O. Henry’s Sherlock Holmes parody, The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes, in the name of a Dr. Watson send-up, Dr. Whatsup. “Sit down, Whatsup, and excuse me for a few moments.”
For all the Super Bowl ads that ever were, check out this site, and keep your eyes and ears peeled this Sunday for even more Word Soup-worthy Super Bowl ad words.
Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. If we like it, your tweet will appear on our blog.
Here are our favorites from last week:
Thanks to everyone for playing! You’ll have another chance this week to perfect your word of the day perfect tweets. To get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.
We’re excited to present this special guest post.
The always awesome Grammar Monkeys have nominated me, Wordnik, for a Versatile Blogger Award. The rules say I need to list seven interesting things about myself and nominate 15 other blogs. And away we go!
Here are seven things you may not know about me:
And here are 15 blogs I love (in no particular order):
And the rules! Feel free to disregard.
Thanks again Grammar Monkeys!
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.
Earlier this week was Burns Night, and while we celebrated Scottish poet Robert Burns with some Scottish food words, BBC gave us some Scottish food recipes (haggis, anyone?). This week was also the Lunar New Year, which The Atlantic rang in with some gorgeous pictures, while at Language Log, Victor Mair wrote about the year of the dragon.
Mr. Mair also discussed pinyin faux amis and Google translate and Chinese. Mark Liberman explored Finnish language flowers (crash blossoms in English), snowmanteaux, the word quite, and the phrase only and only if. Geoffrey Pullum pointed out an Australian company’s right to use another phrase, nuckin futs, and was puzzled in Tarrgona about elevators and baffled in Barcelona about an airport sign. Mr. Pullum also advised politicians not to borrow from Hollywood (at least not without proper citation) when making speeches.
Mr. Liberman bemoaned the loss of the apostrophe from Waterstones, while Mr. Pullum gave his two cents and wondered if the apostrophe ever represents a sound. Stan Carey considered apostrophe apostasy and rounded up apostrophic reactions from around the web. Mr. Carey also explored new abbreviations, as did Ben Yagoda at Lingua Franca (and don’t forget Erin McKean’s piece on clipped words from October).
Macmillan Dictionary blog offered a great primer on American political discourse, while Johnson pondered mixing languages, losing certain types of British accents, and the word issue. Ben Zimmer discussed American dialects from A to Z, while at Lingua Franca, Geoff Pullum wrote about the singular they and what’s normal and what’s formal; Lucy Ferris commented on comments; and Ben Yagoda read the newspaper with a grammar geek’s eye.
Kory Stamper discussed defining obscenities, and editorial correspondence and the dictionary. Arnold Zwicky considered the word fanny, “an area ripe for trans-Atlantic misunderstanding and offense,” and the geek voice. Sesquiotica examined spoffle (as coined by actor Hugh Laurie); scattermalia, “little details passed back and forth one at a time until you lose track entirely of who said what when in response to what”; and the elusive geoduck (which by the way is not an earth duck).
The Virtual Linguist took a look at masher, “well-to-do young men who came [to the music-hall] mainly to look at the women”; women’s use of vastly and other adverbs; and the dwindling use of barrow boy stock market slang. The Word Spy spotted black-hole resort, “a resort that blocks all incoming and outgoing Internet signals”; workshifting, “using portable devices and wireless technologies to perform work wherever and whenever it is convenient”; and Eurogeddon, “an extreme European economic, political, or military crisis.”
In the week in words, Erin McKean noticed Chollima, a rather frightening North Korean version of Pegasus; neophiliac, those “who chase the new at all costs”; mouse type, “6- or 7-point type” largely used for “warnings, disclaimers and legal jargon”; and weibo, “Twitter-like microblogs” in China (“Because weibo sounds like the Mandarin word for ‘scarf,’ microblogging in China is sometimes referred to as zhi weibo, or ‘knitting a scarf’”).
Erin also collected some new words from noncelebrity neologizers, such as nukepicking, “the combination of nitpicking and blowing things out of proportion”; <">