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This book features words that are new or

relatively recent and which may not have yet
reached the dictionaries. At least, this was true
when the pieces were written remember this
is an archive compiled over more than a
decade! And, since writing about them, they
may have vanished again the fate of most
new words.

2C-B/tu si bi/ This is one of a large number

of psychoactive substances first isolated by

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the American libertarian pharmacologist Dr

Alexander Shulgin, which collectively form an
alphabet soup of psychedelics, of which the
better known are DOM, STP, DOB, DOI, and
MDMA. Though not new, 2C-B has only
recently started to be used as a street drug,
beginning to appear in Britain in the mid
nineties. Its full chemical name is 4-bromo2,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine. Its short
name (which is sometimes written as 2CB or
2-CB) may have been chosen because it has a
chain of two carbon atoms attached to a ring,
hence 2C, with the B added to indicate the
presence of a bromine atom. Chemically
similar to the amphetamines, 2C-B is an
hallucinogen similar to LSD
but without some of its
more alarming side effects;
it is most potent when used
in conjunction with Ecstasy
(MDMA); it has reportedly

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been distributed under the street names

Nexus, Venus, Eve, and (because of its use
with Ecstasy) Synergy. Its possession is
illegal.
In April, police said that cut-price ecstasy was
flooding the market. One new drug, known as
2CB, can be bought for as little as 3, and
another, a stronger variant known as DMT,
can be bought for 15.
Guardian, June 1997

360-DEGREE FEEDBACK
This attempt to update the traditional
employee appraisal process is one of the
fashionable techniques of the mid 1990s,
fitting in with other newish tools called team
management, employee empowerment and
total quality management. 360-degree
feedback, as the term implies, brings together

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formal appraisals from everybody that the

person being assessed comes into contact
with line managers, subordinates,
colleagues, peers, and even outsiders such as
clients. Another name for it is multi-source
feedback and a variant is upward feedback, in
which subordinates appraise their
supervisors performance. Though it is
frequently intimidating or dispiriting for the
person concerned, some studies indicate that
such feedback can be helpful in changing
behaviour and improving performance.
However, others suggest that the technique
shows little or no improvement over more
traditional methods and has the disadvantage
that results need skilled interpretation.
They say 360-degree feedback should be
regarded as an organisational process rather
than a mechanical tool.
Independent on Sunday, Sept 1996

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Films in 3D are the latest wheeze to get bums

on seats in cinemas and 3D-TV is now
technically available if you can afford the set

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and can find something to watch on it.

However, a problem has surfaced: eyestrain.
Some filmgoers say that viewing 3D movies is
causing them
eye problems,
headaches and
nausea.
May cause
eyestrain?
The issue is
common to any
medium that
tries to create
the illusion of
depth using
stereoscopic
images, which
require users to
distinguish the images in a way that isnt
natural to the brain. The result can be classic

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motion sickness, which is brought on because

ones eyes are confused by images that are in
reality at a fixed distance but which seem to
move forwards and backwards. Similar
symptoms, Slate magazine noted, plague
flight simulators, head-mounted virtualreality displays, and other 3D technologies.
The formal term is asthenopia.
The term 3D fatigue (also 3-D fatigue) started
to be used in blogs and reviews in the
autumn of 2009, after the 3D films Coraline
and Up were released but before Avatar. The
trouble is far from new, however, since it was
one reason why the last try at producing 3D
films, in the 1950s, failed to catch on. An
earlier term, cybersickness, was coined in the
1990s, specifically for problems with virtualreality goggles that simulated 3D in computer
games; it has reappeared to refer to problems
with 3D films. In December 2010, New

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Scientist magazine suggested that a seriously

afflicted person was in the barfogenic zone.
Following the recent spate of 3D films, with
many more to come, some moviegoers have
borrowed 3D fatigue to refer to boredom
with the technique, which they argue adds
technical spectacle without enhancing
storylines.
It appears entertainment can be bad for our
health. A UC Berkeley vision scientist is
calling attention to what he calls 3D fatigue.
His research shows [that] if 3D movies or
television is done badly, it strains the
viewers eyes.
ABC News, 24 Feb. 2010.
Viewers are also likely to be concerned about
health problems, particularly the so-called
3D fatigue caused by viewers eyes

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10

becoming tired. Manufacturers claim new

technology has eliminated such problems.

This is a mainly British term for a novel type

of industrial injury that is said to be suffered
particularly by staff in call centres. Such staff
spend their days with headphones clamped

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11

to their ears, answering incoming calls or

cold-calling prospective customers. It is
claimed that workers are often subjected to
piercing noises, for example from fax
machines accidentally called (or other
sources not clearly identified in news
reports), which are damaging their hearing.
Many call centres are virtual sweatshops,
with long hours, poor conditions, low pay,
pressure on operators to improve
productivity, and petty limitations on
freedom of movement; it may be that some
claims of hearing damage are as much a
reflection of the stressful working conditions
as of true injury. Acoustic shock is the subject
of a legal case in Britain in which 83 workers
are claiming compensation. The term itself is
not new, having been part of the jargon of
telecoms engineers for many years.

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Call centres, one of the fastest growing

industries in Britain, are triggering a new
industrial injury acoustic shock.
Guardian, Feb. 2001
The TUC set up a helpline to take calls from
call centre workers. Common complaints
included being over-supervised, having toilet
breaks timed, having pay docked for arriving
a few minutes late, and fear of acoustic
shock from the telephone system.
Personal Computer World, July 2001

ACTIVITYSTAT
Several recently reported research findings
suggest that theres a setting in the brain that
determines how active each of us is going to
be or wants to be.

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13

The EarlyBird project at the Peninsula

Medical School in Devon, led by Professor
Terence Wilkin, is following the progress of a
group of 300 British children from age 5 to
age 16, monitoring their activity levels and
metabolism as they grow up. Although
children vary a lot in how active they are
(Prof Wilkins group found a four-fold
variation between children in their test
subjects), each child is consistent in how
active he or she is day-to-day. This doesnt
depend on how much organised physical
activity there is at school, or on daily routine,
socio-economic status or background. If
children are more active at school, theyre
less so at home and vice versa. In particular,
confounding a popular view, how much TV a
child watches didnt affect how much
exercise he or she takes. One implication is
that you cant necessarily assume that obese

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14

children are that way because theyre

sedentary.
Professor Wilkin coined activitystat for the
mechanism in the brain probably in the
hypothalamus that sets energy
expenditure and hence physical activity for
an individual. The word comes from activity
plus thermostat, a parallel formation to
appestat, a known brain mechanism that
controls appetite. Activitystat is first recorded
in print in The Journal of Diabetes Nursing in
2005.
This activitystat, like a thermostat, will adjust
your energy expenditure down when it
thinks you have been too active, and up when
you havent been active enough.
Guardian, 7 Aug. 2007
The activitystat hypothesis emerged after
trials suggested that no matter how much or

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how little exercise children were offered,

they found their own level. Like horses
brought to water, says Professor Wilkin,
children with low-activity settings may
simply not participate.
Times, 23 Apr. 2007

Agencies working for

NASA have used this
term for craft designed
to explore solar-system
bodies such as Venus,
Mars and Titan.
Three sorts of aerobots are proposed or are
under development. One type is an
unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which is
launched from an orbiting spacecraft and

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deploys wings before it lands. The second is a

lighter-than-air craft, a helium-filled balloon
fitted with heaters powered by solar cells. A
third is a hybrid balloon-kite system
sometimes called a helikite.
An advantage of the second and third kinds is
that they dont need fuel, which is expensive
to transport and which runs out all too soon.
Unlike satellites or the winged aerobot, the
lighter-than-air versions can fly for extended
periods,
allowing longterm
monitoring of
the properties
of the
atmosphere. They can also view and record
the ground from much lower altitudes than is
possible with satellites.
In the NASA sense, the word combines the
prefix aero-, as in aeronautics, with bot, a

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common abbreviated form of robot. However,

aerobot is also a trademarked term of Moller
International for its small ducted fan aerial
vehicle, in which the first part of the word
would seem to be from aerial rather than
aeronautics.
Phipps said his team spent 18 months and
several hundred-thousand Euros developing
a mission concept featuring two orbiters
packed with miniaturized instruments and a
tiny aerobot that would be dropped into
Venus corrosive atmosphere.
USA Today, 9 Aug. 2005.
Take this sophistication to another level and
an aerobot sent to Titan could be left to get
on with scientific observations, safe in the
knowledge that the vehicle would not crash
into the first hill.
BBC News, 14 Jan. 2006.

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When this first appeared, from the mind of

Professor John Kasarda of the University of
North Carolina in 2000, it looked like one of
those words whose life would be short and
its death unmourned. But it shows signs of
achieving some permanence in the
vocabulary of aviation, economics, and urban
planning.

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19

The idea behind the term is that major air

transport hubs are now linked with levels of
economic importance that were once the
preserve of major seaports. The jobs directly
generated by the airport itself are obviously
significant; much more financially important,
however, are the firms that relocate near the
hub to take advantage of the speed with
which passengers and high-value cargo can
be flown all over the world.
In several places, new airports are being
created explicitly to exploit this, for example
the new Suvarnabhumi International Airport
in Thailand and the Dubai World Central
airport.
The term is a combination of aero-, in its
aircraft sense, with metropolis. Theres some
doubt in writers minds what the plural
should be; both aerotropolises and
aerotropoli have appeared; both are ugly,

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20

though the latter is to be deprecated because

it puts a Latin plural ending on a word of
Greek extraction.
A vast assemblage of logistics firms,
warehouses, industrial production and other
businesses that rely on rapid air delivery, the
aerotropolis has been a shimmering vision
since county officials proposed it several
years ago.
Detroit Free Press, 14 Apr. 2006
Amsterdams Schiphol Airport is a prime
example of an aerotropolis according to
Euromonitor. Around 58,000 people are daily
employed at the airport itself, and the
surrounding business district stretches for 15
miles and includes the regional head quarters
of such firms as Unilever.
Cosmetics International, 8 Sep. 2006

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21

/flns tst/
This phrase suddenly started to appear in
British newspapers in January 1998, just at
the time when the Government was starting a
series of national road shows to try to
communicate its proposals for reform of the
welfare state. It referred to plans, then not
clearly articulated, to ensure that benefits
went to those most in need by applying tests
of claimants financial resources.

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22

There was already a well-known term in the

language for this process, means test, but the
evidence suggests the Labour government
was at the time keen to avoid it. Its
supporters have always been opposed to
means tests because they are intrusive and
embarrassing for claimants and they are
believed to lead to arbitrary decisions that
stigmatise recipients. Some commentators
suggested at the time that the term was an
attempt to avoid such objections by giving
the impression that it was the less deserving
better-off that would be targeted by the new
tests, not those in genuine need.
The word was not original to the Labour
government: it was coined in the US and
seems to have been popularised in a book of
1993, Facing Up, by Peter G Peterson, former
secretary of commerce in the Nixon
administration. But the term is even older,

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23

having been used in hearings before the US

Congress in 1964.
The phrase continues to be found in
American publications, but has largely
dropped out of British political discourse.
This week Harriet Harman, the socialsecurity secretary, floated the idea of an
affluence test to stop benefit payments to
the better-off.
Economist, Jan 1998
Ms Harman said an affluence test could be
used to determine who really needed to
receive benefits such as statutory maternity
pay, which was often available to highearning women even though a fifth of
pregnant women received nothing at all.
Birmingham Post, Jan 1998

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24

AfPak is the usual shorthand way in military

and political circles, especially within
Washington and NATO, to refer to
Afghanistan and Pakistan jointly. The term
began to appear widely in newspapers in
early February 2009, following a speech
given by the US diplomat Richard Holbrooke,
then recently appointed as US special envoy
to the region, to a security conference in
Munich on 8 February. He said:
First of all, we often call the problem AfPak,
as in Afghanistan Pakistan. This is not just an
effort to save eight syllables. It is an attempt
to indicate and imprint in our DNA the fact
that there is one theater of war, straddling an

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25

ill-defined border, the Durand Line, and that

on the western side of that border, NATO and
other forces are able to operate. On the
eastern side, its the sovereign territory of
Pakistan. But it is on the eastern side of this
ill-defined border that the international
terrorist movement is located.
Hampton Roads International Security
Quarterly, 22 Mar. 2009.
The words we often call demonstrate that
the term was not new. It had appeared
previously in print. The Dhaka Courier wrote
on 19 December 2008: Recently, this
phenomenon in the western part of South
Asia has been interestingly termed as an
AfPak problem by an American General.
The earliest appearance I can trace is this:
There is a theater of war, that I would call
AfPak, with two fronts an eastern front
and a western front, said Richard Holbrooke,

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26

the former United States ambassador to the

United Nations and a supporter of Mrs.
Clintons. I believe that we will look back ten
years from now and say that AfPak was even
more important to our national security than
Iraq.
New York Times, 24 Feb. 2008.

The term is now quite widely used.

McChrystals contempt for the inept Richard
Holbrooke the Afpak envoy who hourly

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27

awaits his own dismissal at least bears the

merit of truth.
Belfast Telegraph, 28 Jun. 2010.
Senior administration officials stopped
referring to Americas efforts in Afghanistan
and instead spoke constantly of AfPak, to
emphasize the notion that success in
Afghanistan depended on actions taken in
Pakistan.
Newsweek, 22 Mar. 2010.

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This term has been around for several years

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29

(the earliest examples I can find are from

1999), but has mostly been used by
specialists up till now. It has gained a higher
profile in the past year or so and has been in
the news because the first International
Symposium on Agroterrorism was held
earlier this month. Agroterrorism is the
deliberate introduction of a plant or animal
disease that disrupts agriculture and so
causes widespread economic loss along with
fear and instability. The risk is potentially
high in the USA, which is a major agricultural
country with huge exports, so that the effect
of a terrorist attack might be felt well beyond
its own borders. As yet, no successful attack
by agroterrorists anywhere in the world is
known to have happened. Threats in New
Zealand to spread foot-and-mouth disease
have been blackmail by individuals, not
terrorism. Known cases of food
contamination in various countries, or of

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30

threats to contaminate food, have also proved

to be the work of would-be blackmailers or
disgruntled employees.
Agroterrorism is a largely hypothetical
problem ... The United States has never
experienced an agroterror attack, but some
of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks were known to have been
interested in agriculture and crop dusting.
Aberdeen News, South Dakota, 2 May 2005
Inspections of imported food at the nations
entry ports have declined since the
Department of Homeland Security took over
the job in 2003, a new government report
says. The drop means the government is
reducing its first chance to discover a foreign
disease or an act of agroterrorism before
the food is distributed nationwide.
USA Today, 9 May 2005

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An alcolock, or more formally in Eurobureaucrat-speak a breath alcohol ignition

interlock device (BAIID), is fitted to a cars
ignition to stop a driver from starting it if hes
over the drink-driving limit. The device is
seen as a way to stop people who have been
convicted of driving under the influence from
offending again. Trials have been taking place
in recent years in the US, Australia, Canada,
and Sweden, though not always under this
name. The European Union has been
conducting studies to see if it ought to be
adopted throughout the EU and as a followup to this investigation a trial is to take place
in two areas of the UK shortly. Supporters of
the scheme argue that it helps to prevent
repeat offences.

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32

In Sweden 1,500 Volvo trucks have been

fitted with the Alcolock.
The Times, 4 May 2003
The alcolock requires the driver to take a
breath-test before the ignition can be turned
on and activates a lock if the result is above a
certain level.
The Observer, 29 Feb. 2004

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/lkpp/
This is a type of alcoholic drink designed and
marketed to appeal to young people. The
term is a blend of alcohol with pop in the old
sense of a sweetish, effervescent fruit drink.
Alcopops are an Australian invention which
first came on the market in Britain in the
summer of 1995, but which later spread to
North America, Japan and elsewhere. They
are broadly fruit drinks fortified with alcohol
a more formal name for them is alcoholic
lemonades usually with about 5% of
alcohol by volume, which makes them rather
stronger than most beers. Their makers have
always denied that they are expressly
targeted at underage drinkers, but a survey

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of more than 3,000 young people in Britain a

couple of years ago, at the height of the craze,
found that nearly two-thirds of boys and half
of girls were drinking them by the age of 16,
and some regular drinkers were as young as
11. The government promised action to curb
their promotion to the under-18s, and some
supermarkets stopped selling them in
response to public pressure, but they have in

any case gone out of fashion in Britain, with

young people turning to lager instead.

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Critics of alcopops say they are cynically

packaged to appeal to under-age drinkers;
the industry retorts that it is up to retailers to
uphold the law.
Guardian, May 1997
The item concerned the precipitous decline
in the market for alcopops, the Great Satan of
the campaign against under-age drinking.
After some supermarkets stopping selling
alco-carbs (their name in the industry),
following the terrible press they received,
total sales to May fell by 30 per cent, and by
an even steeper 42 per cent in off-licenses
and supermarkets.
Independent on Sunday, Aug. 1998

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ALLOHISTORY
Other names for this idea are
counterfactualism, virtual history, and
uchronia, though the most common term is
alternative history (alternate history in the
US).
Its a what if approach, which works out
what might have happened if some nodal
event in history had not occurred or had
turned out differently what if Napoleon
had won at Waterloo, for example (it was a
damn close-run thing, you may recall). It has
long been a staple plot type for science
fiction, from Ward Moores Bring the Jubilee,
through Philip K Dicks The Man in the High
Castle and Keith Roberts Pavane, to Orson
Scott Cards Pastwatch and Kim Stanley
Robinsons recent The Years of Rice and Salt.

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In scholarly
historical
circles, what if
speculation has
in the past been
unpopular to
the point of
derision, though
this is now
changing, in
particular in the
field of military
history. The
British historian
Niall Ferguson
wrote a book in 1997 in which he defended
allohistory he argued that if the study of
history is ever to be able to predict future
events on the basis of past ones, it is
important to analyze what might (or should)
have happened, as well as what actually did.

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The prefix allo- is from Greek allos, different,

other, as in allegory and allergy.
In Virtual History, he debates those of his
colleagues who dismiss allohistory as mere
science fiction.
Sydney Morning Herald, March 2002

ALTERMODERNISM
This has appeared, like a dusty fly speck
dotted across the review pages of the more
upmarket British newspapers this month,
because Altermodern is the name given to
Tate Britains Triennial 2009 exhibition. The
term was coined by the exhibitions curator,
the French cultural theorist Nicolas
Bourriaud.
Explanations of it are varied and more than a
little difficult to get ones mind around if one
hasnt already had a firm grounding in

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Barthes, Derrida and their successors. The

exhibition catalogue says that it refers to the
in-progress redefinition of modernity in the
era of globalisation, stressing the experience
of wandering in time, space and medium.
More simply, the curator argues that, just as
modernism was succeeded by postmodernism, the latters era is ending and a
new one is being born, which will be

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expressed in the language of a global culture

and will be an alternative style to both its
predecessors. Hence Altermodern and
Altermodernism.
The trouble with the idea is that the critics
dislike the result. The Observer called the
Triennial dull and came close to saying it was
a waste of space; the Financial Times said it
was confused, aimless and hideous and that
it was drowned in its curators own critical
theory jargon; The Times complained that
even reading the catalogue was ballcrushingly dispiriting. The critic of the
Telegraph noted that too many artists were
allowed to bang on and on without taking us
anywhere in particular or giving us anything
of interest to look at.
The general feeling is that, rather than being
the next big thing in the art world,
Altermodernism isnt going anywhere and

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isnt a term likely to be included in

dictionaries any time soon.
Altermodernism, if I understand it, is
international art that never quite touches
down but keeps on moving through places
and ideas, made by artists connected across
the globe rather than grouped around any
central hub such as New York or London.
Observer, 8 Feb. 2008
It isnt easy to work out what
Altermodernism might be even when its
been explained to you several times. The
description given in the catalogue leaves you
with the distinct suspicion that
Postmodernism has been towed off to a chopshop, given a quick respray and theyre now
trying to sell it back to us as this years
model.
Independent, 13 Feb. 2008

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AMBIENT ADVERTISING
/mbnt dvtaz/
This phrase started to appear in British
media jargon about four years ago, but (to
judge from a recent article in the newspaper
Sunday Business) now seems to be firmly
established as a standard term within the
advertising industry. It refers to almost any
kind of advertising that occurs in some nonstandard medium outside the home.
Examples are messages on the backs of car
park receipts and at the bottom of golf holes,
on hanging straps in railway carriages, on the
handles of supermarket trolleys, and on the
sides of egg cartons (some clever souls have
even exploited modern printing technology
to put advertising messages on the eggs
themselves). It also includes such techniques
as projecting huge images on the sides of
buildings, or slogans on the gas bags of hot

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air balloons. The general term for the objects

that carry the advertising messages is
ambient media; someone using the technique
may be called an ambient advertiser. The
phrase was presumably coined during the
peak of popularity of ambient music, a genre
with electronic textures that create a mood
or atmosphere. As a result of such coinages,
the standard meaning of ambient, relating to
something that is in the immediate
environment, is becoming slightly less
precise.
mbient advertising contains the seeds of its
own destruction, he says, because once the
approach is copied and becomes
commonplace, it ceases to surprise.
Guardian, August 1997

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The genuine impact of ambient media is

difficult to measure as it often takes TV and
press coverage to attract wider public
attention to it.
Sunday Business, August 1998
What is Ambient Advertising?
January 3, 2012 by Ryan Lum

Ambient advertising is about placing ads on

unusual items or in unusual places you wouldnt
normally see an ad. An ambient ad doesnt have to

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45

be placed outside. Ambient advertising can be

found anywhere and everywhere! The key to a
successful ambient media campaign is to choose
the best media format available and combined
with effective message. These kinds of ads often
make someone think about a certain place or thing
differently.
A common trend we see in ambient advertising is
taking an object and making it in larger or smaller
scale. When we see something is either abnormally
large or small, we cant help but to stop and
gander. Its a great way to raise curiosity and get
the person to come and take a closer look.
Scotch-Brite, a 3M group brand called on the
agency Havas Sports & Entertainment, placed a
large version of their product on the side of
a building near the legendary Santiago Bernabeu
stadium in Madrid.

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Ambient Advertising:

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48

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49

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50

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51

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The hottest
research topic in biotechnology is that of
smart drugs, which will enhance memory and
concentration, either to counter the effects of
ageing or to give younger people a
competitive advantage. (These drugs are also
called cognitive enhancers or nootropics, from
the Greek no-os, mind and tropos, a
turning). Though many such drugs already
on the market work through a placebo effect,
a new class called amperkines show promise

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of a genuine pharmacological effect. They

work by enhancing the action of a
neurotransmitter chemical in the brain called
AMPA (which is short for alpha-amino-3hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazole- propionic acid)
which handles virtually all routine
transmissions of electrical impulses across
synapses. The word is formed from the
abbreviation AMPA, plus the Greek word
kinein, to move, and is a trademark of the
University of California at Irvine, where the
initial research was carried out.

The term male menopause was coined in the

late 1940s for a condition whose symptoms

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56

included emotional upsets and

uncharacteristic behaviour but quickly
became something of a joke. The concept has
recently been revived by various specialists,
who call it the andropause, a word coined
using the Greek prefix andro-, man, plus
pause, also from Greek, which here means
cessation; stop, as it does not only in
menopause but also in some technical terms
such as tropopause or magnetopause. A
better-established related term in medicine,
dating from the early seventies, is andrology,
the study of male reproductive disorders. The
principal symptoms of
the andropause are
loss of libido, decline
of memory, increased
fatigue and risk of
osteoporosis, which
can occur at any age
from about 30

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onwards, but are most common about 50 and

which are associated with lowered levels of
testosterone. Some specialists argue this is a
real condition, often with devastating
consequences for the sufferer, but which can
be treated by appropriate synthetic sex
hormones. The adjective is andropausal.
Another term sometimes seen is viropause.

ANGIOGENESIS INHIBITOR
Angiogenesis is the medical term for the
production of new blood vessels (from Greek
angeion, a vessel), so an angiogenesis
inhibitor is one that stops them forming.
Theyve been studied in the laboratory for
many years in the hope that one will be found
that chokes off the blood supply to cancers in
the body and so makes them shrink. A great
advantage of such drugs is that they are likely
to be much less toxic than the existing
chemotherapy agents. The first drug to treat

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58

a cancer by this means has recently been

approved by the US Food and Drug
Administration. It is now suggested that they
might also be useful in treating obesity, since
the stores of fat in the body are served by
active blood supplies. However, fears have
been expressed that they might damage
immune reactions in the body and they are a
long way from being a practical therapy for
this purpose.
The irony, says Li, is that many of us already
take angiogenesis inhibitors every day
without even knowing it, and they could be
protecting us from cancer and keeping us
thin into the bargain. A long list of dietary
factors strongly inhibit blood vessel growth,
among them resveratrol in red wine, as well
as genistein in soya, catechins in green tea
and brassinin in Chinese cabbage.
New Scientist, 10 Apr. 2004

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Novartis ... Bayer, and Pfizer are among the

big companies with angiogenesis inhibitors
in final testing for colon, kidney, and
gastrointestinal cancers, among others.
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, 26
Feb. 2004

ANORAKISH
Those
choosing to
wear that
eminently
practical
coldweather
garment
the anorak
have suffered much opprobrium in Britain in
the past couple of decades. It began with

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trainspotting, a specialised hobby involving

much standing at the end of draughty station
platforms noting down the numbers of
passing engines. Those choosing this hobby
were frequently ridiculed as being obsessive
about trivia and as having poor social skills.
Since trainspotters often wore anoraks, the
word came to be a pejorative term describing
such a person. From about the late eighties, it
has come to refer to any person (almost
always male) with an obsessive or
excessively enthusiastic interest, particularly
one involving the collection of supposedly
trivial information or ephemera, and is often
applied to someone immersed in some
technological field, particularly computers or
the Internet. The adjective anorakish has
developed from this, as has the group noun
anorakdom, the supposed disease anoraksia
and the facetious word for a fear of all things
techie, anoraknophobia.

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APOPTOSIS

61

/pptss/

The process by which cells naturally selfdestruct in the body, also known as
programmed cell death. An understanding of
the mechanisms by which cells are instructed
to remain alive or die has profound
implications for finding cures for cancerous
conditions and auto-immune diseases.
Recently researchers have found the genes
which cause cell death in some simple
organisms and New Scientist has reported on
research which shows how the drug cisplatin
cures testicular cancer by blocking repair
mechanisms that prevent apoptosis. It is also
becoming clear that the lifetime of a cell is
linked to the presence of lengths of genetic
material called telomeres, a short section of
which is lost each time a cell divides.
Apoptosis is formed from the Greek prefix
apo-, off, from, away; at an extreme, which

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turns up in words like apocalypse and

apogee; this is linked to the Greek ptosis, a
falling in or upon (something) which
appears as a word by itself in medical
language for a prolapse and in a few other
rather rare compounds, including Samuel
Beckets panpygoptosis for Ducks disease.

62

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APPROXIMEETING

This term was coined by the British academic

Dr Sadie Plant in a report, On The Mobile,
which she wrote for Motorola in 2001 about
the effect that the widespread use of mobile
telephones was having on social and
individual life around the world. In the report
she coined a number of terms to describe
aspects of such use, of which this one has
gained some limited currency.

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She set out the context like this: Loose

arrangements can be made in the knowledge
that they can be firmed up at a later stage;
people can be forewarned about late or early
arrivals; meetings can be progressively
refined. But this kind of flexibility we can
call it approximeeting can also engender a
new sense of insecurity. Everything is virtual
until the parties and the places come together
to make it real.
This has now become a common way for
young people in particular to meet and
socialise and it reflects a small but significant
shift in social behaviour thats due entirely to
the ubiquity of mobiles.
More and more with cellphone users, those
plans are what British cultural studies
professor Sadie Plant calls approximeeting,
where a group of friends agree to head to a
general location (say, a mall) and then

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coordinate exactly where to meet by

cellphone as everyone starts showing up.
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 7
Mar. 2004
The large groups of teenagers we see on the
square, he says, will have converged here by
making shifting arrangements to meet via
mobile phone so-called approximeeting.
Guardian, 26 Nov. 2005

approximeeting
pp. Getting together with one or more
people by first arranging an approximate
time or place and then firming up the
details later on, usually via cell phone.
approximeet v.

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Example Citations:
Marty Cooper, known as the "father of the
cellphone" for his work in developing the
first mobile phones at Motorola, recalls that
he only became aware of the device's full
potential as a result of actually using it. His
secretary called him on his prototype mobile
phone as he was getting into his car to drive
to a meeting to say that it had been
cancelledthus saving him from a wasted
journey. But explaining the benefits of being
able to change plans on the fly to potential
customers was difficult, he says, so the first
phones were marketed instead on the basis
that they could make people more
productive, by allowing them to work while
on the move. But today the idea of
"approximeeting"arranging to meet
someone without making firm plans about
time or place, and then finalising details via
mobile phone while out and aboutis

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commonplace.

"The phone of the future," The Economist, December 2,

2006

The bus arrives in Trafalgar Square, and

Mitchell is immediately impressed at how
wirelessness has encouraged a more flexible
use of the space. The large groups of
teenagers we see on the square, he says, will
have converged here by making shifting
arrangements to meet via mobile phone
so-called approximeeting.
James Harkin, "Cyborg city," The Guardian, November
26, 2005

First Use:
Loose arrangements can be made in the
knowledge that they can be firmed up at a
later stage; people can be forewarned about
late or early arrivals; arrangements to meet
can be progressively refined. But this kind of
flexibility we can call it approximeeting

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can also engender a new sense of

insecurity. Everything is virtual until the
parties, the places and the moments come
together to make it real. In this context the
person without a phone becomes something
of a liability.
Sadie Plant, "On the mobile: The effects of
mobile telephones on social and individual
life," Motorola Inc, October 28, 2001
Notes:
Thanks to John Mitchell for passing along this
word.

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Demonstrations and protests in countries in

North Africa and the Middle East in 2011
have led to this term being widely used. As a
metaphor for change through popular
uprisings, it has also been applied to
countries not part of the Arab world.
It was used first for the uprisings that led to
changes of regime in Tunisia and Egypt, as a
term of hope that a domino process might

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lead to similar changes elsewhere. Armed

retaliation by the governments of Libya,
Bahrain and Syria against their own
populations has since tarnished that hope.
The term was coined early in 2005 in
reference to unrest in Egypt, Syria and
Lebanon, probably as a play on Prague spring,
the 1968 democratic uprising in Communist
Czechoslovakia. In turn, that echoes
springtime of the peoples and spring of nations
(German Vlkerfrhling and French
printemps des peuples) that historians use as
shorthand for the revolutions of 1848 in
Europe. Many commentators have noticed
parallels between the events of 2011 and
those of 1848.
The Arab Spring, the great awakening, 2011s
equivalent of the fall of communism in 1989,
is spreading across North Africa and the

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Middle East like water pouring from a broken

dam.
The Times, 19 Feb. 2011.
The frightening spiral of violence in Syria and
the determination of its ruler, Bashar Assad,
to crush peaceful opposition are a bleak
reminder of how far the Arab spring still has
to go before summer arrives and how
easily the regions hopeful mood could turn
wintry again.
The Economist, 30 Apr. 2011.

ARCHAEOGENETICS
The newish field of Archaeogenetics studies
DNA recovered from archaeological sites,
cultivated plants, domesticated animals, or
from living humans. Through such analysis it
has become possible to say useful things

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about the way we have migrated about our

planet and altered our environment.
The archaeologist Colin Renfrew coined it in
2000 in a book that he edited with Katie
Boyle: Archaeogenetics: DNA and the
population prehistory of Europe. The word
itself is still largely the preserve of academic
specialists, but the ideas behind it have had
masses of attention in the press.
Work with human DNA is sometimes instead
called genetic genealogy or historical genetics.
Some of our DNA can remain unchanged for
generations and can give clues about our
origins. Men in Orkney have a Y chromosome
similar to those of modern Scandinavians,
which suggests that the Vikings who
colonised the island may have wiped out all
the male members of its previous Pictish
population. One gene often gives its owners
red hair and was common among ancient

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Britons; invasions by non-redheads later

pushed them to the margins, which is why
that colouring is especially common among
Scots and Irish.
The idea that through analysis of ones DNA it
may be possible to deduce something
interesting about ones ancient family history
is intriguing to anyone who has ever had an
urge to find out who they are by investigating
their forebears.
There is one area of human research which
benefits from their continued existence:
archaeogenetics. It refers to the application
of molecular genetics to the study of the
human past.
Western Mail, Cardiff, 25 Feb. 2006
Such a revelation demonstrates the power of
archaeogenetics ... in which modern Britons

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explore their Celtic, Viking and Anglo-Saxon

origins.
Observer, 31 Dec. 2006

ARCHAEON

Scientists investigating smokers, vents on the

ocean floor which spew hot seawater rich in
dissolved minerals, were startled to discover
in the early eighties that they were home for
bacteria-like organisms. They are almost the
only living things on Earth which survive
independently of heat and light from the Sun
and thrive at temperatures near the boiling

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point of water, which would kill any other

organism. These bacteria were at first called
archaebacteria (from the Greek archaeos,
ancient), but more recently the term
archaeon (plural archaea; also spelled
archeon and archea) has come into use,
recognising their unique place in evolution as
a third type of organism, separate from the
eucaryotes and bacteria. The archaea are
believed to be living fossils surviving from a
time when the Earth had little oxygen in its
atmosphere. Other examples have been
found in sewage sludge, rubbish tips and in
cracks in rocks deep in the earth. The
complete genome of one such has just been
sequenced.

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AREOLOGIST
The equivalent for Mars of a geologist. The
word is formed from the prefix areo-, derived
from the name of the Greek god of war, Ares,
plus the suffix -ologist. It is a term very much
of the moment, following the muchpublicised claim earlier this year that
primordial fossils have survived in an
Antarctic meteorite that originated in the Red
Planet, and because large amounts of
investigative hardware are to be thrown at
Mars in the next ten years (or, in the case of a
recent unfortunate Russian rocket, not). So it
is surprising to discover that the related term

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areology is first attested by the Oxford

English Dictionary in 1881, even before H G
Wells had entertained an earlier generation
with descriptions of ravaging Martians. Until
it turned up in the Economist the other week,
almost the only sightings of areologist have
been in science-fiction works, notably the
Mars trilogy of Kim Stanley Robinson, in
which he creates a number of other
neologisms in areo-, including areophyte,
areosynchronous and areobotany.

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Since the 1950s, it has been the goal of

workers in the field of artificial intelligence to
create an autonomous thinking computer.
This aim has always been ten years in the
future, its attainment retreating as fast as we
approached it. Many gave up hope of ever
seeing it; indeed the very term artificial
intelligence has become a joke in some
circles. More recent projects, such as the
Japanese drive to develop a Fifth Generation
computer, have also failed to meet their
ultimate aims. But the idea of a machine that

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79

can match or surpass the human brain in its

ability to reason has recently resurfaced,
along with a debate on the ethics of actually
building one. Part of the resurgence in
interest can be attributed to Sonys toy dog
Aibo, shortly to be joined by Poo-Chi from
Sega.
Artilect has started to be used as a term for
devices that exhibit autonomous learning
behaviour, a blend from artificial intellect. It
was apparently coined by Professor Hugo de
Garis, head of the Brain Builder Group at the
Advanced Telecommunications Research
Institute in Kyoto, Japan. Prof de Garis, who
calls himself an intelligist (another word he
seems to have invented), argues that by 2050
we shall indeed have computers of
superhuman intelligence. At the moment, hes
working on Robokitten, a device with the
intelligence level of a kitten, a big step in
computer terms, but hardly threatening to

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humanitys dominance as yet well, not till

it gets hung up on the curtains ...
Asteroid-sized, self-assembling, nanoteched,
one bit per atom, reversible, heatless, 3D,
quantum-computing artilects could have
intelligences literally trillions of trillions of
trillions of times the human level.
Independent, Nov. 1999
Humanity will have to make a choice about
whether we want to build these artilects or
not, says De Garis, who sees two factions
arising one for and one against the
artilects.
Daily Telegraph, Dec. 1999

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ASIAN BROWN CLOUD

As though we didnt have enough to worry

about weather-wise, what with global
warming, the ozone hole, and the new El Nio
season, UN scientists have now identified this
new threat to the worlds climate.
It is a vast cloud of smog three kilometres
deep, enveloping the whole of southern Asia

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a soup of industrial pollutants, carbon

monoxide from vehicle exhausts and
particles of soot from burning forests and
millions of rural cooking fires. It blocks 15%
of sunlight, which reduces crop yields. It also
creates acid rain, leads to respiratory
illnesses, reduces rainfall and causes extreme
weather events. Because the cloud is capable
of being dispersed rapidly around the world,
it may affect a much wider area than just
Asia.
The term Asian Brown Cloud seems to have
been around for a couple of years in scientific
circles, but came to prominence in August
2002 in a report prepared by climatologists
at the UN Environment Programme in
preparation for the World Summit on
Sustainable Development in Johannesburg
that month. The good news, they say, is that
unlike other causes of pollution and climate

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change, this one is curable if Asians can shift

to more efficient ways of burning fuels.
The Asian Brown Cloud, a 2-mile-thick
blanket of pollution over South Asia, may be
causing the premature deaths of half a
million people in India each year, deadly
flooding in some areas and drought in others,
a new U.N.-sponsored study indicates.
Los Angeles Times, Aug. 2002
A UN-backed study released on Friday said
the Asian Brown Cloud a vast haze of
pollution stretching across South Asia is
damaging agriculture, modifying rainfall
patterns and endangering the population.
Agence France Presse, Aug. 2002

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ASYLO

British refugee support groups are deeply

disturbed about what they see as the
governments oppressive attitude towards
asylum seekers. For example, theyre
concerned by the recent decision to disperse
refugees away from the south east of the
country, where most of them arrive. Refugee

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groups argue also that paying the larger part

of refugees small welfare benefits in
vouchers rather than cash has made their
plight even worse than it would otherwise be.
This has been fuelled by the discovery that
the Home Office (the government
department responsible for asylum seekers)
is refusing to permit shops to give change in
cash when the full value of food vouchers has
not been spent, so depriving claimants of a
part even of what little they have. The
refugee groups have sarcastically coined
asylo short for asylum as the name for
what they see as the debased currency
represented by the vouchers.
A new currency will soon start changing
hands in the nations shops and
supermarkets. The currency, which refugee
groups have dubbed the asylo, is a voucher
system about to be introduced by the Home
Office as a means of giving cashless refugees

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the opportunity to obtain food and basic

toiletries.
Independent, Feb. 1999
The scheme has been attacked by critics as
inventing a new currency, the asylo, simply
to avoid paying welfare benefits direct to
asylum seekers.
Guardian, Mar. 2000

Much of western military

thinking has traditionally assumed that
conflicts will involve conventional warfare
against an opponent of comparable might,
using similar weapons on a known
battlefield.
However, military experts have been pointing

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out for years that resistance forces in places

like Chechnya have been conducting a very
different kind of war, in which defenders
fight on their own terms, not those of the
enemy petrol bombs against tanks, for
example. This has been given the name of
asymmetrical warfare by counter-terrorism
experts, a term that appears to date from the
early 1990s. In it, a relatively small and
lightly equipped force attacks points of
weakness in an otherwise stronger opponent
by unorthodox means. All guerrilla activity,
especially urban terrorism, falls within this
definition.
The attacks on the US on 11 September are a
textbook example and the term has had wide
coverage since. Some writers extend the idea
to any military situation in which a
technically weaker opponent is able to gain
an advantage through relatively simple
means. An obvious example is the landmine

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cheap and easy to distribute, but difficult

to counter. Another example sometimes
given is anti-satellite attacks, in which it is
much easier and cheaper to knock out spacebased weapons than to put them in place to
start with.
Welcome to the world of asymmetrical
warfare, a place high on the anxiety list of
military planners. In the asymmetrical realm,
military experts say, a small band of
commandos might devastate the United
States and leave no clue about who ordered
the attack.
New York Times, Feb. 2001
In this asymmetrical warfare, the weak
terrorist attacker has the advantages of
selectivity and surprise; the powerful
defender must strive to prevent attacks on
many fronts.
Newsday, Sep. 2001

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AUXETIC
Common sense
says that when
you stretch a
substance, say
a piece of
rubber, it
becomes
longer in the
direction of the
pull but
thinner in the transverse directions. But
there are a very few substances such that
when you pull on them they actually increase
in cross-section. These oddities are said to be
auxetic. The word in this sense is believed to
have been coined by Professor Ken Evans of
Exeter University in an article in Nature in
1991. Such auxetic substances, which now

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include certain ceramics and polymers, have

potential as molecular sieves and filters, as
cushioning (for example, inside crash
helmets), and possibly other uses still being
investigated. The word itself is far from new.
It has been used since medieval times as a
term in rhetoric in which repetitive language
is used to amplify or magnify a statement. In
plant physiology, auxetic substances tend to
increase cell growth without cell division; the
related term auxin refers to a substance that
does this, also called a plant hormone. All
these terms stem from the Greek word
meaning increase; grow. The noun is
auxesis.

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BANGALORED
This word has been
discussed recently in
the Bangkok Post,
the Times of India
and other Asian
newspapers. A
search suggests it
has been in use in
the USA for about
the past year but is
only now beginning
to appear in print.

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It refers to people who have been laid off

from a multinational because their job has
been moved to India a business practice
designed to save money that is arousing
passions in some countries, especially Britain
and the United States. Bangalore is cited in
particular because of its reputation in the
USA as a high-tech city, the Indian equivalent
of Silicon Valley, that has benefited
significantly from such outsourcing. When
this piece first appeared, in the newsletter,
many subscribers immediately connected it
with the Bangalore torpedo, a tube packed
with explosive used by troops for blowing up
wire entanglements, which got its name
because it was invented in that city. I had
thought that the term, which is first recorded
in 1913 and was common in both world wars,
was now so rare among the public at large
that it could not be an influence on the new
term. But Im told that the phrase was used in

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the recent film Saving Private Ryan, which

conceivably might have brought it to mind.
One Web site is selling T-shirts
with the slogan Dont Get
Bangalored as a way of telling
people about the issue. Whats
odd about the term, from the
point of view of language, is
that its unusual for a place name to become a
verb, though we may remember Sodom from
the Bible and Shanghaied has been known
since about 1870, at first in the sense of
kidnapping a person to make up the crew
numbers on a ship, but now more generally
to be forced into doing something against
ones will.
I am a software developer who is about to be
Bangalored. Fine. I am not going to pout
about it. The media write that we are in a
global economy, so deal with it.

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Electronic Engineering Times, Apr. 2004

It may not be entirely correct for US
dictionaries to verbalise outsourcing to India
as Bangalored! With Indias capital city also
attracting call centres ... the Americans could
perhaps also talk in terms of their jobs being
Delhi-ted.
Economic Times (India), 24 July 2004
BEANPOLE FAMILY
Historically, families have usually had more
children than parents, resulting in family
trees that looked like pyramids. In recent
years, though, especially in countries like
Britain and the US, the number of children
per generation has steadily gone down, while
life span has increased. This has led to a
shape of family tree that some researchers
have likened to a beanpole tall and thin,

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with few people in each generation. The term

beanpole family has been around in the
academic literature at least since 1987, but it
rarely appears elsewhere. A recent British
report has brought it to wider public notice,
at least in the UK. Some researchers find it
too slangy and prefer the jargon term
verticalised to describe such families.
Whatever term you prefer, specialists are
sure that the demographic shift is having a

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big effect on personal relationships within

the family and (for example) the role of
grandparents.
The rising divorce rate partly explains the
growth of the beanpole family. With almost
one in two marriages ending in divorce, many
adults have at least two families, each with a
single child.
Observer, May 2002
Noting the rising number of so-called
beanpole families in Britain (families with
only one child), the report warns that a child
without siblings is starved of the
companionship of family members of their
own age ... [leading to] greater social
isolation, with teenagers adopting a more
selfish attitude to life.
Guardian, June 2002

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BENIDORM LEAVE

In a speech to the charity Age Concern on 24

October 2006, David Cameron, the leader of
the British Conservative Party, used this
phrase in reference to the employment
policies of the supermarket chain Asda
(owned by the US company WalMart).
Benidorm leave is a period of up to three
months unpaid leave between January and
March that doesnt affect an individuals
employment history.

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The term is also used by the retailer B&Q and

some other large organisations and refers to
the Spanish resort on the Mediterranean,
which is popular among many British
holidaymakers and to which it seems it is
assumed older staff may wish to decamp
during the coldest months of the British
winter.
The company has designed a number of eyecatching leave packages in recent years,
ranging from IVF leave for people having
fertility treatment, to Benidorm leave for
older workers wanting to spend time in the
winter sun.
Western Mail, 26 Apr. 2006

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BIG BANG II
This happened on Monday 20 October 1997,
on which day the London Stock Exchange
introduced a new computerised dealing
system. The term is derived firstly from the
original financial Big Bang of 11 years earlier,
when the Stock Market was deregulated and
a new electronic dealing system called SEAQ
(Stock Exchange Automatic Quotation
System) was introduced. Both terms are
punning references to the cosmological Big
Bang because of the fundamental changes
that deregulation has brought to the
traditional structure of share trading in the
City. The new system, which the Chancellor of
the Exchequer formally inaugurated, takes
electronic trading a step further by
implementing an order-driven approach,
automatically matching buying and selling
orders for shares of the 100 largest firms,

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bringing Londons dealing systems in line

with others around the world. For these
shares it replaces the older market-driven
system operated by market makers who have
been setting prices since the first Big Bang. If
it works well it may eventually be extended
to all shares.

This is a rather broad term that can refer to

any kind of art that has been inspired by
biological mechanisms or which makes use of
biological concepts.

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These include pictorial art based on aspects

of nature or medical illustrations, software
that turns the genetic code into luminous,
scientifically accurate pictures, and robotic
sculptures operated by fish. The creation by
Eduardo Kac and others of transgenic
bioartistic plants and animals using a
jellyfish gene that makes them glow in the
dark has provoked controversy because it
raises ethical issues of a type that artists are
unused to facing.
The field has been in the news recently
through the prosecution of Steven Kurtz, who
used a biological laboratory at his home to
make artistic works based on bacteria and
DNA; however, he denies his work has any
connection with the species-modification end
of the bioart spectrum, which one writer has
called Frankensteinian aberrations.

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As biotechnology advances and bioart grows

several American universities are
establishing centers for the art it will
undoubtedly become more difficult to tell
where one leaves off and the other begins.
the International Herald Tribune, 4 Jul.
2005
Ionat Zurr, the new courses academic coordinator, says other higher education
institutions have theoretical courses on
bioart, but the UWA [University of Western
Australia] is believed to be the first to offer
hands-on laboratory work in the field. The
universitys ethics committees will have to
approve students projects, as they will
involve the manipulation of biological life to
create living artworks.
Australasian Business Intelligence, 27 Sep.
2005

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Though the term bioinformatics has been

around for
something over
a decade and a
quick AltaVista
search turned
up more than
400,000 hits
for the word, it
has not yet
reached any
dictionary that
I know of. Thats because, though it is a field
with a high public profile, it is also a field
which is still rapidly developing, and one that
is as yet ill-defined. You can tell that by the
way people are still arguing about what it
covers. Some, such as the National Institutes
for Health in the US, take it to be a general
term for any use of computers to handle
biological information in a wide variety of

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fields, including medicine. But it has been

applied much more tightly in recent years to
the use of computers to organise and
interpret the vast amount of data that is
coming out of the Human Genome Project.
Yet a third definition says it is the science of
developing computer databases and
algorithms for the purpose of speeding up
and helping biological research (which
includes the second definition, but is a good
deal broader). Whatever its about, someone
who does it is called a bioinformaticist, less
commonly a bioinformatician.
Although analysts estimate that
bioinformatics will grow into a $2 billion
industry in the next five years, most IT
companies believe the payoffs will be much
higher.
Business Week, Apr. 2001

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Susan Baker, workforce director at the

Northern Virginia Technology Council, says
many companies are turning to areas such as
bioinformatics, which marries technology
with biology.
Washington Post, Apr. 2001
/banven/
This term seems to be
new, but has recently
been popularised
through a book by Chris
Bright of the
Worldwatch Institute in
Washington, DC, called Life Out of Bounds,
Bio-invasion in a Borderless World. He
describes how the traditional geographical
barriers between species have broken down
as a result of human activity. Plants and
animals are transported on purpose or by
accident all around the world by carriage on

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ships and aircraft. Ecosystems that have been

isolated for millions of years are being
invaded by exotic species, with catastrophic
effects. The Everglades are being taken over
by the Australian melaleuca tree, the Asian
tiger mosquito is greatly expanding its range,
bringing dengue fever and other diseases, the
Amazonian water hyacinth has spread along
the margins of Lake Victoria, where it
impedes fishing, and Leidys comb jelly has
been introduced to the Black Sea, where it
has caused the collapse of the ecosystem. The
consequences of bioinvasions are sometimes
called biopollution. The term may be new, but
the concept has been well understood among
ecologists for many years; some are even
predicting that in a century or so all we shall
have left are the versatile and aggressive
species.

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Because it brings the intelligence of evolution

to bear, bioinvasion is a kind of smart
pollution.
AmeriScan, Oct. 1998
In 1993, for example, the Office of
Technology Assessment estimated the
economic cost of 79 major bioinvasions at
$97 billion.
New Scientist, Nov. 1998

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/bmmtks/
Go to the ant, thou sluggard the proverb
advises, and scientists today are increasingly
searching out interesting animals and plants
to gain design insights that will help them
create novel materials and compounds. This
new field of biomimetics has several facets to
it. Some workers mimic natural methods of
manufacture of chemical compounds to

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create new ones (a waterproof glue has been

developed by studying the natural adhesive
produced by molluscs; current research is
trying to create a pollution-free water-based
paint by mimicking the way insects wings
grow and dry). Others imitate mechanisms
found in nature (Velcro is said to have been
created as a copy of the hooks in natural
burrs; new strong but light materials have
come from studying the structure of bone).
Yet others learn new principles from, say, the
flocking behaviour of birds, or the emergent
behaviour of bees and ants. The aim is to
study the natural processes as a starting
point, gain insights and then improve on their
performance, which is often slow or
susceptible to extremes of temperature.

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BIOMUSICOLOGY

Most of us are involved daily with music in

some form, whether we make it ourselves,
hear others making it, or are invigorated or
oppressed according to taste by its
mechanical reproduction in public places. But
nobody knows why the human species is in
general so attached to music or why it should
be such a powerful invoker of mood and
memory. Researchers have in various ways
been searching for answers to these
questions for many years, but it is only

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recently that they have begun to regard their

work as a sub-discipline within the study of
music which they have named biomusicology.
For example, the Foundation for
Biomusicology and Acoustic Ethology was
established in Sweden only two years ago.
Biomusicologists search for the origins of
music in human beings, try to tease out what
evolutionary advantage it gave us, study the
many kinds of music made by societies
world-wide, investigate the ways human
communities use music in ritual and in their
cultural and social lives, and research how
music is perceived in the human brain. It is
one of the most cross-disciplinary of topics,
and one that is beginning to show some
results, as delegates heard during the first
international workshop on biomusicology
held in Italy in May this year.

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This term was popularised by the Harvard

biologist Edward O
Wilson in 1984 as the
title of a book
(Biophilia: The Human
Bond with Other
Species). To him it
seemed
incontrovertible that
we human beings have
an innate sensitivity to and need for other
living things, because we have coexisted in
the closest relationship with the natural
world for so many millennia. He defined
biophilia as the connections that human
beings subconsciously seek with the rest of
life, and argued that they are determined by
a biological need. There may seem to be a
smidgen or two of pantheistic tree-hugging
environmentalism about the idea (which can
hardly be said to be original), but advocates

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of an emotional, even a spiritual, dimension

to our relationship with nature point, for
example, to studies that show patients
recover quicker if they are exposed to
greenery, even pictures of greenery, rather
than a purely artificial environment. The
concept has been taken up by others,
especially Stephen Kellert and Lynn Margulis,
and has links with the Gaia Hypothesis that
argues that Earths ecosystems form a single
unit of which the human species is one
element. Its reverse is biophobia.

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BIOPIRACY

114

/baprsi/

Some developing
countries are
unhappy about the
activities of
biotechnology firms
from industrialised
countries, whom they
claim are searching
out plants that give
improved crop yields or which contain
substances of pharmaceutical value. This
process, called bioprospecting, is not
necessarily a problem. The complaints arise
when firms prospect without permission or
expropriate the results of their investigations
without payment or acknowledgement.
There have been a series of disputes and
accusations, for example against attempts in
1997 by an Australian governmental agency

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to patent a chickpea obtained from an

international gene bank. The Brazilian
government is debating a law to control
companies prospecting for useful genetic
material in the Amazonian rainforests. The
word, as a reflection of the subject to which it
relates, is an emotive one, and which is
sometimes employed wildly. It is beginning
to be used in contexts outside the developing
world, for instance in a
recent news story
concerning an
agreement by a
bioprospecting company
with the US National
Park Service in
Yellowstone.

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Science fiction may seem like a monolithic

genre to outsiders, but experts in the field
have long distinguished a variety of subdivisions. Perhaps the most famous of these
is the cyberpunk school of the eighties and
nineties, an umbrella term for stories of a
dystopian and dreary future with
governmental control enforced by
information technology and in which
individuals are frequently augmented by
mechanical or electronic means. The cyberpart of the name derives from cybernetics

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(and its use here was a key stage in the taking

up to extremes of that prefix in the early and
mid nineties); the punk part derives from
rock music, and refers to young people who
are aggressive, alienated and offensive to
convention. In the early nineties there grew
up biopunk, a derivative sub-genre building
not on IT but on biology, the other
dominating scientific field of the end of the
twentieth century. Individuals are enhanced
not by mechanical means, but by genetic
manipulation of their very chromosomes.
Perhaps the most characteristic writer in this
field is Paul Di Filippo, though he called his
collection of such stories ribofunk, with the
first element being taken from the full name
of RNA, ribonucleic acid. Neither name has
had the impact of cyberpunk and probably
never will.

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The drug industry has been using this word

for several years, but it is only now beginning
to appear more widely, in part as a result of
the recent approval of the first drug of its
type by the European Commission, as well as
through attempts to create a regulatory
framework for them in the US Congress.
A class of drugs that has become available in
the past two decades is made by
biotechnological processes using living
materials such as proteins and enzymes,
often genetically engineered and grown in
cell cultures. The industry calls them
biopharmaceuticals, biologics, and
biotechnology drugs.

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Biosimilars are generic, non-proprietary,

versions of such drugs. Another name for
them is generic biologics. They include
insulin, interferon and human growth
hormone. Interest in them is growing
because patents on the first generation of
biologics are expiring.
A complication is that because theyre made
using living processes, biologics vary
somewhat in nature and effectiveness from
batch to batch and they need to be tested in a
different way to drugs that have been created
by non-living conventional chemical
processes. Biosimilars are closely related to
the branded drugs that theyre designed to
replace but theyre not necessarily identical
hence the name.
U.S. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D., Calif.) plans
to introduce legislation in the current session
of Congress this fall to create a regulatory

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framework to approve biosimilar, or

generic biologic drugs.
Philadelphia Inquirer, 19 Sep. 2006
Generics companies are also keen to get into
this area, and have started to branch out into
biosimilars generic versions of biotech
drugs.
Guardian, 26 Sep. 2006

This word has two rather different meanings

in modern medicine.
One refers to the use of living organisms, in
particular fly larvae, to clean and disinfect
wounds. If you pick the right sort
(greenbottle larvae are best), they eat the

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dead and decaying flesh but leave the healthy

stuff alone. They can even help new tissue
grow, perhaps by introducing natural
antibiotics into the wound. The technique is
ancient, but has been rediscovered in recent
times, and is proving very helpful in cases
where the injured person is infected with
bugs resistant to antibiotics. Surgeons
invented biosurgery for it to soften its mental
shudder factor. Other names are larval
therapy and maggot therapy (sometimes
abbreviated to MT). The term first begins to
appear widely in this sense in the middle
1990s, though it is recorded at least as far
back as 1969.
A second sense has grown up in parallel with
it to mean surgical techniques that employ a
range of natural or manmade materials.
Biomaterials are biologically compatible
glues to seal surgical incisions, lubricants to
help joint movement, and support on which

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living tissue is grown or shaped, but the term

also covers biocompatible materials such as
hip replacements and artificial pacemakers. It
also includes biotherapeutic techniques such
as gene and cellular therapies. This sense is
widespread in the medical literature but
rarely reaches general publications except as
part of the name of companies active in the
field.
Despite its effectiveness, maggot therapy
or biosurgery to the squeamish must
overcome the yuck factor with physicians
to gain widespread acceptance. In my
experience, patients are very trusting. The
yuck factor is with practitioners, Ms. Jones
said.
Internal Medicine News, 1 Feb. 2005
In addition to these two major segments
which are the largest within the space, we
also are seeing a nice fast-growing business

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within our biosurgery business. Today it is

about a $300 million business primarily
focused in wound healing and tissue sealing
applications of various biosurgical products.
Fair Disclosure Wire, 10 Jan. 2007

BIRTISM
A common usage in some of the upmarket
broadsheets in Britain, the term Birtism and
its associated adjective Birtist relate to the
management style and policies of the
Director-General of the BBC, John Birt. Whilst
he has done much to slim down the
organisation, his innovations are regarded by
some as having added their own layers of
bureaucracy through a system which has
created a market economy for producers,
because every activity in every department

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now has to be costed and charged to users.

His most recent proposal, to bring World
Service news within domestic departments to
reduce costs, has provoked protest from
broadcasters and listeners world-wide, afraid
that the World Service will lose some of its
cherished objectivity and independence. The
scheme was approved by the BBCs
Governors in October 1996, subject to some
safeguards insisted upon by the Foreign
Office, which pays for the Overseas Services.

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A black swan event is related to the butterfly

effect.
The latter was coined by the American
mathematician and meteorologist Edward
Lorenz in 1973 as a way to illustrate the
chaotic nature of weather and the huge
difficulties of modelling it on computers. A
tiny change in the initial conditions can often
lead to dramatically different outcomes. His
example was of a butterfly that fluttered its
wings in Brazil, setting off a tornado in Texas.

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The phrase black swan gained some

popularity in 2008 because of the book The
Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly
Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a
former market trader. The phrase was not
new: Taleb had introduced it in his work of
2001, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role
of Chance in the Markets and in Life and a few
appearances are known before 2008, such as
in Maggie Mahars book of 2003, Bull!: A
History of the Boom, 19821999.

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Taleb argued that the stock market is as

unpredictable as any chaotic system and that
people who thought they could forecast it on
the basis of past trends were fooling
themselves. This was considered a contrarian
view in 2007, but recent events have
convinced many doubters of its truth. For
Taleb, a black swan is an unpredicted and
unpredictable event that resembles the
finding of black swans in Australia by the
seventeenth-century Dutch explorer Willem
de Vlamingh. It was taken for granted by
Europeans at the time that all swans were
white, so his finding could not have been
expected and was outside previous
experience.
This idea of a black swan confounding
expectations builds on earlier uses of a
similar idea. It was used by Karl Popper to
illustrate his argument that it was impossible
to prove a scientific theory, only falsify it. He

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gave the assertion that all swans are white

as a theory that can never be absolutely
proved, as we would need to check every
swan in existence to establish its truth; on
the other hand, you only need to see one
black swan to disprove it.
The term black swan has been taken up in
financial circles and now appears more
widely. Though it mainly refers to the recent
global financial turmoil, it is also used for
unexpected happenings the closure of the
London Stock Exchange for most of 10
September 2008 due to a computer failure
was called a black-swan event at the time.
Either the financial world as we know it is
coming to an end or its not! Well only
know in hindsight. But unless this is the
proverbial black swan the unimaginable
and unique event that annihilates capitalism
this panic will subside.

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Chicago Sun-Times, 10 Oct. 2008

The credit crunch and banking crisis
definitely qualifies as a black swan. No one
saw it coming and no one knows how it is
going to end. All we know is that it is messy.
The Press, New Zealand, 8 Oct. 2008

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BLACK-WATER RAFTING
/blk wt rft/
This is another of those curious activities to
come out of New Zealand, often called
extreme sports, though they are frequently
not particularly extreme. It sounds like a
relative of the older and better-known whitewater rafting, in which small groups shoot
rapids in fast-flowing rivers, though more

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usually in inflatable dinghies rather than on

rafts. Black-water rafting is even more of a
misnomer. Its called that because it takes
place on underground streams in the dark.
Participants are dressed in wet suits and
fitted with inflated inner tubes, which both
buffer wearers against sudden upsets on
slippery rocks and also keeps them afloat
when they go down rapids and over
waterfalls in the dark. A New Zealand
tourism Web page says firmly that the
correct generic name for the activity is cave
tubing and that the other one, rather better
known, is in fact the trading name of the firm
that invented the whole crazy undertaking
back in 1987.

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BLAIRISM
We live in an age of isms and Blairism is a
newish British example. It refers to the
policies and intellectual approach of Tony
Blair, leader of the Labour Party, who
sometime before 22 May 1997 is expected by
most people to become prime minister.
British leaders now all seem fated to be so
tagged: Thatcherism has long been a common
term, though Majorism (relating to the

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policies of the present prime minister) is

rather less so, perhaps because the concept it
describes is harder to categorise. The policies
of Mr Blair and the party he leads are clear in
outline Christian Socialism, moral
purpose, communitarianism, a stakeholder
approach to business and society in which
everyone concerned has a say but he has
been close-mouthed about many detailed
policies up to now. These policies are
substantially different to the traditional
standpoint of the party, which is now
commonly called New Labour after its 1995
conference slogan to indicate the substantial
changes which he and his immediate
predecessors have brought about. The
adjective is sometimes Blairist but more
commonly Blairite, which can also be a noun
identifying one of his supporters.

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Blobitecture is curvy architecture, fluid

protoplasmic shapes that completely redefine
what a building ought to look like. You can
now find examples in many cities, because

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adventurous architects are using computeraided design systems to create structures

that would otherwise be impossible to
realise. Examples are Norman Fosters Swiss
Re building in London (dubbed the Erotic
Gherkin) and Frank Gehrys Guggenheim
Museum in Bilbao and Walt Disney Concert
Hall in Los Angeles.
The word has been known in the
architectural world for some years but the
oldest appearance in print I can find is in
William Safires On Language column in
December 2002, in which he says that its
precursor blob architecture was coined in
1995 by the architect Greg Lynn. He based it
on binary large object, or BLOB, a technical
term for a computer representation of an
object; that blob is also a good word for the
amoeboid buildings that can result is no
coincidence.

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The word appeared in the title of a book by

John K Waters in 2003 and the year after in
Next Generation Architecture by Joseph Rosa.
Everywhere it is mildly pejorative, but in
Britain it is further coloured by mental
associations with an excessively rotund and
very silly pink character with yellow spots
called Mr Blobby, who became famous in the
early 1990s in Noel Edmonds Saturday night
BBC television show Noels House Party.
In large part, blobitecture derives its forms
from an architects interpretation of natural
organic forms, but also depends on the
advanced use of computer modeling to
ensure that the evolving design is structurally
stable.
Wikipedia, 17 May 2005
Not only does the new Queen Mary building
point towards a fresh and confident future
for hospital design, it is also doing wonders

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for the reputation of its architect, the

flamboyant Will Alsop, whose toy-like
blobitecture and mad-hatter plans for
reviving towns in northern England with
designs that resemble, among other things,
Marge Simpsons hairdo, have earned him as
many brickbats as plaudits.
Guardian, 6 Jun. 2005

A
blogger is a person who keeps a Web log, or
blog for short. The idea started sometime in
1998, but really caught on in 2000, to the
extent that there are now thousands of
bloggers and blogs about. At the beginning,
the concept was that a person kept a diary of

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their explorations of the World Wide Web,

making it public for others to inspect and
follow up. But as blogging has expanded, that
simple idea has been so much modified that it
is now difficult to get two bloggers to agree
on what the term means. Many blogs are
online diaries chronicling activities and
events as they happen to the writer, often
with no reference to the Web at all. Some
writers create only brief entries, while others
provide extended essays on life, the universe
and everything. There are several sites where
people can create accounts and publish their
blogs, most notably www.blogger.com, where
blogs often have names like The Magnificent
Melting Object, or Exploits of a Dwarf Lover.
As the pool of blog writers has grown,
perhaps inevitably so have complaints about
quality. Its true that some bloggers seem to
feel the need to log every sneeze.

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San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 2001

Bloggers add their own foraging notes to
links discovered on other weblogs. As a
result, some estimate, anything new on the
Web will filter through the blog system in
some form in about 30 days.
Dallas Morning News, Apr. 2000
Sales of
gemstones
such as
diamonds
from mines in
Africa have
been used to fund groups fighting civil wars
in Sierra Leone, the Congo and Angola. In the
late 1990s, this trade gave rise to the term
conflict diamonds, which was soon joined by
the more emotive blood diamonds.

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Considerable efforts have been made to stop

such sales to cut off an important source of
funding.
More recently, emphasis has moved to
minerals in great demand as sources of the
elements needed to make essential
components for electronic devices
computers, mobile phones, DVD players.
They include cassiterite (an ore of tin),
wolframite (of tungsten) and coltan (the
short name for the closely related ores
columbite and tantalite, important sources
respectively of niobium and tantalum). All of
these are illicitly mined in the eastern part of
the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the
income from them funds the civil war in that
country.
By analogy with the older terms, since about
2008 these ores (with the addition of gold)
have begun to be called conflict minerals or

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blood minerals. Efforts are being made, such

as through the Dodd-Frank Act in the US (due
to come into effect this year), to force
electronics firms to get these key elements
only from legitimate sources.
Signs are surfacing that manufacturers are
taking steps ahead of the U.S. Frank-Dodd act
to ensure so-called blood minerals no longer
make it into cellphones and other electronic
devices.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 7 Dec. 2010.
Conflict minerals are an increasing cause for
concern in eastern Congo, with metals used
to make electronics mined in exploitative
conditions and the profits used to fund the
ongoing war.
PC Pro, Mar. 2011.

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Some slight evidence suggests blue is joining

green as an environmental buzzword. The
blue revolution is the water equivalent of the
green revolution and primarily refers to the
need to get water for drinking and crop
irrigation to the many millions of people
worldwide who do not have it. The phrase
has been used for some years, but it came to
notice particularly in press reports of the
recent Third World Water Forum in Tokyo.
Many environmentalists believe that the need
is not simply to provide water, but to do so in

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ways that are ecologically sound and

sustainable; for example, they feel that
building dams is not the right technique.
Solutions are desperately needed, since the
UN estimates that 2.7 billion people face a
critical shortage of drinkable water by 2025.
The grand ambitions of the World Water
Forum trickled down the drain at Kyoto this
week dashing any immediate hopes of a
blue revolution that might keep the world
water crisis at bay.
New Scientist, Mar. 2003
The institute hopes the green revolution in
crop productivity will soon be matched by
the blue revolution in raising water
productivity in agriculture.
Africa News Service, Aug. 2002

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One thing weve learned about modern

technology is that theres no limit to the
inventive ways ordinary people can subvert
or take advantage of it. Take the Bluetooth
radio communication system used in many
current mobile phones; this is designed to
allow you, for example, to use a wireless,
hands-free headset while the phone is safely
in your pocket. But any Bluetooth device is
capable of talking to any other device over a
range of a few metres. A phone with
Bluetooth enabled will tell you about any
devices nearby that you can communicate
with. Mischievous people have started to

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exploit this by sending cheeky messages to

some stranger they see in a public place,
usually personalised ones such as I like your
tie. Most victims will have no idea how the
message arrived on their phones, and their
startled expressions are reward enough.
Fears that the technique might represent a
security flaw seem to be unsubstantiated.
A lanky young woman with long brown hair
was waiting to take a train at Londons
Waterloo Station when she got a surprising
message on her mobile phone from a
complete stranger. I like your pink stripey
top. The woman - who looked around in
confusion - had just been bluejacked by a
13-year-old British girl named Ellie who goes
by the nickname jellyellie.
The International Herald Tribune, 17 Nov.
2003

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But why would somebody bluejack a

strangers phone? The motive behind the
craze is to freak out other Bluetooth users
that you might encounter in public for
example, a bluejacker will check out other
Bluetooth users on the tube and drop them a
message that only someone in the same place
will appreciate, for example, their choice of
newspaper or colour of their top or just a
message to let them know that theyve been
bluejacked.
Znet UK, 6 Nov 2003

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This is a specification,
developed by a consortium that includes IBM,
Ericsson, Nokia, Intel, and Toshiba, for a
radio system that allows electronic devices to
communicate with each other over short
distances without connecting cables. Some
1,200 companies pledged to support this new
format when it was first announced,
including giants like Microsoft.
It has been a buzzword in the computer
industry since late 1999, and in its early days
it seemed certain that the format would
become universal, most commonly in

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portable computing devices and cellphones.

One research firm in late 1999 predicted
there would be 61 million Bluetoothequipped appliances by 2003. Typical
implementations would be for a hands-free
(and wire-free) headset linked via Bluetooth
to your mobile phone in your briefcase;
immediate password access to your office
through automatic sensing between
Bluetooth appliances; or automatic data
transfer between computers, say in a
meeting. However, the slow-down in hightechnology fields in 2001 has meant that
take-up has been much smaller than
originally expected, and other systems, like
Wi-Fi, are competing head-to-head with
Bluetooth.
The consortium named it after the tenthcentury Danish king Harald Bluetooth, who
united warring factions.

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Any Bluetooth device can talk to any other,

no matter what brand name is on the label or
what software forms their operating systems.
Arizona Republic, Nov. 1999
Ive nothing against the concept, but to date
Bluetooth appears to be a triumph of
marketing over product fulfilment.
PC Magazine, Feb. 2002

BLU-RAY
Weve been seeing this term in the technical
press since 2001, when it was settled on as
the name for a high-capacity optical storage
format. It was designed to supersede the DVD
by providing the much greater capacity
needed to distribute films in high-definition
television (HDTV) format.

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The term hasnt yet much impinged on daily

life, as we have yet to be able to buy a
product using it, though thats expected to
change later this year. However, it was in the
news last week because Apple Computers
announced that they were going to support it
rather than the rival contender, HD-DVD. For
the past four years, the prospect of a
standards war has been looming, like the one
that bedevilled the take-up of VCRs back in
the 1970s and 1980s when VHS and Betamax
were slugging it out for supremacy. Some
pessimistic analysts suggest that nobody
much needs either and that it might be a
repeat of a more recent format war in which
both Super Audio CD and DVD-Audio lost out.
The name Blu-Ray was chosen because the
system like HD-DVD uses a shortwavelength blue laser that allows much
larger quantities of data to be stored on a disc
than on a DVD.

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To pack more complicated graphics, video

and other content into each game, Sonys PS3
will go beyond CDs and DVDs to a new disc
standard called Blu-Ray, which can hold up to
seven times more data than todays DVDs.
the Detroit Free Press
HD-DVD and Blu-ray have a great deal in
common. They use a blue laser system, offer
the huge amount of storage required to house
high definition video (at least 10GB), boast
interactive facilities and will also be used to
store PC data and games. Yet they are
incompatible, and both are heading for US
stores this year and next.
the Guardian, 20 Jan. 2005

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This is one of the nicest odd notions to come

out of the Internet. The idea is to leave a book
in a public place with a note of how to log on
to the Bookcrossing site to record where and
when you found it and what you thought of it.
After youve read it, you then release the
book for a new reader perhaps by giving it
to a friend, leaving it on a park bench, in a
coffee shop or some other public place, or by
donating it to charity. The Bookcrossing site
describes itself as a cross between a book

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club, a reading group and an attempt to turn

the whole world into a library. The idea was
taken up in the UK in August by Urbis, the
centre for the urban experience, based in
Manchester. They released several hundred
books into the city. Within three weeks, one
of their books had been reported from
Tangiers and another from Bangkok.
Unlike music or movie file swapping
bookcrossing is unlikely to face the wrath of
the publishing industry. I dont think that
passing books on to friends is illegal (at least
I hope not) and this site is only likely to
encourage people to read more not less.
Birmingham Post, 11 March 2003
Bookcrossing strikes at one of the industrys
darkest fears: that there are already enough
books in the world. Some authors have
voiced anxieties about the phenomenon.

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Guardian, 30 Aug. 2003

Seventeenth-century criminals abducted

children to become servants or labourers in
the American plantations. These were the
original kidnappings, in which the first

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element, kid was then a low slang term for a

child and the second meant stealing (napping
being a relative of nab, to thieve).
Their legacy lives on in frivolous inventions
that preserve the idea of the second element.
Dognapping is the most common, though a
decade ago there was a brief flurry of
gnomenapping of ornaments from British
gardens.
In early April 2009 a new form appeared as a
result of enforced incarceration of the foreign
bosses of French firms by desperate workers
protesting against mass layoffs. Among them,
the director of the French operations of 3M
was held for two days and nights; the chief
executive of Sony France was detained
overnight; three executives of Scapa, a British
glue-maker, were barricaded in their offices;
and four bosses of the US firm Caterpillar
were seized.

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The technique has a long history in France as

a method of negotiation. French people call it
sequestration, but an English term for it is
new: bossnapping. It immediately became
common everywhere, with variant forms
appearing almost at once such as the verb
to bossnap, the noun bossnapper and the
adjective bossnapped indicating a high
degree of acceptance.
Bossnapping is not new in France but the
growing number of corporate restructurings
and rising unemployment have fuelled
growing militancy in labour protests. A poll
this week showed almost half of those
interviewed believed that actions such as
bossnapping were acceptable.
Financial Times, 8 Apr. 2009
Bossnappers struck again in France today as
four executives of Caterpillar, the heavy
equipment manufacturer, were detained by

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their employees in a protest over redundancy

plans.
The Times, 31 Mar. 2009

BOTNET

One of the methods of those using the

Internet for illegal purposes is to grab control
of your computer and use it to distribute

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spam and viruses anonymously. A computer

taken over in this way is known to hackers as
a zombie. A more sinister recent development
has been the entry of organised crime groups,
who harness networks of these zombies,
called botnets (where bot is an abbreviation
for robot). The aim in this case is not usually
to send spam but to bring down a Web site
through whats called a distributed denial-ofservice attack. The network of zombies is told
to send a very large number of request
signals to the site all at once, so denying
access to legitimate users and possibly
causing the Web server to collapse under the
load. There have been reports that this type
of attack has been used for blackmail,
especially of gambling sites and financial
institutions, and obvious risks exist of its
being used for terrorism. The term botnet has
been known in the hacker community at least

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since the middle 1990s, but has only recently

started to appear in more general contexts.
This modus operandi is fuelling a growing
crime wave against e-commerce in which
these networks of bots, dubbed botnets, are
increasingly being offered for hire by hacking
groups.
New Scientist, 6 Nov. 2004
A more sinister use of botnets is sabotage,
police say. A fear is growing that a botnet
could be used to take down a major data
network or prominent Web sites.
Birmingham Post, 13 Jul. 2004

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This term has received publicity recently

through its use as a plot device in Peter Mays
thriller Chinese Whispers, published earlier
this year. However, the technique is a real
one that has been investigated by the FBI in
the hope that it will prove a more accurate
alternative to lie-detector (polygraph) tests.
The system is said to exploit a signal in the
brain that responds to a stimulus with special
significance to the individual concerned
such as the memory of a place or a persons
face. While monitoring the signal using scalp
electrodes, the suspect is shown photographs
of a weapon, a person or a crime scene. The

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electrical signal is said to respond positively

if the suspect has guilty knowledge, even if no
questions are asked and he stays silent.
Sceptics point out that memories change over
time and that as yet theres no evidence that
all people respond similarly in such
situations, nor whether good self-control or
psychological denial might prevent the
signals appearing.
The CCLE [Center for Cognitive Liberty and
Ethics, California] has no problem with brain
fingerprinting so long as its voluntary ... Our
concern is that law enforcement agents will
seek to use it coercively. Such compelled use
ought to be forbidden, because it would
pierce one of the most private and intimate
human spheres: our own memory.
New Scientist, 24 Apr. 2004
Unlike discredited lie-detecting techniques,
which measure changes in breathing, heart

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rate and other variables to determine if

suspects are trying to deceive their
interrogators, brain fingerprinting is
designed to discover if specific information is
stored in a persons brain.
Observer, 25 Apr. 2004

A current management fashion involves at

least partly reinventing the office. In such
environments, workers no longer have their
own desks and workspaces. Instead, in a
technique called hot-desking, they are
allocated a location each day according to
their needs, storing working materials and
personal belongings in portable lockers

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overnight. This vastly increases flexibility for

the employer, who no longer needs to keep
expensive office space available for workers
who may only be there part of the time, but it
causes problems of rootlessness for staff
whose territorial sense is well developed.
Several jargon terms have been created for
aspects of this new system; it is too soon to
determine whether they will enter the
lexicon. One such is lagoon, describing a
group of workers all engaged on a common
task. Another is break-out space, which is a
quiet area away from the bustle of the
workplace where informal meetings can be
held (a common technique is to make
participants stand up to stop sessions
extending beyond need). The
process is called breaking
out.

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On 23
January
2013, the
Daily Mail described David Camerons muchdelayed speech on Europe that day as an
historic ultimatum. He proposed that
Britains membership of the European Union
should be renegotiated, to be followed by
what he called an in-out referendum on
whether the country should stay or leave.
Wits immediately dubbed it the hokey-cokey
referendum (Americans will prefer hokey-

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pokey), with one headline reading In-out,

thats not what its all about.
His speech has pushed the neologism Brexit,
short for British exit, to the foreground.
Strictly, of course, its the United Kingdom
that would be leaving, but Ukexit is too
clunky to be acceptable.
Brexit began to appear in the British press at
the start of 2012:
The PM indulges loose talk of a renegotiated
relationship with a jittery, distracted Europe
which could spiral into a risky in/out
referendum. No wonder Ukips Nigel Farage
hopes for a breakthrough or that Brussels has
a new word: Brexit.
The Guardian, 1 Jan. 2012. UKIP, said as u-kip,
is the UK Independence Party, meaning
independence from the EU.

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It appeared often enough during 2012 to be

noticed in passing in a couple of Words of the
Year compilations. But it was overshadowed
by the term it was modelled on, Grexit, the
possibility that Greece would leave the euro
currency zone. Its visibility has grown hugely
following Mr Camerons speech, not only in
Britain and other English-speaking countries,
but also throughout Europe, including
France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Sweden and
the Netherlands. An Austrian news site
commented sadly on the day of the PMs
speech: Und jetzt droht eine lange BrexitDebatte (Now a long Brexit debate
threatens) and a Czech one the day after
wrote, Odchod Britnie z Evropsk unie
neboli brexit by byl katastrofou (Britain
leaving the European Union, or Brexit,
would be a disaster.) Such widespread
popularity in Europe suggests that The

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Guardian was right to attribute its invention

to EU bureaucrats in Brussels.

Its a noun, not an adjective.

If you say, Im bright, thats
an immodest (and possibly
inaccurate) statement. But

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Im a bright says that you dont believe in

God, more strictly that your view of the world
is naturalistic, free of what its inventors
describe as supernaturalism and mystical
elements of all kinds. The term has only
recently been coined by Paul Giesert and
Mynga Futrell, two educators from
Sacramento, California. They modelled it on
gay, to provide an umbrella term for a
potential coalition of all those who felt
themselves isolated and without political
influence in the USA because they professed
no religious belief. The philosopher Daniel
Dennett has taken it up and publicised it in
newspaper articles, from two of which the
quotations below have been taken. Somehow,
I don't think it's going to catch on.
Whether we brights are a minority or, as I am
inclined to believe, a silent majority, our
deepest convictions are increasingly
dismissed, belittled and condemned by those

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in power by politicians who go out of their

way to invoke God and to stand, selfrighteously preening, on what they call the
side of the angels.
New York Times, 12 Jul. 2003
Look on the bright side: though at present
they cant admit it and get elected, the US
Congress must be full of closet brights. As
with gays, the more brights come out, the
easier it will be for yet more brights to do so.
People reluctant to use the word atheist
might be happy to come out as a bright.
Guardian, 21 Jun. 2003

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/bzns it/
This seems to be a common term of trade in
the exhibitions field in North America, dating
from the late eighties at least, which has also
been spotted in Britain. It seems to be a
jargon term not well known outside that
business. The need to make an effective
impact at business presentations to dealers
and customers has led to the techniques of
the more high-tech end of modern theatre
being applied to sales pitches and promotion.
Take a line through the average new car
launch: complex stage sets, vast lighting
grids, high-powered sound systems, actors,

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dancers, the whole theatrical experience

applied to the business of persuasion. So its
not hard to see how the phrase business
theatre (less commonly, business theater)
came to be applied to this approach, even
though much of the conference organisation,
exhibition creation, and event management
thats lumped under the name is considerably
more modest than these relatively infrequent
set-pieces.
Its not like a business theatre show, where
youre going into a ballroom, or a stadium
show, where youre on a playing field. It was
a chance to build conventional scenery, and
showcase it.
Theatre Crafts International, Apr. 1995
As creative director of Spectrum, a company
which specialises in business theatre, Elliott
has vast experience of designing exhibitions,

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conferences and live events all over the

world ...
Independent on Sunday, Sept. 1998

It sounds a dauntingly highbrow term, but

the intention is just the opposite to
demystify science and help people engage
with it. The technique is based on the

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discussion of topical scientific ideas with

interested people in determinedly nonacademic surroundings. The Cafs sum up
their intentions with a maxim, too long to be
considered a slogan, We want people to be
as opinionated about science as they are
about football. Informal meetings are
usually held in cafs or bars; a guest speaker
talks briefly on a topic and then leads a
discussion. The first Caf Scientifique was
held in Leeds in 1998, with its name invented
by the man who started it, Duncan Dallas. I
was reading the papers obituary of Marc
Sautet, the man who founded the cafs
philosophiques in France, he recalls, and I
thought Id like to do that. But the British
dont think philosophy is a real subject, so I
opted for science instead. The scheme has
extended with the help of funding from the
Wellcome Trust from 2001 onwards. Most
Cafs are in university towns and cities the

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fifteenth, in Bristol, was inaugurated in April

2003.
Organiser Duncan Dallas said the Caf
Scientifique sessions attracted a very mixed
audience, half of them women and half with
no professional science connections. They
ask good questions thats why the
speakers enjoy it. They are not nit-picking
questions, people really want to know the
answers and they are often quite difficult to
answer.
Guardian, 18 Nov. 2002
Science in the Pub is an Australian format
that does exactly what the name suggests.
Last year I found myself in the Harlequin Inn
in Sydney discussing Fermats last theorem
which turned out to be easier to explain
after a few pints. Britains Caf Scientifique is
a more genteel version of the Australian
format. There are now nine cafs, from

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Newcastle to London. And hopes are high

that moving science out of the lecture theatre
will get a broader range of people involved.
New Scientist, 13 Apr. 2002

Its a medical mixture of caffeine and alcohol,

which sounds like the refined essence of an
Irish coffee, except that it is given to patients
intravenously and not by mouth. It has been
in the news because researchers at the
University of Texas Medical School led by
Professor James Grotta have announced that
a study has shown that it helps to limit the

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effect of strokes on the brain in elderly

patients. Its an interesting example of
synergy, in which two compounds given
together have an effect that neither has by
itself. A full trial is needed to find the ideal
mixture of caffeine and alcohol and study
possible side-effects before it can be
approved, but doctors are interested in it
because theres no equivalent existing
treatment.
Researchers found that brain damage in rats
was reduced by up to 80% if caffeinol was
given within three hours of a stroke.
Guardian, 17 Apr. 2003
Prof Grotta said a randomised,
placebo-controlled trial was
needed to determine the extent of
caffeinols protective effect in
humans. He is also planning a
study combining caffeinol with thermo-

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cooling in stroke patients. Other studies have

suggested that cooling the brain might limit
stroke damage.
The Mirror, 11 Apr. 2003

This word
captology is still relatively unusual outside a
group of researchers in the Persuasive
Technology Lab at Stanford University. The
group studies the theory and design of the
ways computing technology can be used to
influence people. If you think that sounds a
bit Big Brotherish, you are not altogether in
error. The emphasis is on influencing people
for good, for example to encourage healthy

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living or improve road safety, but the group

is aware such methods could just as well be
used for baser ends, such as persuading you
to buy things, or to hand over personal data
that could then be misused. To that end the
group, led by Professor B J Fogg, is also
studying the implications of the unreasoning
trust that many of us put into computers
because they are wrongly thought of as as
being unaffected by human agency. The word
was coined by Professor Fogg in 1996 as a
partial acronym from the initial letters of
Computers As Persuasive Technology
together with the ending -ology for a field of
study. Someone engaged in the field is a
captologist.
[Im grateful to Don Chandler for telling me
about this term.]
As pioneers of a nascent discipline called
captology, Fogg and a handful of other

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visionaries are exploring the theory, design

and analysis of computers and related
technologies as instruments of persuasion.
Electronic Engineering Times, Jun. 1999
The class in captology (Computers as
Persuasive Technology) is Stanford professor
B. J. Foggs brainchild, a new area of study
into ways that computers are particularly
useful in persuading people to change
attitudes, buy certain products, or relinquish
personal information.
SF Weekly, Apr. 2000

It is very much the term of

the moment, especially following the report

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in February 2007 by the UN

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
on the effect of human activities on the
worlds climate. The term has received wider
attention in the UK than in the US: newspaper
articles here frequently tell readers how to
reduce their carbon footprint by changing the
way they live. Shortly after the report was
published, the Bishop of London agreed not
to fly for a year in order to reduce his
footprint and to make the point that such
profligate use of fossil fuels was selfish.
The term carbon footprint refers to the
amount of carbon dioxide a potent
greenhouse gas that is given off by an
organisation or an individual burning fossil
fuels. This doesnt only include the obvious,
such as car and plane travel, heating, cooking
and the like, but also covers the cost in fossil
fuel of creating and transporting every item
that we use or consume, including such

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necessities as food and clothing (another

term also used is embodied energy). The
carbon footprint, measured in tonnes, is
taken to be a measure of the extent to which
such activities contribute to global warming.
Footprint here is perhaps not the best term. It
has been used figuratively for several
decades to express an area over which an
effect is felt, such as noise footprint, or the
area within which a radio or television signal
can be received, or the area that a piece of
equipment covers, say on your desk. But its
direct inspiration was ecological footprint,
which seeks to measure the resource needs
of a population by calculating the area of land
needed to support it. This footprint is a
further abstraction, being the metaphorical
mark or imprint on the planet left by our
carbon-dioxide-emitting activities.

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Twenty ways YOU can cut your carbon

footprint; After the hottest January for 90
years, how to reduce the global impact of
your CO2 emissions.
Evening Standard, 1 Feb. 2007
At issue is an ongoing story in Britain about
the princes carbon footprint the amount
of greenhouse gases generated by his travel
in private planes and other activities and
Charles stated efforts to reduce it, including
canceling a recent skiing trip.
Philadelphia Inquirer, 28 Jan. 2007

To exhibit carborexia is to have an extreme

dark green attitude towards environmental
issues. This can show itself as excessive
recycling and in other ways, but in particular

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it refers to an obsessive desire to reduce

ones personal carbon footprint. The term
first appeared in an article in the New York
Times on 17 October. The adjective is
carborexic.
Its the newest addition to the group of words
based on anorexia, in full anorexia nervosa,
the medical term for obsessive desire to lose
weight. Other examples are bigorexia, a slang
term for muscle dysmorphia, in which a false
body image leads bodybuilders to work out
too much; orthorexia, in which sufferers are
obsessed with eating the right diet, in
particular avoiding foods thought to be
harmful to health; and tanorexia, a obsessive
desire for a suntan. Others of lesser staying
power that have appeared in recent years are
yogarexia, excessive practice of yoga to lose
weight, and drunkorexia, consuming alcohol
in place of food as a way to keep thin.

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The implication of these various forms is that

-orexia is turning into a suffix that refers to
an obsessive-compulsive attitude often
related to body image. The chances are that
carborexia will not survive, unlike bigorexia
and orthorexia, which are already in major
dictionaries. But who knows?
Certainly there is no recognized syndrome in
mental health related to the compulsion
toward living a green life. But Dr. Jack
Hirschowitz, a psychiatrist in private practice
in Manhattan and a professor at the Mount
Sinai School of Medicine, said that certain
carborexic behaviors might raise a red flag.
New York Times, 17 Oct. 2008
What do you think: Is carborexia a mental
condition or a noble way of living?
US News & World Report, 21 Oct. 2008

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CARROTMOBBING
Its a form of social activism. It was coined
last year by Brent Schulkin, a US
environmentalist based in San Francisco.
When people carrotmob, they shop at a small
business, specially chosen for its good
environmental practices, in large numbers on
the same day. But Mr Schulkin has introduced

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a twist: he asks the business to invest a

proportion of that days takings in energyefficient improvements at its stores.
The second part of the name is based on flash
mob. The first part borrows the idea of using
a carrot rather than a stick to encourage
behaviour. Its a form of whats been called a
buycott or a procott, the opposite of a boycott,
a form of collective action in which people
choose to buy from firms whose values in
areas such as social justice and
environmental protection reflect and
support their own.
You might call Carrotmob Flash Mob 2.0,
since it combines the whimsy of those events
with the Sierra Clubs seriousness of purpose,
hitting the sweet spot between the Bay Areas
two dominant poses: pointless irony and
earnest do-gooderism.
San Francisco Magazine, Jun. 2008

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CarrotMobbing emerged in the US earlier this

year. It uses the carrot of consumer buying
rather than the stick of boycotting or bad
publicity to encourage ethical business.
Alone, our consumer choices make a minimal
impact, but together and organised we
unlock a bigger bargaining power.
Guardian, 18 Sep. 2008

This is the most recent example of a type of

labelling invention that is becoming common.
The earliest of this set was velvet revolution,
referring to a non-violent political revolution,
especially the events leading to the end of
communist rule in Czechoslovakia in 1989.
We have recently had, among others, the rose
revolution in Georgia in 2003, the orange
revolution and chestnut revolution, both in

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Ukraine in 2004, and, briefly, the purple

revolution, which referred to Iraqis who

raised their purple-stained fingers to show

that they had voted in their countrys recent
election. Cedar revolution refers to opposition
to the Syrian presence in Lebanon; it
appeared in early March 2005 in the US State
Departments publication Country Reports on
Human Rights Practices for 2004, in reference
to the famous Biblical cedars of Lebanon,

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which are also featured on that countrys flag.

The trick is showing signs that it may achieve
the level of overuse and triviality of the
infamous -gate suffix, since recent examples
have not referred to revolutions but to
political opposition or demonstrations of
public opinion, albeit ones with political
consequences.
Syria remained silent about the downfall of
its puppet government in Lebanon yesterday
after Prime Minister Omar Karami was
brought down by people power dubbed
the Cedar Revolution.
Liverpool Daily Post, 2 Mar. 2005
The moment is starkly symbolized in
Lebanon. Street protests in Beirut are being
called the cedar revolution cedar for
Lebanons emblem, with echoes of Ukraines
orange revolution and other uprisings in
Eastern Europe.

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USA Today, 7 Mar. 2005

This is a punning reference to the longerestablished term tiger economy, which has
been used for about fifteen years to describe
the more successful small Asian economies.
The original tiger economies were the Four

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Tigers of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and

South Korea, which have been joined more
recently by others that include the
Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia (though
these, with Hong Kong, have suffered
substantial economic reverses this year,
which have affected many Western financial
markets).
The Celtic Tiger is the Republic of Ireland,
which has benefited very greatly from its
membership of the European Union, both
through financial aid and through inward
investment by companies opening factories
in the country to gain access to European
markets and take advantage of the countrys
low rate of corporation tax. As a result,
Ireland claims to have been the fastestgrowing economy in Europe over the past
decade, admittedly from a low base (though
some critics claim the figures have been
inflated through a sneaky tendency of some

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multinationals to pretend output comes from

Ireland in order to pay less tax, a technique
known as transfer pricing). The term is
mostly confined to British and Irish business
and financial circles, and must be classed as
jargon.

CHEMTRAIL
Definitely one from the conspiracy-theory
end of the word-coining spectrum, this term
seems to have appeared first about three
years ago and is still going strong. Chemtrails
are supposedly contrail-like formations
produced by military aircraft over the US,
Europe, and Australia, among other places.

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Its suggested that substances are mixed with

the engine exhausts for some purpose
among those often mentioned are climate
control, immunisation of populations against
future biowarfare, or a systematic attempt to
kill off the old and sick as part of the New
World Order (some people say they have
suffered pneumonia-like symptoms, or
mystery rashes). The Illuminati (which is
supposedly a secret group that controls
major world governments) are often
mentioned as being behind chemtrails. Those
who believe claim that the trails have
characteristic shapes that can be
distinguished from ordinary contrails
caused by engine exhausts freezing to ice
particles in the upper atmosphere. The whole
idea seems to be based on the idea of seeding
clouds with silver iodide to make rain fall.
They call that white thing the chemtrail, he
said. They can mix all kinds of chemicals in

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there, mix them in with the jet fuel. Barium

salt. Aluminum oxide. All different polymers.
The chemicals come out with the exhaust.
They linger in the clouds. They can easily
change the weather.
Newsday, Apr. 2002
Believers call these tracks chemtrails. They
say they dont know why the chemicals are
being dropped, but that doesnt stop them
from speculating. Many guess that the federal
government is trying to slow global warming
with compounds that reflect sunlight into the
sky. Some propose more ominous theories,
such as a government campaign to weed out
the old and sick.
USA Today, Mar. 2001

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An otherwise normal-looking drinks can

is provided with a false bottom that contains
a refrigerant, usually an HFC
(hydrofluorocarbon). By pressing a button on
the bottom, the can and contents are quickly
cooled. The device is an American invention
(the term Chill Can is a trademark of the
Joseph Company Inc of California), designed
to produce cool drinks in places where

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refrigerators are not readily available.

Though it seems a useful little device, it has
been widely criticised because of the
environmental consequences of releasing
HFCs into the atmosphere. Unlike CFCs
(chlorofluorocarbons), which are now banned
in most developed countries, the HFCs dont
have much impact on the ozone layer, but
they are even more effective greenhouse
gases, and so contribute to global warming.
Several major suppliers of HFCs, including ICI
in Britain, have now publicly refused to
supply them to drinks manufacturers for this
purpose, and the British government is
pressing the European Union to ban them
altogether, so the Chill Can may struggle to be
accepted, unless its manufacturers can find
some less environmentally sensitive working
fluid.

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Unless one is immersed in the pop-music

scene, genres can come and go before youve
noticed them. This one appeared in the
summer of 2009 and within three months
was being described as past its peak, though
references to its demise have proved
premature.
It has also been derided as one of the dafter
genre coinages, and thats in a scene that has
grunge, goat metal, psychobilly, gabba,
shoegazing, grebo and grindcore. Other

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names that have been applied to it are lo-fi

(although thats a generic term dating from
the 1980s and didnt catch on), glo-fi and
hypnagogic pop.
As so often with derivative musical forms, its
difficult to define chillwave. One writer has
called it mellow, cooled-out, laid-back beach
music. Another tried lo-fi but pop; danceinfluenced but bedroom-based; summery but
melancholic. Tracks considered to be
definitive include Feel It All Around, by
Washed Out, Bicycle by Memory Tapes and
Psychic Chasms by Neon Indian.
There is now a name for the latest game in
indie rock. Chillwave describes those low-fi
electropop newbies who deal in hazy, stoned,
warped retro grooves.
The Irish Times, 4 Dec. 2009.

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Its a highly anticipated album from a oneman lo-fi band that defines the term
chillwave. These washed-out electronic
beats and smooth melodies will make even
the most Minnesota of winters feel like a lazy
summer day.
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), 31 Jan.
2010.
As a portmanteau
term for China and
India considered
together, this word
has been around in
the Western press
since 2004, though it
may have been used
earlier in the Far
East. The blend of the two names is intended
to suggest that they are becoming a powerful

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economic force whose global influence may

change the pattern of the worlds trade over
the next couple of decades.

It was in the news in January 2007 because of

a new book by the US futurist and
trendspotter Marian Salzman, Next Now:
Trends for the Future, which is co-authored
with Ira Matathia. This includes the term as
one of the issues that American and
European business must watch in the coming
years. It was also, coincidentally, the title of

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an art exhibition in London the same month

that focuses on these two countries.
Some analysts argue that neither country
sees itself partnered with the other in any
meaningful way because of historic distrust
and that the two are based on different
economic and social models. But others argue
Chinas manufacturing strength complements
the powerful IT sector in India.
Globalisation is the subject of Italian artist
Patrick Tuttofuocos art. His first solo show ...
Chindia, focuses on the worlds two main
emerging powers, India and China.
Independent, 8 Jan. 2007
Globally, Salzman says, beware the Chindia
factor. She says China and India will become
technology strongholds and leave the U.S.A.
in the dust.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, 2 Jan. 2007

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A chiptune
is a piece of
music made
using
vintage
home
computers.
To create
one,
composers
use only the sounds that can be generated by
the chips inside old personal computers such
as the Commodore 64, the Atari or the ZX
Spectrum. The fascination of this sub-genre
of electro music is partly the technical
challenge of pummelling these old chips into
producing a noise worth listening to, but also
that their low-fi tonal quality is unlike any

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sound made by the current range of

electronic gear.
The genre, and the term, have been around in
the underground music scene for a couple of
decades my first sighting of chiptune is
from 1992; to judge from that example it
wasnt new even then. In recent years it has
been moving towards the mainstream and
references to it now appear in the popular
media, though mainly in Europe, Australia
and Japan rather than North America.
Chiptune artists have presented sessions on
British radio and two concerts using antique
computing machinery took place last month
at the British National Museum of Computing
at Bletchley Park.
The concept has also been an influence on the
newish alternative musical genre called
wonky or aquacrunk, a blend of hip-hop,
crunk and electro, and its related to what has

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been disparagingly called videogame music,

early examples of which perforce used the
same sound chips.
Music plays a huge role in the experience,
and every beat that you deflect contributes a
note to the levels chiptune song; each
segment transition that you make adds
another layer of complexity onto its everevolving soundtrack.
CNET Reviews, 21 Mar. 2009
What the article didnt mention was the huge
debt this sound owes to the chiptune scene,
an international underclass of musicians who
create incredible tracks by electronically
torturing the sound chips found in vintage
videogame hardware.
Guardian, 26 Mar. 2009

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Chronopsychology is the scientific study of the

way changes to our daily sleep-waking cycles
can adversely influence our ability to work
well. It applies mainly to shift workers, but
also concerns airline pilots, who regularly
move across time zones and who suffer what
is grandly called transmeridian dyschronism
(jet-lag to you and me). We may try to live in
a 24-hour society, but chronopsychological
research suggests our biological clocks
stubbornly refuse to play ball. It seems that if
we deliberately subvert our natural sleep
patterns we potentially give ourselves a
number of health problems, perhaps even
chronic fatigue syndrome, and also reduce
our ability to learn new skills. A number of
chronopsychological laboratories have been
established in various places to study these

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effects and suggest remedies. As a specialist

term, chronopsychology has been around for
several years; it seems slowly to be becoming
more widely known (fans of M-Flo may
recognise it as the title of one of their songs,
for example). It has links with chronotherapy,
featured here not long ago; the general term
for the study of the influence of our body
clock on biological function is chronobiology.
Since a large percentage of industrial
employees work shift work, factors such as
efficiency, safety and profit need to be
understood in relation to the
chronopsychological effects, he said.
Press Release, University of Florida, June
1999
Anything you care to measure will show a
rhythm hormones, temperature, alertness,
immune functions, urine excretion, sodium,
potassium, says Simon Folkard, a

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chronopsychologist at the University of

Wales, Swansea.
New Scientist, June 2000

CHRONOTHERAPY
Our bodies have a built-in
24-hour cycle, which
doctors call the circadian
rhythm. Researchers have
started to realise that
these natural rhythms
also apply to medical
conditions and have
implications for
treatment. In the 1980s it
was discovered that
some cancer patients had significantly
reduced side effects if chemotherapy was
given at the right time of day. Asthma is at its

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worst at 4am, when cortisol levels in the

body are at their lowest, but trials suggest
drugs taken at 3pm ensures theyre at
optimum level during this crucial period of
the night. Heart attacks often happen shortly
after waking up because blood pressure
surges at that time; two drugs have been
developed that can be taken last thing at
night, but whose action is delayed several
hours until they are most needed. The
medical profession is starting to use the term
chronotherapy for such treatments that work
in harmony with the bodys natural time
rhythms. The study of the process is
chronotherapeutics.
As with so much in the infant field of
chronotherapy, theory lags practice.
Economist, Dec. 1999
Last year a trial using chronotherapy to treat
cancer patients in France, Italy, Belgium and

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Canada found that patients given drugs at the

optimum time in their day cycle of cell
growth had far fewer side effects.
Independent on Sunday, Feb. 2000

Though the term is relatively new, with few

examples before 2005, it is now common, in
part because it appeared in Dan Gillmors
book We the Media of 2004. It refers to
individuals who report on the news from

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outside traditional journalism channels. This

might be as simple as photographing or
videoing a news event as it unfolds and
passing the images on to a newspaper or
newscast, or writing a blog on current events
from a position of specialist knowledge. (The
first sort has been given the ungainly title of
user generated content.) Its rise has been
entirely due to the Internet, which has
provided a vast forum in which anybody can,
in theory, talk to anybody and in which it is
infinitely easier both to research facts and to
communicate them.
The term citizen journalism has been in the
news recently because of a recent ruling
against Apple Computer by an appeals court
in the USA. Apple tried to get bloggers who
had revealed trade secrets to hand over their
sources, but the court said that bloggers were
covered by the same shield law as journalists
and by the First Amendment protections of

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the press. We can think of no workable test

or principle that would distinguish
legitimate from illegitimate news, the
opinion said.
Citizen journalism is often seen as two-edged.
It provides a large pool of informed and
concerned members of the public who can,
and often do, expose inaccuracy or mendacity
in announcements by public figures or the
mainstream press. The downside is that such
journalism is usually by people who lack
many of the key skills of finding and
interpreting information and who often have
trouble avoiding bias or selective reporting.
With the rise in citizen journalism, the
internet and video phones, big world events
unfold before our eyes in a very different way
to a few years ago.
The Independent, 8 May 2006

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Citizen journalism allows the true voice of

the people to emerge free of the inaccurate
spinning often found in traditional media
reports, says Arianna Huffington, co-founder
and editor of HuffingtonPost.com.
PR Newswire, 14 Mar. 2006

Confusingly, and perhaps annoyingly for the

firm concerned, this relatively new technical
term has no direct connection with the

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business of the same name selling

educational products for young children.
This type of claytronics is definitely grownup play dough, also known as programmable
matter or dynamic physical rendering. The
project at the moment still a long way
from realisation is to create nanoscale
robotic mechanisms with computing ability,
capable of changing form and joining
together to form larger-scale mechanisms or
objects. The researchers have called these
individual micro-robots catoms, claytronic
atoms. The name claytronics was deliberately
chosen to suggest modelling clay, but may be
from claymation, a method of film animation
using adjustable clay figures and stop-motion
photography. The research at CarnegieMellon University in the US goes by the
name of the Synthetic Reality Project.

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One of the aims of the project is to create a

new communications medium that the
researchers called pario, which will
reproduce moving, physical, threedimensional objects (made up of collections
of these catoms) that are realistic enough
that you will accept them as real, so creating
in effect 3D television.
Researchers in the US ... reckon that within
two decades a talking, walking Claytronic
human morph could be visually
indistinguishable from the person it
represents.
Personal Computer World, Jan. 2007
If it works, claytronics could transform
communication, entertainment, medicine,
and more. The research may help scientists
learn how to better manage networks that
consist of millions of computers. It will also
advance their understanding of

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nanotechnology how to make tiny, tiny

parts do useful things.
Science News for Kids, 17 May 2006

In the wake of the London bombings of 7 July

2005, this jargon term of the law
enforcement and security agencies had some
circulation in the British press, variously as
two words, hyphenated, or as one word. It
refers to a person with no criminal record or

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evidence of actual or potential wrongdoing,

who is able to move freely without being
flagged as suspicious.
It isnt limited to terrorism; the word
appeared in the British press the year before
in reports that the police were concerned
that clean skin football supporters, with no
previous history of violence, would be able to
travel to Euro 2004 matches without
attracting attention and cause trouble. The
earliest examples I know of date from 2001
and refer to an IRA bombing alert in London,
including this from the Evening Standard:
Detectives are faced with the difficulty that
the terrorists are thought to be clean-skins
members not known to the security
services who have been recruited since the
ceasefire. They usually hold responsible jobs
and keep a low profile until they are
activated to carry out an attack.

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The word has a long history in Australia.

These days, it refers to unlabelled bottles of
wine, usually sold by a winery in bulk to a
merchant specialising in such goods. The
winery is thereby able to dispose of excess
stock while keeping the price of its branded
output high. The wine merchant then sells
the wine on with generic labels attached. But
the term is much older. The Australian
National Dictionary has examples from 1881
in the sense of an unbranded animal and
from 1907 for a person with no criminal
record, which appears to be police jargon of
the period. Might the intelligence term have
come from this? It seems likely.
The paucity of knowledge the intelligence
community has about the precise extremist
threat is shown by the fact that the four men
behind the London bombings have been
described as cleanskins people not
identified as posing a severe danger.

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Guardian, 20 Jul. 2005

The three identified men are regarded as
cleanskins in that they were not known as
potential terrorists. Sources said there had
been no intelligence that such a gang was
about to attack.
Daily Telegraph, 13 Jul. 2005

The tumultuous events in countries such as

Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 have been called
Twitter revolutions or Facebook revolutions,
though the role of these social networks in

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shaping political events in these countries

has been disputed.
Commentators have taken the same view
about other online protests, arguing that
adding your name to an electronic petition or
sending out a tweet in support of some cause
is an effortless activity that makes you feel
good without achieving anything useful. This
view was forcefully put forward in October
2010 by Malcolm Gladwell in an article in the
New Yorker, Why the revolution will not be
tweeted.
Though clicktivism has been appearing as a
derogatory collective term for such purely
symbolic actions, oddly it began life several
years ago as a positive term for the online
support of good causes and has only recently
flipped sense.
Newspaper articles particularly refer to
clicktivism in order to compare it

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unfavourably with groups that employ

networking sites to take disciplined and
strategic action. One notable example is UK
Uncut, which carries out peaceful high-street
protests, such as occupations of bank
branches in protest against bankers bonuses.
Clicktivism has become the common,
derogatory catch-all for online protest. But
its not always a fair one. Allying yourself to a
cause online may be easy, but thats not to
say it accomplishes nothing.
The Independent, 1 Feb. 2011.
The latest clicktivists are smart, media-savvy,
highly engaged with social media, accessible,
usually only loosely organised, and well
aware of the pitfalls of clicktivism.
Evening Standard, 17 Jan. 2011.

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This technical term suddenly started to

appear in non-specialist publications as a
direct result of a paper by a group of US
scientists that appeared in Nature on 24
December.
As the world warms, plants and animals
unable to cope with rises in average
temperature will have to migrate towards the
poles if they are to remain in a climate belt to
which they are adapted. This happened after
the last Ice Age, when the northern edge of

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forests in Europe is thought to have moved

north by about a kilometre a year. This rate

of movement is the climate velocity, also
called the temperature velocity. The research
group calculates that a rate of about 0.4
kilometres a year will be needed to keep pace
with the predicted change in our current
climate.
One big worry is that there may be no
suitable habitat for species to move into, as a
result of human activity. Another is that
many plants will not be able to migrate that

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fast. The research group suggested that

human intervention may be needed if
vulnerable species are not to die out.
Nevertheless, while the climate-velocity
concept is still crude, its promising enough
that Ackerly is collaborating with an
organization called the Bay Area Open Space
Council on habitat conservation strategies in
central California.
Time, 24 Dec. 2009.
The scientists say that global warming will
cause temperatures to change so rapidly that
almost a third of the globe could see climate
velocities higher than even the most
optimistic estimates of plant migration
speeds.
Guardian, 24 Dec. 2009.

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CLINICAL GOVERNANCE/klnkl
vnns/
The phrase clinical governance has been the
hot topic among members of the medical

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professions in England and Wales over the

past year or so; it is now beginning to be seen
in newspapers and other non-technical
writing, though it will probably continue to
be viewed as jargon. It encapsulates a
systematic attempt by the Labour
government in Britain to improve standards
of care in the National Health Service (NHS).
These have come under threat through
financial constraints, especially a competitive
system introduced by the last Conservative
government that was based on an internal
market. There have also been several recent
much-publicised cases of medical
incompetence. From April 1999, all British
hospital administrators will have a statutory
responsibility for standards and the quality
of patient care, which will require them to
keep a firm eye on how well surgeons,
doctors, nurses and support staff do their
jobs. They will have to ensure that doctors

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who are identified as performing poorly

either retrain, change their caseloads or leave
their jobs. Many doctors are unsure how well
monitoring can work, but within at least
some hospital departments it already seems
to be leading to a more alert and questioning
view of methods. The term echoes the older
term corporate governance for proposals to
improve standards in British business life
following the Cadbury Report.
While the proposal to improve clinical
governance in the NHS should be universally
welcomed ... the mechanisms for monitoring
and managing clinical performance will
almost certainly prove more controversial.
British Medical Journal, Jan. 1998
There is no doubt in many peoples minds
that clinical governance could become a
bureaucratic extravaganza ... without much
effect on the quality of patient care.

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Report, Clinical Governance in North

Thames, Jun. 1998
In the past decade
a number of new
words based on
robot have
appeared,
including
cancelbot,
knowbot, microbot,
mobot and
nanobot. This is
the most recent, a
blend of
collaborative and robot, which has been
invented by two researchers, J Edward
Colgate and Michael Peshkin, in the School of
Engineering and Applied Science at
Northwestern University in the USA. The

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stimulus for creating

it has come largely
from motor
manufacturers,
whose assembly line
workers often have
to place bulky or
heavy components
such as instrument
panels or
windscreens into
very restricted
situations where the
risk of collisions,
damage and injury are high. The control
programs in cobots lay down limits beyond
which they cannot be moved so that they and
their loads can be directed precisely into
position between invisible or virtual walls
without bumping into anything. Unlike other
engineering robots, cobots dont have any

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motive power of their own and so reduce the

risk of accidents still further.

With the growth in the expense and

complexity of experimental equipment in
many fields (astronomical instruments and
accelerators in particle physics are two
examples) and increasing constraints on
research budgets, the need for mechanisms
that will help researchers to share such
scarce and costly resources has become ever
more pressing. The collaboratory concept has
developed in the nineties as a method that
may enable researchers to work together on
projects even though they might be
thousands of miles apart. Using information

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technology, they would be able to schedule

and set up experiments, control instruments
remotely, share data, and communicate with
each other in a laboratory without walls.
The term seems to have been coined by
Professor William Wulf of the University of
Virginia in an unpublished paper in 1989 as a
blend of collaboration and laboratory. The
term has not appeared much in the UK,
perhaps in part because the British
pronunciation of laboratory on its second
syllable makes the
blend less felicitous.

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This is a jokey journalists term for that group

of people whose job is to comment on the
news. It seems to have first appeared in the
US in the early nineties but only to have
become fashionable in about 1997. Its found

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often enough to suggest that it may be here to

stay. It remains closely associated with
political and media circles in the USA; when it
appears in other countries, it is mostly in
reference to American political affairs.
William F Buckley, writing in the Sacramento
Bee in October 1997, defined it as the name
given to talk-show hosts who opine on the
Sunday shows, but its scope is wider than
that, encompassing all those experts, pundits
and pollsters who analyse political events
and discuss their implications. The word is a
punning clipped blend of commentator with
the suffix -ariat, a moderately rare ending
derived from French which denotes an office
or function (its equivalent to one sense of the
English suffix -ate, as in directorate or
professorate). The immediate inspiration was
probably one or other of proletariat or
commissariat (in the old Russian
governmental sense rather than the military

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food-providing one), with a nod towards

secretariat.
Even before the recent reports, the
commentariat had embraced a new national
parlor game: devising ways for Clinton to
extricate himself from Grand Jury Jeopardy.
Washington Post, Aug. 1998
Although Lott was eventually reined in (by
Jesse Helms, of all people), that word timing
became the mantra of the right-leaning half
of the commentariat.
Pilot-Independent
(Walker, Minnesota),
May 1999

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This is a relatively new

umbrella term for
schemes that are
designed to help
people in a community
help each other. Such
schemes are
frequently created as a
way to develop links
between isolated individuals or to bring
people who are excluded from employment
into useful activity. Reviving the local
economy is often not the main objective. The
best known examples are LETS, Local
Exchange and Trading Systems. These create
local currencies for trading among its
members, a form of mutual credit. They
began in the eighties; there are now about
400 LETS schemes in Britain, 250 in
Australia, 50 in New Zealand and 140 in
North America. LETS have a negotiable rate

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for services, which some writers distinguish

from systems like time dollars, developed by
the Washington lawyer Edgar Cahn in the
mid eighties, in which it is assumed that
everybodys time is of equal value. How
useful they are is not easy to judge, as
benefits are often intangible rather than
directly economic, what one writer has called
the warm glow effect.
Key to the success of LETS systems, says
Linton, is community control through
community currency or Localized
personal monies, as he calls them.
Harrowsmith, June 1994
The realities which underpin a community
currency system, as understood by its
members, is very much dependent upon the
picture portrayed to them as they join the
system.

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Int. J. Community Currency Research, 1997

This phrase has its origins in the US. It refers

to a system by which all the ministers of
religion in a town or city agree to perform
marriage ceremonies only on couples who
have been through a process of pre-marital
counselling and preparation. This includes
training in communication, conflict
resolution, and sometimes psychometric
testing to determine their compatibility. In

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some cities, successful married couples are

recruited to act as mentors. The aim is to
reduce the high proportion of marriages that
end in divorce. The first community with
such a policy is said to have been Modesto in
California in 1986, though the name for the
system only came later, as it slowly gained
support in the early nineties. It is claimed
that more than 80 such agreements are now
in force in various parts of the USA. The term
has just started to appear in Britain, with the
first such policy having been agreed in
Totnes in Devon.
He has initiated Americas first total
community marriage policy, involving judges
and magistrates as well as members of the
clergy.
New York Times, May 1997
In Grand Rapids, Michigan, for example, the
Community Marriage Policy requires couples

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to attend four premarital-counseling sessions

that involve religious instruction and
relationship training; and the clergy are
pledged to promote courtships of at least a
year and to teach long-married mentor
couples to work with engaged couples.
The Weekly
Standard, March
1998
COMPUTERASSISTED
JOURNALISM
Though a new
term for most of
us in the UK, it is
increasingly
common in the
US newspaper

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world. It is an umbrella term for the use of

computers in news-gathering. Journalists in
the US now regularly search for relevant
information in the electronic realm, including
government databases and online archives.
From it they derive ideas for stories, find
contacts, get essential background
information and check their facts, in an
electronic analogue of traditional legwork.
They use software tools such as spreadsheets
and data mining programs to search, collate
and process data. computer-assisted
journalism (CAJ) is also known as computerassisted reporting (CAR). None of these terms
are likely to be taken up quickly in the UK,
not because of doubts over the value of the
technique or because British newspapers are
generally less wired than their US
equivalents and their staffs less computerliterate, but because the electronic
information that is the lifeblood of American

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CAJ often doesnt exist in Britain, and where it

does it is frequently inaccessible as a result of
the provisions of the Official Secrets Act.

/knslns/
Edward O Wilson popularised this rare word
earlier this year when he used it in the title of
his best-selling book Consilience: the Unity of
Knowledge. It means a jumping together,
and in his book he encourages those who
study the sciences, the humanities and the
arts to bridge the gaps between their narrow

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specialisms and so link together all the

branches of learning, an aim which goes back
to the thinkers of the time of the
Enlightenment. Professor Wilson is trying to
bring together what three decades ago the
late C P Snow called the two cultures in
what he calls a dream of unified learning.
Wilson argues that all fields of study have a
common goal, to give understanding a
purpose, and to lend to us all a conviction,
far deeper than a mere working proposition,
that the world is orderly and can be
explained by a small number of natural laws.
But Wilson didnt invent the word: that
honour belongs to the nineteenth-century
philosopher William Whewell (who also gave
us the word scientist), who used it in his book
The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences in
1840 to describe the interlocking of
explanations of cause and effect between
disciplines. He seems to have derived it from

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the Latin word consilere, formed from con-,

with, and salire, to leap.
The trend cannot be reversed by forcefeeding students with some of this and some
of that across the branches of learning; true
reform will aim at the consilience of science
with the social sciences and the humanities in
scholarship and teaching.
E O Wilson, Consilience, 1998
What prevents us from coming to grips with
environmental decay or the rest of our social
bedevilments has less to do with a lack of
consilience in learning than with the
interplay of interests and power.
New York Times,
Apr. 1998

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Though English has convivial, which is based

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on the Latin convivium for a feast or banquet

(or, more broadly, a living together, from con
+ vivo), the latter word has not itself been in
the language until recently.
It started to appear in Britain and other parts
of the English-speaking world in the late
1990s to refer to local groups or chapters
usually named in the plural as convivia set
up by the Slow Food movement. This was
formed in 1989, as a result of an Italian
initiative, as a reaction against increasing
globalisation and standardisation of food,
especially fast food (hence its name).
One of its aims is the preservation,
encouragement, and promotion of local
specialities, for example in cheeses,
traditional ales, breeds of animals, and
varieties of fruits and vegetables. A key
theme is to link together those who enjoy
good food with the environmentalists who

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want to preserve and support local, smallscale producers, especially those using
organic farming methods. Its emblem is the
snail, seen as a symbol both of gastronomic
delight and of slowness.
Each convivium has a leader who is
responsible for organising food and wine
events, tasting workshops and who generally
raises the awareness of small local producers.
Independent, July 2001
Funding and support for these projects
comes from local convivia and producers as
well as the regional authorities
the ideal of community lies
at the heart of the Slow
movement.
Observer Food Monthly, Nov.
2001

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/kul brtn/
When I first wrote
about this
catchphrase, in
March 1997, I said
with more than
a hint of hope
that it promised to
be temporary.
Alas no, it is now
(March 1998)
everywhere in the
British press. The
Economist wrote
on 14 March that
Many people are
already sick of the
phrase. It started

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to appear in the British press near the end of

1996, shortly after Newsweek declared
London to be the coolest capital city on the
planet. Most people who live in that scruffy
and under-governed metropolis didnt
recognise this description, as a rush of
sarcastic press comments testified. However,
the press soon changed its mind and it has
been taken up with enthusiasm. The phrase is
an obvious pun on the title of the patriotic
song Rule Britannia, so obvious that
though whoever re-invented it this time
around is probably too young to know it
was the title of a song by the Bonzo Dog Doo
Dah Band back in 1967. The phrase refers to
a fashionable London scene (the capital as so
often taking its concerns to be typical of the
nation) with a new generation of pop groups
and style magazines, successful young
fashion designers, and a surge of new
restaurants. For a while after July 1996, the

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phrase was also a registered trade mark for

one of Ben & Jerrys ice-creams (vanilla with
strawberries and chocolate-covered
shortbread) designed for the British market,
though this has now been withdrawn.

/kptn/
In most of the modern theories of business,
competition is seen as one of the key forces
that keep firms lean and drive innovation.
That emphasis has been challenged by Adam
Brandenburger of the Harvard Business

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School and Barry Nalebuff of the Yale School

of Management. In part using some of the
ideas of game theory, they suggest that
businesses can gain advantage by means of a
judicious mixture of competition and
cooperation. Cooperation with suppliers,
customers and firms producing
complementary or related products can lead
to expansion of the market and the formation
of new business relationships, perhaps even
the creation of new forms of enterprise. They
chose coopetition for this concept (a blend of
cooperation and competition), which they
used as the title of their 1996 book explaining
their theories, a book which has become a
best-seller and which has since come out in
paperback. However, it seems that they
didnt coin the word: it was Ray Noorda, the
founder of Novell, who did that. The concept,
and the word, seem to have been taken up
most enthusiastically in the computer

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industry, where strategic alliances are

common in order to develop new products
and markets, particularly between software
and hardware firms.
How far does so-called co-opetition extend
in the name of the best interests of the
industry?
Computing, August 1997
I think its important that Apple be seen now
not as a pure competitor with Microsoft but
in coopetition: competing in some areas,
cooperating in others.
PC Week, June 1998

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/kzms(j)utkl/
This is a blend of cosmetic and
pharmaceutical which has appeared only in
the nineties. Its a well-known term in the
pharmaceutical business, which is still most
commonly encountered in the USA, but is

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now increasingly being used elsewhere, and

which is moving into more general contexts.
It refers to a product which is marketed as a
cosmetic, but which contains biologically
active ingredients that have an effect on the
user. Examples are anti-wrinkle creams,
baldness treatments, moisturisers and
sunscreens. They are causing problems
world-wide for regulatory authorities, such
as the American Food and Drugs
Administration, which must decide when a
product crosses the line between being
merely a cosmetic and becoming a drug, the
latter having much more stringent controls
on its development, testing and supply. Much
seems to depend on the labelling of the
product: one describing itself as a deodorant
would probably be classed as a cosmetic,
whereas one labelled as an antiperspirant
might well be classified as a drug because it
claims to close the pores of the skin.

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More prescription drugs are being sold

across the counter; some may soon become
cosmeceuticals or nutriceuticals active
chemicals sold as cosmetics or food.
Economist, Apr 1995
Photodamage, the deterioration of skin due
to sun exposure and aging, is the biggest
market segment for cosmeceuticals.
The Scientist, Jan 1998

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The divorce rate in the USA is so high

(between 40 and 50 per cent of all marriages)
that some states are trying ways to reduce it
by techniques such as mandatory premarital
counselling, cooling-off periods, or the
abolition of no-fault divorces altogether.
Louisiana is trying a slightly different
approach in which couples can opt for a more
restrictive covenant marriage, which requires
premarital counselling and sets strict limits
on divorce (at least one cynical journalist has
already referred to traditional and covenant
marriages as the regular and premium
options). The scheme has come about largely

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as a result of pressure from the churches,

whose prime motive is avowedly to protect
children from the trauma of separation, but
which are also seeking to emphasise their
view that marriage is a covenant, not just a
private contract that one may cancel at will.
Opponents protest that it is a retrograde step
based on conservative social and religious
views that reintroduces the myth that
divorce is always somebodys fault, and that
it is a form of emotional blackmail pushing
couples towards taking the harder option.
What is certain is that the idea is spreading:
several other states are interested, including
Ohio and Arkansas, and Indiana is likely to
reconsider the idea following the defeat of a
covenant marriage bill earlier this year.

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This is one of the many names that have been

given to a form of confessional and selfrevelatory writing rooted in the experiences
of the author and which frequently discusses
breakdown, childhood abuse, depression,
addiction or illness. Some recent examples

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are The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison, Skating to

Antarctica by Jenny Diski, and Prozac Nation
by Elizabethd Wurzel. Theres nothing
particularly new in such writings, of course,
as they go back at least to the Confessions of
St Augustine 1600 years ago, and the current
series has been traced to the writings of
Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe in the 1960s,
if not earlier. But now such intimate memoirs
have become so fashionable that a generic
name has had to be found for them. But there
is as yet no clear consensus: other terms that
have been used include narrative non-fiction,
personal writing, confessionalism,
autopathography and creative non-fiction.
The confessional mode, whether it bears the
label personal writing or crisis memoir, is
becoming formalized and institutionalized in

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college courses and workshops as a foster

child to the creative writing of fiction.
James Wolcott, in Vanity Fair, Oct. 1997
Almost by definition, there has to be a happy
ending: such crisis memoirs can be written
only when the authors have put some
distance between themselves and the
material.
Blake Morrison, Too True, Granta, 1998
CRISITUNITY

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Either in this spelling or as crisatunity, this

word blends crisis and opportunity. Its
occasionally used by writers and political
activists for a problem or difficulty that
provides an opportunity to communicate
their views and mobilise support.
The term derives from a 1994 episode of The
Simpsons, in which Homers daughter Lisa
tells him that the Chinese use the same word
both for crisis and opportunity. Homer
replies, Yes! Cris-atunity!
Lisa is wrong, by the way: the story about the
Chinese word is folk etymology. Ben Zimmer
wrote about it on Language Log in 2007,
finding it in a rather different form from as
long ago as 1938:
The Chinese term for crisis is dangeropportunity (). Without the danger
there cannot arise the opportunity. It is very
fitting then that in this time of danger-

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opportunity there should go forth a call to a

Forward Movement in the Christian Church
in China.
Chinese Recorder, Jan. 1938.
Ben Zimmer also discovered that this story
was widely repeated in the years that
followed, though its nonsense, as breaking
the Chinese term into its constituent
characters makes roughly as much sense as
arguing that locomotive means crazy
incentive.
A writer in 1943 muddled matters by
suggesting there was a Chinese proverb that
equated crisis with opportunity. Lisas
version is a more recent streamlining of the
tale that likewise replaces danger with crisis.
In this folk-etymologically befuddled form, it
is now a modern proverb, appropriate for
energising the workers when a sticky

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situation impends. Crisitunity is a handily

abbreviated version.
Abortion-rights groups, which see
contributions rise when their opponents are
in power, have long known about crisatunity,
even if they didnt call it that.
New York Times, 8 Jan. 2010.
None of these ideas are new. Legislators have
been half-heartedly jawing about them for
years. But the states budget crisitunity, as
Homer Simpson would say, has finally
created the incentive to do a few right things.
Providence Journal, 26 Jan. 2009.

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This is currently mostly an in-term for

internet pundits, though its potential social
impact means that its likely to become more
widely known. Its a modification of the much
better known crowdsourcing from 2004, itself
a combination of crowd and outsourcing.
In crowdsourcing, requests to help with a
task are broadcast online. Many research
projects have a crowdsourcing element, such
as searching astronomical photos to find

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planets around other stars or taking a survey

to contribute to knowledge about variations
in peoples biological clocks. The original idea
behind crowdsourcing was unpaid voluntary
collaboration but many projects now attract
cash rewards. The term crowdsourcing is now
common and has spawned several
derivatives, including crowdfunding (asking
for small contributions from a large number
of people to fund a project) and crowdvoting
(in which websites collect the opinions of a
large group on a topic).
Crowdworking is the newest member of the
set. It refers to websites that employ people
to undertake mainly low-level repetitive
tasks such as data entry, ranking URLs on
Google, transcribing recordings or tagging
photographs. Crowdworking sites have been
criticised for low pay, no security of
employment and no appeal if a worker feels
he has been unfairly treated.

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Crowdworking is growing, fast. Ville

Miettinen, chief executive of human
powered document processing service
Microtask, says business at his
crowdworking company is increasing at
around 400% year-on-year and his
experience is typical of the wider industry.
BBC News, 26 Jun. 2012.
It has excited technology-watchers who like
the idea that crowd-sourcing can become
crowd-working: Instead of hiring employees
or negotiating tiresome freelance contracts,
anyone who wants a job done that can be
done on a computer can simply go to the
market and instantly pick from a host of
willing or desperate workers.
Huffington Post, 19 Feb. 2013.

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Aficionados of this US musical style will know

that Im behindhand in mentioning it, since it
was described by Slate magazine eight
months ago as the defining sound of 2004 in
the States. But it has only recently crossed
the Atlantic to the UK, so its new for many
people. The usual problem applies of
explaining just what distinguishes it from
other musical genres that come and go. The
best I can do is quote from the same Slate
article, which talked of its lurching beats and
bellowed choruses and said that theres no
mistaking the genres sonic blueprint: a
pulverizing low end and lots of rowdy
shouting, party music that mixes menace and
pure mayhem. Just the thing with which to

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annoy the neighbours, in fact. It is said to

have begun in the clubs of Atlanta as yet
another variation on hip-hop. Where the
name came from is disputed: some say its
just the existing US slang term, a mixture of
crazy and drunk; others argue its from a
southern slang term meaning cranked up.
There has been much talk of the crunk
phenomenon lately, with some dismissing it
as a mere gimmick or publicity stunt. But Lil
Jon and his crew proved that the hype is not
without foundation, with a show that more
than made up for in energy what it may have
lacked in lyricism.
Evening Standard, 1 Feb. 2005
Crunk is a high-impact brand of wooferpopping party hip-hop that eschews all
musical and lyrical invention in wild-eyed
search of a good time.
Daily Telegraph, 22 Jan. 2005

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This abbreviation has become

known in parts of Australia
during the early months of
2006, possibly the creation of
David Chalke, a successful
social analyst and communications
consultant. It stands for cashed-up bogan
and refers to a type of young, white, mainly
working-class male.
Bogan by itself has been used both in
Australia and in New Zealand in recent
decades, either for someone who is stupidly
conventional and old-fashioned or for a
person who is uncouth or uncultured. Its
said to have started in Melbourne and to have
been popularised by The Comedy Company, a
television programme that aired in Australia
for a couple of years in the late 1980s. Where
it comes from is uncertain. Several places in
New South Wales have it in their names (and
theres also Bogan shower, a dust storm,

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among other terms). Pam Peters of the

Australian Dictionary Research Centre
suggests that these may have been borrowed
in the nineteenth century from the name of a
local tribe of aborigines. The other half of the
name, cashed-up, is an Australian colloquial
term meaning well-supplied with money,
which was originally applied to seasonal
workers who had just been paid.
An article in the Age of Melbourne describes
cashed-up bogans as extremely well-heeled,
skilled, blue-collar workers and says they
are being wooed by advertisers because they
are both moneyed and aspirational. But
others prefer to regard them as loutish,
sexist, poorly educated and unintelligent,
deriding them for being ostentatious with
their money and easily falling prey to slick
marketing. They sound very much like the
British chavs.

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The Cub market is increasingly targeted by

companies touting discretionary items such
as high-end cars, boats and motorbikes,
pricey home entertainment systems and premixed alcohol and spirits.
The Age, Melbourne, 20 May 2006
Cubs have money, and they want to spend it
on flash stuff. Like cars, boats, motorbikes,
luxury clothing and expensive home
entertainment systems.
Sydney Morning Herald, 8 June 2006

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It has long been common for opposing groups

to deface each others posters, billboards and
advertisements. In the last decade, doing so
has advanced to the status of a witty art form,
in which the adverts are not so much defaced
as rewritten or parodied. The term culture
jamming refers to this practice.
It is intimately associated with the Media
Foundation of Vancouver, Canada, which
publishes Adbusters Quarterly, edited by

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Estonian-born Kalle Lasn. The technique has

been taken up by various anti-capitalist,
green, or anarchist groups, who consider
advertising to be a polluting invasion of
personal privacy that supports the
consumerist system.
A recent British exploit, for example, changed
a billboard advert for a BBC programme
featuring Bush and Blair that read The Ones
to The Clones. Ideas stretch beyond
advertising: you may recall the group which
switched the sound chips on Barbie and GI
Joe dolls so that Barbie said Vengeance is
mine! and GI Joe said Lets go shopping!.
Thats considered to be culture jamming, too.
Its also called anti-advertising and
subvertising, though these are much less
common.
Lasn views Buy Nothing Day as a form of
culture jamming a means to subvert our

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heavily corporate- and media-driven culture.

He declares, Culture jamming involves
people who dont like consumer culture and
look for all sorts of ways to jam it up. We find
ways to make [consumerism] bite itself in the
tail.
University Wire, Nov. 2001
In the 90s, Canadian culture jamming
magazine Adbusters took the artform to new
levels with the slick subvertising of adverts
for American corporate giants such as Gap
and McDonalds to convey anti-consumerist
messages.
Guardian, May 2002

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Retailers in the US have for at least the last

25 years called the day after Thanksgiving
Black Friday, because its the day when
everybody wants to shop. Its said to be the
day when stores go into profit (go into the
black on their books), though thats an urban
legend early usage examples show it was
given that name because of all the crowds
and snarled-up traffic.

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In November 2005 the online retailer

shop.org gave the name Cyber Monday to the
Monday after Thanksgiving. The rationale
was that in recent years it has become the
biggest online shopping day of the year, with
people logging on from work to buy things
for Christmas. When I wrote briefly about
this term at the time, I suggested it was
unlikely it would still be around in 2006. I
was so wrong.
According to Google News, more than a
thousand pieces mentioning it appeared in
US newspapers during November and early
December 2006. However, the main story of
2006 which was based on a survey by
MasterCard asserted it was a myth, as
records suggested that the peak day online in
2005 was really 5 December (as the Orlando
Sentinel put it on 29 November 2006: Cyber
Monday may need to be renamed Cyber
Hype). Britt Beemer, the founder and CEO of

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Americas Research Group asserted that

Cyber Monday is a hoax. The Cyber Monday
theory was that consumers would rush to
make purchases on-line on the Monday after
Black Friday either to get better prices or to
order from their computer at work. Neither is
true. Another survey claims the peak day in
2005 was 12 December and yet a third
predicted that in 2006 it would be on 18
December.
As all these dates are Mondays, the name
could still be made to fit, though nobody
seems to want to move it from its immediate
post-Thanksgiving position. So much
promotional activity was poured into Cyber
Monday this year by online retailers that it
may become the busiest electronic shopping
day through a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Even if Cyber Monday is not the biggest
online shopping day, merely a flimsy

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promotion meant to attract media attention

and push people to shop online (classic
Hallmark holiday), a bunch of people actually
did buy stuff online Monday, and its useful to
see what the Internet masses are shopping
for.
Washington Post, 1 Dec. 2006
With no parking lot congestion, or checkout
lines, it was easy yesterday to overlook Cyber
Monday, the e-commerce equivalent of Black
Friday. But Cyber Monday, so designated by
the National Retail Federation, has gained
acceptance as an Internet shopping
phenomenon. Following the rush of crowds
to brick-and-mortar stores on the Friday
after Thanksgiving, many consumers use
their high-bandwidth Internet connections at
work to get serious about their online
Christmas shopping.
Cedar Rapids Gazette, 29 Nov. 2006

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This is worth noting as a late entry to the

group of words in the prefix cyber-, so
fashionable in the middle nineties for matters
related to online communications. The
second element is clearly enough from the
word hypochondria, abnormal anxiety about
ones health. Medical professionals seem to
have coined the word in exasperation at
people who frantically search online for
detailed information on their medical
problems, real or imagined. There are three
difficulties with doing so much online
material is designed for other professionals
and is difficult to interpret unless youre
already well versed in the field, some is
biased or wrong, and some comes from
unregulated sellers of pharmaceuticals who
dont know purchasers medical histories and

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cannot predict possible side effects. Theres

so much material available that a person with
unfocused worries about health can easily
become convinced theyre suffering from any
number of serious ailments.
There was a time when the internet fed and
fuelled her health concerns and she has
featured in a number of articles about
cyberchondria, which occurs when an
individual surfs the net in a frenzy of health
anxiety.
Observer, Mar. 2001
Hypochondria, the excessive fear of illness,
has now been overtaken by cyberchondria
the same fear made much worse, fuelled by
volumes of easily-accessible material
available on the Internet.
Daily Record, May 2001

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If youre reading this in the office, you may be

cyberloafing, as its the term for employees
who surf the Internet when they should be
working. Its not an especially new word (it
dates from the end of the heyday of the cyberword-creation boom, with the first example
probably being in Toni Kamins' article Cyberloafing: Does Employee Time Online Add Up to
Net Losses?, in the New York Daily News in
July 1995) but it became briefly newsworthy
in 2002 following the publication of a paper
by Vivien K G Lim of the National University
of Singapore in the Journal of Organizational
Behavior. She surveyed a selection of selfidentified cyberloafers and found they often

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did so not out of boredom or laziness but as

an act of defiance against what they saw as
unjust actions by their employers so a
conscious attempt to balance the ledger. The
root of the term is the colloquial English noun
loafer, someone who spends time idly. This is
known from about 1830, originally in the US,
but its origin is unknown; it might just
possibly come from an old German word for a
tramp, Landlufer.
Gartner estimates that about five percent of
enterprise workers engage in inappropriate
online behavior at the office, ranging from
simple cyberloafing to using company
Internet access to hold down a second job.
Business Wire, May 2001

As employers grow wary of workers

cyberloafing and worry about litigation over
offensive and incriminating e-mail, many
companies are cracking down with strict e-

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mail use policies and software to monitor

network usage.
PC World, Mar. 2000

CYBERVENTING
What do you do when youre unhappy with
your boss? Traditionally, you grumble to coworkers in the hallway, round the water
cooler or over a drink after work. When email, bulletin boards and chat rooms came
along, some wrote messages to each other.
Now the idea has been taken a step further:
disgruntled employees are setting up Web
sites to provide a forum for complaints. The
term invented for this is cyberventing:
venting your anger by electronic means.
Some employers have even set up official
grousing sites on internal Web systems,
reasoning that its better to get the

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complaints out in the open than have

problems fester in the dark. The term has
also been applied to Web sites set up by
people who are angry at the treatment
theyve received from retailers or suppliers,
and also to the mass e-mailing of staff by
aggrieved ex-workers, such as in a recent
case at Intel.
While cyberventing is a convenient way to
blow off steam, conflict resolution is the best
way in the long run to build and maintain
strong work relationships, he contends.
HR Magazine, Nov. 1999
Bosses in New Zealand must be pretty good,
because none of them get a mention in the
My Boss Sucks website. This is part of a new
trend on the Internet cyberventing, where
you can complain to your hearts content.

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The Press (Canterbury, New Zealand), Mar.

2000

This term has been around at least since

1996, when it appeared in a special issue of
the International Journal of Heritage Studies;
it gained wider public notice in 2000 through
the publication of a book with the title Dark
Tourism by Professors Malcolm Foley and
John Lennon of Glasgow Caledonian

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University. Dark tourism is the visiting of

sites of tragedy, such as Auschwitz and New
Yorks Ground Zero, or historical battlefield
sites such as Bosworth and Gettysburg, or
trips to the home turf of Jack the Ripper in
Whitechapel. Malcolm Foley and John Lennon
point out that the custodians of such sites
have responsibilities both to their visitors
and to the victims commemorated there to
tell a truthful and rounded story. This is not
always possible in an excursion that may
have been designed as entertainment rather
than remembrance and in which voyeurism
and exploitation for commercial or
propagandistic ends may distort the message.
When you visit the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, you
are engaging in what specialists call dark
tourism travel to a site associated with
atrocity or public tragedy.

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Midstream, 1 May 2005

Dark tourism sites are important
testaments to the consistent failure of
humanity to temper our worst excesses and,
managed well, they can help us to learn from
the darkest elements of our past.
Observer, 23 Oct. 2005

This is a confusing term because it has two

meanings.
The older one, popularised by an influential
discussion paper The Darknet and the Future
of Content Distribution, of 2002, saw it as the

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collection of peer-to-peer systems that

permitted the illegal sharing of copyright
digital material across the Internet. In a
review of J D Lasicas 2005 book Darknet:
Hollywoods War Against the Digital
Generation, it was explained thus: Darknet is
the lawless underground economy in which
computer users share and trade music,
movies, television shows, games, software,
and porn. In a sense, its the black market of
the Internet.
The second meaning has grown up in the past
couple of years and is now the more
common. To evade crackdowns on public filesharing systems, some users have set up
private, invitation-only networks. Others
have adopted similar methods to circumvent
censorship or to avoid legal oversight for
other reasons some private forums are
said to be used by hackers and paedophiles.

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A darknet is an encrypted, anonymous

section of the internet where users meet, chat
and swap data.
Daily Record, 1 Sep 2006

Fed up of controls
imposed on the internet by everybody from
the government to workplaces and the
service provider at home, Charles Assisi tries
exploring the darknet. A part of the internet
where entry is by invitation only.

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February 12 is the anniversary of the

birthday of Charles Darwin, the author of the
theory of evolution by natural selection.
Since 1997, when it began at the University of
Tennessee, events have been organised
annually in the USA to mark this day, under
the title Darwin Day. It has came about
because many scientists are concerned about
the number of schools and colleges in the US
which under pressure from the religious
right either do not teach evolution or
teach creationism instead. The purpose of the

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day is to raise the profile of the ideas behind

evolutionary theory, to encourage debate,
and to rebut fundamentalist ideas.
A campaign was launched in the USA two
years ago to make Darwins birthday an
international day of celebration of his life and
achievements and of the theory of evolution.
The organisers are placing particular
emphasis on getting the Day established in
Britain, where Darwin was born, and where
anti-evolution sentiment is rare. It is hoped
to have the Day in place by the bicentenary of
Darwins birth in 2009.
Its going to be rather harder getting Darwin
Day widely accepted in the US, because 12
February 1809, by an odd coincidence, was
also the birthday of Abraham Lincoln
Times of India, 4 Dec. 2005

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Things
move
fast in

computing technology, as many people know

only too well. (Seen many 5.25" floppy disks
recently?) But its not just the physical
storage of data which gets outmoded very
quickly so do the formats in which that
data is stored. As methods evolve, data stored
in old structures becomes progressively less
accessible. Enter the data archaeologist, a
specialist in recovering historical data from
such sources and translating it into a form

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which is useful. The term is used especially

for large data stores like those accumulated
in weather recording, of great importance for
assessing climate change. This seems to have
been where it originated: its recorded about
1993 in the name of the GODAR Project, the
Global Oceanographic Data Archaeology and
Rescue Project. It is closely related to the
more common data mining, which refers to
the trawling of corporate databases for
meaningful relationships between data.
[Im grateful to Mike Anglin for telling me
about this term.]
Data Archaeologist smacks of
postmodernism gone awry, but the business
of rummaging through now-forgotten tapes
of health-care records or satellite
observations for archival data is already a
viable industry.

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Rohit Khare and Adam Rifkin, Capturing the

State of Distributed Systems with XML, 1997
Data archeologists like Levitus have spent the
past 7 years seeking out ocean temperature
data around the world and digitizing them for
archiving on modern media.
Science, Mar. 2000

This phrase has been around for at least 15

years, but only in a specialist way. One sense
is that of a place of safety and security for
electronic information, for example where
encrypted copies of crucial data can be stored
as a backup away from ones place of
business. But it can also mean a site in which
data can be stored outside the jurisdiction of

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regulatory authorities. This sense has come

to wider public notice recently as a result of
Neal Stephensons book Cryptonomicon, in
which the establishment of such a haven in
South East Asia is part of the plot. In a classic
case of life imitating art, there is now a
proposal to set up a data haven on one of the
old World War Two forts off the east coast of
Britain, which declared independence under
the name of Sealand back in 1967 (it issues
its own stamps and money, for example). The
idea is to get round a proposed British law
the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill
(RIP) that would force firms to hand over
decryption keys if a crime is suspected and
make Internet providers install equipment to
allow interception of e-mails by the security
services.
The Privacy Act doesnt protect information
from being transferred from New Zealand to

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data havens countries that dont have

adequate privacy protection.
Computerworld, May 1999
The government last night poured cold water
on a plan by a group of entrepreneurs to
establish a data haven on a rusting iron
fortress in the North Sea in an attempt to
circumvent new anti-cryptography laws.
Guardian, June 2000
G

This term has been visible in the technical

literature since about 1995, but is only now
starting to become known to non-specialists

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(The New York Times on 2 November had a

headline Silicon Valley says datacasting is
hot) and as yet seems not to have been listed
in any general dictionary. Its an obvious
enough blend of data and broadcasting, and
its a cover-all term for the transmission of
various kinds of data as a secondary service
on digital broadcasting networks. The
networks can be terrestrial, satellite or cable,
and the data can be information, interactive
multimedia (including video), or Internet
downloads. Although European broadcasters
have been active in digital television and
radio broadcasting for some years, it is
doubtful whether the term is any better
known in Europe than in the US.
The new venture will expand WorldSpace
broadcasts to include datacasting, bringing
Internet downloads to millions of people in
Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin
America.

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Edupage, Oct. 2000

For other elements, such as movie clips, it
might mean getting users permission to
datacast video automatically into their hard
drive caches a variant on the old PointCast
push model.
Telephony, Mar. 2000

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The World Wide Web has become so big that

search engines cant index it all; in fact, they
find only a small proportion. Theres also lots
of stuff out there mostly in databases
that cant be reached at all by the
conventional search technologies in use since
the Web began. The firm BrightPlanet has
estimated that this deep Web (a term it seems
to have invented) contains 7,500 terabytes of

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data, compared with about 19 terabytes of

data on what it calls the surface Web,
numbers impossible to visualise in other than
the vaguest way. Even if these figures are
overestimates, it still suggests that there is a
lot of material out there that would be useful
if only one could find it. The firm also points
out that the deep data is usually of excellent
quality, and that most of it is publicly
accessible without charge. Now we have to
find a way of getting at it.
BrightPlanet estimates that this so-called
deep Web could be 500 times larger than
the surface Web that most search engines try
to cover.
NewsScan Daily, Jan. 2001
The FAA database is part of the invisible
Web, sometimes called the deep Web a
vast repository of information hidden in

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databases that general-purpose search

engines dont reach.
The Industry Standard, Sep. 2000

DE-EXTINCTION

This word has emerged, seemingly from

nowhere, in the past couple of weeks, led by
the cover story in the April 2013 issue of
National Geographic magazine. Most of its
appearances have been in news items

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connected to a conference in Washington DC

on 15 March on the practical and ethical
issues of reviving extinct species to deextinct them.
A new organisation, Revive and Restore,
formed by the Long Now Foundation with the
help of the National Geographic Society and
advised by a group of respected scientists,
has been created to examine the potential for
a new branch of zoology: de-extinction.
The Times, 8 Mar. 2013.
Genetic science is rapidly getting to the stage
of being able to regenerate animals and
plants from preserved specimens. The
conference heard that a team led by
Professor Mike Archer at the University of
New South Wales has created embryos of the
extinct Australian gastric brooding frog,
which incubated offspring in its stomach and
gave birth through its mouth, though the

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embryos survived only a short time. The

extinct Pyrenean ibex was cloned in 2003 but
the baby died shortly after birth. There are
proposals to bring back the Tasmanian tiger,
the American passenger pigeon and the
mammoth. The subject divides the scientific
community. Some opponents consider deextinction to be valueless, while others feel it
will divert attention and resources from
preserving living but endangered species.
The earliest scientific usage Ive found is in a
quite different context, in a paper on
cosmology published in 2008. As so often, a
SF/fantasy author got there first, in a story
about a magician:
Again he hesitated and was brought up
short by the coalescing vapor. Suddenly
thirteen black cats faced him, spitting
viciously. Bink had never seen a pure cat
before, in the flesh. He regarded the cat as an

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extinct species. He just stood there and

stared at this abrupt de-extinction, unable to
formulate a durable opinion. If he killed these
animals, would he be re-extincting the
species?
The Source of Magic, by Piers Anthony, 1979.

The trouble with having some famous person

endorsing your products or even becoming
associated with them by accident is that they
can and often will say or do things that
adversely affect your reputation. How good it
would be to have a celebrity on board who
could be guaranteed to be the epitome of
discretion, always there but always on
message, or at least never off it. No risk of
embarrassing faux pax, sudden

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disappearances to dry out, or upstaging

winners at awards ceremonies.
This is part of what lies behind a slang term
of the marketing and entertainment business
that has recently started to appear in media
addressed to the wider world: deleb, short
for dead celebrity. A recent edition of the
US television programme 60 minutes found
that theres a lot of money to be had
representing famous dead people
everybody from Elvis to Einstein.
On 29 October 2009 newspapers reported
Forbes magazines annual list of the TopEarning Dead Celebrities. This put Yves Saint
Laurent at the top, followed by Richard
Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, with
Michael Jackson coming third. The income of
these delebs (Michael Jackson had already
earned $72m since his death in June 2009)
proves the truth of the old saying

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sometimes death really can be a good career

move.
Steve McQueen is a legend that many
celebrities like to emulate, but few do, said
Diana Brobmann, senior manager, new
business development and product licensing
at GreenLight. The use of Dead Celebs (or as
I call them Delebs) such as McQueen,
continues to increase in the marketplace.
Licensing.biz, 19 Jun. 2008.
Images of deceased stars have long been used
in advertising. The most recent trend is for
digital enhancement of images, seamlessly
integrating delebs into current situations
and, in some cases, putting words into their
mouths.
Marketing Week, 30 Apr. 2009.

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DEMITARIAN
The UN Environment
Programme published a
study this week, entitled
Our Nutrient World, which
argues that people in the
developed world eat far too
much meat. Intensive meat production, it
says, requires large amounts of fertilisers to
grow grain for fodder, which leads to a web
of water and air pollution that is damaging
human health. Our lust for cheap meat is
unsustainable, the study asserts, and fuels a
trade in undocumented livestock and
mislabelled cheap ready meals that has, for
example, led to the current European
horsemeat scandal.
According to the lead author of the study,
Professor Mark Sutton of the UK Centre for
Ecology and Hydrology, one solution is for

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people to halve their consumption of meat, to

become demitarians (a semi-blend of
vegetarian with the prefix demi-, a half).
Professor Sutton is credited with having
coined the term, which first appeared in print
in the title of the 2009 Barsac Declaration
about ways to reduce usage of nitrogen
fertilisers in Europe.
Dr Sutton ... and the other scientists involved
in the project have signed an agreement
pledging to be demitarians or eat half as
much meat. He said the idea was to
encourage people to cut down rather than go
vegetarian completely. We are not saying do
not eat meat full stop, he said.
Daily Telegraph, 11 Apr. 2011.
He said a good aim was to be demitarian,
halving the amount of meat normally eaten.
This would also benefit health, as Europeans

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currently consume 70% more protein per

day on average than is needed.
MSN News, 18 Feb. 2013.
DEMUTUALISATION
Until recently in Britain, building societies
(the equivalent of the US savings and loans)
were almost the only source of mortgages
and played a key role in personal savings.
These were always mutual societies, owned
by and run for the benefit of their members,
with no shareholders taking profits.
Fundamental changes in financial systems in
the 1990s have led many of them to turn
themselves into banks so ceasing to be
mutual societies because there are fewer
restrictions on the way banks do business
and it is thought to be easier to raise finance
(fashion probably has something to do with

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it, too). This shift is furthest advanced in

Britain and South Africa, but is also taking
place in Australia and elsewhere. The process
is called demutualisation and has been
controversial, not least because members
have been given cash settlements to
encourage them to agree to the change in
status. This has led to people opening
accounts solely in hope of a windfall profit, a
technique which has been dubbed
carpetbagging in the British press. The
process has now extended to some British
insurance companies which are also mutual
in structure. The verb is demutualise (in the
US, demutualize).

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Its open to debate whether this is really an

English word, though it has been seen in a
number of English-language publications in
recent months, because it was actually coined
in German. Its first letter comes from Deutsch,
the German for German, plus Englisch, the
German for English (it is sometimes
anglicised to Denglish). It refers to the hybrid
German-English fashionable speech of

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younger Germans, heavily influenced in

particular by American English.
Its perhaps only to be expected that
computerese such as e-mail and homepage
are standard. Outside computing, you may
encounter task force, party, shopping,
goalgetter, and sales among many others. On
German railways, you will find service points,
ticket counters and lounges.
Many Germans have been angered by what
they see as the linguistic imperialism of such
imports. Some, such as Eckart Werthebach,
the regional interior minister in Berlin, have
called for a language purification law to ban
them; others have suggested an Academy for
the Cultivation and Protection of the German
Language, like the Acadmie Franaise. What
annoys them especially is the way that
English words infiltrate otherwise normal
German sentences. An example was a notice

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seen at a German airport: Mit dem stand-byupgrade-Voucher kann das Ticket beim Checkin aufgewertet werden.
Denglish joins a variety of other words of
similar kind, such as Japlish, Chinglish
(Chinese), Konglish (Korean), Russlish,
Hinglish (Hindi), Spanglish, Polglish (Polish),
Dunglish (Dutch), Singlish (Singaporean
English) and Swenglish (Swedish), not to
mention Franglais, of course.
This movement wants to impose hefty fines
on any German caught using the bastardised
tongue known as Denglisch.
Observer, Mar. 2001
Werthebachs plan has sparked a national
debate over whether the language of the
printing pioneer Johann Gutenberg and poet
Johann Wolfgang Goethe is in danger of being

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diluted into the German-English mixture now

known as Denglisch.
Reuters, Mar. 2001

Can you imagine that visiting the dentist

might one day be regarded as a treat, a
pleasant session in which youre pampered
by personal attention before a little relaxing
root canal work? A few American dental

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surgeons think this is the future of their

speciality, and have invented the dental spa.
As well as dental treatment, a range of other
treatments, such as massages, manicures and
facials are available, all against a backdrop of
relaxing mood music and images. Theres a
serious medical purpose behind this, beyond
the need to get more people through the door
and more income for the practice: theres
good reason to think that a relaxed patient is
one who suffers less and whose treatment is
more effective.
Welcome to the Dental Spa, Californias latest
pampering establishment, where the pain of
root canal and fillings is sublimated totally to
the pleasure principle.
Toronto Star, Nov. 2002
The Atlanta Center for Cosmetic Dentistry in
Georgia is one of the first of these new dental
spas. It hired a team of designers to create

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an ambience reminiscent of a fine upscale

resort where visits start with free tea, coffee,
juices and freshly baked cookies in a
luxurious, scented lounge.
Guardian, Jan 2003

A fundamental disagreement between the UK

parliament in Westminster and the devolved
Scottish one in Holyrood concerns Scotlands
constitutional status. Should it remain part of
the UK, become an independent country, or
move towards a status somewhere in
between?
The last option, favoured only as a fallback
position by the ruling Scottish National Party,

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under its leader Alex Salmond, is summed up

in the political catchphrase devo-max, short
for maximum devolution of powers. Among
other matters, this option would include the
power to set, raise and keep taxes, with a
proportion remitted to London to pay its
share of the costs of defence and foreign
affairs (the jargon term for this is fiscal
autonomy).
The UK government objects strenuously and
wants to keep devo-max off the ballot paper
in a referendum proposed for 2013 (by
Westminster) or 2014 (by Holyrood, since it
is the symbolic 700th anniversary of the
Battle of Bannockburn in which the Scots
under Robert the Bruce gave the English a
bloody nose).
Devo-max is first recorded in 2007 in a book
by Henry McLeish and Tom Brown, entitled
Scotland: the Road Divided.

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Fearful that he may fail to turn the polls

round, the SNP leader has been eyeing the
consolation prize of devo max (for which the
polls consistently show a large majority) as a
stepping stone to independence.
New Statesman, 16 Jan. 2012.
Current polls suggest Scottish voters would
reject full independence but would back a
third option, dubbed devo max. The UK
coalition government and Labour are
determined to make sure it does not appear
on the ballot sheet, because they would
struggle to agree on the question and fear it
would make eventual independence seem
inevitable.
Financial Times, 26 Jan 2012.

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This abbreviation can be expanded in several

different ways (such as Design For Yield or
Division for Youth), but the one that has
gained most exposure in British newspapers
in the past year or so is Done For You. Its the
opposite of DIY (Do It Yourself).
The trend is for busy people with disposable
income to get someone in to undertake those
little annoying jobs around the house rather
than try to do them themselves. In British
cities in recent years, this has been helped
along by the influx of large numbers of skilled
workers from the new central European
members of the EU, especially Poland, and is
said to be the reason why DIY suppliers
profits are falling.

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The abbreviation itself is recorded from at

least as far back as 2000, but even now
articles that use it always explain it, so it
hasnt yet become established in everyday
vocabulary.
The do-it-yourself boom has finally collapsed,
replaced by the phenomenon of DFY Done
For You. Instead of trying DIY, homeowners
are paying professionals to do the work.
Daily Mail, 1 Dec. 2006
The dramatic shift by the British public away
from DIY towards DFY Done For You
has triggered a collapse in demand for MFIs
self-assembly kitchens and bedrooms.
Evening Standard, 22 Sep. 2006

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The word is a blend of diabetes and obesity,

which sums up the problem. Doctors in the
West and some Asian developing countries
are deeply worried about the rapid increase
in a form of diabetes called adult-onset or
Type 2 diabetes. This used to be a problem of
later life but it is now being seen more and
more among obese younger people,
sometimes even children. A person who is
grossly overweight another problem
which is now endemic in some Western

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nations has a very high risk of contracting

diabetes, so high that the two conditions are
considered intimately connected a
situation the new term seeks to express. The
cure is the deeply unpopular one of eating
less and taking more exercise to reduce
weight; even if a person already has adultonset diabetes caused by being overweight,
getting slim can put it into remission. In the
US, diabesity is a trademark of a non-profit
organisation, Shape Up America, which raises
awareness of the health effects of obesity and
promotes a healthy lifestyle.
A particular concern is the rapid spread
among Asian children of what was once
known as adult-onset diabetes. The ailment,
which rarely affected children in the past, is
so closely linked to obesity that it has been
nicknamed diabesity.
International Herald Tribune, 17 Mar. 2003

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Hand in hand with the obesity rates is a

rocketing rate of diabetes. In America, they
are even coining a new word for it: diabesity.
Guardian, 10 May 2003

This phrase appeared in the US in the middle

1990s to refer to the gap developing between
those who had access to the Internet and
those who did not. The implication was that

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poorer groups were losing out through lack

of access to the information available online
(a deprivation also referred to as being
information poor). It is now widely
distributed and has become common in much
of the English-speaking world.
In the UK it has recently been redefined to
refer to people who cant afford, or are
unwilling, to buy new television sets to
receive free-to-air digital terrestrial
transmissions. The British government
originally set a date of 2006 for closing down
the existing analogue transmitters, a date
that has since been revised to 20062010.
One reason for pressing on with the changeover is that the government would be able to
auction off the radio spectrum used by the
old analogue transmitters. The trouble is that
many people see no point in changing, and
analogue sets, with a lifetime of at least a
decade, are still being sold in substantial

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numbers, with no indication that they will

shortly be obsolete.
Ministers want to gauge reaction to digital
television from the kind of households that
have been slow to make the change to multichannel television. There are fears that,
unless the take-up of digital spreads to the
middle-aged and elderly, a digital divide
could open up.
Guardian, Apr. 2001

This is a technique for broadcasting digital

radio programmes over short-, medium-, and
long-wave transmitters worldwide, to
replace the AM format used since the dawn of
broadcasting. Its claimed to provide listeners

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with near-FM quality and more

importantly a signal free from interference
and fading.
The term goes back to 1996 and became
formal in 1998, when a consortium of
manufacturers and broadcasters was formed
to work out a common standard. It was
realised by everyone involved that
broadcasting in the lower bands was doomed
due to reception problems unless a
fundamental change was made.
It is being predicted, in fact, that DRM will
eventually supersede AM in all these bands, if
the many millions of listeners throughout the
world can be persuaded to replace their
existing receivers.
Though it has had a lot of attention in the
specialist press, it was only in 2003 that the
first broadcasts were made and even now the
number of channels is extremely limited,

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receivers even more so. Because the standard

is non-proprietary, it has also been taken up
by amateurs.

DISINTERMEDIATION
A fairly horrid mouthful, but if you pick
disintermediation apart you will find it is a
noun based on intermediate. The concept is
that of removing links from a trading chain,
what is called in more colloquial language
cutting out the middleman, or putting the
producer of goods or services directly in
touch with the customer. It is currently a
buzzword in several fields but particularly in
banking, because banks have seen much of
their traditional market drift away to

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businesses which trade directly with the

public by telephone or post. Another key area
is that of insurance, where telephone-based
direct traders have creamed off much of the
business that used to go through local
insurance brokers. Other middlemen already
affected are share brokerages and travel
agencies where big providers of services are
using electronic communications and the
Internet to bypass them and so lessen the
trading distance between them and their
customers, in the words of one expert to use
information to replace mobility. The
adjective and participle is disintermediated.

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This is a gently
mischievous
manifesto
agreed in
October 1995 by
a founding group
of four Danish
film directors,
among them
Lars von Trier
and Thomas
Vinterberg. They
asserted it was a
rescue
operation to
counter certain tendencies in film today
they aimed to break away from what they
saw as the stifling conventions of film making
that created barriers between actor and
audience. They agreed to create films
according to ten self-denying precepts.

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Among others, these lay down that films must

be shot entirely on location with no outside
props; the camera must be hand-held; there
must be no artificial lighting and all sound
must be recorded on location; action must
take place in the here and now and
everything seen on screen must actually take
place (so ruling out, for example, scenes of
murder). Dogme is still mainly a term of
European art-house cinema, but its
becoming known through feature films made
under these rules, such as Lars von Triers
Idiots and Thomas Vinterbergs Festen (The
Celebration), which won the Special Jury
Prize at Cannes in 1998. A third film, Mifune,
has just been released. The concept has been
gently derided by many critics, some of
whom sound puzzled why anybody would
shackle themselves with such rules. Jonathan
Romney in the Guardian said it was playful
puritanism, and it has also been called

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tongue-in-cheek provocation. The name is

the French word for dogma, and is
pronounced the same way.
Dogme helped the film stay as close to reality
as possible. Because of this style, there were
no props or fake blood, so when it came to
physical fights, everyone had to take one for
the team.
Toronto Sun, Feb. 1999
Rules are there to be broken and for this
third outing under the Dogme 95 banner,
director Kragh-Jacobsen has embraced the
sacred vow of cinematic chastity with
anything but monastic rigour.
Empire Online, Oct. 1999

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Australians will be familiar with this term for

a type of targeted political campaign
message, since it has been known there since
at least 1997. It has started to appear in
Britain during the current election campaign
because of the Australian political guru
Lynton Crosby. He ran four campaigns for

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John Howard before transferring his person

and his skills to the UK and another Howard,
the leader of the Conservative party, Michael
Howard. The phrase refers to a campaign
message that will not cause general offence,
but which contains a coded message to which
sympathetic voters will respond, in the same
way that a dog will hear an ultrasonic whistle
inaudible to the humans around it.
The net also plays into the Tories hands by
facilitating the dog-whistle campaigning at
which Michael Howard has become
increasingly adept. Just as a dog-whistle is
inaudible to humans but is heard by every
canine within miles, Howard has been
beaming messages at targeted groups antiabortion campaigners, and people hostile to
immigrants, gypsies and asylum-seekers
which, if broadcast in the normal way, might
repel the majority of voters.

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the Observer, 10 Apr. 2005

The Tory leaders choice of issues, from
immigration to travellers and abortion, is
said to be an example of dog-whistle
politics. You call home your traditional
supporters of the party who have drifted
away by appealing to their basest instincts
and stirring up fear and prejudice and ugly
gutter politics. But you do so at a pitch that
cannot be heard by others. Its a hit-and-run
approach, says Mr Hain.
the Independent on Sunday, 27 Mar. 2005

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Domotics is the application of intelligent

technology to make a home more
comfortable and convenient. You may be
familiar with the idea under the name
household automation, which is much more
common; domotics tends to be preferred by
robotics and computing specialists and also

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to be more often used in Europe. Another

term sometimes encountered is smart house,
used in a European initiative from 2004.
Too old to learn new tricks
Among the many applications
that fall under the heading of
domotics are sensors that
automatically adjust lighting
levels to meet the personal preferences of
family members. Other sensors could water
your plants according to need or vary the
ventilation to make best use of outdoor
climate conditions. With broadband
communications now widely available, in the
event of a fire or break-in your house could
call the emergency services and explain in
detail what was wrong. Some experts have
described clever fridges that could read the
wireless tags on food, spot when items are

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getting low and automatically reorder them.

Intelligent washing machines could decide
for themselves how much cleaning your
garments needed.
People have been dreaming about the
automatic house for decades it was
satirised back in the 1950s by Jacques Tati in
Mon Oncle. It is now possible to implement
many of the ideas but the cost is too high for
most people.
Domotics blends Latin domus, a house, with
robotics. The earliest example Ive so far
found is from 1994.
Domotic systems that use PDAs, cell phones,
sensors, and Internet access are being used
for everything from alerting emergency
services to unlocking the front door, making
it possible for all of us to live fuller lives.
Dr Dobbs Journal, Mar. 2005

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Buyers of Polaris homes choose modern or

rustic interiors at La Torre, with underfloor
heating often part of the standard package
and domotics the ability to use your
laptop or mobile to turn on air-conditioning
or irrigation systems.
Daily Mail, 25 Apr. 2004

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D.O.T.S

Every doctor knows that it is often difficult to

persuade patients to complete a course of
treatment and not to leave off as soon as they
feel better. This is particularly significant
with antibiotics, in which stopping too soon
has led to drug-resistant strains of disease.
The problems are more acute when the
patient is suffering from tuberculosis, which

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requires drugs to be taken for at least six

months and in which the immediate
symptoms can disappear quite quickly. A
system has been developed, originally
applied to uncooperative drug-takers in the
US, in which health workers supervise the
patient and ensure that the drugs are actually
taken day by day. This is known by the
cumbersome name directly-observed
treatment (short-course), which is commonly
and unsurprisingly abbreviated to DOTS. The
term was in the news in March 1997 because
the World Health Organisation seemed to be
claiming that the use of this technique could
bring the world-wide epidemic of TB under
control within a decade, a claim regarded as
preposterous by many experts.

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/dul/
This word isnt especially new its
recorded as long ago as the 1980s and the
association Doulas of North America has been
in existence since 1992 but it is only
slowly becoming known outside the US and

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as yet is rarely recorded in dictionaries. A

doula is a supportive companion, herself a
mother, who is trained to help a new mother
during childbirth and afterwards. The doula
is employed to give advice, practical
assistance and emotional support, but
doesnt get involved with the medical aspects
of the birth. After the birth, she may continue
to advise and perhaps do some light chores
around the house to help mum cope with the
new baby, though the birth and post-birth
types of assistance are often separated. The
term comes from the Greek name for a
female slave, a household servant, by
implication one who would have helped the
woman of the house during childbirth.
The professional doula doesnt just walk into
a house and take over she does whatever
is necessary so that the new mother will start
to feel that she is taking control of things
again.

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Daily Telegraph, Jan. 2000

The best possibility would probably be a
doula, who is trained to help new mothers in
any way she can. This miracle worker will
mind the twins for you, fix meals, do the
laundry whatever you want.
Washington Post, June 2000
DOWNSHIFTER
Downshifters are
the antithesis of
the acquisitive
yuppies of the
eighties. They
believe that time
is more important
than money and
that it is better to
work less and be happy and fulfilled than be

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well paid for struggling with jobs that are

stressful or unrewarding. Though it was
heralded as a new Renaissance philosophy
by the Trends Research Institute in New
York, which is credited with inventing the
term in 1994, the idea is far from new and,
for example, echoes the Gandhian voluntary
simplicity of the 1930s. To downshift means
to cut out unnecessary expenditure and
cultivate a simpler lifestyle with time to do
more of the things one wants to do, but not
go to the extremes of dropping out of society
or attempting self-sufficiency. Some who
have gone this route say that they have been
able to make savings because a substantial
proportion of their income was spent coping
with the emotional and social consequences
of overachievement and maintaining a
consumerist lifestyle. Ironically, it seems a
requirement for remodelling ones life is
financial independence; significantly,

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downshifting has been taken up principally by

middle-class professionals who can afford the
loss of income. The word is a figurative use of
a term originally applied to changing gear in
a car and which dates from the 1950s.

This has become a

fashionable term in
recent months in the
US, and the phrase has
now crossed the
Atlantic to Britain. Its a reaction against
dress-down Friday, which started out as a
well-meaning attempt to inject informality
into office life, but which seems to have led to
more stress than ever. Employees could no
longer hide behind uniform business dress,
but had to start thinking about what to wear.
In the way of things, this informal Friday

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clothing has itself become stylised into

business casual. The term dress-up Thursday
seems to have been invented by enterprising
American menswear firms last year to try to
revive the popularity of the suit, though
industry pundits predict that the move
towards more casual work dress styles is
going to continue inexorably. Dress-up
Thursday is causing some employers to tear
their hair out. One said: We have workplace
dress-up and workplace dress-down. Why
dont we dress normal and get the work
done?
Some companies, finding that casual
sometimes means sloppy, are now testing a
novel idea: Dress-up Monday or Dress-up
Thursday.
Christian Science Monitor, Apr. 2001
Leading chains such as Mens Wearhouse now
promote themselves as guides helping baffled

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men navigate the new dress codes. But the

industry is also trying to fight the casual
trend, last year launching a campaign to
promote dress-up Thursdays.
The Record (Bergen County, NJ), Apr. 2000

The idea is to remove

the mechanical linkages between the controls
of a car and the devices that actually do the
work. Instead of operating the steering and

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brakes directly, the controls would send

commands to a central computer, which
would instruct the car what to do.
The great advantage being put forward for
this is that the computer is able to make the
steering, suspension and brakes work
together to give the car better handling,
especially in bad road conditions, to give
better fuel consumption, and to react to
emergencies faster than a human driver
could. Though the vehicle would look much
the same, it would be transformed into what
one industry expert calls a computer
network with a car wrapped round it.
The problem for car manufacturers, who are
actively researching the systems, is that
getting them right is likely to be much less of
a problem than convincing drivers familiar
with crashing computers at home that
their cars wont do the same.

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Its no accident that the term sounds like flyby-wire, which is a method of controlling
commercial aircraft that has been in use for
more than a decade. The term drive-by-wire
has been around since the 1980s, though in
early examples it could instead refer to
methods of automatic steering using circuits
embedded in the road surface.
As far as the industry is concerned, it is only a
matter of time before drive-by-wire becomes
standard. But some safety experts are
questioning the wisdom of this radical
change. They point out that fly-by-wire has a
bumpy track record. Will the car industry
learn from these mistakes, they ask, or make
them all over again?
New Scientist, 8 Nov. 2003
Drive-by-wire may have to be proven first in
a secondary system, such as the parking
brake, before consumers grow more

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comfortable with the idea of replacing the

traditional primary control systems in their
vehicles.
Business Wire, 12 Dec. 2002

/drkrks/
It refers to young people restricting their
food intake so they can drink more without
putting on weight, or drinking rather than
eating as a way to slim, or saving money on

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food so they can afford to get drunk. Its most

common with young women and among
students seeking a cheap way to relax from
studying and exam pressures.
It was first identified in the US. Everyone
agrees that the word is silly it is said to
have been coined a couple of years ago as a
spiteful joke against those celebrities who
lead hectic social lives and drink to excess
but stay as thin as rakes. However, the
experts are warning that when it refers to a
slimming method, it represents a real and
serious problem that can be akin to bulimia
and anorexia (hence the name). The
association between alcohol abuse and eating
disorders has been known about for decades
and is well understood by doctors. Perhaps it
takes a catchy (or silly) new term to arouse
the attention of newspapers and their
readers.

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Its a rare example of a word that so far as

printed media are concerned has
seemingly come from nowhere within a
heartbeat. The first example I can find in a
newspaper is in the New York Times on 2
March. It has appeared widely since.
However stupid the word, drunkorexia sums
up the various ways in which eating
disorders and alcohol abuse are often
bedfellows.
Sunday Times, 23 Mar. 2008
Drunkorexia skipping meals to save the
calories for booze is the latest food fad to
cross the Atlantic... Sondra Kronberg, an
eating disorders specialist based in New
York, estimates one in three women aged 18
to 23 restrict food calories so they can drink
without gaining weight.
The Sun, 20 Mar. 2008

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/di vi di/

If the
industry
hype is to
be believed,
by the end
of the
century
DVD will be
the biggest
word in
consumer
electronics. It is the successor to the CD
the same size, but potentially double-sided
and multi-layered, so its data capacity is
much larger. It can hold a complete feature
film in broadcast- quality digital video on one
disc. It will come in five flavours: DVD-Audio
(for audio recordings), DVD-Video (for films),
DVD-ROM (for data and games, like the CDROM), plus DVD-RAM and DVD-R (two

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recordable formats). Expect the first products

real soon now. Its makers used to say that
DVD stood for Digital Video Disc, but then
they changed it to Digital Versatile Disc as
being a more general term not seeming to
limit its applications to video, and then more
recently still removed the expansion
altogether, so that the official name of the
device is now just DVD, though one of the
older expansions is still commonly quoted in
articles.

DWARF PLANET
This word came
officially into
being as a result
of a resolution
passed at the
meeting of the
International Astronomical Union in Prague
on 24 August 2006. It refers to a class of

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objects in the solar system of which Pluto is

the type sample.
With the resolution, astronomers have ended
a controversy that has been simmering for
decades over the status of Pluto. The causes
were Plutos anomalous situation and the
development of modern observational
astronomy. In 1930, Clyde Tombaugh
discovered Pluto orbiting beyond the then
known limits of the Solar System, a discovery
that was a sensation at the time. Because
initial estimates of its size were much too big,
it was included with the other planets. Later
observations found it was only half the
diameter of Mercury, one fifth that of Earth,
and that its orbit was extremely eccentric,
occasionally even coming inside that of
Neptune. In recent years many similar
objects have been found even further out, in
the distant part of the Solar System called the

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Kuiper Belt, at least one of them larger than

Pluto.
The official definition:
A dwarf planet is a celestial body that (a) is in
orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass
for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body
forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic
equilibrium (nearly round) shape, (c) has not
cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit,
and (d) is not a satellite.
The same resolution formally defined Pluto
as a dwarf planet, effectively demoting it
from its status as a member of the main
planetary club of Mercury, Venus, Earth Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

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A condition in which the person affected,

usually a child, is unable to control various
voluntary body movements that require skill;
an older name for it is clumsy child syndrome.
Though dyspraxia has been used in the
medical literature for many years (the British
Dyspraxia Trust, for example, was formed in
1987), it has only recently begun to be used
outside this specialist field but now shows
signs of becoming a vogue word in Britain, as
dyslexia did before it. A particular form of the
condition is Developmental Verbal Dyspraxia
or DVD, in which a child is unable to control

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the muscles of the mouth and so cannot

articulate words correctly. The problem is
known not to be due to paralysis or nerve
damage and seems to be a failure to interpret
messages from the brain correctly. There is a
technical difference between this term and
apraxia but the two are often used
interchangeably. The word is derived from
the Greek negative prefix dys and the Greek
word praxia, action. The adjective is
dyspraxic.

E-BANDONED
For more than a decade, the e- prefix has
been a popular way to create terms that
relate to electronic and Internet-mediated
communications. I wrote about this back in
early 1999 when the fashion seemed to be at

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its height. It has moderated since, but new

words using it continue to be formed.
E-bandoned, one of the odder creations, has
appeared recently, mainly in the UK, where it
was coined (or probably re-invented) in
publicity linked to Get Online Day on 11
October 2007. The Coventry Evening
Telegraph wrote that schoolchildren are
growing up e-bandoned by parents who lack
the skills or confidence to help with
schoolwork on the web.
What seemed at the time to be just a
neologistic flavouring to help digest a meaty
discussion has been used since in a slightly
different context, to describe those members
of a community who have no computer and
no online access either because they cant
afford them or because they feel unable to
learn how to use them.

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In all of this chatter, though, it is easy to

forget one startling fact: there are, in 2009,
10 million people in the UK who have never
gone online, who would not recognise a
homepage or a bookmark, for whom http and
www are still weird unknowns; they are, to
use the inevitable coinages, the e-bandoned
and e-solated, a predigital tribe.
The Observer, 25 Oct. 2009.
The term, and its close relatives, the verb ebandon and the noun e-bandonment, had
previously been used for a situation in which
a person suddenly stops e-mailing another
after a relationship had been established. In
2006, the Urban Dictionary included this as
an example of the way in which it might be
used: I bumped into an old college friend
and we e-mailed for a while but when I
suggested getting together she e-bandoned
me.

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This is not a new term the earliest reference I

can find is from 1975, and it is said to be older
still but it has until now been a specialist one
among some writers for what mainstream
linguists prefer to call the Black English
Vernacular or African-American Vernacular
English and has not commonly been found in
dictionaries. The word is a rather infelicitous
blend of Ebony, a near-synonym for Black,
and phonics, the science of sound or of spoken
sounds; it is as much a political as a linguistic
term. It is used to emphasize the distinctive
grammar and vocabulary of African-American
speech, which, it is argued, derive at least in part
from various Niger-Congo African languages

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and are a relic of slavery. Whether Ebonics is a

dialect of English, a creole or a separate
language is open to argument, though the first of
these is the received view. It has suddenly hit
the headlines world-wide as a result of the
decision by the Oakland School Board in
California in December 1996 to recognise
Ebonics as a separate linguistic entity whose
speakers need assistance in becoming fluent in
standard American English.

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From the late 1980s, writers began to refer to

the generation of children then being born
under variations of the term echo. The
earliest is probably this:
As they approach their days of leadership,
Baby Boomers must, above all, focus on their

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own children, those whom some call the

Echo generation.
ABA Journal, 15 May 1987.
As this shows, the term was starting to be
applied to the children of the Baby Boomer
generation (seen as an echo of them, hence
the name). The Baby Boomers were born
between 1946 and 1964, as a result of
demographic changes following the end of
the Second World War. They were by some
measures the healthiest and most privileged
generation that had ever been born. Their
existence, and the attention paid to them, was
largely responsible for the idea that
generations could be identified by some tag,
which has led to many other terms for
generational groups.
Echo boomers, as they were identified in the
early 1990s, were born between the late
1970s or early 1980s and about 1990; the

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date range was later extended. They have

been stereotyped as ethnically diverse
children of the computer age, comfortable
with digital communications and equipment,
moderately conformist, untroubled by the
generation gap. This group is large (three
times that of the preceding Generation X) and
has been posing demographic problems,
especially in education.
The group has become known by many
names as the Millennial Generation (or the
Millennials), Generation Next, the Net
Generation, the iGeneration, the MyPod
Generation and as Generation Y (or Gen Y,
with individuals being Gen Yers). But the
terminology is muddled, with Generation Y
as you might expect being limited by some
to the children of Generation X parents, or
those born after about 1983. The range of
birth dates has progressively been extended
to the late 1990s or very early 2000s.

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Most of the terms are still in use among

sociologists, demographers and marketing
professionals, though less so in popular
writing. Generation Y is more frequent in the
American press than Echo Boomer. Net
Generation is also common, particularly
outside the US.
Weaned on video games, Echo Boomers are
the first generation to claim the computer as
birthright. They troubleshoot the home PC
and teach their parents the fine points of email and Internet navigation.
The Salt Lake Tribune March 1998
Four different life perspectives are present:
the Silents, shaped by the Depression and
World War II; the boomers, products of nolimits postwar American affluence, but with
the shadow of the cold war across their
playground; Gen-X, more conservative,
politically and financially; and Gen-Y, aka

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echo boomers, the boomers children, who

have grown up wired and connected, but
with no memory of, say, a mobile phone the
size of a small backpack.
The Christian Science Monitor, 14 Apr. 2010.

ECO-AUDITOR
Every problem, the business gurus say,
should be viewed instead as an opportunity.
Now that the economic and climatic

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consequences of our profligate Western

lifestyles are regularly held up to adverse
scrutiny, as they have been recently by the
Stern report commissioned by the Treasury
in the UK, a new group eco-auditors
becomes available to advise us.
Through eco-auditing we can learn to become
environmentally responsible in our daily
lives by reducing our gas, electricity and
water use, by recycling more, and shopping
responsibly its like having a personal
trainer for our homes.
The job and the term evolved out of
European Union and international initiatives
of the 1990s (the related term environmental
auditor was used in an ISO standard dated
1996). Eco-auditor was discussed as a case of
widening EU professionalisation in an article
dated 2000 in the journal European
Sociological Review, but until very recently

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the term has been unfamiliar outside the EU

administration.
A new deal just struck with the National
Federation of Womens Institutes to provide
as many of its 215,000 members who want it
with detailed eco-auditing advice, funded by
a government grant, will increase demand
still further.
The Observer, 5 Nov. 2006
Donnachadh McCarthy, author of Saving the
Planet Without Costing the Earth and a home
and business eco-auditor, is concerned about
how much water is wasted.
The Independent, 27 Sept. 2006

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Its a brave man who challenges the worldwide cement industry, which produces
getting on for two billion tonnes of the stuff
every year.
All of it is Portland cement, invented by a
Leeds stonemason named Joseph Aspdin two
centuries ago (it was called that because its
finish was thought to resemble stone from
quarries at Portland in Dorset). Portland
cement is made by cooking a mixture of chalk
or limestone with clay in a kiln at high
temperatures, a process that gives off large
amounts of carbon dioxide.

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Now John Harrison, an inventor from

Tasmania, has found a way to make a cement
thats more ecologically acceptable. He
replaces the calcium-based lime with reactive
magnesia, a form of magnesium oxide. This
can be kilned at a much lower temperature,
so needing less fuel; more importantly it
rapidly absorbs large amounts of carbon
dioxide from the air when it sets and cures
(Portland cement does this, too, but much
more slowly).
Also, the new eco-cement permits large
amounts of organic waste material to be
incorporated. The result, Mr Harrison claims,
is a cement that can act as a net carbon
dioxide absorber; in other words, putting up
a building using his cement would be much
like planting a grove of trees.
And if eco-cements gained a foothold in our
cities, they could immediately reduce the

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cement industrys contribution to global

warming, reabsorbing much of what was
emitted in their creation.
Toronto Star, 27 Jul. 2002
Basic eco-cement produces about a tenth as
much carbon dioxide as regular Portland
cement. When organic material such as hemp
fibre is added, a concrete block can be built
that is a net carbon sink.
Guardian, 28 May 2003
Its really just an up-market
term for fuel economy
learning to drive your
vehicle in a way that
minimises your fuel
consumption. Among the
tips are: dont carry unnecessary loads, speed
up and brake smoothly, engage the

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appropriate gear for your road speed, dont

leave the engine idling unnecessarily, use the
engine to brake when you can, and drive at
the most fuel-efficient speeds. Campaigners
argue that techniques such as these can
reduce fuel costs by up to a third.
The term has been
around for some
years. Early examples
refer to Japanese
schemes to encourage
environmentally efficient driving to reduce
emissions as much as to economise on fuel. It
has had a fair amount of exposure in British
newspapers recently as a result of European
initiatives, in particular a campaign by the
Dutch to reduce fuel consumption, cut
emissions and improve safety through
teaching eco-motoring measures to learner
drivers and by including them in the theory
element of the driving test. The UK Driving

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Standards Agency introduced an eco-safe test

for new instructors in October 2005 and the
skills are to be part of the theory test from
2008.

Greater encouragement and incentives for

the development and take-up of technological
solutions such as hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles
are required and these financial incentives
should be linked to an education and
communication programme to encourage
eco-driving.
Independent, 4 Apr. 2006

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New for 2006 are a 30-minute documentary

on Driving Skills for Life, to be broadcast this
spring on public television stations, including
PBS, and enhanced curriculum on the web
site, notably the importance of eco-driving to
personal safety and the environment.
US Newswire, 16 Mar. 2006

ECOFACT
This is one of those specialist technical terms
that lurk in the interstices of the language for
a while, but then suddenly pop out, catching

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word researchers by surprise. Though its

well known in archaeology and has been
around at least since the early 1970s, it
appears only rarely in dictionaries.

An ecofact is a find at an archaeological site

which comes from something living, but

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which has not been modified by human

activity. Examples are wheat seeds, sheep
bones, or seashells at inland sites. Finds like
these tell us something about the diet, way of
life, or culture of the people who lived there.
Something that has been created by people is
an artefact (an artifact if youre American);
ecofact was formed from it by blending it
with ecology. The fact part of artefact comes
from Latin factum, something made, so
ecofact might mean something created from a
living organism, exactly the opposite of the
way archaeologists use it. However, it is
equally possible to parse it as something
made by a living organism, which would
release archaeologists from the accusation
that theyre bad at etymology!
Other terms of like kind include geofact,
naturally fractured rock that looks as though
it might have been manufactured by human

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action, but hasnt, and ventifact, something

that has been shaped by wind-blown sand.

ECOLOGISM

From the eighties onward, it became

common to refer to different shades of
environmentalism: someone who was

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obviously green in their opinions might be

further categorised as dark green or deep
green, implying they had a radical or
fundamentalist approach to the need to
preserve the environment. This radical end of
the green movement has been given the
name ecologism within the movement itself,
though the word is still infrequent in general
usage. Many greens distinguish between
ecologism and environmentalism. The former
is a fundamentalist philosophy of deep
greenness some would argue a political
ideology, though not aligned anywhere along
the traditional right versus left, capitalism
versus socialism axis with a strong
spiritual component that seeks to preserve
the environment in absolute terms without
concern for the place of human beings within
it and in particular without making allowance
for the potential needs of future generations.
To those holding such views,

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environmentalism is no more than a form of

engineering which treats the environment as
a resource to be manipulated or consumed
while seeking to minimise pollution and
other adverse effects; those espousing that
approach are sometimes pejoratively
described as shallow greens.

The death of a 28-year-old woman in the

arrival hall at Heathrow Airport in 2000

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following a flight from Australia brought this

phrase into the news.
It refers to a deep vein thrombosis, usually in
the leg, caused by sitting immobile for long
periods in a cramped aircraft seat. Once
movement begins again the clot can move to
heart or lungs, causing rapid death. Air
operators are now being urged to give
prominent advice about precautions
travellers can follow to avoid the problem,
which include taking an aspirin before
boarding (to help stop blood clotting),
exercising during the flight, and consuming
plenty of soft drinks. The finger is also being
pointed at poor cabin ventilation, which
some doctors say is a contributory factor.
The airlines say the phrase is a misnomer as
it isnt a problem only with economy class
passengers not exactly reassuring for
business travellers. However, Roderik

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Kraaijenhagen and colleagues from the

University of Amsterdam said in the British
medical journal Lancet in November 2000
that they could find no evidence for the
syndrome; they argued that its risk has been
greatly overestimated by previous studies.
Other life-threatening conditions such as
deep vein thromboses and strokes have also
been connected with what has become
known as economy class syndrome.
Independent on Sunday, May 2000
This type of schedule has become so common
that last year the British science journal The
Lancet published a study pointing to a new
medical condition, economy-class
syndrome as a major contributor to heart
disease and stroke deaths among business
people.
International Herald Tribune, May 2000

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This term has been

around for some
years, but has yet to
appear in any
dictionary I know
of. It is the
application of the
principles of
mathematical
physics to the study
of financial
markets. Experts
are beginning to
discover that the world economy behaves
like a collection of electrons or a group of
water molecules that interact with each
other. With new tools of statistical analysis,
like the recent breakthroughs in
understanding chaotic systems, it is
beginning to be possible to make sense of
these hugely complicated systems (one year

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of the worlds financial markets produces

about 24 CD-ROMs worth of data, so theres
no shortage of material to number-crunch).
As a result, specialists are addressing a
variety of questions that are difficult or
impossible to understand using conventional
economic principles: Is the market random,
or is there any underlying order? In
particular, are there any long-term trends
that can be foretold? Are financial crashes
inevitable? Someone who is an expert in this
arcane field is an econophysicist.
Obviously, you cant predict the future, said
Gene Stanley, a physicist at Boston University
who organized the econophysics session. But,
he added, such research reveals how
physicists and economists should compare
notes in the future.
Dallas Morning News, Mar. 2000

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Judging by the work of two Parisian

econophysicists, they are making a
controversial start at tearing up some
perplexing economics and reducing them to a
few elegant general principles with the
help of some serious mathematics borrowed
from the study of disordered materials.
New Scientist, Aug. 2000

ECOTARIANISM

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Ecotarianism, wrote Tony Turnbull in The

Times on 25 September, is the new
buzzword, a kind of greatest hits of all our
favourite food movements from the past
decade. Its about sourcing locally,
organically, sustainably, in season and
leaving Earths resources untouched. Its
goodbye to 3 chickens imported from
Thailand and hello to bean casseroles; no to
winter asparagus and a resounding yes to
celeriac mash.
Tony Turnbull says ecotarianism was
apparently coined two years ago by a small
group of Oxford undergraduates with an
interest in food politics. I cant confirm that,
though the term was used in the title of a
paper by Jessica Lee at the Oxford
Symposium on Food and Cookery in
September 2007, in which she noted that it
may be found floating about on the internet
in limited usage; it has been said since to be

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a catch-all term for anybody who is in general

against what is sometimes called industrial
food, but who varied in their emphasis.
Ecotarians can be meat-eaters, vegetarians or
vegans. At its broadest, its an umbrella term
for everybody who is concerned to eat food
with the lowest possible carbon footprint.
From this wide usage, it may be that
ecotarianism is actually a blend of ecological
with sectarianism rather than with the more
obvious vegetarianism.
A good ecotarian bases their model diet on
Tara Garnetts study Cooking Up a Storm, a
bible for people who care about food and its
impact on the environment.
Evening Standard, 25 Nov 2008
It might seem unhelpful to fling in yet
another dietary definition, but ecotarianism
has a winningly common-sense approach.

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The concept is simple: eat the foods with the

lowest environmental burden, those with the
lowest global-warming potential (GWP) and
the least chance of messing up the planet via
their acidification and pollution potential.
Observer, 23 Nov. 2008

This term appeared widely in British

newspapers last week. Mind (the public name
of the National Association for Mental
Health), published a report to coincide with
the associations Awareness Week. It argued,
with support from two academic studies, that
outdoor, green exercise conservation

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work, gardening projects, or just a walk in the

park helps peoples mental and physical
health and offers a cost-effective and natural
addition to existing treatments.
The idea behind undertaking such activities
is not new: a scheme by the British Trust for
Conservation Volunteers, called green gym,
focuses on physical health improvements
through environmental work. And Rudyard
Kipling was ahead of them all, in the rhyme
about the camel's hump, or depression, in the
Just So Stories:
The cure for this ill is not to sit still
Or frowst with a book by the fire;
But to take a large hoe and a shovel also,
And dig till you gently perspire;
And then you will find that the sun and the
wind
And the Djinn of the Garden too,

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Have lifted the hump The horrible hump The hump that is black and blue!
Ecotherapy appeared in the USA in the early
1990s as an accompaniment to
ecopsychology, contending that action on
behalf of the environment could take people
out of themselves and lead to emotional
health, a very similar concept to the earlier
ideas of Edward O Wilson encapsulated in the
word biophilia. The term ecotherapy became
more widely known through Howard
Clinebells 1996 book Ecotherapy: Healing
Ourselves, Healing the Earth.
[Mind] Chief executive Paul Farmer said: It is
a credible, clinically valid treatment option
and needs to be prescribed by GPs, especially
when for many people access to treatments
other than antidepressants is extremely
limited. Were not saying that ecotherapy can

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replace drugs but that the debate needs to be

broadened. If it was prescribed as part of
mainstream practice, ecotherapy could
potentially help millions, he added.
Daily Mail, 14 May 2007
Ecotherapy is gaining ground as a serious
way to help people stay healthy. Just walking
the dog, stroking the cat or even swimming
with dolphins could help you cope with
stressed-out modern life, according to
researchers at the University of Leicester.
Evening Gazette, Middlesbrough, 24 Apr.
2006
Just for once, the e
doesnt stand for
electronic. E-day is
Euro Day: 1
January 2002,
when the twelve

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countries of the European Union that have

signed up to adopt the single currency
(Britain not among them) change over to the
Euro. Large-scale logistical problems are
inevitable: the European Central Bank will
have to distribute 16 billion Euro notes and
56 billion Euro coins enough paper bills, it
is claimed, to circle the equator 50 times and
enough metal to replicate 35 Eiffel Towers.
As there will be a changeover period of a
month or two, retailers predict chaos as
people pay for things in old currencies and
receive change in the new, or try to pay in a
mixture of old and new. The impending loss
of national currencies is causing agonising
problems for people who prefer to keep their
money in the mattress rather than in the
bank. It is particularly affecting criminal
gangs, such as prostitution rings and drug
smugglers in eastern Europe, who are having
to shift large sums of illicit funds into other

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currencies, especially the American dollar. It

is said that this is one of the main forces
tending to distort exchange rates at the
moment and keep the dollar high.
To prepare, businesses and banks can begin
buying euro banknotes and coins in
September but must sign contracts that
prohibit circulating them to the public before
E-Day.
International Herald Tribune, Jan. 2001
Prodi said his greatest fear is not that people
will continue to flee from the euro, but rather
that so many investors will jump back into
the euro once E-Day passes with relative
tranquillity.
Washington Post, May 2001

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This is yet another pop-musical genre. Its

beginning, at least in terms of journalistic
attention and appearances of the name in
newsprint, was at the Electroclash festival
held in New York in October 2001. The genre
has since become big in Montreal and has
also spread to Europe. Its a retro style, a
romantic reaction against impersonal house
music in clubs, with emphasis on

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synthesisers, theatrical performance,

personalities, and song and dance, plus some
rock and punk influences, all mixed in with
an interest in fashion and art. The bestknown bands are probably ARE Weapons and
Fischerspooner. Some people think its the
future; others consider it to be no more than
a tarted-up rehash of old ideas. They could, of
course, all be right. Or it might have vanished
again within months.
Listening to electroclash, at times, is like
burrowing into a wormhole that exits
somewhere near 1985. The music is replete
with the gorgeous, tuneful synths that
characterized acts like Flock of Seagulls.
Indeed, while listening to the Soviet tune
Candy Girl on the Electroclash compilation
CD, youd swear youd happened upon some
undiscovered old 80s track.
The Toronto Star, Feb. 2002

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The scene label Electroclash is vulgar and

ridiculous (mere Electro isnt enough for
alternative types, they need to validate it
with a suffix which imbues it with a violence
and rebel chic it doesnt merit), but its
reluctant leaders, New Yorks
Fischerspooner, have turned vulgarity and
ridiculousness into art forms.
Independent on Sunday, Apr. 2002

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Its a bit of a mouthful, but it describes a

condition in which individuals claim to suffer
ill-health as a result of exposure to electrical
or magnetic radiation from kettles, television
sets, computers, power lines, or mobile
phone base stations. Symptoms include
burning sensations, fatigue, dizziness,

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nausea, heart palpitations, and digestive

disturbances.
The term has been around in a quiet way for
some time (the first example Ive found is in
Robert O Beckers Cross Currents of 1990),
but it had wide circulation in Britain in May
2006 or so as a result of a series of reports in
popular newspapers focussing on the
condition. It is also known as electromagnetic
hypersensitivity syndrome (EHS) and sufferers
are sometimes described as electromagnetic
hypersensitives or as being electrosensitive.
It is controversial, with no study finding a
clear link between low-level electromagnetic
radiation and symptoms. Researchers are
sure that those complaining of symptoms are
sincere, experiencing a real problem that can
be disabling, but can find no evidence that
suggests a connection with radiation.

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We wanted to inform the Health Secretary

about the debilitating symptoms experienced
by electro-sensitive people. Patricia Hewitt
was sympathetic whilst seemingly unaware
of the electromagnetic hypersensitivity
problem.
Birmingham Mail, 12 Jan. 2006
If theres no real explanation, perhaps a
placebo explanation like
electromagnetic hypersensitivity can
have almost all the same properties as a real
one.
Guardian, 13 May 2006

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/ilktrnk snm/
Theres a lot of interest being shown within
the film industry in this idea. The intention is
to cut out the expensive and slow business of
duplicating and distributing prints of feature
films to cinemas (movie theaters in North
America, though electronic cinema seems to
be used on both sides of the Atlantic).
Instead, its proposed that films will be
transmitted in digital form to cinemas using
satellite technology and projected to the
customers through an enhanced highdefinition television system. In Europe, at

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least two consortia are working on such

systems. The demonstration in London by
one group recently was greatly enlivened
when the managing director of a key
member, the British image-processing firm,
Snell and Wilcox, got up at the end and
denounced it as junk, being quoted in the
press as saying I am ashamed to be
associated with this event. We can do ten
times better. You people just dont
understand digital processing, which came
as a great embarrassment for British
Telecom, who organised the event. The
system is also known, perhaps inevitably, as
cyber cinema.

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ELECTRONIC PAPER

The late Isaac Asimov

once gave a lecture describing the ultimate
data storage and display medium, which
would require no power to operate or
maintain its image, could display text or
pictures (in colour if necessary), permit
random access to its data, cause no problems
with future obsolescence of its recording
system, and would easily fit into a jacket
pocket. Only at the end did he reveal that he
was describing the book. At least two

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groups of American researchers are currently

working towards combining all the best
features of that most versatile and durable
device with those of the standard computer
display. After several years work, they have
produced prototypes of a medium almost as
thin and flexible as paper, but which can be
repeatedly erased and rewritten with data
from computer storage and which requires
no power to maintain its image indefinitely.
Unsurprisingly, this new stuff has been
dubbed electronic paper, a term which goes
back at least to the mid nineties, though the
term digital paper has also been used. As you
might imagine, the writing mechanism is
called electronic ink. At the moment, the
display is limited to monochrome, but
researchers are predicting that by 2006 they
will have mastered the technique of
displaying not only colour images but video
as well.

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As increasing amounts of information are

held and presented in the electronic medium,
it is an appropriate time to reflect on whether
electronic paper is a realistic proposition
now or in the future.
Roger Gimson, Electronic paper can it be
real?
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, 1995
Sheridon and his team have already made
square tiles of electronic paper 30
centimetres across containing an embedded
processor that allows them to display a
different image every second.

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The term is currently in the news because of

a dispute between the Italian government
and the Vatican over the intensity of the
signal from Vatican Radio. Romes expansion
means that the area around the transmitters,
almost unpopulated 50 years ago, now has
some 100,000 inhabitants. The Vatican, a
sovereign state, allows itself higher field
strengths from transmitters than does Italy.
Though this dispute has publicised the term,
it has actually been around for some time, in

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a relatively specialist way, to refer to the sea

of electromagnetic radiation from broadcast
and mobile telephone transmitters in which
we involuntarily bathe. Back in 1996, a firm
in Durham, North Carolina, responding to
concerns about the health implications of
such radiation, manufactured a cybercap out
of metallic fabric that was supposed to shield
the wearer from the electrosmog, so
described, that was given off by wireless
networks.
Angered by constant references in the Italian
media to electrosmog coming from his
radio station, Father Federico Lombardi,
Vatican Radios director of programmes, said
in a statement: We consider it immoral to
foment unjust accusations and cause alarm in
the population.
New Scientist, Apr. 2001

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Environment Minister Willer Bordon has told

the Vatican to either reduce electromagnetic
transmissions by two-thirds or face a
blackout. He says electrosmog from the
radios powerful transmission towers is
causing high levels of cancer and other
problems among residents who live near
them.
USA Today, Apr. 2001
New Scientist, May 1999

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406

Musical genres come and go, often too

quickly to tie them down, but this one has
been gestating out of mainstream sight for
many years. It is short for emotional, and it
turns up in terms like emo-rock, emo-punk
and emocore (in which the second element is
from hardcore, as in hardcore punk, out of

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which the form first grew around 1984).

Long lurking in the musical underground, an
expansion in popularity means it has become
one of the more popular American
underground rock modes in the late 1990s
and is now edging tentatively towards the
mainstream, with bands like Jimmy Eat
World and Weezer. This shift is something
that many enthusiasts feel is against its
strong anti-commercial spirit. It has now
crossed the Atlantic as well. In style, its
variable, but its less macho than hardcore,
often full of complicated and layered guitar
passages, with passionate and confessional
lyrics. The emphasis is certainly on emotion,
so the name is appropriate. Despite a report
that the term had been invented in the late
1980s in Washington, DC, the first definite
sighting of emo Ive come across in print is
from 1999.

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While emo may be a

controversial term
that gets thrown
around all too often,
Victory at Sea should
be proud of the label.
It plays in the
tradition of some of
the best emo bands,
such as Sunny Day Real Estate and Modest
Mouse, by combining complex guitar work
with deeply wrought lyrics.
Washington Times, Oct. 2001
In their mid 20s, Jimmy Eat World are hardly
newcomers, and carry with them an emo
following the subculture thats sprung up
around emotional U.S. indie-punk bands
and sizable street-cred.
Calgary Sun, Dec. 2001

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ENDOCRINE DISRUPTER
Human ingenuity has given us a vast range of
manufactured substances. There is increasing
concern that many of them, but especially
pesticides and plastics, contain chemical
compounds that mimic hormones normally
produced within the body and so interfere
with their action. As hormones are produced
by the endocrine glands (they include the
adrenal and thyroid glands as well as the
ovaries and testes), such disruptive
compounds have become known recently as
endocrine disrupters. Most attention is
focused on ones which mimic the action of
the sex hormone oestrogen, which are
generated, for example, by breakdown
products of PCBs and DDT. They are under
suspicion of causing breast cancer, reducing
sperm counts, causing early puberty in girls,

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reducing the intelligence of children, and of

interfering with foetal development. A major
problem with discovering the truth is that
large doses of the disrupters have little effect,
because the body detects them and brings
defences to bear; the danger comes from
minute quantities which slip through the
bodys defences, quantities so small that they
are hard to detect and even harder to
experiment with.

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ENTITLEMENT CARD

This one falls into the class of political

euphemisms. The British Home Office (the
government department responsible for the
police, judicial system, and related matters)
has proposed that all British citizens be
issued with identity cards. The aims include
reducing the levels of identity fraud
(especially using stolen credit cards) and to
reassure people who are concerned about

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illegal immigrants gaining access to

employment and services. It is suggested that
the cards which would be smart cards
containing an embedded chip might
contain biometric data such as fingerprints or
iris records as well as information about the
holder. To help sugar the pill, the Home Office
decided not to call them identity cards, a
concept and a term that has been consistently
and successfully opposed by libertarians in
Britain. Since the cards would prove the
holder was entitled to medical and other
services, the consultation document that put
the idea out for discussion earlier this month
called them entitlement cards instead.
The Home Office believes that by building the
entitlement cards into newly issued driving
licences or passports it can make the scheme
self-funding. Of the 51 million UK residents
who would require entitlement cards, some

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38 million already hold driving licences and

44 million have British passports.
Independent, July 2002
An entitlement card would make it far harder
for firms to claim they did not know someone
had no right to work in the UK. And it would
help tackle one of the major pull factors for
people traffickers who claim it is easy to
work illegally in the UK.
Birmingham Post, July 2002

In full electronic numbering, this is a

technology that few people know much about
at the moment, though it is being developed

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in several countries, including Britain. The

idea is that your contact details fixed and
mobile telephone and fax numbers and email addresses could all be registered in
one place so that you need only give a single
number to contacts. The system making a call
would then translate this universal number
into the right code for the service. The
technique would require a central
registration body to be set up to record and
authenticate these numbers and the British
Department of Trade and Industry is
reported to be working on such a scheme at
the moment. This is causing concern among
some technology experts, one of whom is on
record as calling E-num a major privacy
threat.
The departments move follows a
UK e-num trial earlier this year
when 5,000 numbers from about

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30 companies were used to test

applications.
Computer Weekly, 9 Sept. 2004
Will telecom and Internet
addressing converge one day into
a single number for mobile, fixed,
email and DNS? It is possible, but
it is also a lot of work, as a recent
EC report into E-NUM (ENumber) points out.
Telecom Asia, 1 Nov. 2003

This is well known to those who care about

our environment, but it has until recently
rarely appeared in public. It refers to actions
that degrade our surroundings, such as

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spraying graffiti, leaving litter, dumping cars,

or plastering walls with posters. A stimulus
for its wider use in the UK was the
Environmental Protection Act of early 2004,
which gave councils the power to fine
businesses that cause environmental damage.
Many local councils combine the stick of legal
action with wardening schemes that aim to
clear rubbish quickly so it doesnt become an
eyesore and to persuade people to look after
their neighbourhoods. The idea is to stop
places looking run-down and neglected and
hence unsafe. The word is also used, though
less often, for much more serious pollution
such as major oil spills and illegal dumping of
asbestos and chemical waste.
Lewisham is one borough that
involves local people in its fight
against what it calls
envirocrime. It has a network of
street leaders: residents around

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the borough who report problems

such as litter, graffiti, abandoned
cars and fly-tipping to the council.
London Evening Standard, 8 Oct.
2003
A new envirocrime unit, set up with
money from the council budget but
with extra funds coming from the
police through central government
initiatives, has helped provide some
joined-up thinking.
the Guardian, 11 Oct. 2004

EPHEBICIDE
George Monbiot created this word in an
article entitled Lest we forget in the Guardian
on 11 November 2008: There are plenty of

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words to describe the horrors of the 193945

war. But there were none, as far as I could
discover, that captured the character of the
first world war. So I constructed one from the
Greek word ephebos, a young man of fighting
age. Ephebicide is the wanton mass slaughter
of the young by the old.
The root appears in a few English words,
including ephebe, the Greek word filtered
through Latin that means a young man aged
between 18 and 20 who undertook military
service. Ephebiatrics is a rare medical term
for the branch of medicine that deals with the
study of adolescence and the diseases of
young adults; an ephebophile is a adult who is
sexually attracted to adolescents.
Though George Monbiot created it afresh,
there is one previous example of ephebicide
on record, in a work of 1979, Sauls Fall: A
Critical Fiction. This purported to be a

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collection of critical essays about a play by a

forgotten Spanish author, but the whole
book, including the play, was an invention by
Herbert Lindenberger, now Emeritus
Professor of Humanities at Stanford
University.

EPHEBIPHOBIA/fibifb/

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The modern concern with the problems of

youth and especially the problems caused by
young people has perhaps made it inevitable
that this word would be created. It refers to a
fear and loathing of adolescents by adults.
Tanya Byron, Professor of the Public
Understanding of Science at Edge Hill
University in Lancashire, has recently made
ephebiphobia better known by using it in a
lecture. Despite a comment by Peter Hitchens
in the Daily Mail on 29 March that she had
invented it, she certainly hadnt. The earliest
example Ive so far found is in the title of Kirk
Astroths article Beyond Ephebiphobia:
Problem Adults or Problem Youths? in Phi
Delta Kappan for January 1993. He pointed
out then that the attitude behind the word
was hardly new: Nearly every generation of
young people has been chastised for being
out of control or aberrant in some way.
Adult claims of degeneration among the

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young can be found in nearly every previous

decade. Heres another early use:
Many, if not most, adults dislike junior high
kids. They simply dont like being around
them. Others suffer from what has been
called ephebiphobia, a fear of adolescents.
Junior High Ministry, by Wayne Rice, 1997.
The word derives from ephebe, the classical
Greek word that meant a young man aged
between 18 and 20 who undertook military
service.
You may not know the word, but youve
probably had the feeling. Ephebiphobia, or
fear of youth, is one of the most enduring
phenomena in our society and its more
prevalent than ever.
Daily Telegraph, 17 Mar. 2009.

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Prof Byron, clinical psychologist, broadcaster

and Government advisor, will address the
growing issue of ephebiphobia, the fear of
young people. She will argue that society
demonises children, rather than the
teenagers being the problem themselves.
Liverpool Daily Post, 3 Mar. 2009.

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EPIGENOME
This term of the
biological sciences
has been around for
decades but it has
been specialist,
unknown to the
general public. That
changed to some
extent in October
2009 when
newspapers
reported a paper
that had appeared in
the science magazine Nature.
Were familiar these days with the idea that
the nature of living things is controlled by the
DNA in their genes, the genetic code of an

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individual being its genome. Since there are

many sorts of cell, but only one genome in an
individual, there must be a way to switch
genes on and off inside the cell so that it
develops into a specific type fat, muscle,
brain or other sort. This process is controlled
by chemical switches collectively called the
epigenome. The report in Nature was that
researchers at the Salk Institute in La Jolla,
California, had for the first time mapped it.
Environmental factors can disrupt the
epigenome, which can lead to a variety of
medical conditions, including cancers. Armed
with the new roadmap of the way the
epigenome works, specialists can now study
the differences between healthy and diseased
cells and begin to understand how this can
happen.
Epigenome includes the prefix epi-, upon or in
addition to, from Greek epi, upon, near to, or

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in addition to. Its study is epigenomics and

the adjective is epigenomic. The field is new
and the terminology is still evolving; it is
common for researchers to use epigenetics
instead of epigenomics for the study of all the
changes to a cell that result from external
rather than genetic influences.
The closely related term epigenesis refers to
our current understanding that an embryo
progressively develops from an
undifferentiated egg cell, rather than the
older belief that it is created completely
formed (an homunculus) and merely grows
bigger. The adjective epigenetic can refer to
epigenesis, but is used in the scientific
literature in connection with epigenomics.
Scientists believe the epigenome can be
altered by environmental factors, ranging
from diet to pollution, and disrupt this finely
tuned regulatory process, setting the stage

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for various illnesses including cancer and

heart disease.
The Globe and Mail, Toronto, 16 Oct. 2009.
The epigenome can be disrupted by smoking,
ageing, stress, atmospheric pollution, what
we eat and drink, and a host of other
environmental factors. There is some
evidence that the environment causes
epigenetic changes that make people more
susceptible to asthma.
Guardian, 14 Oct. 2008.

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I usually avoid
e words, as there have been so many of them,
most destined only for eventual oblivion. But
the evidence suggests this one might be a
favoured runner in the new words
sweepstakes. Its a largely British term for
new developments in information technology
that aim to help researchers process the vast
amounts of data that come out of many
scientific investigations. Its applied
especially to fields such as the human
genome project and nuclear physics for
example, a new particle accelerator due to
come on line at CERN in 2006 is expected to
generate a petabyte of data every second

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(peta- represents one followed by 15 zeroes).

Other parts of the project are designed to
help create a super-fast Internet that will give
researchers easy access to all this data and to
supply new software to process and visualise
it. The term seems to have appeared first at
the beginning of last year, and was given a
stamp of approval through being used in a
White Paper (a governmental consultation
document) in August.
e-Science is science which is increasingly
done through distributed global
collaborations enabled by the Internet,
possibly using very large data collections,
tera-scale computing resources and high
performance visualisation to achieve its
objectives.
New Scientist, June 2001
Also capturing a large share of new funding
are projects that aim to digest once-

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unfathomable amounts of data, an area the

U.K. government calls e-science.
Science, Dec. 2000

ETHICAL FADING
This has been in the news recently, in part
because it was featured in a book that was
published this year (2011), Blind Spots, by Max
Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel and because it
has proved a useful term when discussing the
phone-hacking accusations concerning News
International.
Sometimes, unethical behaviour
in business fiddling
expenses, overcharging, hiding
unwelcome facts (say about an
unsafe product), bribery or
corruption, putting workers at
risk through cutting corners, or

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paying police for tip-offs and hacking peoples

phones becomes accepted as part of the
culture of an organisation. This may be because
its unchecked by management, sometimes
because it seems to be the only way to get the
job done, sometimes because its known that
telling a dictatorial boss about a problem is a
good way to get fired. Ethical fading refers to an
erosion of the ethical standards of a business in
which employees become used to engaging in or
condoning such behaviour.
The term is clearly new to most commentators,
but it was created in the article Ethical Fading,
the Role of Self-Deception in Unethical
Behavior, by Ann Tenbrunsel and David
Messick, which appeared in Social Justice
Research in 2004.
When we are busy focused on common
organizational goals, like quarterly earnings or
sales quotas, the ethical implications of
important decisions can fade from our minds.

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Through this ethical fading, we end up engaging

in or condoning behavior that we would
condemn if we were consciously aware of it.
New York Times, 20 Apr. 2011.
The academics describe a process of ethical
fading in businesses where maximising returns
is encouraged over fairness to fellow employees
and customers. The result is that right and
wrong go out of the window. Read about the
culture at the News of the World and ethical
fading certainly comes to mind.
Guardian, 18 Jul. 2011.

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E-THROMBOSIS
thrombosis (rmbo ss) coagulation of the blood within
a blood vessel in any part of the circulatory system.

This word has gained some publicity in the

UK following the launch on 9 May 2006
during National Thrombosis Week of a
campaign by the charity Lifeblood to raise
awareness among office staff of the risk of
being struck down by it. Its in effect the same
condition as the deep vein thrombosis (also
called economy class syndrome) thats
occasionally suffered by air passengers. The
cause is the same: sitting for long periods in
the same position, causing a blood clot to
form in a vein in the leg.

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It may be fascinating,
but take a break!
Two well-publicised cases have highlighted
the risks. One was a Bristol freelance
computer programmer, who recently
collapsed and almost died after spending 12
hours at his screen without a break. A blood
clot formed and moved to his lung, where it
created a pulmonary embolism. The earlier
case, in 2003, was of a young New Zealand
man who spent long sessions at his
computer. He, too, suffered a pulmonary
embolism.

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The term is said to have been invented by Dr

Richard Beasley of the Medical Research
Institute of New Zealand, who investigated
the latter case.
It is feared millions of people could be at risk
of e-thrombosis as the average working week
has risen to 45 hours and people are working
longer hours than they were three years ago.
Western Mail, 15 Apr. 2006
While most of us are aware of the risks of
sore eyes or a stiff neck, it appears that lack
of movement could make millions vulnerable
to a new health risk e-thrombosis.
Daily Record, 9 May 2006

EUGEROIC
Its a comparatively recent invention, of the
1990s, supposedly from classical Greek

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words meaning good arousal (eu- is from

Greek eus, good, and the middle bit may have
been taken very irregularly from the verb
egeirein, to arouse or awaken).
Eugeroics are drugs that reduce the need for
sleep. Theyre claimed to deliver an alert and
wakeful state that feels natural without the
side effects of earlier types of stimulant. The
best known is modafinil, though the earlier
drug adrafinil and the newer armodafinil also
belong in the same group.
Theyre officially intended to treat sleeping
disorders, but theyve become lifestyle drugs
which allow people to cope with the stress of
excessively busy working and domestic lives.
The military sees huge potential in them
because they enable soldiers to remain active
and alert for up to 48 hours at a time. Theyve
been reported to ease flight crew fatigue on
long trips and to help with the symptoms of

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attention deficit hyperactive disorder

(ADHD) in children.
New drugs are being developed that allow
people to go without sleep. Modafinil was
launched in the late 1990s. It has made
possible 48 hours of continuous wakefulness
with few ill effects. It is an eugeroic, and gives
a natural feeling of alertness and
wakefulness.
Australasian Business Intelligence, 22 Feb
2006
Modafinil belongs to a new class of
awakening drugs known as eugeroics, which
are unravelling the mechanisms of
sleepiness. Once youve done that you will
end up in a world where the need to sleep is
optional.
Sunday Telegraph, 6 Jan 2004

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Not a reference to an obnoxious European,

but a term in finance for one consequence of
the move to the euro. This becomes the
currency of twelve European nations on 1
January 2002, replacing the franc, the mark
and the lira, among others. The UK remains
outside this group, but a survey recently
showed that about half of Britains larger
retailers will be accepting the euro as
payment for goods. This is true even of chains
whose proprietors are strongly opposed to
Britain adopting the single currency
profits, it seems, are triumphing over
principles. Many multinationals and foreignowned companies based in Britain already
require suppliers to invoice them in euros,
and this is likely to become even more
common in the future. Euro-creep is the

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tendency for EU nations outside the euro

group to adopt it by stealth in this way; some
economists expect it to lead to the UK
adopting the euro whether it wants to or not.
The informal appearance of the euro is
known in government circles as euro-creep.
Its encouragement will become a central
plank of the Prime Ministers campaign to
prepare the country for a referendum on the
issue.
Observer, Nov. 2001
Whether or not Britain joined, Mr Fabius
said, it was likely that euro notes and coins
could be widely circulated in the UK. The
changeover will probably step up the eurocreep phenomenon in the out countries, he
said.
Financial Times, Dec. 2001

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EUROLAND/jrlnd/
This is an informal shorthand term for the
group of eleven members of the European
Union who have decided to adopt a single
currency from the beginning of 1999. It

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differentiates these countries from the other

members of the Union, such as the UK, which
are not joining. As the new currency is the
Euro, it was not a huge inventive leap to coin
Euroland for the group, though the potential
for confusion with the EU as a whole is
significant. It seems to have come into
relatively common use only in the early
months of 1998, about the time it was
confirmed which countries were eligible for
European monetary union according to the
Maastricht criteria; it has since become the
standard word in financial and political
circles, and is even used by members of the
British government. It turns up also in other
European languages, such as German.
Eurolands fiscal policy remains in the hands
of politicians from 11 different countries.
Scotsman, May 1998

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While Duisenberg warned Tuesday that the

economies of Euroland, as the 11-nation
single currency zone is informally called,
were slowing down and business confidence
was falling, he did not hint that interest rate
cuts were needed.
Washington Post, Dec. 1998

EUROPANTO
/jrpnt/
Europanto is a sort of language, the tonguein-cheek creation of Diego Marani, a
translator working for the European Council
of Ministers in Brussels. He writes regular
columns in it in Swiss and Belgian
newspapers, and has also produced a book
and a board game. The name is a blend of
European with Esperanto, the international
language invented by Dr Ludovik Zamenhof

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in the 1880s. But Diego Marani feels

Esperantos chance of acceptance has gone, a
product of a linguistic environment that no
longer exists; today, he argues, English is
dominant, a lingua franca used by many
groups with no link to the Anglo-Saxon
world. In his manifesto, a fine example of
straight-faced humour, he says that
Europanto, based on English with many
words injected from other European
languages known to the speakers, is
intended to give voice to the frustrations of
the vast majority of people who are forced to
use English even though their command of
the language is not very good and that
instead of trying to compete with English,
the aim is to cause the language to implode,
to destroy it from within. So far, its no more
than a fun intellectual game, but you never
know.

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Si no comprende este compte de Nol, no

panic: este perfectly normal. Er ist crit in der
erste overeuropese tongue: the Europanto.
Europanto ist 42% English, 38% French, 15%
le rest van de UE tonguen und 5% mixed
fantasia mots out from Latin, unlikely-oldGreek et mucho rude Italian jurones.
Le Soir illustr, Dec. 1996
Signor Marani launched Europanto as a joke,
a way of whiling away the time during
interminable Council meetings, but it has
proved enormously popular and le ciel ist
now der termino, as the Panto-ists might say.
Guardian, Feb. 1999

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This term has begun to appear in recent

months in magazines and newspapers in
North America to refer to the broadband
always-on instant Internet thats slowly
becoming a reality. It applies not only to the
World Wide Web but also to the universal
connection of all sorts of domestic and
industrial appliances to the Net, such as the
much-written-about fridge that can order its
own replacement food. If it succeeds in
becoming other than a briefly fashionable
term, evernet will be a great nuisance to those
people who have been using it for years in
various senses, not least Evernet Systems, for
whom it is a trade mark.
The next day we read that the Internet is
giving way to the Evernet, meaning that

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anything with electricity is having chips

embedded in it from pagers to toasters to
cars and connected to networks.
Dallas Morning News, May 2000
I think were now quite early in the building
of the Evernet, this always-on, high-speed,
broadband, ubiquitous, multiformat Web.
Fortune, Nov. 2000

This is a jargon term of British

educationalists and still rather rare. It is
obviously based on the older and better
established term evidence-based medicine. It
may have been used first by David
Hargreaves, Professor of Education at the

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University of Cambridge, in 1996. The idea

behind all evidence-based approaches is that
the methods that practitioners use should be
evaluated to prove whether they work, and
that the results should be fed back to
influence practice. Its an attempt to move
from individualistic and personal approaches
to one in which traditional ideas are tested
and where necessary changed. It tries to link
research and day-to-day practice more
closely than in the past. In Britain the term
evidence-based very much reflects the views
of the Labour government, which is trying to
adopt standard approaches based on what is
known to work, both in the National Health
Service and in education. However, critics of
evidence-based education point to the
complexities and subtleties of teaching (and
learning), in which teachers own
experiences, beliefs and values are often
more influential than research findings.

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EVO-DEVO
When youve invented a
jaw-stretching phrase like
evolutionary
developmental biology,
shortening it again seems
a neat idea. So the term
evo-devo was born,
sometime around the
middle 1990s, though it is
only gradually beginning to
appear outside a narrow specialist arena.
In essence, its a marriage of the approaches
of two groups of scientists those who
study how the genetic make-up of organisms
has evolved between species over millions of
years, and those who investigate the way that
genes control the growth of individual living
organisms from conception to maturity.

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Researchers have found that genes are

extraordinarily stable, even between species
that evolved millions of years apart. Some
genetic markers and chemical structures
have survived fundamental changes in the
physical appearance of species. The most
famous is the hox gene sequence that
controls the way the body develops in
essence, this was much the same in lowly
organisms 700 million years ago as it is in
humans today.
Studying these genes from both points of
view both evolution and development
helps researchers to understand how
organisms today develop from egg to mature
adult, and provides insights into the genetics
of organisms like the dinosaurs that are
known only from fossils. The fusion of the
two approaches is predicted to result in
many important discoveries.

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E-VOTING
This term, an abbreviated form of electronic
voting, seems to have begun appearing in
newspapers about 1999. It has become more
common recently as various governments
have begun to use computers (plus text
messaging and the Internet) for entering and
counting votes, largely as ways to encourage
people to participate in elections. The recent
Irish referendum on ratifying the Nice
proposals to extend the European Union was
partly conducted by computer; the British
government is piloting the idea in local

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council elections in some places next year,

following trials of Internet and text-message
voting last May. The term e-voting is limited
to systems that use methods to record and
count votes that are entirely electronic, so it
excludes the voting machines commonly used
in the USA that were responsible for the great
hanging chad scandal of the 2000
presidential election. However, technology
experts are sceptical about the whole idea,
arguing that the opportunities for fraud or
error are too great, since it is so hard to be
certain that people voting online or via
mobile phones are who they claim to be, its
too easy for corrupt governments to falsify
the results when no checkable audit trail
exists, and they fear that voters can be too
easily intimidated when voting at home.
Many observers believe the fundamental
problem with e-voting is that the government
appears to be using it to provide a technical

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fix to what is essentially a political and social

problem.
Computer Weekly, Oct. 2002
Georgia is implementing statewide e-voting
at a time when voter confidence is still
recovering from the 2000 presidential
election disaster. Those wounds were
reopened this month when Florida counties
debuting their electronic voting machines
struggled through another election fiasco,
thanks largely to poorly trained poll workers.
Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Sep. 2002
EXERCISE BULIMIA
Bulimia is a well-known condition in which
those affected have an obsessive desire to
lose weight, which shows up as bouts of
extreme overeating followed by fasting or
self-induced vomiting or purging. Less well
known is the variation exercise bulimia, in

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which the urge to lose weight leads

individuals to engage in a frenzy of gym
activity as a socially acceptable way to purge
their bodies of unwanted nourishment and
remove the guilt associated with eating. Its
often hard to diagnose, since it may not be
obvious whether a person is just exercising a
lot or is out of control. The term is over a
decade old, but has been receiving more
attention recently because Jamie-Lynn
DiScala, who plays Meadow in the US
television series The Sopranos, admitted in
2005 to having the disorder. A less common
term for it is anorexia athletica.
Her exercise bulimia started when she was in
her 30s and her son was in the hospital. Shed
run up and down the stairs to his room.
When he got out, she continued the
compulsive exercise by running seven miles a
day, followed by stomach push-ups, sit-ups,
leg lifts and other calisthenics.

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St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 19 Mar 2006

If you find yourself going to great lengths to
hide how much you hit the gym, or you feel
depressed when you miss a session, it may be
a sign that you have exercise bulimia and
should consult a mental-health professional.
Town & Country, 1 Sep. 2005

/ksfmen/
This word is used by Tor Nrretranders in
his book The User Illusion, published in
Danish in 1991 and in English in 1998. He
argues that effective communication depends
on a shared body of knowledge between the

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persons communicating. If someone is talking

about cows, for example, what is said will be
unintelligible unless the person listening has
some idea what a cow is, what it is good for,
and in what contexts one might encounter
one. In using the word cow, Nrretranders
says, the speaker has deliberately thrown
away a huge body of information, though it
remains implied. He illustrates the point with
a story of Victor Hugo writing to his
publisher to ask how his most recent book,
Les Miserables, was getting on. Hugo just
wrote ?, to which his publisher replied !,
to indicate it was selling well. The exchange
would have no meaning to a third party
because the shared context is unique to those
taking part in it. This shared context Tor
Nrretranders calls exformation. He coined
the word as a abbreviated form of explicitly
discarded information, originally in Danish as
eksformation; the word first appeared in

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English in an article he wrote in 1992. He

says exformation is everything we do not
actually say but have in our heads when or
before we say anything at all. Information is
the measurable, demonstrable utterance we
actually come out with.
From the information content of a message
alone, there is no way of measuring how
much exformation it contains.
Tor Nrretranders, The User Illusion (1998)
Thought, argues Norretranders, is in fact a
process of chucking away information, and it
is this detritus (happily labelled
exformation) that is crucially involved in
automatic behaviours of expertise (riding a
bicycle, playing the piano), and which is
therefore the most precious to us as people.
Guardian, Sep. 1998

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The twentieth century has seen a resurgence

in interest in a question which was once the
province of religion rather than science: are
we alone in the universe, or is there a
plurality of worlds? The SETI (Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project is one
attempt to answer the question, listening out
for radio messages that might indicate the
presence of other beings.

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A more recent one has been the search for

direct evidence of planets circling other stars.
They are much too small to be observed
directly, even if the light from their parent
stars didnt obscure them, so they have to be
sought by subtle astronomical observations
that detect changes in the light coming from
their stars brought about by wobbles caused
by the invisible companion.
In the past eighteen months the discovery of
several such planets has been announced.
Their formal name is extrasolar planets, but
this has been abbreviated to exoplanet,
employing the Greek prefix exo-, outside;
external, which turns up in a number of
English words such as exotic, exoskeleton, and
exogenous. The adjective is exoplanetary.

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The phrase is in the news because Lonely

Planet yesterday published its Guide to
Experimental Travel. One author is Joel
Henry, a 48-year-old television scriptwriter
from Strasbourg who is said to have created
the idea in 1990 (though the term is more
recent). Its also called experimental tourism.
As a surreal alternative to the standard
trudge round tourist venues, he suggests that

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you should challenge your perceptions of a

city and increase your receptiveness as a
tourist by trying alternative ways of seeing.
Alphatourism, for example: identify the first
and last streets in the A-Z, draw a line
between the two and follow the route on foot
(a variation might be to draw a random
shape, superimpose it on a street plan and
follow the route it marks out). Or
aerotourism: spend a day in an airport
enjoying its facilities without going
anywhere. Or nyctalotourism: go to a foreign
city at twilight, look around all night and
leave just before dawn. Or cecitourism: let a
trusted friend or partner walk you
blindfolded round a place, describing the
sights. If these are all too mundane, you
might try horses head tourism: don a horses
head costume and walk around to experience
the way that people react to you.

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About 20 miles further on, I drive past

Bodiam Castle, a 14th-century fortification.
This, of course, is a conventional tourist
attraction, but experimental tourists are
permitted to visit such places, as long as they
indulge in contretourism. This involves
turning your back on the monument in
question and taking a photograph of the view
in the opposite direction.
the Independent, 9 Feb. 2005
You see, he says. That is the thing about
doing experimental tourism, it gives you a
special feeling. It makes you into a person
you are not. I think about this but I dont
think Im sure enough of the person I am to
know that Im not the person Im not. But
then, this is precisely the kind of topsy-turvy
conundrum that experimental tourism
throws up the whole time.
the Observer, 22 May 2005

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Though vast efforts have been put into

decoding the human genome, it has become
increasingly obvious that knowing the DNA
sequence of a person is a long way from
knowing the person, because of other
influences. Its the nature versus nurture

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conundrum again, with the genome being the

nature part.
As examples of these other influences,
researchers are mapping the proteins that
are expressed by a cell, together called the
proteome, the chemical switches in the cell
that modify the way the genome works,
collectively the epigenome, and the group of
small molecules such as hormones and
signalling molecules the metabolome
(from metabolism).

Adds to the exposome

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Some researchers are claiming that these

internal influences are greatly outweighed by
external ones, such as diet, lifestyle, drug use
(medicinal or recreational) and the chemicals
that we absorb from our environments.
These factors have been given the collective
name exposome. Its argued that mapping it
for an individual may be crucial in measuring
the factors that lead to disease.
The name was coined as a combination of
exposure and genome in imitation of the
others, in which, if you trace it back, the -ome
ending is taken from chromosome (originally
from Greek sma, body). The inventor was
Chris Wild, director of the International
Agency for Research on Cancer, in a paper
published in August 2005.
And if there is to be any hope of untangling
the complex web of risks behind chronic
diseases, many scientists argue, researchers

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need to develop an exposome, a highly

detailed map of environmental exposures
that might occur throughout a lifetime.
Scientific American, Oct. 2010
Were reaching the point where were
capable of assessing the exposome, says
Balshaw. With the implications for
understanding disease causes and risks, and
a real prospect of developing personalised
medicine, the exposome is showing more
promise than the genome already, he adds.
New Scientist, 25 Dec. 2010.

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It is less than a year since the term intranet

was coined to mean an internal or corporate
network based on Internet technology. But
already a term that sounds very much like its
antonym has been invented. The word
extranet is obviously formed from the Latin
prefix extra-, outside, plus Net, and this
gives the clue to its sense. Whereas intranets
are used internally to boost corporate
efficiency, extranets are used externally to
improve communication between the
organisation, its suppliers and its customers
without prejudicing its electronic security. An

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example is the FedEx system, which allows

customers to place orders and interrogate
FedExs computers to find out where their
packages have got to. The word came to
wider public attention when IBM used it to
describe its huge (and, alas, flawed) system
for distributing information at the Atlanta
Olympics. The word may be new but the
concept certainly isnt, and already there
have been complaints that such neologisms
are hindering understanding and muddying
straightforward concepts with artificial
distinctions.

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This legal term has gained much attention in

the press in the past couple of years because
of reports that the CIA has been capturing
terrorism suspects in one country and
delivering them with no court hearing or
extradition process to a second, in which
torture is practised, in order to get
confessions or useful intelligence. The term
dates to the end of the 1980s at the latest, but
is in the news at the moment because of
accusations that the CIA is being actively
aided by the British government, and because

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of a court case last month in New York in

which a Canadian citizen challenged his
removal to Syria in this way.
The core of the term is rendition, an old but
little-known legal principle. It comes from an
obsolete French term that derives from
rendre, to give back or render. Most people
know rendition as a posh word for the
performance of an actor or musician, but in
the time of the first Queen Elizabeth about
1600 it referred to the surrender of a
garrison (the occupants rendered, or gave
themselves up, to the victors).
In US law rendition refers to the transfer of
individuals from a foreign jurisdiction to the
USA to answer criminal charges; the
defendant is said to have been rendered up to
justice. However, the formal process is
extradiction. When the transfer is done by
extra-judicial methods, the process is strictly

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called informal rendition, though this can be

casually shortened to rendition.
A problem for the security forces is that once
brought to the USA the person is subject to
US law and the rules of due process, which of
course excludes torture. Hence extraordinary
rendition, a euphemism for taking them to a
country where these rules do not apply.
One week ago a judge in Milan signed
warrants for the arrest of 13 of the agents,
which has thrown covert CIA activities
outside the US under the spotlight and drawn
attention to the increasingly common
practice of so-called extraordinary
rendition, by which the US seizes terror
suspects and removes them to countries
known for their use of torture.
the Independent, 1 Jul. 2005

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Extraordinary rendition is antithetical to

everything Americans are supposed to
believe in. It violates American law. It violates
international law. And it is a profound
violation of our own most fundamental moral
imperative that there are limits to the way
we treat other human beings, even in a time
of war and great fear.
the New York Times, 18 Feb. 2005
This word turned up
recently in a news item in
the British newspaper The
Guardian, describing a new
policy in Singapore of
making school children do
eye exercises to music every
morning. In origin it is obviously a blend of
eye and aerobics. Others appear to have
independently invented this word in related

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senses: the US cartoonist Keith Bratton has

drawn a little 16-page book called Eyerobics,
with the subtitle Eye exercises for toning
and strengthening vision for all kinds of
compulsive watchers. The oldest reference I
have found is to a 1985 arcade-style
educational game called EyeRobics,
intended to help speed reading. Whether the
word will catch on is far from obvious, but it
is the kind of catchy formation that someone
is going to trademark someday, if they
havent already.

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Semiconductor
manufacturers have two
possible approaches to
making their products. They
can either build and run
their own manufacturing
plants, or restrict
themselves to designing
chips that are then made by others. The
former was once the more usual method,
involving the construction and operation of
extremely expensive factories (called silicon
foundries in the jargon) which are capable of
the high standards of precision and
cleanliness required to make these complex
circuits. Many of these plants were sited in
places, often in foreign countries where wage
rates and other costs were low or grants
were available and were usually restricted to

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manufacture of components with no research

or design facilities. These became known in
the business as fabs, short for fabrication
plants. More recently, some companies
especially the smaller ones have begun to
select the other route to manufacture,
because they have discovered they can
innovate more effectively and bring products
to market more quickly if they contract out
the production stages to a foundry. Such
firms are said to be fabless. This group now
has its own trade association, the Fabless
Semiconductor Association.

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This is a gently sarcastic term for a person

who is an enthusiast for fashion. It covers not
only the dedicated followers of fashion who
wear the clothes, but also those who write
about them. And it can refer to those who
design, make, model and publicise clothes,

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and the fashion buyers whose decisions

determine the success of a collection.
Im told by researchers at the Oxford English
Dictionary that it goes back to 1993, to a book
by Stephen Fried entitled Thing of Beauty: the
Tragedy of Supermodel Gia. The word began
to become more widely popular from about
1998 onwards, has just started to appear in
dictionaries, and looks set to become a
permanent part of the language.
Its formed from fashion by adding the suffix ista from Spanish, equivalent to our -ist
ending. English has only comparatively
recently borrowed this from familiar
Spanish-language terms such as Sandinista
and Peronista. Such words have often had
negative associations in English and new
words using the suffix are usually derogatory,
like Blairista for a supporter of the British
prime minister, Tony Blair. Fashionista was

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one of this type, and it has not yet entirely

lost its disparaging associations with
triviality.
Last week I finally realized that no matter
how hard I try, Ill never be a true fashionista
one of those guys and gals who can
stumble out of a swamp covered with leeches
and still look like a million bucks.
Denver Rocky Mountain News, Sept. 1999
As founder and editorial director of
Wallpaper magazine, the style and design
bible for the fashionista, he is a man on firstname terms with good taste.
Daily Telegraph, Feb. 2000

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FAT TAX

A fat tax is a surcharge applied to certain

kinds of high-fat and high-energy foods
whose consumption is most likely to
contribute to excessive weight gain. The hope
is to reduce the increasing levels of obesity
known to cause or exacerbate health

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problems like heart disease, cancer and

diabetes and encourage people instead to
eat healthy foods that are low in salt, sugar,
and saturated fats.
Some US
cities and
states levy
taxes on
soft drinks
and junk
food but
the idea
hasnt yet
spread to
Europe.
The term
was in the news in the UK in July 2007
following publication in the Journal of
Epidemiology of a report by Dr Mike Rayner
and fellow researchers at Oxford University.
At the moment, nearly all foodstuffs are

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untaxed in the UK; the researchers suggest

that applying sales tax at the usual rate of
17.5% to non-essential foods like cakes,
biscuits and puddings would potentially save
up to 3,200 lives a year. A similar proposal
was put forward by Dr Tom Marshall in the
British Medical Journal in 2000; a fat tax was
rejected by the British government in 2004
as being a product of a nanny state.
The term fat tax has been independently
invented several times. The earliest I know of
was at the World Food Conference in 1973,
during which delegates were encouraged to
weigh themselves and pay a graduated fat tax
to charity if they were overweight. The first
example I can find in the sense of a tax on
foodstuffs appeared in a letter by a reader in
the Valley Independent of Monessen,
Pennsylvania, in July 1987.

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Dr Rayner said: Given the high incidence of

cardiovascular disease and the acknowledged
contributory role of dietary salt and fat a
well-designed and carefully targeted fat tax
could be a useful tool for reducing the burden
of food-related disease.
Evening Standard, 12 Jul 2007
Critics say a fat tax would hit the poor
hardest because they spend 30 per cent of
their income on food, twice the proportion
spent by richer households.
New Scientist, 21 Jul 2007

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A blend of fee and rebate, this is an idea that

seeks to improve energy efficiency and
reduce pollution. For example, when you
bought a new car, you would pay an extra fee
if it were an inefficient user of fuel, or
alternatively get a rebate if it were energyefficient. The neutral point would be set so
that fees and rebates balanced, so it became
neither an inflationary measure nor a
disguised tax. Similar schemes have been
proposed to reduce the consumption of
water and other resources and as a way to
improve the energy efficiency of new
buildings. The term is mainly to be found in

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the USA; it has been around since the early

1990s at least (it appeared in Bill Clintons
1992 campaign literature), and limited
schemes have been applied in some places,
though usually not under this name.
Initiatives that penalise heavy users (gasguzzler taxes, for example) strictly arent
feebate schemes, as theres no rebate
element; others, like the British licence-tax
reductions for small cars, should equally fall
outside its scope, as theres no explicit
balancing penalty. But most
environmentalists seem to use the term
loosely to mean any tax or charge that is
scaled to encourage economy; the word is
still mostly to be found in the jargon of such
groups.
All policies that operate through mechanisms
similar to fuel-economy standards policies
such as feebates that tax vehicles with
lower fuel economies and subsidize vehicles

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with higher fuel economies lead drivers

who purchase more fuel-efficient vehicles to
drive them more than they otherwise would.
Environment, Jan. 1997
Governments could speed up this process, by
insisting on higher standards for emissions,
or by feebates, making those who buy
inefficient, polluting cars pay a fee used to
rebate those buying cleaner, greener cars.
Guardian, Nov. 1999

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FEMTOCELL/fmtsl/
Although its common within the
telecommunications industry, this term
hasnt yet made much impact on the wider
world. Thats about to change.
A femtocell is a mobile-telephone base station
in the home thats connected to your
broadband internet service. The idea is to
give subscribers a better signal and faster

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data access, because buildings, especially in

cities, can block the wireless signal or reduce
its quality. As the mobile phone is often the
first point of contact for friends and family,
many people would prefer to maintain it as
their main phone but poor indoors reception
often makes this difficult. Other benefits
being touted are that your phone will only
have to operate at very low signal levels, so
extending battery life, limiting the risk of
adverse health effects and preventing
interference with other electrical equipment.
The phone companies hope that femtocells
will encourage people to use the high-speed
data services that have been introduced at
huge cost and will help to draw users away
from their competitors, the fixed-line
telecoms operators. Products are appearing
at trade shows but have yet to go on retail
sale.

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The word is taken

loosely and
figuratively from
femto-, the metric
prefix that means 1015 or a quadrillionth (a
million billionth) of
some unit (its from
the Danish or Norwegian femten, fifteen),
plus cell, the standard name for a single
mobile telephone coverage area, whose name
was borrowed from the idea of a cell in a
honeycomb. Its the logical next member of a
series of terms that have been created by
telecoms engineers for equipment with
different coverage areas, including macrocell,
minicell, microcell and picocell (from the
prefix meaning one thousand billionth or 1012, based on Spanish pico, a little bit). Unlike
these others, which remain industry jargon,
the direct impact of femtocell on the public

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means it is going to achieve much greater

visibility in the language. The term is already
being abbreviated to femto in the telecoms
business.
For femtocell technology to achieve the kind
of growth in service use and data
consumption operators hope, it needs to be
more than just niche take-up. But getting the
cost per unit low enough to facilitate the
firing of femtocells into scores of homes may
require carriers to subsidise the hardware
which of course would come at a cost.
Business Week, 29 Feb. 2008
Hooked up to a homes broadband-internet
connection, femtocells provide solid indoor
coverage and allow residents to make cheap
calls using their existing handsets. Leave the
house while chatting, and your call is
automatically handed over to the wider
mobile-phone network.

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Economist, 14 Feb. 2008

FINANCIAL PHOBIA
British newspapers have
employed this phrase
frequently, as well as

variations such as fiscal

phobia, ever since a
report from researchers
at
Cambridge University
appeared at the end of
January. The researchers claim to have
identified a psychological condition in which
some nine million people in Britain have a
morbid fear of coping with their financial
affairs, to the extent of never reading their
bank statements or replying to letters about

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their personal finances. The researchers

argue theyre not feckless spendthrifts, but
otherwise sane and rational people who have
got themselves into a state in which they
cant deal with such matters sensibly. The
cause often seems to be some financial upset
outside the persons control that triggers a
complete aversion to everything connected
with money. A person who is suffering from
the state is said to be a financial phobe.
The highest levels of financial phobia are
found among younger age groups, with 30
per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds suffering from
the condition and 26 per cent of 25 to 34year-olds. Women are more likely to suffer
from the condition than men.
Birmingham Post, Feb. 2003

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Im

talking financial phobia. Its official.

Researchers at the Social and Political
Science faculty at Cambridge University have
discovered that 20 per cent of the population
is affected with FP. Yes, about 10 million
people greet the appearance of a bank
statement on the doormat as they might react
to a hand grenade: theyd like to get rid of it,
but theyd rather not touch it, so they just
ignore it.
Independent, Jan. 2003

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FLASH
MOB
In the
middle of
June,
groups of
people
began to
congregate in New York without warning to
carry out some daft action the first
happened in May, but the one that hit the
news occurred on 15 June, when a crowd of
200 materialised in Macys department store
in Manhattan, supposedly in search of a
$10,000 love rug. The next, on 2 July,
formed in the mezzanine of the Grand Hyatt
Hotel and did nothing but burst into applause
for 15 seconds on cue. These absurdist
crowds were assembled through instructions

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passed from person to person using e-mail,

text messaging and other instant media.
The figure behind these New Yorker flash
mobs is known only as Bill. His Mob Project
aims periodically to create inexplicable but
peaceful gatherings somewhere in New York
for just ten minutes at a time. Copycat
schemes quickly sprouted in big cities all
over America and the idea was soon exported
to many other countries.
Where he got the name from isnt known, but
its suspected that he borrowed it from a
famous SF story by Larry Niven in which the
new technology of teleportation became
allied to mass communications to provoke
what Niven called flash crowds to assemble
where something newsworthy was
happening.
Was this just a manifestation of silly-season
hot-summer madness, or was there more to

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it? One pointer to its being rather more than

the fashion of a moment is that several verbal
compounds of the name have already been
formed, including flash mobber and flash
mobbing, as well as the abbreviation mobber,
always a sign of a term that has hit the
collective unconscious. Some commentators
argue that it is actually a reflection of a sense
of alienation among young people, while
others fear it has been so successful an idea
that it will not be long before others adopt
the concept for less benign purposes.
The flash mob phenomenon is part
sanctioned insanity, part Seinfeld on the
loose, part nonsensical wanderings through
city streets en masse.
Christian Science Monitor, 4 Aug. 2003
Even the usually staid Swiss are getting into
the act. During one recent flash mob scene at
the Zurich railway station, flash mobbers

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formed a long single-file line with hands

linked, dividing the station.
Toronto Star, 5 Aug. 2003

FOLKSONOMY
Though this term has become known online
in the past year and the idea behind it is
arousing interest in the technology
community, it is rare outside such specialist
groups. This may be changing. A folksonomy

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is a type of classification system that

spontaneously arises out of the way users tag
items of information with freely chosen
keywords (a more common term, in fact, is
tagging). Such tags might be attached to
photographs that individuals upload to Web
sites such as Flickr, or to sites listed on
StumbleUpon, a user network for sharing
information about them. Its a bottom-up
form of informal classification thats
fundamentally different to the top-down
type imposed from above, such as the Dewey
system for classifying books. A useful article
on the word on the Wikipedia site says its a
blend of folk and taxonomy and that its
invention has been attributed to Thomas
Vander Wal.
Tagging, or Folksonomy, represents an
alternative and complement to traditional
enterprise rigid ontology.

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PR Newswire, 8 February 2005

Folksonomies work because although users
can choose idiosyncratic tags, most people
tend to use fairly obvious ones most of the
time.
the Guardian, 24 Mar. 2005
Tagging, or Folksonomy, represents an
alternative and complement to traditional
enterprise rigid ontology.
PR Newswire, 8 February 2005
Folksonomies work because although users
can choose idiosyncratic tags, most people
tend to use fairly obvious ones most of the
time.
the Guardian, 24 Mar. 2005

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One characteristic of
the jargon of particular trades or professions
is that they appropriate words which have a
well-understood literal meaning and adapt
them to describe some technicality. Footfall is
a good example. It has been taken up by the
retailing industry to refer to the number of
people entering a store, a direct equivalent of
the older show business clich bums on seats
(tourism marketers have a similar term,
bums on beds). So you might read in an article
that The Trocadero has an annual footfall of
16 million visitors. If you have a high
footfall, you are presumably doing well

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(though the concept wisely does not attempt

to equate the numbers who buy with the
numbers who enter), so the ambition of all
retailers is to increase their footfall. A letter
to the British Bookseller magazine recently
noted that at least one of the more aggressive
marketers has begun to speak of driving
footfall, as in We strive to show booksellers
what we are doing to support them and drive
footfall into their stores, which raises a
disquieting image of the marketer as
sheepdog, herding his charges towards the
point of sale. Ive seen footfall only in UK
sources, so it may be a peculiarly British
term. If so, do please forgive us for inventing
it.

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FRATIRE

A New York Times piece in April 2006

discussed Tucker Maxs I Hope They Serve
Beer In Hell: Young men, long written off by
publishers as simply uninterested in reading,
are driving sales of a growing genre of books
like Maxs that combine a fraternity housestyle celebration of masculinity with a
mocking attitude toward social convention,
traditional male roles and aspirations of

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power and authority... [T]hey collectively

represent the once-elusive male counterpart
to so-called chick lit, and so perhaps deserve
an epithet of their own. The article
suggested fratire.
An older term, dick-lit,
might seem to have
already filled the
linguistic need, but thats
a more direct equivalent
to chick-lit in which male
narrators fret over their
romantic screw-ups.
That is most definitely
not a state Tucker Max
ever finds himself in. The
introduction to his book says: My name is
Tucker Max, and I am an asshole. I get
excessively drunk at inappropriate times,
disregard social norms, indulge every whim,
ignore the consequences of my actions, mock

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idiots and posers, sleep with more women

than is safe or reasonable, and just generally
act like a raging dickhead.
The New York Times article didnt explain the
origin of fratire but its author presumably
coined it from fraternity + satire.
The masculine backlash celebrated in such
books has also given rise to the term
menaissance.
The themes and topics in fratire arent
appropriate for family dinner-time
discussion, but the crude sexual references
and tales centered on obsessive alcohol
consumption are drawing plenty of
twentysomething guys into bookstores.
Arizona Daily Star, 14 Jul. 2006
The fratire writers are cyber-characters, who
hold themselves up as a paragon of backlash
cocksure in the discovery that the more

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misogynistic they are, the more attractive

women seem to find them.
Guardian, 22 Apr. 2006

FREECYCLING
What do you do with all the stuff you collect
that you no longer want but which is too
good to throw away? At one time you might
have given it to some charity; these days you
could sell the more presentable items on
eBay, but a new alternative is to freecycle it.
This initiative was invented last May by
Deron Beal, who works for an American
nonprofit organisation called RISE, Inc,

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whose aim is to reduce waste. Local

communities form groups, each with a
volunteer organiser and an electronic forum
on which members can post details of items
they dont want, or of things they do.
Members whose needs match then organise a
hand-over. The only rule, strictly enforced, is
that no money must change hands and there
must be no bartering.
In the face-to-face world, its often hard to
find that deserving person who needs your
specific load of useless castoffs. Enter the
Internet, which not only makes such
networking easy but also has long been
suffused with an ethic that promotes gift
giving. Since May, the Freecycle concept has
exploded, spreading from city to city with the
speed of a grass (roots) fire.
Salon, 25 Nov. 2003

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A couple of freecycling abuses have been

identified. Illegal drug paraphernalia has
turned up on some sites across the country,
and donated items occasionally are snatched
up for resale elsewhere by visitors exploiting
the free-for-all spirit of the arrangement.
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service; 26 Jan.
2004

The idea behind

freeganism is that you get as much of your
food as you can from stuff that has been
thrown out by supermarkets, restaurants and
street markets. Though the practice is also
known as voluntary simplicity and monetary

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minimalism its only partly about living

cheaply. Its more a political philosophy, a
statement of defiance against what freegans
regard as the wasteful consumerist culture of
the developed world, which is why it has also
been called ethical eating and the ultimate
boycott.
The name is usually said to be a blend of free
and vegan, since early practitioners were
either vegetarian or vegan (not least because
it is much more dangerous to eat discarded
meat or fish than vegetables and grains). But
it has also been argued from a political
perspective that its short for free gain. The
evidence is that some normally vegan
freegans will take animal products, since
theres another term, meagan, for vegans
who will eat meat if they can get it for
nothing.

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The culture lives on the edge of illegality,

since many firms regard taking food from
skips or dumpsters as theft. Some extreme
freegan practices would be considered
unacceptable by most people, such as table
diving, in which freegans hover in a
restaurant and grab discarded food from
diners plates after they leave.
Freegans come from a larger community of
young, do-it-yourself punks. Many are
anarchists, opposing all forms of government
and embracing ideals such as individual
freedom and cooperation. Some, though,
dont identify as anarchists or as punks
or they resent being labeled. But all of them
despise the American-style consumerism
they call destructive.
The Sacramento Bee, 27 May 2003
An unwritten rule of freeganism is that you
leave enough for people who genuinely need

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the food. So when I found discarded boxes of

carrots, I only took a few handfuls.
The Observer, 23 Nov. 2003

Free-running treats the urban landscape as

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an adult playground. It treats man-made

structures as an obstacle course that
participants negotiate by daring feats of
graceful gymnastics. It was invented by a
group of childhood friends in Lisses, near
Paris as in so many suburban towns, there
was little for young people to do, so Sebastien
Foucan, David Belle and others created what
they call le parkour (a deliberately un-French
spelling to make the point that they were
doing something different).
Anybody in Britain who has been watching
BBC1 in recent months will have seen this
most recent example of an extreme sport in
action; David Belle was filmed for a
promotional trailer in which he rushed home
across Londons rooftops to catch his
favourite TV programme. More recently, a
trio of free-runners were seen in a
programme called Jump London on Channel
4.

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The sport grew out of attempts to imitate

ninja feats. Unlike other extreme activities, it
has developed a philosophy. It is not just a
game, Sebastien Foucan is quoted as saying,
it is a discipline because it is a way of facing
our fears and demons that you can apply to
the rest of your life.
Free-running is essentially cat-burglary
without the larceny and with a hefty
addition of Gallic philosophising.
Independent, 10 Sep. 2003
A new urban sport which emerged from the
southern suburbs of Paris, free-running uses
gymnastic skills to find alarming new ways of
navigating the urban landscape. It is the freerunners fondness for catapulting themselves
at dangerous heights over anxiety-inducing
distances that has brought them notoriety
initially within the confines of their mayors

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office, but more recently on an international

level.
Guardian, 21 Aug. 2003

Fusion inhibitors are a new class of drugs that

act against HIV; they got that name because
they prevent the virus from fusing with the
inside of a cell and so stop it from replicating.
Though this term has been used in the
pharmaceutical industry since the mid1990s, it has only very recently started to be
seen in the non-specialist press because the
first example, Fuzeon (generic name
enfuvirtide), was approved by the US Food
and Drug Administration only in 2003. Such
drugs are members of a broader class, the

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entry inhibitors, which stop the virus from

entering the cell in the first place. These are
classed as antiretroviral drugs, like other HIV
agents, since HIV is a retrovirus, one that
works by generating a DNA copy of its RNA
genome inside the cell, the reverse of normal
genetic replication, which goes from DNA to
RNA.

Gamification (very
occasionally

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spelled gameification) refers to the

application of digital game technology and
game design in areas of life outside games,
especially marketing.
Its proponents argue that traditional
incentive-based marketing has had its day. If
individuals are prepared to spend hours
collecting intangible points in a video game,
the argument goes, they could easily be
encouraged to earn rewards on business and
retail websites through game-style activities.
For example, visitors could gain incentive
points by posting comments on a site, or even
by logging in, so encouraging repeat visits
and customer loyalty. To encourage a spirit of
competition, the visitors with the greatest
number of points might be listed on a
leaderboard, be given rewards such as
access to private areas of the site or become
eligible for special offers.

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The idea is applicable, its advocates argue, to

everything from global-positioning software
to retailing and financial services. It would,
they say, make sites easier and more pleasant
to use and attract younger people who are
comfortable with online games. Multiplayer
games are also being tried at work to
improve communication and coordination
between staff, and it has even been suggested
that boring tasks such as paying taxes or
checking the weather might become fun.
In a related sense, proponents of gameplaying point out that the skills we acquire by
playing video games are making us better at
real-world tasks, such as playing music.
There was a sudden proliferation of
appearances of this word in the media in the
latter part of 2010, although it is recorded
from 2005 in academic and specialist
publications. The linked verb gamify has also
appeared.

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With gamification, companies study

and identify natural human
tendencies and employ game-like
mechanisms to give customers a
sense that theyre having fun while
working towards a rewards-based
goal.
Fortune, 3 Sep 2010.
Marketers ... have seen the potential
benefits of tapping into the growing
gamification of our lives. Airlines,
hotels, and credit card companies all
understand our desire to be
rewarded and to achieve status and
have recognised that gaming is just
making it more of an adventure, and
more social.
Marketing Week, 30 Sep. 2010

514

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GASTRO-DIPLOMACY
Gastro-diplomacy refers to a method of
building the reputation of ones country
through promoting ones national cuisine. It
received public exposure in August 2010
through reports that Taiwan had launched a
gastro-diplomatic campaign as a way to tell

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people about itself, differentiate it in peoples

minds from China and demonstrate that the
country is more than just a huge electronics
factory.
Neither the idea nor the word was new.
Gastro-diplomacy was quite widely used
around 2002-03 in reference to a similar
initiative by Thailand, called Global Thai, to
greatly increase the number of restaurants
around the world serving Thai food.
Campaigns by North Korea, India, Malaysia
and other countries have employed the same
technique. A South Korean push in the US has
led to kimchi diplomacy being created in
reference to the countrys famous spicy
pickled cabbage. Similarly, the current
Taiwanese gastronomic strategy has been
called dim sum diplomacy.

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For all that Korea is spending trying to

rebrand itself and push Korean
gastrodiplomacy, it would be better served
listening and looking for examples of organic,
authentic and homegrown outlets of cultural
gastrodiplomacy like the Korean taco truck.
Korea Times, 4 Jul. 2010.
Taiwan has become the
latest country to launch
a diplomatic drive
based around its
national cuisine.
President Ma Ying-jeou
has ordered his envoys
to start talking the
language of food by launching a 20m
gastro-diplomacy campaign in the UK and
elsewhere.
Guardian, 8 Aug. 2010

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GENE CHIP
Gene chips are devices not much larger than
postage stamps. They are based on a glass
substrate wafer and contain many tiny cells
400,000 is common. Each holds DNA from
a different human gene. The array of cells
makes it possible to carry out a very large
number of genetic tests on a sample at one

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time. At the moment, the devices are used in

pharmaceutical laboratories to investigate
what genes are involved in various normal
and disease processes and to speed up the
slow and painstaking process of finding new
drugs. The hope is that it will soon be
possible for doctors to use these devices to
run simple tests on patients during
examinations in order to diagnose diseases
with a genetic base or to find a treatment
tailored to an individuals genetic make-up.
The concept is seen as having vast potential,
and more than a dozen firms are trying out
various cost-effective ways of making the
chips. The devices are often called DNA chips,
or generally biochips; more formally
they are referred to as microarrays, and the
process of testing the gene patterns of an
individual is sometimes called microarray
profiling.

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In one of the first applications of highpowered gene chip technology to an

important psychiatric syndrome, scientists
reported yesterday the discovery of genes
that may prove key to understanding
schizophrenia.
Washington Times, Nov. 2000
People, not populations, will be treated with
tailor-made drugs that suit their genetic
makeup; gene chips will identify who is at
most risk of disease, so they can have more
check-ups; similar chips will distinguish one
type of cancer from another, so the best
treatment is chosen; gene transplants will be
used to correct mutations that cause
metabolic disorders.
Daily Telegraph, June 2000

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GENETIC POLLUTION
/dntk pl(j)un/
This has recently become a common term in
the environmental movement and is
increasingly turning up in newspaper
reports. It was popularised by the American
environmental campaigner Jeremy Rifkin in
his book The Biotech Century, which was

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published in May 1998. He used it for the risk

that genes from genetically modified
organisms (GMOs in the jargon) could be
dispersed as a result of them breeding with
wild relatives, or even with unrelated species.
As it is common for such genetic modification
in plants to include resistance to control
sprays, one result could be that weeds will
become resistant to herbicides or pesticides,
becoming, in other words of the moment,
superweeds that are supercompetitive. The
worst case is that such transformed species
could spread widely, take over other habitats,
and force rare or vulnerable wild species into
extinction. This is one basis for the great
controversy in Britain at the moment over
genetically modified crops which has led to
calls for a moratorium on their introduction.
Tens of thousands of novel transgenic
bacteria, viruses, plants and animals could be
released into the Earths ecosystems for

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commercial tasks ranging from bioremediation to the production of alternative

fuels. Some of those releases, however, could
wreak havoc with the planets biosphere,
spreading destabilizing and even deadly
genetic pollution across the world.
Jeremy Rifin, The Biotech Century, 1998
I think that it is likely that we will be plagued
by genetic pollution, and that we will look
back and see chemical and nuclear pollution
as not as significant even though one
brought us global warming and the other
waste that we cannot deal with for thousands
of years.
New Scientist, Oct. 1998

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Its now possible to take a number of tests to

find out whether you are a potential sufferer
from a disease caused by a genetic defect.
This has led to new ethical dilemmas. Is it
right, for example, that an employer or
prospective employer should be able to
screen you for susceptibility for disease?
Should insurers have a right to know that you
have tested positive for a possible future

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condition and increase premiums? Such fears

are leading to the spectre of a genetic
underclass forming: a group of people
classified as susceptible to a disease
following a genetic test and who are unable
to get insurance or jobs. In Britain, the
government has announced that it intends to
outlaw genetic testing by employers except in
rare cases where it might have safety
implications. However, British insurers said
last week that they will continue to ask for
the results of the seven currently available
genetic tests if they have been made. It is
feared that people will refuse to be tested in
case the results are positive, as has happened
with HIV.
Mr Ryan said that in New Zealand, insurers
were keen to avoid creating a genetic elite,
because that would automatically create a
genetic underclass.

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Evening Post (Wellington, New Zealand), Aug.

2000
Civil rights activists are growing concerned
that if such Orwellian practices develop at the
same pace as the race to decipher the human
blueprint they could create a genetic
underclass considered unemployable
because of the chemical codes they carry
inside them.
Guardian, Sep. 2000
When I was working
down in Devon years
ago, I learned of a longestablished game
played by hikers on
Dartmoor, who used
compass and map to
identify one of a set of

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letterboxes in remote locations on the moor,

such as Cranmere Pool. If you found one, you
left a message in a book in the box to prove
you had been there. In recent decades, this
has been updated to a form of orienteering
called letterboxing, to the extent that the five
boxes I knew about in the early 1970s have
now grown to many times that number.
Geocaching (a conflation of geo, earth, plus
cache) is a recently invented high-tech
equivalent. Someone hides a box with
treasure in it, treasure being defined very
loosely to include items like maps, books,
software, videos, pictures, money, tickets,
antiques, tools, and the like. The hider
publicises the Global Positioning System
(GPS) co-ordinates for it (on a Web site,
where else?), inviting others to find it.
Though the GPS system is accurate to within
a few metres, finding the cache can still

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require a lot of hard work, especially in an

urban area, or if the evil-minded concealer
has placed it under water, halfway up a cliff,
or in some especially remote spot. You are
supposed to record your success in a logbook
in the cache, take out only one bit of treasure,
and add something else in its place.
Geocaching is a new Web-based fad that
could have Alaskans flying to Finland to find
treasure hidden under fallen trees. Players
stash the goods anything from native art
to sunglasses and leave directions at
www.geocaching.com.
Time, Oct. 2000
Rather than keeping the booty for
themselves, successful geocachers are meant
to keep the game going by taking just one
item and replacing it with a new treasure,
adding their details to the logbook for
posterity.

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New Scientist, Jan. 2001

GEO-ENGINEERING

This term was in the news earlier this month

after the publication by the Royal Society of a
special edition of its academic journal
Philosophical Transactions on the subject.

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Geo-engineering is engineering on a planetary

scale to mitigate or reverse the effects of
global warming and climate change. Its far
from new it is recorded from the late
1980s, but until recently it has been the
province of specialists. Schemes include
seeding the oceans with iron to help plankton
grow in greater abundance, so that when the
organisms died they would take carbon to
the sea bottom with their corpses. Another
idea is to pump aerosols of sulphur dioxide
into the stratosphere to block some of the
suns light falling on Earth. Yet another is to
reduce the suns radiation by a giant
sunshade in space.
For a long while, such geo-engineering
proposals were thought to be the stuff of
science fiction; indeed, several SF writers
have noted in their works that we are in such
a mess that were going to have to terraform
the Earth. Most scientists regard them as

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dangerous ideas that are likely to do at least

as much harm as good; the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
dismissed the idea in 2007 as largely
speculative and unproven and with the risk
of unknown side-effects.
Though nobody is going to put sunshades in
space any decade soon, in recent years the
other geo-scale ideas have begun to get
serious attention, almost in desperation as
experts realise that political inaction is letting
catastrophe overtake us by default.
Confusingly, geo-engineering has for several
decades been used as a shortened form of
geological engineering, a discipline that puts
the skills and techniques of the geological
sciences together with those of engineering
to design facilities such as roads, tunnels, and
mines.

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Climate scientists, concerned society is not

taking sufficient action to prevent significant
changes in climate, have studied various
geo-engineering proposals to cool the
planet and mitigate the most severe impacts
of global warming.
The Hindustan Times, 25 Apr. 2008
Humans may have to attempt planet-scale
engineering of the climate because global
warming is happening faster than experts
have been predicting, leading scientist James
Lovelock said yesterday. Safe forms of geoengineering should be used if they can buy
us a little time to adapt to a rapidly changing
climate.
The Journal (Newcastle), 1 Sep. 2008

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GEOSEQUESTRATION
One of the principal causes of global warming
is the vast amount
of carbon dioxide
we pump into the
atmosphere by
burning fossil fuels
such as coal,
natural gas and oil.
One approach to
mitigating climate
change is to find
ways to remove
carbon dioxide
from the
atmosphere by storing it away in places such
as the ocean depths, disused oil wells, or
suitable geological formations. The general
term for the technique is carbon
sequestration. It is as yet experimental, with

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only one test project in the North Sea off

Britain.
The federal government in Australia is keen
on the idea, under the more specific title of
geosequestration to indicate that the carbon
dioxide will be stored in suitable rock strata
and not in the oceans. Sites are described by
the acronym ESSCI, which stands for
Environmentally Sustainable Site for CO2
Injection, a pun on the Esky, an Australian
trademark for a container to keep food or
drink cool. The proposal has aroused some
controversy, partly because one possible site,
at Barrow Island off the north-west coast, is a
nature reserve, but also because the scheme
may be diverting funds and attention away
from ways to reduce carbon dioxide
emissions in the first place.
The green lobby was concerned that
geosequestration the process planned to

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reduce carbon dioxide emissions from

Australian Power and Energy Limiteds
proposed $6billion plant was an infant
technology that it said had not been tried on
land before.
The Age (Melbourne), Jul. 200
Increasingly, industry is interested in
exploring geosequestration activities as
options for long-term greenhouse gas
disposal.
Greenhouse News (newsletter of the
Australian Greenhouse Office), Winter 2002

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GLAMPING
Its a hard thing to say in the year in which
the Scout Movement is celebrating its
centenary, but something fundamental has
shifted in public perception of what
campings all about. We are experiencing the
rise of glamorous camping a term
condensed in the current fashion to
glamping. Its proponents declare camping no
longer means leaky tents, unlightable
campfires, smelly toilets and lumpy ground
to lie on. Instead, luxury accommodation is
available that can include apart from neat

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tents with comfortable beds, duvets and

carpeted floors amenities such as power
for your PlayStations and hair dryers. A few
high-end glamping sites even have swimming
pools, restaurants, four-star baths and camp
butlers to light fires and generally meet every
need. It seems to be the fault of us effete
Europeans (at least, thats what US
newspapers say), especially such fashionable
glampers as Kate Moss and Sienna Miller who
attend festivals like Glastonbury but want to
avoid the mud and mess. This year, British
retailer Marks & Spencer has even brought
out a special line in glamping tents, which
includes floral tent pegs. Floral tent pegs?
Baden-Powell must be turning in his grave.
Its known as glamping, or glamorous
camping, a British import inspired by Alisters who wanted to be in touch with nature
without touching the dirt and dishes.

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Seattle Times, 30 May 2007

The number of visits to U.S. national parks is
declining, but glamping glamorous
camping is on the rise in North America
after gaining popularity among wealthy
travelers in Africa and England, where luxury
tents come with Persian rugs and electricity
to power blow dryers.
Los Angeles Times, 19 Aug. 2007
GLOBAL DIMMING

An article in the Guardian on 18 December

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has created some interest, as many readers

concluded it seems to have thrown the whole
topic of global warming into confusion. As an
indication of the articles impact, the number
of references to global dimming on Google
went from 21 to 6000+ in the week after it
appeared, though there have been no
references in newspapers or magazines that I
can find, before or since.
It publicised the fact known since the late
1980s but supposedly ignored or disbelieved
until recently that over the past fifty years
the average amount of sunlight reaching the
ground (the name for which is insolation) has
gone down by about 3% a decade. It doesnt
mean the sun is sending out less radiation,
but that less of it is reaching the Earths
surface because of pollution in the
atmosphere. This effect seems to have been
named global dimming in an article in
Agricultural and Forest Meteorology in 2001.

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Theres no conflict with observed global

warming, whose likely severe impact on the
worlds plant and animal species a report in
this weeks Nature makes clear. The suns
heat is still being absorbed, but at a higher
level in the atmosphere, probably on
particles of soot and the like. The Guardian
article argues that the adverse impact on
agriculture could be substantial, since even a
1% reduction on sunlight is enough to affect
the ripening of some crops.
GLOBAL DISTILLATION
However
inhospitable, one
thinks of the Arctic
as pristine and
elemental, free from
the environmental
problems that beset
more southerly

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latitudes. So its a shock to read reports that

the far north is more affected by pollution
than almost anywhere else on the planet.
Pollutants include polychlorinated biphenyls
(PCBs, which cause cancer and birth defects
and developmental damage in young
children), pesticides such as lindane,
toxaphene, chlordane and DDT, and some
heavy metals like mercury and cadmium.
These originate in lower latitudes, where
they evaporate from fields and rubbish
dumps or are given off when substances are
burned. They travel vast distances on the
winds and condense out only when they hit
the cold of the far north. In effect the
atmosphere is acting as a giant system for
vaporising and condensing volatile
substances, and so environmentalists have
started to call the effect global distillation.
The levels of some pollutants are way above
international limits: it has recently been

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reported that some Inuit are eating a

hundred times the permitted intake of PCBs
in seal skin and blubber each week.

This is a blend of global with obesity and

refers to the looming public health crisis
worldwide caused by excessive weight gain.
A writer at the World Health Organisation
coined it in a report in February 2001 on the
increasing risk caused by obesity worldwide,
which is classed by many health
professionals as much more serious a

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problem than smoking. The fat epidemic

mainly the result of poor diet is often
thought to be peculiarly a US problem (61%
of Americans are categorised as overweight
and 26% as obese), or more generally of the
developed world (a European Union
conference in Copenhagen last week heard
that that within 15 years at least 75% of
British men and women will be overweight),
but it is a problem increasingly shared by
developing countries (WHO says that 18% of
the global population is obese and that
malnutrition and obesity
often now both occur within
the same countries). The
problem of obesity is
particularly worrying
because it is affecting
children even more than adults, leading for
example to the early onset of Type Two
diabetes, at one time unknown in childhood.

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Globesity is fast
becoming more of a
problem than
famine and undernutrition, and has
now reached a point
where it is
becoming a serious
threat to the health
of every nation
striving for
economic development, scientists said
yesterday.
Independent, Feb. 2002
The Lancets cancer journal, Lancet Oncology
... warns that the obesity epidemic or
globesity as the World Health Organisation
termed it recently threatens a public
health crisis.
Guardian, Aug. 2002

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GLYCOMICS
The creation of this word only in very recent
years is a pointer to what might be a new
suffix, -omics. It has already appeared in
genomics, the study of the genetic make-up of
organisms, and proteomics, the study of the
way proteins work inside cells, plus several
compounds such as toxicogenomics. This new
term refers to the study of sugars within
organisms.
The glycome is the set of sugars an organism
or cell makes. What is slowly becoming clear
to biochemists is that these sugars play as
vital a role in making the cell work as do the
proteins. They combine to form giant
molecules such as carbohydrates and
cellulose; they are already known to regulate

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hormones, organise embryonic development,

direct the movement of cells and proteins
throughout the body, and regulate the
immune system. It shows yet again that the
DNA in the genome is only one aspect of the
complex mechanism that keeps the body
running decoding the DNA is one step
towards understanding, but by itself it
doesnt specify everything that happens
within the organism.
The ending -omics is etymologically odd,
since it doesnt have a direct ancestor in the
classical languages. Its actually -ics, for a
branch of knowledge, added to -ome (as in
genome). There is an existing ending -ome,
having a specified nature, but genome
doesnt use it. That word was created as a
blend of gene and chromosome, so the ending
is actually the last part of -some, which
derives from Greek soma, body. The prefix
part of glycomics is from Greek glukus, sweet.

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This ending has nothing to do with -nomics,

which turns up in terms like Reaganomics
and which comes from the final element of
the words economics and ergonomics.
Scientists are saying that glycomics could fuel
a revolution in biology to rival that of the
human genome.
New Scientist, Oct. 2002
But even as doctors and drug companies
struggle to interpret and exploit the recent
explosion of data on genes and proteins, yet
another field of biology is waiting to break
out: glycomics. This emerging discipline
seeks to do for sugars and carbohydrates
what genomics and proteomics have done for
genes and proteins - move them into the
mainstream of biomedical research and drug
discovery.
Technology Review, Oct. 2001

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GOLD-COLLAR WORKER
Once there was a real distinction in clothing
between blue-collar workers and white-collar
workers out of which the figurative sense of
manual versus clerical staff evolved. Recently
the term pink-collar worker has been
invented to describe the female equivalent of
the (assumed male) blue-collar worker,
which is particularly applied to women who
assemble electronic equipment and run back-

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office data-entry systems (the term may have

originated in the title of a book by Louise
Kapp Howe in 1977). More recent still are
gold-collar workers, highly-skilled individuals
who know a great deal about several areas of
their companys work, are frequently crucial
to its continuing profitability, and who it is
argued must be managed by techniques
that take their special qualities into account.
The term was reportedly invented by
Professor Robert E Kelley of Carnegie Mellon
University, and forms the title of his 1985
book on managing this new type of employee.
He also uses the term gold-collar manager for
those who supervise them. Other terms
which have been used are knowledge worker
(itself at least 15 years old, though it hasnt
yet reached most dictionaries), new economy
worker, and professional eclectic.

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Its really a
carroty-orange colour, but that doesnt carry
with it the associations with value and
excellence that golden has. The rice is this
colour as a side effect of genetic
modifications that add beta-carotene to the
seeds, a substance that human beings can
turn into Vitamin A. Millions of malnourished

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people worldwide dont get enough of this

vitamin in their diet; lack of it leads to
blindness and greater susceptibility to
disease. It is hoped that the level of betacarotene can be made high enough to provide
the average person eating 300g of rice a day
with all the Vitamin A he or she needs. The
modified plants have other genes that double
the amount of iron in the rice, to combat
another dietary deficiency that can lead to
anaemia. The new variety of rice was created
in Switzerland with financial backing by the
Rockefeller Foundation. Unlike some other
genetically modified crops, the seeds will be
widely available to farmers in developing
countries without conditions being attached;
for example, farmers will be able to keep seed
to sow next years crop. The new rice should
be available in two or three years time.

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The result is golden rice yellow grains

that contain enough beta-carotene to supply
all of a persons vitamin A needs.
New Scientist, Aug, 1999
The new green revolution driven by
biotechnology will vastly improve the
nutritional value and pest-resistance of basic
food crops, such as the new vitamin-A rich
golden rice.
Washington Times, Mar. 2000

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Being, as you might imagine, of an advanced

age and sedentary temperament, even
reading about this activity is too stressful for
me. It is one of a number of adventure sports
like white-water rafting and bungee jumping
which have grown up over the past decade or
so. Gorge-walking is one of the newest, only
beginning, I am told, two or three years ago.
It is a smaller-scale version of the longerestablished canyoning, but which is better
suited to the gentler scenery of British
mountains, at first mainly in Wales but now
also in Scotland. When you gorge walk you
follow a stream or small river, not just its

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general course, but the actual flow of the

water. This is fine when the stream is just a
foot or so deep, provided that you can keep
your footing on slippery rocks, but you are
often forced to swim through rough water as
the depth increases or negotiate rapids. The
real fun starts when you encounter a
waterfall: theres no question of going round,
you just have to jump. Its guaranteed to
leave you tired, wet, cold and probably rather
scared. Gorge-walking is regarded as a
dangerous sport, requiring qualified guides
and instructors.

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This term for the financial mess were in

began to appear throughout the world
following a widely reported speech by
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the
International Monetary Fund, on 10 March
2009: I think that we can now say that weve
entered a Great Recession. Note the capital
letters.

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This follows a period in which writers had

been casting around for a suitable term.
William Safire recorded several in his On
Language column in the New York Times on 9
February 2009, including credit crunch,
market crash and global economic crisis, and
wrote of other usages that Slump is too
cheerful and depression too alarmist,
especially when capitalized. Economic
Armageddon is panic-stricken, though the
combination of four-syllable words nicely
fills the mouth.
Catherine Rampell wrote about it, likewise in
the New York Times, the day after Mr StraussKahns speech, illustrating her comments
with a chart taken from the Nexis newspaper
database. This showed that the term caught
on in December 2008, a landmark usage
appearing on the US Federal News Service on
5 December: Some economists are already
calling this the Great Recession because they

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fear it may be longer and deeper than any

recession in recent history. An early
example was in an article by Jesse Eisinger in
Portfolio, dated April 2008: The next
president will take office during what may
well come to be known as the Great
Recession.
Ms Rampell noted that the
term isnt new; it had been
used for the earlier
downturns of 1974-75, 197982, the early 1990s and 2001.
Hundreds of examples are on
file that refer to these earlier
fiscal unhappinesses. Why commentators
should keep returning to the term is puzzling,
though the desire to be reporting on a
catastrophe is innate to every journalist and
superlatives sell papers. The difference this
time is the stimulus that was given to it by
Dominique Strauss-Kahns speech.

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It seems almost certain now that the current

crisis will become the definitive Great
Recession and that the next major economic
downturn will need some new term. Google
News finds almost 6,000 examples in the first
six months of 2010. A further pointer to this
is that the Associated Press Stylebook
mainstay of newsrooms and a semi-official
bible of terminology added the term in
February 2010.
Analysts, art advisers and auction executives
concur the world's wealthy have retained
great liquidity through the Great Recession
and are once again ready to spend and invest.
Daily Telegraph, 13 May 2010.
Fifty-five percent of Americans in the labor
force have experienced a job loss, a pay cut,
or a reduction in hours since the onset of the
Great Recession in 2007, a new survey finds.
Christian Science Monitor, 30 June 2010.

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GREEN FAMINE

This phrase has begun to appear in

newspapers, particularly with reference to
Ethiopia, but is as yet hardly common outside
relief agencies. It refers to a situation in
which the land is green and crops are
growing, but in which people are starving.

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This may be because the rains have arrived

too late for crops to be grown and harvested
in time to prevent famine; alternatively, civil
war and consequent mass migrations may
have prevented normal agriculture. It is
possible to track the term back as far as 1994
in reports from UNICEF officers in Addis
Ababa. There is, Im told, an older expression
in South Africa, green drought, for a state in
which there is enough rain for the veldt to be
green but not enough for crops to grow. It
may be that the expression is a modification
of that.
Without additional food aid ... the counterintuitive notion of a green famine may
become dreadfully familiar with food
crops growing in the fields as an ironic
backdrop to the large-scale migrations and
displacements, massive camps and
widespread deaths for which Ethiopia, sadly,
has become a byword.

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UN Office for the Co-ordination of

Humanitarian Affairs, Ethiopia:
Separating Humanitarian Needs and Political
Issues, Jul. 1999
Like thousands of people across the south of
the country, she is starving to death in a
green famine brought on by three
consecutive years of crop failure.
Independent on Sunday, Aug. 2000

GREEN ROOF
Its also called a eco-roof
or a living roof. A green
roof is a wild garden of
grasses and herbs planted
on a suitable surface,
usually on an urban
house. It traps rainfall
and releases it slowly, so
it helps to prevent the

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flooding that can happen after a storm in a

built-up area. It also acts as extra insulation
for the building. But its principal virtue is
that its a haven for wildlife, especially
beetles and spiders. In turn these provide
food for birds the black redstart has been
encouraged to nest in one part of London as a
result of green-roof construction. A recent
survey for English Nature found over a
hundred species of bugs, some of them rare,
in a mixture not found in nature. This has led
to the creation of tecticolous as a term to
describe this characteristic group (from Latin
tectum, a roof).
The building features a Green Roof built on
top of the parking deck to provide additional
outdoor space and help with storm water
runoff.
The Capital Times (Madison, WI), 21 Sep.
2004

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Its a remarkable thing, having a green roof,

says Jon Alexander, who can stand in his
dining room and look out on his planted
garage roof in Ballard. There is this
constantly changing show, including wildlife
birds, squirrels, butterflies and bees.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2 Sep. 2004

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GREXIT
The turmoil in the
Eurozone over the fragile
state of the Greek
economy and the
increasing likelihood that
the country will be forced to abandon the
Euro as its currency has generated this
jargon term, short for Greek exit. It
originated in British newspapers but it has

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become widely known in other Englishspeaking countries. Its first known

appearance in the financial press is this:
First, we raise our estimate of the likelihood
of Greek exit from the eurozone (or Grexit) to
50% over the next 18 months from earlier
estimates of ours which put it at 25-30%.
Second, we argue that the implications of
Grexit for the rest of the EA and the world
would be negative, but moderate, as exit fear
contagion would likely be contained by policy
action, notably from the ECB.
The Economist, 7 Feb. 2012.
This was a quotation from the issue of Global
Economics View published on 6 February by

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the international financial-services firm

Citigroup. It was written by Willem Buiter

and Ebrahim Rahbari, respectively
Citigroups Chief Economist and UK Chief
Economist. Its creation is usually attributed
to Buiter.
The extent of its penetration into the
language as a fashionable, if most probably
temporary, term may be judged by the
parallel formations that journalists have
begun to generate from it in reference to the
worsening economic situation in other Euro
countries (Grexit must be one of the ugliest

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words ever coined. Perhaps it will be

followed by Pexit, Spexit, Itexit and Irexit
Financial Times, 22 May 2012).
Not only is [Spains] economy so large as to
be indispensable, but its ties with Italy mean
that the Italian economy (which is the thirdlargest in the EU) would be fatally
compromised by its fall. Itexit is almost
unpronounceable, so perhaps its fortunate
that it will never be required: after Spexit,
there would be nothing left to exit from.
Sunday Telegraph, 3 June 2012.

He forecast that inflation could jump to 50

per cent following a Grexit and that gross
domestic product could fall another 20 per
cent in addition to the substantial declines
seen already since 2009.

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Financial Times, 8 Jun. 2012.

Putting this fear aside for one moment and
calmly reflecting on current events, lets ask
ourselves what is the likely impact of a
Grexit for Europe, China and, importantly,
Australia?
Sydney Morning News, 5 Jun. 2012.
This goes back to 1986 and
Eric Drexlers book The Engines
of Creation. He is the guru of
the world of nanotechnology,
in which individual molecules
are manipulated as
though they are snooker
balls. In fiction, but not (yet)
in fact, intelligent sub-microscopic machines
do extraordinary things like building
spaceships from raw materials without
human intervention or circulate in the

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bloodstream to monitor our bodily fitness

and cure every ill.
Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems, hardly a technoLuddite, has written about a negative side to
this magical molecular mystery that may one
day be ours. He argues that these
nanotechnological auto-assemblers might get
out of control and convert the planet and
every living thing on it to a uniform but
useless mass of bits and pieces: the grey goo
(a term actually invented by Mr Drexler). Mr
Joy goes as far as saying that there are some
areas of research we ought not to pursue,
because the consequences might be so dire.
Michael Lewis, who has just published
thoughts on his own brand of futurology in a
book called The Future Just Happened and
in the process spawned a fresh set of
sightings of the term says that concern
about grey goo is an allegory of mid-life

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personal obsolescence. Or just possibly a fear

that developing technology is going to eat our
bodies as well as our souls.
The nightmare is that combined with genetic
materials and thereby self-replicating, these
nanobots would be able to multiply
themselves into a gray goo that could
outperform photosynthesis and usurp the
entire biosphere, including all edible plants
and animals.
American Spectator, Feb. 2001
Grey goo is a wonderful and totally imaginary
feature of some dystopian sci-fi future in
which nanotechnology runs riot, and
microscopic earth-munching machines
escape from a laboratory to eat the world out
from under our feet.
Guardian, July 2001

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/re ltrtj/
A number of compound terms use grey to
signify something which is part-way between
the extremes of formality and informality or
legality and illegality. Two which are well
established are grey economy, commercial
activity which is not recorded in official
statistics but which isnt actually illegal, and

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grey market, informal channels of trading,

unsanctioned by manufacturers or
regulators. (The terms grey power and grey
pound are not part of this set, as both use
grey in the sense of grey-haired in reference
to the economic and social strengths of older
people.)
The term grey literature refers to a wide
range of types of informational material
which is made available to the general public
by public and private sector organisations
whose function is not primarily publishing.
Such information includes reports,
brochures, guides, dissertations, product
information, budgetary data, memoranda,
and research findings. A more formal
definition is: That which is produced on all
levels of government, academia, business and
industry in print and electronic formats, but
which is not controlled by commercial
publishers.

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The key difference between other sorts of

publishing and grey literature is that the
latter is not produced as a commercial
undertaking, but as part of a communications
process. There have so far been two
international conferences dealing with grey
literature, with a third scheduled for Autumn
1999, and the term is becoming established
in information science.

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This has become the usual abbreviation in

Britain for what is known formally as the
National Grid for Learning, a massively
ambitious initiative to connect all 32,000
schools to the Internet by 2002; the objective
is to give all 450,000 teachers and nine
million pupils access, and to provide every
child over the age of nine with an email
address. Development is well under way,
with a series of interconnecting educational

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Web sites already set up. These offer teacher

training, curriculum material and access to
services such as libraries and databases. The
cost will be 1bn, which includes 235m for
teacher training in IT, taken from the
proceeds of the National Lottery.
The name perhaps requires explanation. In
the 1930s, electricity companies in Britain
built a national network of high-voltage
transmission lines to connect power stations
with consumers. This was called the National
Grid, a term that was afterwards used in
other parts of the world. The new initiative
borrowed that name (though everybody is
abbreviating it to Grid), even though this has
confused some people into thinking it is a
separate network of actual cabling, when it is
really an Internet access initiative.
What surprised me most was the extent to
which the internet the Governments

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much-spun National Grid for Learning has

penetrated the classroom. Almost every
school has a Web page; and hundreds more
can be accessed from all over the world.
Daily Telegraph, January 2000
The Grid will allow computer users to assess
almost unlimited amounts of information
from a central computer network without the
complication of time-consuming searches of
the internet or having to download
information onto their own computers.
Guardian, Education Section, March 2000

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This is the
fashionable new term for a networking
system once more commonly called
distributed computing. The basic idea is that
instead of running a program on one big
computer, you run it on a lot of quite small
computers connected through a network. An
example is the SETI@Home project, in which
spare time on thousands of PCs is borrowed
using the Internet to analyse data from radioastronomy signals with the aim of finding
evidence of extraterrestrial life. A similar
kind of project searching for very large prime

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numbers has found five new ones. The idea is

attractive to large companies, which often
have thousands of idle networked PCs.
Various computer companies, such as IBM,
are working towards commercialising what
has now been renamed grid computing and a
centre to develop the idea was opened in
Edinburgh in April. The term comes from the
electricity grid that connects producers with
consumers.
The idea behind distributed or grid
computing is to share computer applications
and resources, such as processing power and
storage, over the Internet.
Toronto Star, Feb. 2002
The grid computing concept enables us to use
computing power and data storage as if they
were some kind of utility like electricity, gas
and water.

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Jakarta Post, Apr. 2002

What unenticing names music enthusiasts

give their genres. This is a black British dance
genre which is emerging from the London
club scene and raves via pirate radio and
bootleg vinyl discs. The US magazine
Entertainment Weekly described it last
January like this: Also called sublow or 8bar, grime mashes dancehall, rap, and jungle
into a menacing mix of stuttering drums,
woofer-blowing bass, PlayStation blips, and
MCs spitting stories of life in Londons
rougher hoods. The Guardian said of it in

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early July: Combining the ear-crashing

instrumentation of garage with the crimeriddled rhymes of rap, the sound creeping
cautiously from the bowels of the
underground is refreshingly and uniquely
British. Its better-known performers include
he Nasty Crew, Dizzee Rascal and Shystie.

Following the achievements of artists as

diverse as Dizzee Rascal and Ms Dynamite,
the 21-year-old Shystie (aka Chanelle Scott)
is the first star of grime, the new
underground dance genre descended from
UK garage, to sign directly to a major label;

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she is also the first female British MC to have

success.
Independent, 2 July 2004
Dizzee Rascals Mercury Music Prize-winning
breakthrough last year has led record
companies to check out a scene labelled
grime a tougher, dirtier strand of garage
that rejects the pseudo-American, designerlabel stance of Craig David.
Evening
Standard, 25 June
2004

GROCERANT
This is yet
another
consequence of
our high-speed,

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must rush, no-time-to-stop, flat-out living

lifestyle. The number of people who cook
proper meals seems to be going down in
inverse proportion to the number who buy
cookbooks (in Britain, cookery books), which
makes one wonder what the people who buy
them do with them. One of the newer
solutions for people who want to eat but
dont have time to cook is this American
invention. Essentially its a restaurant inside
a supermarket, a natural enough progression
from in-store bakeries and a subtly different
take on the take-out (in Britain the takeaway) food outlet. No longer do you go to the
store just to buy the ingredients to cook with.
Now you can buy the complete cooked meal,
freshly prepared and ready to eat either in
the supermarket, at your place of work, or to
serve to the family at home. The name seems
to have been created sometime around 1996
as an obvious blend of grocery and restaurant

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and remains a jargon term of the food

business, almost entirely unknown to
customers, though it has on occasion turned
up in newspapers on both sides of the
Atlantic.
Whether its a personal chef service, a
supermarket offering prepared meals or a
grocery store/restaurant hybrid
(grocerant), the food offered by these
alternatives to traditional fast-food fare is
being gobbled up.
Entrepreneur Magazine, Dec. 1997
He cites the grocerant concept which is
currently sweeping the US. This is shorthand
for a supermarket grocery counter which is
also a takeaway restaurant.
Independent on Sunday, Jan. 2000

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GUERRILLA GIG
A guerrilla gig is one in which pop musicians
(most often punk rockers, for some reason)
descend on a public place to give an
impromptu performance. They tell their fans
about it by text messages and other
electronic media. It hit the news when a
group called The Others staged a 30-minute
gig in a London Underground train and then
in the lobby of pop-music station BBC Radio
1. The technique is clearly borrowed from the

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flash mobs of 2003; the name reflects a

variety of other anti-authoritarian techniques
that weve heard about, of which the best
known are guerrilla gardening (cultivating
public ground in an urban location where one
isnt authorised, as a political statement),
guerrilla architecture (in which designs are
created to subvert conventional ideas about
the form and function of buildings), and
guerrilla marketing (gaining public notice
through unconventional methods). Guerrilla
gigs certainly fit this last model, since one
aim is to get publicity for indie bands that
arent signed to a record company.
The strength of this movement is in its
community, said Imran Ahmed of New
Musical EUpress. Gigs can be organized in a
matter of hours. The venue, time and any fee
will be communicated via message board,
text or blog; the community then congregates

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at a place beforehand and then all head down

to the guerrilla gig together.
Wired News, 4 Aug. 2004
If you believe all you read, the streets of
London are currently paved with amps and
speakers awaiting the latest guerrilla gig by
some band of charity-store-clothed
individuals who always claim to have just
played with The Libertines/Babyshambles
(delete as appropriate) and are going to
shake up rock just like the Sex Pistols did
with punk.
The Independent, 11 Sep. 2004

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This is a form of
chewing tobacco
which originated
in India (its
name is Hindi
for a small piece
or shred). It is
made more
attractive by
adding sweeteners, flavourings and nuts; as a
result, it has been taken up by young people
in particular. Gutkha is becoming common in
parts of Britain where Asian immigrants live.
Here it seems to be aimed even more at
young people than it is in India; it has been
claimed that packets sold in Britain lack the
health warnings that by law must accompany
other tobacco products. Gutkha began to
appear in India several years ago, and has
caused concern among health workers and
educators because of the high risk of mouth

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cancer; pre-cancerous lesions have been

reported in the mouths of children as young
as twelve. Various attempts have been made
in India to limit its sale or to tax it as a luxury
good. A campaign has been launched in
Britain, supported by the British Dental
Health Foundation and the World Health
Organisation, to make people aware of its
dangers.
The massive hike on sales tax on gutkha
(flavoured chewing tobacco) in Goa has
sparked a controversy. The Congress
government is caught between the
contradictory demands of the gutkha dealers
and the anti-tobacco citizens groups.
Rediff on the Net, Apr. 1998
Children are tempted to consume gutkha
either by friends or the local panwalla, who
might offer the first few sachets free of cost,
said another student, Ms Mridula Palat.

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Nowadays, gutkha sachets are available for

as cheap as 50 paise, which is the price of a
toffee.
The Times of India, Mar. 1999

HAPPY SLAPPING
Happy slapping is a violent craze in which an
individual or gang humiliates or assaults a
victim while an accomplice films it on a

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mobile phone. The pictures are then

circulated to friends for their entertainment.
Incidents vary from the mild to the severe:
one girl was
recently put
in hospital
for three
days after a
particularly
vicious one.
Most are
carried out
on other
young
people in
order to
humiliate
them a survey in early June reported that
one in ten schoolchildren claimed to have
been bullied by means of a camera phone
broadcasting an embarrassing image but

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gangs are picking on older people in the

street too. The term has become widely
known in the past month throughout the UK,
though reports suggest it began in South
London late last year. Sir Ian Blair, the
commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said
at the end of May that the craze was partly
behind the recent rise in street crime.
However, a lecturer in journalism, Graham
Barnfield, has argued: A happy slap doesnt
appear very different from many other
antisocial behaviours, so its hard not to think
theres more than a touch of a manufactured
moral panic about the way its being
reported. The term is a pun on happy
snapping for taking photographs, which goes
back at least to the 1940s.
Young thugs are rather attracted to
surveillance culture, as the recent craze for
so called happy slapping attests: regardless
of whether the CCTV picks up their assault on

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a hapless victim or not, they are now

recording it for their own delight on a mobile
phone, and circulating the miserable image to
gleeful pals.
Sunday Telegraph, 29 May 2005
Tracy Murray chose to teach son Dean at
home after he became the victim of the
growing trend of happy slapping. Dean ...
was surrounded, slapped and punched by
pupils while the attack was filmed on a
mobile phone, and he has been too frightened
to go back to school since the attack in
February.
Evening Chronicle, 2 Jun. 2005

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HATE-WATCHING

Hate-watching is a neat term for watching

television shows that you dont like but get
perverse satisfaction from. But in these days
of instant communications through social
media, hate-watching isnt only a matter of
watching stuff thats so bad its almost cool;
you and your friends and followers on
Facebook and Twitter have to communally

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tear it to pieces to prove to each other just

how bad it really is. What distinguishes hatewatching from guilty pleasure or simple
displeasure is that the haters avidly watch
every episode in order to keep on
complaining.
Proto-hate-watchers have been around for
decades, but net pundits say the term was
inspired by NBCs Broadway drama Smash,
which began in February 2012, and
particularly by an article by Emily Nussbaum
in the New Yorker on 27 April 2012.
Some point to Aaron Sorkins series Studio 60
on the Sunset Strip and Newsroom as classic
TV hate-watch fodder. Brits often castigate
Downton Abbey for its wonky plots and poor
characterisation. (I prefer to hate its
anachronisms of language and I know
whereof I write since Ive watched every
episode. But Im not a hate-watcher because I

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just shout at the telly and never post online

about it. Well, hardly ever.)
This is a further British view of hatewatching fodder:

Its not just light entertainment that we

hate-watch its TV with pretensions.
Shows in which the characters personalities
change every two episodes and the scripts
are heavy with metaphor. ... Homeland series
two, Downton Abbey, Glee these are the
programmes which fuel Twitter, the petrol to

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its engine, its users competing for the drollest

insult in the fewest characters in the fastest
time.
Observer, 17 Feb. 2013.
This hate-blast suggests that you can hatewatch one-off films as well as television
series:
If by any chance youve recovered from
seeing Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor in
Lifetimes Liz & Dick, fear not, because this
week brings another incompetent, tawdry
biopic set during the waning years of
Hollywoods Golden Age. Alas, Sacha
Gervasis insultingly stupid Hitchcock is not
nearly as much fun to hate-watch, in no small
part because it seems to think its being
clever.
Philadelphia Weekly, 28 Nov. 2012.

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Foodies in New York were the first to learn

this term, through the writings of restaurant
critic Adam Platt in New York magazine. A
play on haute cuisine, the traditional high
cookery of France, it describes a restaurant
whose house style emphasises the quality of
the ingredients and where they come from to
a greater extent than their preparation.
Fresh, good-quality ingredients, often organic
and sourced locally according to season, are
cooked well and served simply. The idea

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598

behind it is farm cooking at its best, hence

barnyard. But its often at a premium price at
the New York eateries first identified with
the tag and which have since been described
as pretentiously unpretentious. Haute
barnyard has spread beyond New York, with
sightings from both Australia and the UK; in
the latter country it has been taken up by the
restaurant critic Jay Rayner in particular.
The ongoing hunger for American countrified
cuisine made with greenmarket ingredients
and spun upscale (coined haute barnyard
by New York magazines Adam Platt) shows
no signs of flagging. Get all the farmhouse
chic you can swallow at Forge and Hundred
Acres, twin additions to the genre.
The Village Voice, 30 July 2008
Market is the sort of place any of us would
like to be able to call our local: a small, simple
restaurant serving food with its own solid but

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599

definable character that great term haute

barnyard comes to mind once more at a
reasonable price.
The Observer, 21 Sept. 2008

At least since the days of Twiggy, fashionable

models have aimed to be thin, sometimes
with such determination that they have
become anorexic or have suffered other
medical problems. In the middle nineties, this

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waif-like image has been accentuated even

more, with models appearing hung over and
with dark circles under glazed eyes.
This look, which is thought by some in the
fashion business to be attractive to young
people, and which was typified by a
notorious set of pictures in 1997 advertising
Calvin Klein clothes, has been dubbed heroin
chic because the models look as if they are
drug addicts. In fact, there are wellsubstantiated reports that heroin addiction is
common among fashion photographers and
models, so the look is not always simulated.
In the US, where this fashion is more
prevalent than in Britain, it has drawn many
protests from anti-drug groups, culminating
in a much publicised attack by President
Clinton in May 1997 following the death from
an overdose of the fashion photographer
Davide Sorrenti.

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Reports of this speech promoted the first

mention of the term in mainstream British
newspapers, just at the time when pressure
of public opinion was forcing designers,
photographers and editors to reassess the
value of the style. Thirteen British fashion
designers are reported to have signed a
statement in October 1997 condemning the
heroin look, marking the formation of a group
called Designers Against Addiction. It seems
heroin chic is now falling out of fashion
within the business.

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This refers not to the overt and obvious

hunger of poor people who are unable to
afford enough to eat, but to a more insidious
type caused by eating food that is cheap and
filling but deficient in essential vitamins and
micronutrients. A World Health Organisation
report pointed out recently that this problem
is widespread, in particular in the Third
World, where families may fill themselves
with cheap rice, say, but be unable to afford
the fruit, vegetables and meat needed to
provide a balanced diet. A related cause is
that some of the green revolution crops of
the 1960s and 1970s that were created

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specifically to reduce starvation are often

short of nutrients such as zinc, iron and
vitamin A. The term hidden hunger is not
often found outside specialist journals and is
more common in news agency copy than in
newspapers and magazines: at some point
along the road to publication the phrase is
blue-pencilled by sub-editors who regard it
as jargon. It is sometimes also employed as a
general term for the extreme poverty that
can exist undetected or unacknowledged in
developed countries; it has appeared in this
sense in the USA and New Zealand in recent
years.
He questioned the rationale behind keeping
exotic animals and spending fortunes to feed
them while a vast majority of Gambians are
plagued by hidden hunger.
Africa News Service, Aug. 2002

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According to Gautam, apart from absolute

hunger stemming from lack of food, there are
at least three more types of hunger, for
instance, hidden hunger for micronutrients
such as minerals and vitamins.
Xinhua News Agency, Jun. 2002
Home zones are
residential streets in
which motor vehicles
take second place to
people. Theyve been a
feature of some parts
of continental Europe
for 25 years, but have
only recently begun to
be discussed seriously
in Britain. The government has recently
asked local authorities to nominate
neighbourhoods to be turned into such zones.

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The term is still uncommon in the UK, at the

moment mostly being the jargon of traffic
engineers and local environmental
campaigners. Similar ideas have been put
forward in other English-speaking countries,
but the term is even less well known than in
Britain.
In continental home zones, pedestrians and
cyclists have legal
right of way, and
motor vehicles are
restricted to not
much more than
walking pace. The distinction between
vehicle and pedestrian areas is deliberately
blurred; trees, seating and play areas are
added so that the streets become open spaces
for walking, sitting, playing and talking.
Home zones are marked with an
internationally recognised sign showing a

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606

walker, a house, a child with a ball and a

distant car.
The word is the English equivalent (what
grammarians call a loan translation or
calque) of the Dutch name for the system,
woonerf.
What would Home Zones be like, in practice?
For residents, parents, children, pets,
strollers and promenaders in the spring
sunshine they would be delightful. Queues of
cars would be unlikely to form, because cars
would avoid them unless
absolutely necessary.
The Times, Jan. 1998
Home Zones have
existed in many other
European countries for
years, and play a key role
in improving the quality of life for residents

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607

in towns and cities, reducing the demand for

new housing in rural areas and cutting down
on commuting.
Manchester Forum, Summer 1998

Many
companies,
especially in

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608

the USA and the UK, have moved jobs to

countries such as India in which costs are
lower, a process that's called offshoring. Not
all such transfers have worked out, as a
result of bad management decisions, poor
service, and complaints from customers
about difficulties in communication with
overseas call centres. Some companies are
starting to consider the potential of the
increasing proportion of people who have
broadband Internet connections into their
homes. This permits staff to work from home
on a semi-casual basis while being able to
supply a high standard of service, because
they know local conditions. Companies are
reported as finding in some cases that costs
are no higher in real terms than employing a
worker in an Indian call centre. The term
homeshoring has been coined for this in the
USA, a word and a technique which is at

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the moment hardly known in the UK but

which seems likely to catch on.

IDC said companies are turning to

homeshoring in response to call center
challenges such as the need for superior
agent quality, frequent turnover and the
seasonal nature of the business.
C-Net News 21 Dec. 2004
Domestic and international carriers are
cutting costs by relocating these facilities to
small U.S. communities, offshoring and
nearshoring them outside the countrys
borders and even home-shoring them into
employees residences.
Commercial Property News, 1 Nov. 2004

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HOT DESKING/ht dsk/

This term dates from the early nineties. Its
one of a set of words invented to describe
aspects of new working practices. In hot
desking, also sometimes called location
independent working, workers do not have
their own desks, but are allocated work space
according to their needs, keeping their
personal belongings in lockers or filing
cabinets when not in the office. The system is
heavily dependent on computers to route

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telephone calls, allocate resources and

maintain individual working files.
The name may derive from hot bunking, the
name given to the sharing of sleeping space
by sailors on watch in wartime, when as one
went on watch another took his place. The
system is best suited to firms in which staff
spend a lot of time out of the office, for
example seeing clients, so that space doesnt
have to be kept permanently allocated for
them and costs are reduced. Other names for
the system are the virtual office and hotelling.
The latter can refer to a version in which the
building is treated as though it were a hotel
without beds, in which all space and facilities
for staff are provided against bookings as
though to guests; one consultancy firm in the
US is reported to have engaged a hotel
concierge to ensure that services run
smoothly.

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A person who works according to this system

is a hot desker; the verb to hot desk is also
common.

In human safaris,
parties of tourists are taken to isolated tribal
communities for intrusive and sometimes
salacious entertainment. The practice is far
from new but the term has become widely
known this year as a result of an
investigation by Gethin Chamberlain for The
Observer, a British Sunday newspaper.
The communities concerned are on the
Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of

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Bengal, particularly the Jarawa on the

Andaman Islands. The tribe has long resisted
external interference, but the building of a
major road has opened up their tribal lands
to outsiders to devastating effect. Though the
Indian government prohibits any contact
with the Jawara, including feeding or
photographing them, the ban has been
ignored and they have been exploited. The
appeal for some tourists is their habit of
going naked.
Though human safari has been known as a
nonce formation for some years (in 2003 The
Scotsman described a human safari through
Bel Air and Beverly Hills to catch a glimpse of
the homes of stars such as Keanu Reeves and
Leonardo DiCaprio), the current sense and
specific association with the islanders dates
to an article of 2008 in another British
newspaper, The Telegraph, in which it was

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said to be a humorous term used by the local

tour guides and taxi drivers.
Video footage capturing the daily human
safaris through the forest home of the
islands recently contacted Jarawa tribe has
provoked worldwide outrage. The footage, in
which an off-camera police officer orders
partly naked Jarawa women to dance for
tourists in return for food, was described in
India as a national disgrace.
The Observer, 15 Jan. 2012.
A charity has renewed its calls for a boycott
of sightseeing tours in the Andaman Islands
because, it says, they put the indigenous
Jarawa tribe at risk. Survival International
describes tours that use the Andaman Trunk
Road, which passes through the tribes
ancestral land, as human safaris.
The Telegraph, 1 Oct. 2011.

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HYBRID CD
It seems strange to record a new compound
in CD so late in its history, especially as it is
certain that it will soon be superseded
(industry pundits expect DVD to be selling
more units than CD before the turn of the
century). But theres life in the older format
yet.

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The hybrid CD is basically a conventional CDROM which contains detailed data on some
topic perhaps a database, bibliography,
instruction manual, shopping catalogue or
encyclopaedia allied with online access.
Such discs get out of date extremely quickly
and until recently the only solution was to
revise the data regularly and distribute new
copies of the CD-ROMs, an expensive and
slow business. The hybrid CD solves the
problem through software which updates
and integrates the data on the CD-ROM with
information obtained from a Web site, so
combining the large data capacity of the CDROM with the immediacy of the Net. No
doubt the new DVD-ROM format will adopt
the same system, so expect sightings of the
term hybrid DVD sometime soon.
Confusingly, the term has also been in use in
the industry for some years to refer to a CD-

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ROM which can be read by a variety of

operating systems.

HYDRODYNE PROCESS
/hadrdan prss/
If a report of this had not appeared in so
reputable a source as the Scientific American,
and had not been confirmed by various news
articles, I would not have thought it was
genuine, it sounds so unlikely.
The hydrodyne process is a novel method of
tenderising meat, especially beef, that avoids
the need to hang joints in cold stores for
weeks at a time. The boned joints are sealed
in vacuum packs and hung in a thick-walled

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tank of water. A small explosive charge

equivalent to about four ounces of dynamite
is then set off. The shock wave pounds the
meat and tenderises it in less than a second,
reportedly without affecting the flavour. It
also seems to kill some of the bacteria that
would otherwise eventually spoil the meat.
The process is being commercially developed
by a subsidiary of the Halliburton Company
and is expected to be available by the end of
1998.
It would seem the name was coined by the
inventor of the process, John Long, from
hydro- water, and -dyne, a suffix from the
Greek word for power that has been used on
occasion to form technical terms, the bestknown of which are probably heterodyne and
dyne itself, the unit of force in the old CGS
system.

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The principle is simple enough: use the

energy of the sun to split water into its
component oxygen and hydrogen. The
hydrogen becomes a storable fuel that can be
used when needed to run fuel cells; these will
provide electricity and power vehicles. The
only waste product of the fuel cells is pure
water. It sounds a perfect solution to the
problems of pollution and global warming
caused by the burning of oil and coal, not to
mention the exhaustion of the oil reserves
that must come one day. But making it work
has been far from easy, success requiring
among others things cheap capture of
solar energy and efficient fuel cells.

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The concept has been in

being for many years, as
has the name hydrogen
economy for a society
based on it, which is
recorded in the 1970s. But
the concept has only
started to look practicable
in recent years, based in
part on research that has
been boosted by measures like Californias
zero-emission policies and related initiatives
from the European Union. Iceland has
recently decided to become the worlds first
hydrogen economy and this initiative has
brought the phrase to wider notice.
The Icelandic government is working with
the two companies to change its fishing fleet
over to hydrogen and has launched a plan to
convert the country entirely to a hydrogen
economy over the next two decades.

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Independent on Sunday, Jan. 2000

Mike Brown ... voices deep frustration over
Canadas failure to see the fuel cell and the
hydrogen economy as a way for Canada to
make a mark in the world.
Toronto Star, Jan. 2000

HYPERCAR
The motor car
is a handy
device to have
around but
one which is
polluting and
profligate of
natural
resources, not only in the fuel it consumes
but also in the raw materials and energy
needed to construct and maintain it. Some

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experts argue that the car has reached a

design plateau and that the only way to make
significant improvements to its efficiency is
to radically rethink it.
This has led to the concept of the hypercar, a
term invented and popularised by the
futurist Amory Lovins and his Rocky
Mountain Institute. It has been much in the
news recently because the concept is
discussed at length in a report to the Club of
Rome which he has co-authored. The
hypercar would be made of ultralight
plastics, be heavily streamlined, and would
have a hybrid propulsion system in which
fuel is burnt to generate electricity that
drives the motors. The motors would also be
used in regenerative braking as generators to
claw back some of the energy that would
otherwise be lost.

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Amory Lovins claims that putting these

improvements together could make the
hypercar about ten times as efficient as cars
are now, so it could in theory cross the
United States on one tankful of fuel. The word
is formed from car by prefixing the Greek
hyper-, meaning over, beyond, above
measure, which is now a common
superlative prefix.

Newspaper sales are under huge threat from

rival media. One way of stemming the decline
has been pioneered in the US and is now
being looked at seriously in the UK and other
countries. The idea is to reinvent the local

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paper as a series of freesheets, each serving a

very small community, perhaps only one
suburb or group of streets.
Such hyperlocal papers (another term is
micropapers) would employ only one or two
journalists; they would mainly rely on
content provided by readers (citizen
journalism, as the industry has rather
grandly dubbed it). Such news sources would
also be multimedia, with content being
simultaneously made available on the Web, in
some cases through podcasts or vodcasts
(audio and video items available on demand),
and by mobile phone. One aim is to provide a
series of complementary outlets in which
local firms and shops can advertise cheaply
and effectively.
Those involved in producing community
freesheets, many of which have been running
for decades, will scarcely consider this to be

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innovative. The industry argues, however,

that newspaper
groups would
bring
professional
marketing and
journalism,
together with
cross-media

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expertise, that community groups frequently

lack.
The term hyperlocal has been used in this
sense since the late 1980s, but it has been
restricted to industry sources until quite
recently. Though most frequently turning up
in relation to the Web and newspapers, it is
also used, for example, in local radio. The
word is formed using the common hyperprefix from Greek huper, something over or
beyond the normal. Hyperlocal Web sites are
also often called placeblogs.
Media analysts agree that many readers are
looking for hyperlocal content, but they say
most citizen-journalism sites arent mature
enough to tap into the lucrative local
advertising markets.
Washington Post, 15 Jan. 2007

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Think Globally, Act Locally has flourished

for decades. But for plenty of media
companies in 2007, the first part of that
gospel will be eclipsed by a souped-up
devotion to matters hyperlocal.
New York Times, 30 Dec. 2006

HYPERMILING
This US term for
finding ways to
reduce your
vehicles fuel
consumption
began to be
sighted in the UK
in 2008, having
taken a couple of years to cross the Atlantic.

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It became much more popular in the middle

of that year as a result of a sudden hike in oil
prices, but it can be traced back in print at
least as far as an article in the magazine
Mother Jones dated January/February 2006
featuring Wayne Gerdes, who is said to have
invented the term, and even further to a
posting of July 2005 on the GreenHybrid
online community board.
Hypermilers urge drivers to stick to speed
limits, avoid rush hour traffic, avoid
accelerating or braking hard and plan ahead
to take advantage of traffic conditions to
maintain momentum. They suggest removing
unnecessary items from ones car, pumping
up tyres to the manufacturers maximum
allowable pressure and not using the air
conditioning or opening windows.
Some hypermilers tricks are regarded as
dangerous, such as ridge-riding, driving with

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your passenger-side wheels at the edge of the

road to avoid grooves worn by traffic that sap
speed, forced auto stop, coasting along in
neutral with the engine off, and even suicidal,
such as drafting, tailgating big vehicles to stay
in their slipstream.
I did miss a trick, though. Biddle says (and
hypermilers agree) that one of the most
effective ways to improve your driving is to
use a digital fuel-consumption gauge.
Sunday Star-Times, 12 Oct. 2008
As petrol prices soared from 95p a litre in
July 2007, to 125p a litre in July 2008 so,
for obvious reasons, did hypermiling. In the
US, its a sport, with world championships
(held this year in Elkhart, Indiana) and world
records (213 miles per gallon from a Honda
Insight).
Northern Echo, Darlington, 23 Sep. 2008

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HYPERNOVA
Sometimes the super- prefix just isnt
extravagant enough, or its been used
already, or linguistic inflation has set in. This
term seems to be a product of all three, since
it is an even more spectacular cosmic event
than the well-known supernova. But perhaps
the superlative is warranted in this case, as
the last such event spotted from Earth was

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widely reported as being so intense that if it

had happened near to us we would have fried
(luckily, it happened long, long ago in a
galaxy far, far away). Such cataclysmic
explosions the biggest bangs since the Big
Bang, NASA called them, with perhaps
permissible overstatement are about a
hundred times as powerful as the biggest
supernovae and may be caused by the total
collapse of a very large star. They have been
suggested as a possible origin of intense
bursts of gamma rays that have been
observed by space-borne detectors since the
1970s. In January 1999 the source of one was
seen for the first time as it was happening.
By this time, theorists had built up a picture
in which GRBs [gamma-ray bursters] result
from the collision of two high-density
neutron stars or from a hypernova the
total collapse of a very massive star.

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Science, Mar. 1999

Really big stars such as Eta Carinae may go
out in an even more spectacular explosion
called a hypernova. Such a hypernova could
produce another phenomenon known as a
gamma-ray burster, which sends powerful
gamma radiation out into space.
Minneapolis Star Tribune, Jun. 1999

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IDENTITY THEFT
This crime is a product of the electronic age.
We all now have a series of electronic
analogues of ourselves in the databases of tax
authorities, banks, credit agencies insurance
companies, and the like. This data is
sometimes alarmingly insecure, allowing
crooks to borrow your electronic identity,
perhaps to steal your money, or impersonate

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you to commit a credit-card fraud, or obtain a

false driving licence or passport using your
personal details. This crime has been dubbed
identity theft, a relatively new term that has
now been incorporated into American law
through the Identity Theft and Assumption
Deterrence Act of 1998. Strictly speaking, a
computer is not required to commit identity
theft criminals can use personal
information obtained from other sources,
such as paper records but it is most often
described as though it were electronic data
theft. It remains a hot topic in the US, to the
extent that some households are reported as
buying shredders to make sure nobody can
glean personal details from papers thrown
out with the garbage.
Vice President Al Gore ... will also endorse
legislative proposals to regulate the
collection of personal information from
children online, as well as a proposal

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intended to deter identity theft by increasing

the penalties against people who use other
individuals personal data to obtain things
like credit cards and drivers licenses.
New York Times, July 1998
The FBI is advising senior officers in Britains
National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS)
on how to combat one of the fastest-growing
crimes in the US identity theft.
Independent on Sunday, July 1999

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This is a Japanese
invention, an Internetconnected mobile phone
system that has taken
that country by storm
since it was introduced
in early 1999 by
DoCoMo, a firm
controlled by Nippon Telegraph and
Telephone. It allows people access online to
send e-mails, to obtain information such as
news, weather forecasts, train times, and
sports results, and to carry out online
banking and stock trading. It is not that
different in principle to WAP, the heavily
promoted European system. However, WAP
has had sluggish take-up because it is slow
and difficult to use and there are few sites to
link to; I-mode has the advantage that its
Internet access is always on. DoCoMo has

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recently invested in the Dutch telecoms

operator KPN and will soon launch a
European version of its system on the GPRS
(General Packet Radio System) services that
are only now being launched; it is very likely
also to move into the USA following a deal
with AOL. Industry watchers are suggesting it
may overtake and force out WAP altogether.
Worse, Waps struggle to find a market in
Europe and the US is being contrasted with
the exploding popularity of NTT DoCoMos
more advanced i-mode system in Japan. A
VHS v Betamax-style formats war may be
brewing.
Guardian, Aug. 2000
As well as using KPNs existing WAP
capabilities, the joint venture will introduce
NTTs highly successful i-mode mobile
Internet service to Europe.

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Time, Oct. 2000

INFORMATION FATIGUE SYNDROME
Perhaps you shouldnt be reading this. The
term was coined in a recent report from
Reuters News Agency, called Dying for
Information?, which argued that many people
are becoming highly stressed through trying
to cope with the huge amounts of
information flooding them from books, fax
messages, the telephone, journals, and the
Internet. The symptoms of Information
Fatigue Syndrome include paralysis of
analytical capacity, a hyper-aroused
psychological condition, and anxiety and
self-doubt, leading to foolish decisions and
flawed conclusions. It is a problem which the
report argues particularly affects the group
called knowledge workers whose jobs mainly

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involve dealing with and processing

information. The term is obviously based on
the name of the medical condition chronic
fatigue syndrome and is abbreviated toIFS.
Though it is a phrase that sounds as if it
ought to catch on, sightings have been rare
except in news items about the report itself,
so this one may never make it into the
dictionaries.

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INFORMATION RICH/INFORMATION
POOR

In recent years researchers have pointed out

that there are huge differences in peoples
ability to obtain and act on information. This
is causing concern, with experts arguing that
a fundamental split is developing between
the information haves and havenots
throughout the world. The information
rich have good access to information

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641

especially online, but also through more

traditional media such as newspapers, radio,
television, and books and can plan their
lives and react to changes in circumstances
on the basis of what they know or can find
out. The information poor dont have such
access and are vulnerable to all kinds of
pressures. Though the information rich are
mainly in the industrialised countries and
the information poor are mostly in the
developing world, similar splits are obvious
between prosperous and disadvantaged
groups inside industrialised countries.
Information-rich and informationpoor are a new classification of rich
and poor. .. If you keep people
ignorant, theyre more likely to do
what theyre told.
Tony Benn, in the Daily Telegraph,
June 1998

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You are, by dint of reading this

newspaper, information rich. You
belong to the knowledge class, for the
purchase of a paper such as this also
implies you are more likely to have
access at home or work to the
internet with all its wealth of
information.
Guardian July 1999

This word is always applied to human beings.

By analogy with terms
like herbivore andcarnivore, it seeks to
suggest that we are a species that lives by
processing and communicating information.

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Its not a particularly appropriate linguistic

analogy as a matter of fact, as the only thing
all these words have in common is the suffix ivore. Thats a close relative of ourvoracious,
and comes from the Latin vorare to devour.
So it properly refers to consumption rather
than manipulation. Though its sometimes
said that we humans devour information, we
actually process it, not consume it.
Cognitive scientists usually
take informavore to refer to our ability to
manipulate representations of the outside
world inside our heads and to transmit
information to each other through language.
These are regarded by many as the crucial
abilities that distinguish modern humans
from all other species. The word is
sometimes used in connection with the huge
growth in information media in the
developed countries in the latter part of this
century.

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Its coinage is usually attributed to the

psychologist George Miller in the 1980s, but
it has achieved wider circulation in the 1990s
through popular works by Daniel Dennett
and Steven Pinker.
The user is an adaptive informavore
who makes use of extensive
resources, interleaving planned and
opportunistic episodes and using
both automatic and intentional
processes.
Lisa Tweedie, Interactive
Visualisation Artifacts, in People and
Computers X, Proceedings of the
HCI'95 Conference (1996)
We would expect organisms,
especially informavores such as
humans, to have evolved acute
intuitions about probability.

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Steven Pinker, How the Mind

Works (1997)

The developed nations are so reliant on

computer-mediated communications and
computerised control of systems that war can
now be waged on them in a new way. By
jamming signals or injecting spurious
commands an attacker can paralyse its
opponents military command structures,

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communications, transport, financial and

banking systems, and emergency services;
false information could be planted as a form
of psychological warfare. Some of these
techniques were used in the Gulf War and the
Pentagon is now developing its techniques
further.
The military is just as conscious that the US
could be done by as it does and is uniquely
vulnerable (the possibility of an electronic
Pearl Harbor has been mooted), and is as
actively planning electronic
countermeasures. It is perhaps an indication
of the intensity of interest in the topic that so
many near-synonyms have been generated in
the past five years: infowar is the current
buzzword, an obvious contraction of the
fuller term information warfare; but it is also
called cyberwar and netwar (this last term
was apparently coined by David Ronfeldt of
the RAND Corporation in 1993).

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The possibility that freedom fighters,

insurgents, guerrillas or terrorists could use
the same techniques has led to the catch-all
term cyberterrorism. Those engaging in such
warfare are sometimes
called cyberwarriors, net warriors,
or infowarriors.

INJECTING ROOM
This is a place where drug addicts, mainly
those using heroin, are able to inject fixes in
safe conditions using sterile needles, with
medical attention and advice available if they
need it. The aim is not to condone drug use,
but to reduce the incidence of diseases like
hepatitis transmitted by users sharing
unclean needles, the risk of fatal
consequences of overdosing, and the
nuisance caused by addicts shooting up in
public. The term seems from the written

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evidence to have first appeared in Australia

at the end of the last decade, where it has
since become well known, and where a
debate is now taking place on legalising them
following a trial of one in Sydney sanctioned
by government. It has now travelled to the
UK and is likely to become known here, since
it was used last month in an important report
on drugs policy by the Parliamentary Home
Affairs Select Committee.
Australias first medically supervised
injecting room managed 250 heroin
overdoses in its first year but not one
was fatal, a report out this morning
says. And fears of a honey-pot effect
where the centre would attract
drug dealers and cause a rise in local
crime have proved baseless.
Sydney Morning Herald, May 2002

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To reduce the harm caused by

heroin use we have
recommended a network of safe
injecting rooms where chaotic
users can inject safely, where
needles can be disposed of and
where those interested can get
access to help.
Chris Mullin, Chairman, Home
Affairs Select
Committee, in the Guardian, May
2002

In the nineties business has slimmed down

by a variety of methods variously
calledrestructuring, delayering,

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or downsizing. Whatever it was called, it

has meant people losing their jobs. Now
firms are beginning to think hard about
ways to keep and motivate the staff they still
have. During the shake-out, many
organisations hired consultants to help
displaced employees find new jobs, a
process which is often calledoutplacement.
That job is now largely done. So the
consultants have moved to marketing
themselves as guides and mentors to staff
still in post, to help them make the most of
their career opportunities within the
organisation. By an obvious shift in
language that matches their change in role,
they sometimes refer to their function
asinplacement. But other terms are also in
use (see the second citation below) and it
may turn out to have been only a short-term
fashion.
The policy provides for both
inplacement and outplacement

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services, pay continuation, and

continuation of specific benefits to
those eligible employees whose
positions are eliminated as a result
of administrative restructuring.
Compass, Univ. of Pennsylvania,
July 1996
Consultants offering inplacement
services now call themselves
career-change consultants, or
career development consultants.
Independent on Sunday, March
1999

651

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652

This jargon term of the food-rocessing

industry is not yet, as far as I know, in any
dictionary. But it is one that has been
turning up more frequently in the past few
years as a result of increasing concern over
side-effects of the technologies that produce
some of the processed foods we eat.
Manufacturers of products such as cakes
and biscuits need fats in solid form, but
unsaturated fats usually occur as liquids, so
makers have commonly converted them to

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solids by hydrogenation. The problem is

that some of the fat is converted to a type
called trans fat, which humans cant easily
digest. As a result, firms are instead starting
to turn to interesterification, in which acids
or enzymes modify the fats to make them
solid. (The name comes about because the
component fatty acids in the oils are
combined with other organic groups and
are so technically esters; these are shifted
about within the oil molecules during the
reaction.) The process has been known for
at least the last two decades, but is slowly
becoming commercially viable. Some critics
claim it is open to similar objections to the
older hydrogenation method. A variant
spelling, interestification, sounds as though
it might be something that enhances your
interest in a subject. Its certainly a process
being carefully watched by nutritionists.

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INTERMERCIAL
The pace of innovation on the World Wide
Web is dizzyingly fast. It seems only a
moment ago that those letterbox-shaped
banner advertisements began to appear on
Web pages. We had just learnt to ignore
them when advertisers, recognising our
growing immunity, began to animate them.
Now that novelty is beginning to pall,
theyve come up with another wheeze to
force themselves on our attention:
theintermercial. In origin, the word seems
to be a blend
of interactive and commercial, after the
model of infomercial.
Intermercials consist of short video
sequences which are presented to you
between Web pages and which fill that
blank interval while you are waiting for the
next page to arrive. One problem with the

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idea is bandwidth, since downloading a

video sequence on a dial-up system takes
time, and so costs the user money, though
clever compression techniques may make it
possible to limit file sizes to 10K-20K. As
they also require browser add-ins, many
users will be unable to view them unless
advertisers can persuade them to download
the software. But, in the view of columnist
Douglas Rushkoff, the biggest obstacle may
be customer resistance, Web users being a
notoriously impatient lot. Web site
operators may also come to feel that it is
unhelpful to employ a technique which
tends to delay users accessing what they
have to offer.

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The huge growth in public access to the

Internet in the nineties has brought its
facilities to an audience scarcely imaginable
to those who created the original system in
the late sixties. The downside is that the
Internet is now so crowded and slow that
the researchers for whom it was designed
have to compete for access, hampering their
work.
A project called Internet 2 (sometimes
written Internet II) aims to solve the

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problem by creating a new system,

compatible with the old, but to which access
is limited to the academic community. This
is not unlike the most recent phases of the
British SuperJANET system, which is
currently the fastest in the world. Though
increasing capacity is the first aim, Internet
2 is also a research project, in which
innovative techniques such as interactive
distance learning, multimedia,
videoconferencing, real-time collaboration
between physically-separate groups, remote
operation of laboratory systems are being
investigated.
Since the initial meeting in October 1996,
more than a hundred universities have
signed up (committing each of them to
spend at least $500,000 a year over the
next three years), the US government has
pledged support as part of its parallel Next
Generation Internet scheme, and nonprofit organisations like the National Center

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for Supercomputing Applications and many

commercial firms have become involved.
The whole scheme is expected to take
between three and five years to complete.

Its curious how a term can sometimes slide

into the language with little notice. Though
Ive traced it back a decade to the title of an
article by Chana R Schoenberger in Forbes
Magazine on 18 March 2002, internet of
things only struck me as a fixed term worth

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commenting on after it turned up in my

reading three times in the past month.
The second theme is personalisation, linked
to what technologists call the internet of
things. This refers to the way in which
increasing numbers of ordinarily mundane
objects are becoming wi-fi enabled. Already,
for instance, there exist lightbulbs whose
colour can be controlled by smartphone.
The Times, 2 Feb. 2013.
The reference is to the way that equipment of
many kinds is now fitted with embedded
computing technology, not only the obvious
items like telephones and video recorders
but also your car, your washing machine and
your refrigerator as well as your lightbulbs. It
is no longer futuristic fiction to suggest your
refrigerator might be able to report youre
low on bacon or eggs and order up fresh
supplies. Or that a bathroom cabinet might

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monitor your pill consumption to remind you

to take the next dose, organise refills and
allow your doctor to supervise your case.
An associated idea is called M2M, machineto-machine communication:
Often, it means fixing sensors on devices,
such as an electricity meter that can relay
information on power consumption to a
utility. Or attaching sensors in electrical
equipment at home which can help you
remotely switch on the lights and even lock
doors. Sometimes, M2M is also
interchangeably used with the Internet of
Things or the Internet of Everything the
next phase of the Internet where everything,
including people and objects, will be
connected to the web.
Business Today, 20 Jan. 2013.

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The concept started with RFID (radiofrequency identity) tags, now widely used to
track items during delivery and in stock
control, a passive system in which the tags
respond to an external wireless command by
returning their identity numbers.

INTERWEB, INTERNETWEB
AND INTERTUBE
Both interweb and its close
relative internetweb were created online and
are mainly used as joking terms to imply
ignorance or naivety about the Net, real or
assumed. Theyre not especially new:
Wikipedia says that the first use
of interweb was in an episode of Babylon
5 that was first broadcast in July
1994; internetweb goes back at least to 1995.
Ive also recently seen an extremely rare

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adjectival form of the

former,interwebular (though the writer made
it even rarer by using it as a noun). Writers in
newspapers sometimes use these forms as
deliberate errors to show their antipathy
towards online matters or that theyre
above having to bother with them. But
enough examples of
both interweb and internetweb have
apppeared, seemingly used seriously, in
recent years in in books and newspapers
too many for them all to be misprints to
make me wonder if uninformed users
believe them to be the right way to refer to
Web sites.
A third term thats become popular since
2006 is intertube (my thanks to Seth Elgart
for telling me about it). This is likewise used
sarcastically by those who are familiar with
the online world to suggest that somebody
doesnt know what theyre talking about. It

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sometimes appears as tubular interwebs.

This came from the phrase series of tubes,
which was used in the US Congress by
Senator Ted Stevens in June 2006 while he
was speaking about Internet matters. He
was ridiculed for failing to understand the
nature of the online system, though as he
was arguing that the Net wasnt a truck
(lorry) but a series of tubes, he wasnt
creating a totally ridiculous analogy.

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This is one of computings current

buzzwords. An intranet is a
communications network built using the
same system as the Internet and employing
many of the same tools, particularly World

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Wide Web browsers. The difference is that

the intranet is private and internal to a
company. The word is new enough that its
meaning has not yet quite settled down
some usages imply that an intranet can also
be connected to the Internet, or make use of
Internet circuits, others stress its total
separation behind protective barriers
(firewalls). Their advocates argue that the
value of intranets lies in their comparative
simplicity, replacing proprietary systems
with a limited number of widely-used and
supported techniques, and also point to
their potential for boosting
productivity by enhancing the
ability of staff to work
together. The word is formed
from the prefix intra-, on the
inside, within, plus net, a
common abbreviated form of
network.

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In the nineties business has slimmed down by a

variety of methods variously called
restructuring, delayering, or downsizing.
Whatever it was called, it has meant people
losing their jobs. Now firms are beginning to
think hard about ways to keep and motivate the
staff they still have. During the shake-out, many
organisations hired consultants to help displaced
employees find new jobs, a process which is
often called outplacement. That job is now
largely done. So the consultants have moved to
marketing themselves as guides and mentors to

TURN OF PHRASE

667

staff still in post, to help them make the most of

their career opportunities within the
organisation. By an obvious shift in language
that matches their change in role, they
sometimes refer to their function as
inplacement. But other terms are also in use (see
the second citation below) and it may turn out to
have been only a short-term fashion.
The policy provides for both inplacement and
outplacement services, pay continuation, and
continuation of specific benefits to those eligible
employees whose positions are eliminated as a
result of administrative restructuring.
Compass, Univ. of Pennsylvania, July 1996
Consultants offering inplacement services now
call themselves career-change consultants, or
career development consultants.
Independent on Sunday, March 1999

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Iraqification
The US Administrations current
policy in Iraq is summed up by this word,
which encapsulates the idea that power and
control should be transferred to local
politicians and armed forces as quickly as
possible. Its on record earlier in the year,
before the invasion of Iraq, but only began to
appear frequently in the American and
international press quite recently. Its use was
stimulated further by the news a week ago of
a shift in US policy towards reducing the
period of occupation, involving the speeding
up of the creation of a new constitution and
the holding of elections by June 2004. The
training schedules of recruits from the Iraqi
police and the Iraqi army are also to be

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accelerated. One aim is to bring home as

many US and British troops as can be spared
as quickly as possible. For some
commentators the term is unfortunate, as it
evokes memories of an unsuccessful earlier
attempt at a similar policy the
Vietnamisation policy of President Nixon of
the late 1960s and early 1970s.
And while Rumsfeld is routinely
restaffing community draft boards, no
one is seriously considering that idea
yet. But the Pentagon chief
conceded that McCain was right to
warn him against signaling U.S.
retreat through Iraqification.
Newsweek, 17 Nov. 2003
While Iraqification will not solve our
immediate security problems, we
must move more quickly to transfer

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meaningful political authority to Iraqi

leaders.
Washington Post, 9 Nov. 20003

IRIS CODE/ars kd/

The financial world is forever struggling to
implement effective security against fraud.
The newest schemes rely on the muchimproved ability of computers to match
patterns. These examine some pattern linked
to the user and check that it matches that
stored in its records, in a technique
called biometrics. Among the suggested
patterns are hand shape, the timbre of the
voice, and even body odour. Fingerprints are
another, known to be unique to each
individual, but criminals may be able to fake
these with special slip-over plastic gloves,
and the patterns are difficult to digitise with

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confidence. As a result, attention has turned

to the eye, whose iris pattern is also known
to be uniquely linked to the individual. The
computer scans the customers eye, identifies
the iris pattern, and converts it to a short
digital code, the iris code, which is then
checked against the one stored. It is claimed
that a new system using this idea, called iris
scanning, can examine eyes from three feet
away even if the person is wearing contact
lenses or spectacles, even in the dark. It may
be implemented as a secure identification
scheme for hole-in-the-wall bank teller
machines.

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This
term
was
coined by Gerald
Lincoln,
a
researcher at the
Medical Research
Council
in
Edinburgh,
and
came to public
notice in Britain in
early
March.
Presumably he, or
the MRCs press
officer, coined it on
the
analogy
of irritable bowel syndrome. Dr Lincoln claims
that men of any age who suffer stress can
experience sudden drops in testosterone
level, making them bad-tempered, nervous,
or easily reduced to tears. One suggestion is
that testosterone replacement therapy may
restore men to their usual state (whatever

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that is). The idea has received what one may

describe as a mixed reception, with comment
from the female of the species being
particularly acerbic.
If irritable male syndrome does affect
men, diagnosing it wont be easy. Its
far from clear what normal
testosterone levels are, while extra
doses of the hormone may increase
the risk of heart disease.
New Scientist, Mar. 2002
Q: What do you call a man who is
always tired, miserable and irritable?
A: Normal. Q: How can you tell if a
man has irritable male syndrome? A:
You ask him to pass the salt and he
yells: Take, take, take thats all
you ever do!
Daily Mirror, Mar. 2002

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The craze for

sudoku now seems
to be levelling out
in the UK, though
far from over. As
one part of the
Guardians
complete redesign
on Monday (which
included changing the papers size to one
called the Berliner, used in continental

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Europe but not previously in the UK, and

putting colour on every page), it decided to
go one better by importing another popular
Japanese word puzzle.
Kakuro is similar in concept but uses a
differently shaped and sized grid, a cross
between sudoku and a crossword puzzle, and
is based on another US-invented game called
Cross Sums. The name is a wonderful
example of cross-language fertilisation,
created by McKee Kaji, who introduced it to
Japan and publishes the puzzles there.
An article in Wednesdays issue explained:
Kaji named his version kasan kurosu, a
combination of the Japanese for addition
and the Japanese pronunciation of the
English word cross. It was soon abbreviated
for marketing effect becoming the catchier
kakkuro, or, in its British incarnation,
kakuro.

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KETTLING/kt()l/
This jargon term of the British police first
came widely to public notice during the G20
summit in London in April 2009. It was in the
news again in late 2010 as a result of
demonstrations in London against steep rises
in university tuition fees.

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Demonstrators are kettled by herding them

into a limited area and stopping them from
leaving. As they are often constrained for
many hours without food, water or toilet
facilities, opponents of the method regard it
as unlawful imprisonment.
We might guess that the image behind it is of
demonstrators starting to boil out of control,
so theyre contained in a figurative kettle. But
the term puzzles experts because it seems to
have no obvious English precursor. The
nearest analogy, which isnt very close, is the
US term kettling for the circling and soaring
of a group of migrating hawks or other birds
within air currents to gain height, which is
said to resemble the swirling motion of water
boiling in a kettle.
The most plausible suggestion is that the
word is from German, in which Kessel is the
everyday word for a kettle or similar vessel,

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such as a central-heating boiler (it is

sometimes translated as the more evocative
cauldron). The derived verb einkesseln (to
enkettle) means to encircle or surround,
principally in the military. This may come
from an older sense of Kessel for a semicircular ring of hunters driving game before
them. The best-known example of the
military sense is the Stalingrad Kessel of
1942, so called at the time by the German
forces besieged in the Russian city. Two films,
Enemy at the Gates of 2001 and Stalingrad of
2003, renewed interest in the battle among
English speakers.
German police employ the same technique as
the British, calling it Polizeikessel. The term is
older than the English kettling (it appears in
the publications Die Zeit and Der Spiegel in
June 1986 and may well be earlier). Might it
be that sharing knowledge of the technique
between the national police forces lead to

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kettling being created by the British police as

a loan translation?
However, a retired senior member of the
Metropolitan Police tells me that the word
isn't used by the UK police, practitioners
calling it containment; he suggests that the
term is a media construct, which may suggest
that the use of it by the German police is
irrelevant and that it came into use through
reporters memories of the films.
The kettling tactic used by police to pen in
5,000 people during the G20 protests carries
significant risks, the man leading the review
of public order policing said today.
The Times, 21 Apr. 2009.
I started to get anxious when I realised they
were kettling the children - blocking off exits
to Westminster Bridge, Parliament Square
and Liberal headquarters. Kettling children is

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hardly the mark of a civilised and tolerant

society.
The Guardian, 27 Nov. 2010.
[Thanks go to Paul Frank and Dan Goncharoff
for their help.]

KIBIBYTE
Because of the binary nature of computing, it
has long been common for memory sizes,
disk capacities and the like to be measured,

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not in units of 1,000, but of 1,024 (the latter

being 2 to the power of 10). Lacking a name
for their idiosyncratic multiple, computer
scientists borrowed the standard metric
prefix for 1,000, kilo-. This was fine while
such matters were the preserve solely of a
few computer experts, but now were all
using the things, the confusion between the
two senses of the prefix is getting to be a
problem. The International Electrotechnical
Commission (IEC), a standards body, is
proposing a new set of prefixes to sort
matters out. Multiples of 1,024 would be
prefixed by kibi-, for example kibibytes.
Similarly mebi-, gibi- and tebi- would replace
mega-, giga- and tera-. These prefixes are
formed using the first two letters of the
existing ones, plus bi (short for binary).
Were several years away from any decisions
on this one, though, and probably a great deal
further away from their general acceptance.

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A proposal being circulated internationally

by the IEC would introduce the new prefixes
kibi, mebi, gibi and tebi derived as short
unions of the SI prefixes with the word
binary.
IEEE Standards Bearer, Jan. 1997
The new term kibibyte will more accurately
describe the number of bytes in a kilobyte
rather than being 1,000, as could be inferred
by the prefix kilo, a kilobyte actually has
1,024 (2 to the 10th power) bytes.
Edupage, Mar. 1999

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LADULT
Its tough being young and
male these days. People keep
reinventing you or keep
trying to fit you into everchanging stereotypes. In the
1990s, there was the Loaded
type, all greed is good

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brashness and conspicuous consumption;

then came the caring, sensitive, and nonaggressive New Man; the style- and
appearance-obsessed, high-earning young
urban Metrosexual, deeply in touch with his
feminine side; and last year the confident,
unashamedly masculine, stylish bersexual,
politically aware and passionate about world
causes. Some pundits are predicting 2006
will be the year of the Ladult. As the name
suggests, he is of a laddish persuasion but can
be adult when it matters. (Lad and laddish
here are British
and
Commonwealth
slang for a
boisterously
macho or highspirited young
man.) He was
noted last

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685

summer perhaps more

correctly invented
by the crystal ball-gazing experts at the
Future Laboratory, who suggested that he
might turn out to be the partner of another of
their creations, the young woman whom they
acronymised as HEIDI (highly educated,
independent, degree-carrying individual).
Ladult: This is the Loaded lad who has grown
up now hes reached his thirties though he
still rides a 50cc Vespa. In a settled
relationship, hes just had his first child, and
is a keen, enthusiastic and careful father. Old

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habits die hard and occasionally he still likes

to get bladdered but hes always up first
thing for the morning feed. He read About A
Boy and cried at the sad bits.
Independent on Sunday, 31 Oct. 2005
Long live the Ladult. He is single, assured,
solvent and secure in his new-found
masculinity. Aged between 25 and
thirtysomething, the Ladult works
moderately hard at middle management. ...
He spends a lot on gadgets and DVDs, and
enjoys poker, online gambling and even fly
fishing. He irons his own shirts and can cook
simple meals. He has no problem with the
notion that women are his equals, but
secretly thinks they are different.
Observer, 1 Jan. 2006

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If youve been looking forward to a holiday,

only to fall ill with some poorly-defined
malady in its first days, you may have become
a victim to a recently named syndrome,
leisure sickness. The condition has been
identified by the Dutch psychologist
Professor Ad Vingerhoets of Tilburg
University. There are two varieties. One
refers to symptoms which can include
nausea, fatigue, headaches, and recurrent

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infections that appear whenever the stress

of the working week is suddenly removed,
either at the weekend or at the beginning of
holidays. The other sort is found among men
and women who have become tired of the rat
race and who have downshifted to enjoy a
quieter life, only to find themselves suffering
from these recurrent minor illnesses plus
boredom and depression, another name for
which is underload syndrome (an older
generation would have named it ennui, an
expressive word that has rather gone out of
fashion). Whatever its called, few of us need
worry about the risks of getting it: research
evidence suggests its mainly found among
high-achieving men and women and that only
3% of those surveyed have experienced it.
The researchers, who presented their
findings at a recent meeting of the American
Psychosomatic Society, determined that
people who are perfectionists, carry large

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689

workloads and feel very responsible for their

work are more apt to suffer from these
symptoms, termed leisure sickness.
Psychology Today, 1 July 2001
Those lazy days on the croquet lawn can also
make you ultra-responsive to physiological
signals of illness. The Dutch psychologist Ad
Vingerhoets coined the phrase leisure
sickness after studying 2,000 people who
became ill when they had little to do.
Independent, 5 Apr. 2003

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LIFESTYLE DRUG
/lfstl dr/

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691

This is a pharmaceutical which is taken not to

relieve or cure a medical condition, but to
improve the quality of life of the person
taking it. But there is dispute about what
constitutes a medical condition that needs
treatment and what is just cosmetic,
discretionary or even unnecessary. The
phrase is commonly used disparagingly by
journalists, especially in Britain, where it is
feared the cost of fashionable treatments may
cause financial problems to the cashstrapped National Health Service. The matter
has come up recently concerning Viagra, a
new drug to treat male impotence that has
created huge public interest both in the USA
and Britain (though sales in the US are now
reportedly already only a third of the level
reached soon after its launch earlier this
year). Another such drug is Xenical, a
treatment for severe obesity that was
released in Britain last month.

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Magee contends Viagra is medically

necessary for several reasons and is not a
recreational or lifestyle drug. In addition,
it gets men into treatment for conditions that
otherwise may not have been diagnosed, he
said.
Nando Times, Aug. 1998
It is as likely that Xenical will be used only to
combat life-threatening obesity as it is that
Viagra will be used only to treat clinical,
diagnosed impotence. Were talking about a
lifestyle drug here, one that enables us to
have it all: the pleasures of food with few of
the calories.
Daily Mail, Sep. 1998

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/latkrft/
Rockets have to carry all the fuel they need
not only to lift their payload, but to carry the
unburned remainder of the fuel itself, an
expensive business which rapidly leads to

TURN OF PHRASE

694

diminishing returns. So a craft that doesnt

have to take its fuel with it is a dream of
rocket scientists. New Scientist magazine has
recently reported on US experiments with a
launch vehicle that rides into space on a
beam of laser light. It uses infra-red lasers left
over from the old Star Wars experiments of
the eighties to fire a series of extremely short
and powerful bursts of light focused on the
rocket. A carefully-shaped cavity
concentrates the light into a tiny area where
it is so intense it rips air molecules apart to
form a hot plasma that shoots out at speed,
driving the craft upwards. Above the
atmosphere, the lightcraft will obviously
have to carry its own supply of gas to replace
the air, but even so great economies in
weight and cost of getting satellites into orbit
may be possible.

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LINGUISTIC PROFILING

The term linguistic

profiling is not in itself new, but in recent
months seems to have taken on two fresh
meanings. The key idea behind both is that
the ethnic group a person belongs to can be
identified from the way he or she speaks.
One sense stems from the older psychological
profiling, a technique increasingly being used

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696

by law-enforcement agencies to deduce the

character and motivations of an unknown
person who has committed a serious crime;
here, the voices of suspects yield clues about
their origins and identities. Linguistic
profiling has also been in the news in the US
in another sense (almost certainly derived
from racial profiling, as are other phrases like
ethnic profiling and facial profiling see
Words of the Year below that are less
common), as a new term for a long-standing
form of racial discrimination (for example in
housing) based on whether a telephone caller
sounds black or not in this sense the
profiling is done by those who exercise
discrimination. This second meaning is
mainly associated with John Baugh, professor
of education and linguistics at Stanford
University, who has done research in this
area.

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Confusingly, linguistic profiling has an older,

more neutral sense techniques employed
by educationalists to diagnose and treat
children with language problems such as
dyslexia.
He found that when he showed up to see
places in person, they were suddenly
unavailable, and he suspected he only got the
appointment on the telephone because, as he
says, hes a black man who doesnt sound
black.
Analysis, National Public Radio, Sep. 2001
Johnson is suing the landlord for linguistic
profiling, a form of racial discrimination the
courts have yet to fully recognize. His case
will be set for trial early in the new year.
ABC News, Dec. 2001

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LOCAVORE
/lkv/
The word began life in 2005, according to
reports by a group of four women in San
Francisco, and has grown in popularity, so
much so that Adam Platt wrote in New York
magazine on 17 September 2007: What selfrespecting restaurant critic isnt weary of the
whole locavore phenomenon? A couple of
months later, the editors of the New Oxford
American Dictionary selected it as their word
of the year for 2007.
Its about the distance that food travels to
reach our plates. For supermarkets, it makes
commercial sense to source foodstuffs where
they can be grown most cheaply and
consistently, which can be thousands of miles
from their markets. Consumers want to eat

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699

fruit and vegetables all year round, so they

have to be brought in from where theyre in
season. Theres nothing new in transporting
foodstuffs to markets but what concerns
environmentalists is the extent to which
theyre now being moved long distances by
road and air, which leads to great
expenditures of energy and the dumping of
masses of carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere. The British term food miles,
dating from the 1990s, was created to
measure the distance that food travels to
reach us and illustrate the complexity of the
supply chains involved.
Locavore is a compound of local with one of
the words ending in -vore, such as omnivore
or carnivore; localvore is also used. Locavores
try to obtain their food from as near as
possible to where they live and so restrict
themselves to seasonal produce. They argue
that local food is often fresher, better-tasting

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and more nutritious than that from

supermarkets, and helps to improve their
health as well as support local enterprise and
save the planet. What local means is open
to interpretation, but a radius of 100 miles is
often quoted, leading to the term 100-mile
diet. The area from which food is sourced is
sometimes called the food shed, presumably
taken from watershed, which for Americans is
the area drained by a river (this needs to be
explained, since in the UK a watershed is the
boundary between two drainage systems,
which in the US is a divide).
[Many thanks to Dave Cook for pointing me
to this word.]
The Windsors do emerge in this book as
locavores before the trend, relying on foods
raised or caught on their own estates for
much of their diet. And they eat seasonally.
As McGrady notes, woe to the chef who

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would dare serve the queen a strawberry in

January.
Chicago Sun-Times, 4 Sep. 2007
On a cloudy May Saturday in Columbus, Ohio,
the self-described locavore is making a
meal of almost all local ingredients not an
easy feat for an unabashed foodie who
waitresses at a local restaurant.
Advertising Age, 4 Jun. 2007
LONG TAIL

This retailing concept has become widely

known and discussed in the past year. It was
popularised in Wired Magazine in October

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702

2004 by that journals editor-in-chief, Chris

Anderson.
The long tail is that of the demand curve of
products versus sales. The best-sellers are all
at one end, but as we move to the other sales
drop off in a long slow curve that never quite
hits zero. Traditional retailers draw a line
only part-way along this curve, because slowmoving items return less profit than the cost
of stocking them. But online retailers backed
by huge warehouses and fast stock deliveries
can easily afford to keep them permanently
available. Helped by clever search engines
that can suggest possibilities for customers
with special interests, these niche items
suddenly become profitable. Amazon, for
example, gets half its sales from outside its
130,000 top titles.
Chris Anderson is expanding his thesis into a
book, The Long Tail: The Radical New Shape

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of Culture and Commerce, to be published in

2006.
The term itself, however, isnt new. Insurers
have used it for many years to describe
business, such as that for liability insurance,
in which claims may be made long after the
end of the insured period; the opposite is
short tail, in which claims arrive during the
policy period.
The counterintuitive reality of the long tail is
that its potential is based on aggregating
supply and demand, but its realization is
based on helping individuals find just the
right thing, one scenario at a time.
KMWorld, 1 Nov. 2005
Westergren hopes to exploit what Wired
magazine calls the long tail effect. The idea
is that, while a small number of products
make up a large quantity of sales, there are

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many products in relatively low demand that

dont sell well on their own, but which
together can outsell the more popular
products.
Independent, 14 Sep. 2005

It used to be that the

process of creating an animated film, even digitally,
required long hours of labour using specialised and
expensive software. Then moviemakers cottoned
on to the potential of the image-generating engines

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that exist inside animated computer games such as

Quake. Some games, especially Quake 3, allow the
user access to the underlying code to customise
scenes or create new ones. It didnt take long for
audio-visual experts to spot their potential for
creating entirely new animated sequences. Films
so made have been around for several years, but
the technique, and the results, have begun to
attract mainstream interest only
recently. Machinima is usually said to be a blend
of machine plus cinema; the large number of Web
sites in German that feature it suggest the term
may have been coined in that language.
Making digital movies is now as easy as playing PC
games literally. A rising technique called
machinima (machine and cinema) uses software
from common computer games to make animated
films, and upstart directors are flocking to the Web
to learn it.
Entertainment Weekly, June 2001

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Machinima movies, which range from short

comedies to science-fiction epics, are produced
entirely on computers, eliminating the need to buy
costly equipment, rent spectacular locations or
hire glamorous actors. The films are then
distributed free over the Internet.
New York Times, July 2002

Mad As Cheese.
This is mainly a British
expression, now very
common. However,

examples have started to

appear in American
publications, suggesting

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707

it is making inroads there. Madhere is used in the

sense of crazy or deranged, not angry.
An example was heard in the BBC Radio 4
programme Start the Week on 27 March 2006,
when the presenter, Andrew Marr, described the
painter Van Goghs mental state in this way.
The Sunday Mirror mentioned that it appeared in
the British filmConfetti: Naturists Michael (Robert
Webb) and Joanne (Olivia Colman) want to tie the
knot in the nude. They are helped by the
wonderfully camp wedding planners were mad
as cheese, us! Hallmark has had a line of greeting
cards in the UK called Mad as Cheese since July
2003.
There are plenty of examples available online,
showing it dates back to the middle 1990s at least.
Logically minded readers may wonder why cheese
should be less sane than any other comestible, but
such considerations have no place in the creation
of new expressions. You can tell that from related

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sayings, such as mad as a pink balloon,mad as a box

of frogs, and that old Northern standby, daft as a
brush.
Just how do system builders dream up names for
their systems? The Matrix Prestige Xtra? Thats
certainly one for the next PC Plus anthology of
mad-as-cheese system names.
PC Plus, June 2005
As the most raucous audience that genteel
Bournemouth can ever have entertained went as
mad as cheese, you could have sworn a small black
cabin at the side of the International Centre hall
must have smoke billowing around.
Evening Standard, 24 Mar. 2006

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This word, until now not often seen outside the

specialist field of cosmology, has suddenly became
a hot topic. Reports have recently appeared of a
colossal burst of gamma rays which hit the Earths
upper atmosphere on 27 August 1998. The pulse
lasted about five minutes, ionised the atmosphere
on the night side to levels normally seen in
daytime, disrupted some radio traffic, sent
detectors on several spacecraft off scale and
caused one to shut down completely.
What is astonishing about this phenomenon is that
it was traced to a star some 20,000 light years
away, of a strange and rare kind known as

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a magnetar. Astronomers think they are young

neutron stars, formed in supernova explosions,
which are rotating at speeds that approach a
thousand times a second. This rotation generates
immense magnetic fields. The heat generated by
the movement of the field through the iron crust of
the neutron star quickly becomes so great that it
cracks apart in what has been dubbed a starquake,
the stellar equivalent of an earthquake. This causes
the release of vast amounts of gamma rays. Though
our atmosphere protects us from the radiation,
such huge bursts can, as weve seen, knock out
satellites.
The name is a blend of magnetic and star; it was
coined by Robert Duncan and Christopher
Thompson in a paper in the Astrophysical
Journal in 1992; these exotic stars are also
called soft gamma repeaters, a name which was
given to them after a huge radiation burst was
observed in 1979 and long before their true nature
was realised.

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In ordinary neutron stars the crust is stable, but in

magnetars, the crust is stressed by unbearable
forces as the colossal magnetic field drifts through
it, said Duncan.
Space Science News, May 1998
A young magnetar would be very hot, because of
frictional heat generated by mobile material,
redistributed by the powerful magnetic field.
New Scientist, Aug. 1998

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Malvertising

712

is formed

from malicious plus advertising. Its an online scam

in which reputable sites are tricked into
distributing bogus advertisements that link to
malicious code. It has become a significant issue
within the past year, with many well-known sites
suffering from the problem, and its expected to get
worse.

A malvertising exploit from April 2009, simulating

a genuine anti-virus product
Click on image to enlarge it
A classic example is an advert that offers a free
anti-virus scan, but which instead downloads an
application that takes over your browser to

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harvest credit-card numbers and passwords or

send fake e-mails through your account. Since such
fake scans work by frightening users, they are also
calledscareware. The problem for legitimate
owners of sites is that its hard to detect the fake
ads until somebody complains, by which time
damage has been done and the publishers
reputation compromised.

Malvertising is a specific type of whats

called malware (malicious software), which can
be installed on your computer in a variety of ways.
It used to arrive most often in e-mail attachments,
but most users have got wise and protect

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themselves against it. It now infiltrates in other

ways disguised as a legitimate download or
served up from a contaminated site.
Publishers have told us that malvertising is one of
the biggest threats to their business, and
antiquated ad infrastructure technology is largely
at fault.
Business Wire, 12 Jan. 2010.
The latest threat for internet users is malvertising,
the use of ad networks for distributing malicious
software.
Cape Times (South Africa), 16 March 2010.

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715

The New
York Times seems to have started something
with an article by Jennifer Lee in its issue of
10 April under the headline The Man Date;
What do you call two straight men having
dinner? The article discussed the issue that
two male friends enjoying certain kinds of
public activity together going for a walk,
visiting a museum, or having a meal are
automatically assumed by onlookers to be
gay if there is no obvious business- or sportsrelated reason for them to be together. The
fear of being thought gay, the article
suggested, made it difficult for men to create
the kind of one-on-one close friendships that
women take for granted. The story has been
picked up by papers worldwide as a peg for

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discussing these issues and for relating them

to social attitudes, metrosexuality (changing
male views on fashion and personal
grooming), and other matters. Whether Ms
Lees invention of man date for a non-sexual
male assignation is going to become a
permanent part of the language is much too
early to say. My back hairs say it isnt.
Like the now pass metrosexual,
man date is sure to cause some
consternation and self-consciousness
among males everywhere. Social
behaviors once considered mundane
will be subjected to a man-date litmus
test. Watching a football game with
another man will be kosher; watching
a foreign film will be a man date.
Cooking outdoors on a grill will be
normal masculine socializing; cooking
indoors on a range will be a man date.
Of course, Lee andThe New York

TURN OF PHRASE

Times arent trying to promote

homophobia by bringing man date
into the national vocabulary, but one
can see little sociological use in the
term other than exacerbating
homosexual panic.
University Wire, 13 Apr. 2005
Sideways, the recent highly acclaimed
film from Alexander Payne, is
perhaps the best example of the Man
Date movie. Two buddies, Jack and
Miles, hit the road for a week of wine
tasting and fine dining before Jacks
wedding. These are average guys, but
are unabashed about sharing a good
bottle of wine over dinner and talking
about their feelings.
the Observer, 17 Apr. 2005

MARI-FUEL

717

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718

So far as online records show, this word burst

upon the world for the first time on 17 December
2008, in a press release announcing that European
Union funding of 6m (5m or $8.5m) had been
won for the BioMara project. This is a cross-border
project involving researchers from Scotland,
Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The
aim is to find ways to convert seaweeds and
marine algae into fuels. One hope is that it will help
rural communities in these countries, who may be
able to use fast-growing seaweeds such as kelp to
make a locally produced and cheap fuel that wont
take up valuable agricultural land. Mari-fuel is an
obvious parallel to the better-knownagri-fuel, for
fuels derived from agricultural products.
The development of mari-fuels could have a lasting
impact on remote and rural communities by
providing locally produced, relatively cheap, low
impact fuel as well as serving the local public
transport infrastructure.

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Daily Telegraph, 18 Dec. 2008

Motorists may soon be driving cars powered by
kelp and algae after scientists in Scotland and
Ireland won European funding today for a new
research project to create mari-fuels the
marine equivalent to plant-based biofuels.
Guardian, 18 Dec. 2008

MARKETOPIA
Terence Ball
Marketopia was created by
Professor Terence Ball of
Arizona State University in an
article in the
magazineDissent in 2001. He formed it
from marketing and utopiato identify and
satirise a world in which social responsibility
has been lost, all public services have been
privatised and market forces rule absolutely.

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720

The quality of life experienced by those living

in his imagined world is so poor that a better
root would be dystopia.
It has a small continuing circulation among
left-leaning liberal commentators on
economics, with its adjectivemarketopian. Its
perhaps best known from Peter Lunns book
of 2009, Basic Instincts: Human Nature and
the New Economics, in which Lunn invents
the city of Marketopia, where everybody is as
rational and selfish as conventional economic
theory holds.
A US provider of warranties for home
equipment has adopted the
term marketopia as a service mark,
presumably in ignorance of its origin and
associations.

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The main shortcoming of marketopia

is its massive and systematic
violation of a fundamental sense of
fairness. Marketopians who cannot
afford health care, education, police
protection, and other of lifes
necessities are denied a fair (or even
minimally sufficient) share of social
goods.
The Abandoned Generation, by
Henry A Giroux, 2003.
Mistrust ... is evident in marketopian
reforms which treat public servants
as knaves to be slapped into line by
the self-interested whack of the
invisible hand.
The Guardian, 1 Jan. 2011.

721

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This word is hardly new, since it was used by J R R

Tolkien at the beginning of the first volume of
the Lord of the Rings, published in 1954. As with so
many unfamiliar words in his works, he derived it
from Old English, in this case the one usually
written mam, a precious thing, treasure, valuable
gift, that was current in about the year 1000.
Following Tolkien, it has gained significant
currency online and in a few printed sources. To
define the modern meaning, I can do no better than
quote Professor Tolkiens own words: Anything
that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were
unwilling to throw away, they called a mathom.
Their dwellings were apt to become rather
crowded with mathoms, and many of the presents
that passed from hand to hand were of that sort.
Its a useful little word for which there seems no
simple alternative and now that we have come
across it, mathom will no doubt become part of our

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723

familys standard vocabulary, since we have an

attic full of the stuff.

Weve only just got used to lots of new forms

beginning in e- but now m- is starting to turn up
for mobile. The advent of WAP (Wireless
Application Protocol) and new systems for sending
data to and from mobile telephones at high speeds
means that Web-style electronic commerce seems
set to become available soon at a mobile phone
near your ear. It may look a very new term and
references to it in the press have only really begun

TURN OF PHRASE

724

to accumulate since the middle of 1999 but it

has been recorded as far back as the mid nineties.
For all its hype, however, m-commerce remains in
its infancy.
International Herald Tribune, Feb. 2000
Business is moving quickly on m-commerce for a
number of reasons.
Toronto Star, Mar. 2000

MDR-TB/mditibi/
This abbreviation has come to wider public
notice recently as the result of an appeal for
funds has been made by a group of aid
agencies, including the United States Public

TURN OF PHRASE

725

Health Research Institute, for help to control

an epidemic of tuberculosis (TB) in Russia.
They say that a potential global public health
hazard now exists as a result of inadequate
medical treatment of TB-infected prisoners in
jails in that country. Because of limited
resources, they are often treated only
intermittently, so that the disease becomes
resistant to standard drugs. Prisoners are
being released from custody while still
infected, and are passing the disease on. The
problem of drug-resistant TB is far from new
there has been concern for much of the
past decade and the abbreviation MDR-TB
for multiple drug resistant tuberculosis has
been used in the public health community for
some years. But concern is still growing
about its implications, despite techniques
such as the DOTS initiative of the World
Health Organisation, which are intended to

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make sure that TB sufferers complete their

courses of drug treatment.
Recent MDR-TB outbreaks have been
characterized by mortality rates of 50-80%
and a duration of only 4-16 weeks from the
time of diagnosis to the time of death.
Frontiers in Bioscience, August 1996
Because of the high mortality associated with
MDR-TB infections, it is recommended that
these infections be treated only by those
individuals with special training. Generally
speaking, these infections require a
prolonged duration of therapy with multiple
drugs.
St Francis Journal of Medicine, Winter 1997

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727

This term is a blend of mechanics and

electronics, which describes its subject area
pretty exactly. Its a cross-disciplinary
combination of mechanics, electronics,
electrical engineering and computing in
essence the use of microelectronics to control
mechanical devices. Since the majority of
machines we use today contain embedded
electronic control systems, mechatronics

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728

specialists can be involved with the design

and construction of a huge range of
equipment: video recorders and washing
machines, traffic control systems and antilock brakes, medical scanners and artificial
organs, photocopiers, automatic production
systems, industrial robots and computercontrolled machine tools. The word, though
relatively new, is now common in the field
but it is as yet rarely seen outside
universities and other specialist groups. A
more formal term for the discipline is
mechatronic engineering, which employs the
singular form mechatronic as an adjective. As
with many other similar terms, mechatronics
is usually treated as a singular noun.

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MELDREW
Heaven knows
whether this one is a
short-lived linguistic
firework or a new star
in the language
firmament. Those who
have followed the
British TV series One
Foot in the Grave will
know about Mr Victor
Meldrew, the retired security officer who is
the epitome of grump, a miserable sod who
feels that everything and everyone is out to
get him. The series has ended its 10-year run,
with Meldrew being killed in the last episode
by a hit-and-run driver, who wasnt actually
out to get him, but who got him all the same.
Last week a poll by the survey firm MORI
identified Meldrews as a new social type
aged between 35 and 54, rebellious and with

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little time for authority, unhappy with their

lives and the world around them, whose
attitude can be summed up by lifes a bitch
and then you die. A possible sign of vitality
for the term is the number of compounds that
have instantly appeared, such as Meldrewism,
Meldrewian, and Meldrewesque.
Whats really interesting about the MORI
research is the fact that todays Meldrews are
not pensioners, as was the star of the
television sitcom One Foot in the Grave, but
are in the 35 to 54 age group. Fed up with
their lot, disillusioned with the Government,
worried about money, pessimistic about the
future and generally sick to death of the
shallow, something-for-nothing society we
have become, they see years of misery ahead
and then death.
Birmingham Post, Aug. 2002

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731

Millions of people aged 35-55 are Meldrews,

that is unhappy about society and deeply
frustrated that they are powerless to change
things. They are Meldrews in that they do not
regard Cool Britannia as the Utopia they were
told it was.
Church of England Newspaper, Sep. 2002

MEMS/mmz/
This is an abbreviation for
microelectromechanical systems, a term

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732

which, understandably, is not often spoken or

written in full. MEMS are essentially
computer chips that contain not only
electronic circuits but also miniaturised
mechanical devices, such as mirrors, levers or
sensors. As an example, its possible to etch a
tiny beam into a chip, which distorts under
acceleration and so affects an electronic
circuit. This makes a tiny, robust (and cheap)
accelerometer that is already being used as a
car air-bag sensor. A device the size of a
wristwatch might contain a complete set of
sensors for watching the weather. Others are
being designed to pump fluids, switch laser
signals or create new types of radio circuits.
Its a rapidly growing field, not yet widely
known (though the term itself dates from the
early nineties), but one that is predicted to
become a substantial industry within a few
years. Some experts refer to the more
obviously mechanical of these devices, such

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733

as those containing gears, as micromachines;

others have coined the term smart matter for
MEMS devices. So fast is the pace of
miniaturisation that some researchers have
already coined NEMS
(nanoelectromechanical systems) for yet
smaller systems of a similar kind.
Smart matter, material utilizing
microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), is
almost sentient in that it can sense (strain,
temperature, pressure, motion, etc.), actuate
(push, squeeze, deflect, switch, etc.),
communicate (with fibers, antennas, wires,
etc.), and calculate (with microprocessors).
Physics News Update, Aug. 1997
Previous experience with synchrotron
radiation, X-ray lithography,
microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) or
mask making by e-beam is desirable.

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734

Advertisement in New Scientist, Dec 1997

Farewell metrosexuals, with your gelled hair,

your moisturised skin and your impeccable
clothing. Hello real men: beer-swilling,
carnivorous, macho, hanging-out-with-yourmates, sexist. Its the
menaissance. Its the
backlash.
A sign of the times?
American newspapers,
quick to spot a trendette,
have pounced on a series of
recent US television

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735

advertisements that pander to ones inner

caveman, and on books like The Alphabet of
Manliness by George Ouzounian (alias
Maddox), I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell by
Tucker Max, and Real Men Dont Apologize by
Jim Belushi. In various ways, all preach a
return to an old-style masculinity.
Another term for the unreconstructed (or
reconstituted) male that pops up in some
articles is retrosexual. The literary genre in
which the lifestyle is celebrated has been
dubbed fratire.
Some commentators deride the whole issue.
Mark Simpsons view, in the Guardian in
October 2006, was blunt: Truth be told, this
is a phoney war. The menaissance is
mendacious. This isnt retrosexual at all, but
hummersexual a noisy, overblown, studied
and frankly rather camp form of fake
masculinity that likes to draw attention to

TURN OF PHRASE

736

itself and its allegedly old-fashioned

manliness, but tends like driving an
outsized military vehicle in the suburbs to
be a tad counterproductive.
But others point to the male sexs struggle to
adjust to a world of sexual equality as the
main driver for the backlash. Professor
Harvey Mansfields recent book Manliness, for
example, argues men need to recapture some
conventional male virtues such as
decisiveness and assertiveness and not be
afraid to display them.
Of course, advocates of the Menaissance may
argue that we shouldnt be too concerned
about what kind of a man women want these
days. Isnt that, they would say, the way we
arrived at simpering metrosexuals desperate
to please their other halves?
Daily Mail, 12 Jul. 2006

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737

A woman friend tells me theres a desperate

need for a menaissance. Many women are
weary of sensitive emo-boys and
metrosexuals.
Philadelphia Inquirer, 8 Apr. 2006

There has been a lot of interest recently in

ways to get broadband Internet connections
into homes that avoid having to dig up miles
of road. Attempts to provide wireless
broadband connections have not been

TURN OF PHRASE

738

successful, at least in Britain, because of the

cost and difficulty of setting up yet another
network of transmission masts. A scheme
invented by a Cambridge firm, Radiant, gives
hope for a cheaper and neater solution.
Instead of connecting each subscriber
individually to a central provider, each is
linked to several other subscribers nearby by
low-power radio transmitters; these in turn
are connected to others, forming a network,
or mesh, of radio interconnections that at
some point links back to the central
transmitter. As each subscribers station is
short-range and can be directional, the
amount of power needed for the connection
is small less than one watt. A pilot scheme
has been organised in Cardiff for sometime
early this year.
Mesh radio achieves nearly 100 per cent
cover by turning each home into a mini base
station. A stubby unit on the roof hides four

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739

directional antennas with motors that

automatically align them with other antennas
on other houses.
New Scientist, Nov. 2001
Mesh radio is one of those technologies that
is so obviously an excellent idea that the
market should be huge.
IT Week, Nov. 2001
Its been argued by
pundits that the Internets destruction of
distance would also result in the demise of
middlemen. They point to what has already
happened as a result of direct telephone
access to many types of offline businesses
such as travel agencies, stockbrokers, and
banks (a process economists call
disintermediation). But online trading is so
complex that it is creating a new breed of
middlemen to ease the process of finding

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740

what you want. Professor Mohanbir Sawhney

of Northwestern University calls them
metamediaries and argues that they work in a
virtual trading space called metamarkets that
connect customers with the providers of
goods and services they need to fill their
needs. For example, somebody buying a
house might regard purchase, mortgaging,
insurance, and maintenance as related
functions a metamarket. The trouble is,
these are provided by a great range of
unconnected types of firm. One function of
the metamediary, he argues, is to link all
these together electronically in a way that
makes sense to customers and permits all
their needs to be met by providers. The
process is called metamediation. One mark of
an concept that hasnt settled down yet is
that other words for similar ideas exist,
notably the more established infomediary,
but also cybermediary.

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741

At their heart, metamediaries are providers

of trusted advice and information that
customers need to make better decisions for
a cluster of activities.
Business 2.0, May 1999
Customers have reduced transportation costs
but increased search costs, giving rise to a
new wave of middlemen metamediaries
that will act as a trusted third party providing
a single point of contact between customers
and suppliers.
Edupage, May 1999

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742

This word has been around

since at least the mid-1990s,
and was first used to
describe urban (and urbane)
young men who were selfindulgent, even narcissistic,
and who were interested in
fashion and beauty. It has
been reinvented with a twist.
The story is that 21stcentury man has become
neutered and insecure as a result of the rise
of female power in the workplace. Straight
men, happily married but confused by the
new gender equality (and by a barrage of
comment saying theyre useless and
obsolete), are turning to methods more
traditionally associated with women, such as
power dressing and beauty treatments, to
assert themselves. Metrosexual man, the

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743

theory goes, wants to be thought of as caring,

nurturing and open-minded, while rejecting
many traditional male virtues. At least, this is
what Marian Salzman, American guru of
futurology, is suggesting, although her thesis
is derided by other futurologists, who say
that the way that some men feel at the
moment is merely part of a realignment of
gender roles that hasnt yet worked its way to
a conclusion.
Last week ace trend spotter Marian Salzman
of the advertising agency Euro RCSG
Worldwide identified Beckham who likes
to say how comfortable he is with his
feminine side and who has been known to
wear a sarong as the epitome of
metrosexuality, which, since you ask, is the
characteristic of heterosexual men who
spend time and money on their appearance
and enjoy shopping.

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Time, 30 June 2003

According to the experts, this guy lives near
the city, uses beauty products, fancies Kylie
Minogue but would never cheat on his
partner. How do you spot this paragon of
virtue? The Metrosexual will, they say,
possess at least one salmon pink shirt.
Mirror, 19 June 2003

Most of us in Britain are only very slowly

coming to terms with the idea of egovernment, communicating with
government departments using our PCs and
the Internet. But many countries apart
from the UK they include Sweden, the
Netherlands, Malta, Singapore, Hong Kong,
South Korea, China and the Philippines are

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working towards talking to their citizens via

the almost universal mobile phone. The
technique has been dubbed m-government.
Examples include security alerts sent out by
Londons Metropolitan police; people in
Malta can opt to get reminders to renew
licences; Singaporeans can learn the results
of medical examinations; the Hong Kong
government uses the system for emergency
announcements; in Norway and Sweden,
people can confirm via an SMS text message if
their tax returns are accurate; and in Finland
they can buy bus tickets. At the moment,
most of the initiatives are fairly small-scale
and to varying extents experimental, but
experts in the field suggest that the rate of
innovation means that the system will soon
be in routine use almost everywhere.
After e-government, m-government. The idea
of the state permanently streaming data to
and from your mobile phone may be some

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peoples nightmare. In Sweden, its already

reality.
The Guardian, 10 Jun. 2004
Despite its infancy, mobile government (mgovernment) is a growing and important set
of complex strategies and tools that will
change completely the roles and functioning
of traditional governance.
Europemedia, 15 Jan. 2003

This relatively new term achieved

widespread publicity as a result of the first
Microcredit Summit held in Washington in
early February. Microcredit is the name given
to small loans made to very poor people who

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747

would normally be regarded as bad financial

risks and so be unable to obtain funds
through conventional banks (some
economists call this the capital gap). Though
still a long way from the financial
mainstream, many governments now see
microcredit as an effective way to build up
local enterprise and reduce unemployment;
they include not only countries like
Bangladesh, where the Grameen Bank has
been a pioneer, but also industrialised areas
such as North America and Australia, where
microcredit meets special needs. It is
generally agreed that women should be the
prime recipients of loans, as they are better
risks than men and the loans have greater
impact. The World Bank has issued a number
of papers on the subject and has set
minimum standards of reporting from
microcredit institutions. Another term for
this technique is informal credit and the

TURN OF PHRASE

748

lenders have been called barefoot banks by

analogy to Chinese barefoot doctors. The term
has been joined in recent years by others
beginning in micro- that relate to aspects of
the process: microbusiness, microenterprise,
microfinance, microlender, and microbank.

Always eat your greens, was once the

advice of every mother who was concerned
about the health of her children. A new way
of eating vegetables has become known in

TURN OF PHRASE

749

the USA in the past five years or so and the

trend (you might say fashion) is now
broadening its appeal to the UK and other
countries with one writer claiming they are
becoming the highest-flying salad items
since rocket. (The joke doesnt work in US
English, where the vegetable is usually called
arugula.)

(Photo: Microgreens USA)

People have long grown mustard and cress
on wet flannel to harvest for salad. Like these
sprouts, microgreens are young plants, no
more than a week or so old, usually with only
their first seed leaves developed. The leaves
and stems are harvested and served in a
mixed salad. Unlike alfalfa and bean sprouts

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the roots arent eaten, not least because

microgreens are usually grown in soil. A very
wide variety is available, not just common
salad plants such as arugula, lettuce and
celery, but also red beet, cabbage, basil,
endive, purslane, rapini (the edible leaves of
an immature white turnip), dill, sorrel, and
many others. Nor are microgreens always
vegetables: some are flower plants such as
chrysanthemums.
Part of the appeal is that the salad is often as
fresh as can be, with the plants being
harvested moments before theyre served.
Supporters claim their flavour is often more
intense than other salads or the mature
plants and that they contain health-giving
minerals. This puts them into the class of
functional foods or nutraceuticals.
The oldest example of the word I can find is
from 1998. It turns up most often in

TURN OF PHRASE

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connection with the restaurant trade,

inevitably so because of the way the plants
are grown and harvested, though some
supermarkets are looking at including them
in pre-packed salads. Another term
sometimes used is microherbs, though this is
a misnomer because the choice is much
wider than just herb plants.
We had different types of microgreens that
needed to be layered in a specific order on
the fish, so that the different colors would
show.
Orange County Register, 1 May 2006
After moving to the Bath Priory, Horridge
decided to keep in touch with microgreens.
The exciting thing about these plants is that
they bring together great taste and great
appearance theyre not just a garnish.
Guardian, 5 May 2006

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From a commercial point of view,

development of the Internet and the World
Wide Web is being held back by poor security
which makes it difficult to sell and buy things
electronically (e-commerce in the jargon).
Various techniques have been advanced to

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solve this problem, some depending on

cryptography to foil crackers, others using a
trusted third-party to process transactions
and validate payments. In particular,
businesses are looking for ways to charge for
access to Web pages, which may for example
hold stock market quotes or give access to
interactive games. Charges for each page or
item are likely to be minuscule, perhaps a few
cents (pence), and the cost of processing such
small sums, called microtransactions (or
sometimes micropayments) is prohibitive at
the moment. Various companies are working
on systems which would aggregate payments
and so reduce the number of transactions, or
charge users through their telephone bills or
issue scrip tokens redeemable by the
merchant. One slightly cynical provider has
commented that the true meaning of
microtransaction is any transaction whose
value is currently too small to be worth

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bothering with about one US dollar (60

pence) at the moment.

MICRO-WIND
TURBINE
When we think of wind turbines, the image is
usually of a monster windmill on a windy
hilltop, generating megawatts of electricity.
But as one element of a variety of schemes to
make our houses more energy-efficient
along with good insulation, combined heat
and power gas central heating, and solar
panels comes the micro-wind turbine. This
is a tiny version of its big brother, one that
can be fixed to a convenient chimney or roof.
Theyve been around for ages on sailing boats
and in some countries, especially the USA,
have become popular in rural areas away
from power supplies as ways of powering

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devices such as electric fences or public

telephones. But recently they have started to
be promoted for domestic use in urban areas
in countries such as Britain. Objectors argue
that it takes too long to get back the cost of
installation and that high average wind
speeds are required, which are often not
available in heavily built-up areas.
Existing mini-turbines sit on a pole at the
bottom of the garden and are useless for
townies. However, new micro-wind turbines,
no bigger than a TV aerial or satellite dish,
which can be mounted on a roof, are
expected to be available from the middle of
next year.
the Guardian, 20 Nov. 2004

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Also known as the millennium virus,

millennium timebomb and Y2K problem (short
for Year 2000 Problem). The potentially
catastrophic risk, according to many industry
experts, that a large proportion of the worlds
computers will go wrong at midnight on 31
December 1999. This is because much of the
programming code was written anything up
to 25 years ago (whats called in the business

TURN OF PHRASE

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legacy code) when the century change was a

distant prospect but a much more immediate
problem was the shortage of memory and
filespace. So years were commonly
programmed using only the last two digits
(78 for 1978 for example). When the
century changes, instead of moving on to
2000 all such dates will roll back to 1900,
causing chaos in any system which compares
dates, for example to calculate entitlements
or penalties. As this includes a large
proportion of the worlds systems, disaster is
being predicted. The cure is to check every
line of code for two-digit dates and change it,
a process which is expected to cost business
many hundreds of millions of pounds.

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MINIGARCH
A minigarch is like
an oligarch, only
less well-endowed
in the back-pocket
department. Its a
weird formation,
not least because
oligarch means a
member of a small group that holds power in
a state (from Greek oligoi, few, plus arkhein,
to rule), and strictly has nothing to do with
money.
But the term has long been tainted with the
implication that oligarchs use their great
power to gather riches; in particular it has
been used for members of the nomenklatura,
former Communist Party appointees, who
were most directly involved in gaining wealth

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in post-communist Russia. The Financial

Times wrote in January 2001, The oligarchs
divided up among themselves the most
valuable state companies, which Yeltsin
privatized under fire-sale conditions.
Minigarch appeared in British newspapers in
2006, an early instance in the Independent
on 26 May: Vladimir Gusinsky, 53, used to be
one of Russias most powerful media
magnates, but he lost almost everything and
is now more minigarch than oligarch. It has
never been common, though it turned up
several times in 2007, but the global financial
turmoil of 2008 hit the Russian super-rich
especially hard and the word has had a
resurgence.
Moscows exclusive watering holes, such as
this expensive fusion restaurant near the
Kremlin, are still hosting so-called

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minigarchs and the merely wealthy further

down the scale.
NPR Morning Edition, 15 Oct. 2008
A lower oil price may affect the geopolitical
ambitions of Russia and its allies. Some
oligarchs may become minigarchs. But Russia
will not need to beg for cash from the outside
world.
The Economist, 23 Oct. 2008
MISOMUSIST/msmjuzst/
Invention of this word is
usually credited to the Czech
novelist Milan Kundera, who
described it like this in his book
The Art Of The Novel in 1988:
To be without a feeling for art
is no disaster. A person can live in peace
without reading Proust or listening to
Schubert. But the misomusist does not live in

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peace. He feels humiliated by the existence of

something that is beyond him, and he hates
it.
So a misomusist is not a passive ignorer of
culture, but an active opponent of it. Active
opposition to culture has been a
characteristic of totalitarian governments,
summed up by a famous saying: Whenever I
hear the word culture, I release the safetycatch of my Browning!. (Often attributed in a
different form to Hermann Goering, it was
actually written by the German dramatist
Hanns Johst in 1933.)
Presumably Milan Kundera coined the word
in Czech, from which it was carried over into
the English translation. He took it from the
Greek misos, hatred, and mousa, learning (the
word is also the source of the name of the
nine muses of Greek and Roman mythology
who presided over the arts and sciences).

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He cannot claim sole credit, however, for he

was pre-empted by Sir Edward Dering more
than three centuries ago, in his Collection of
Speeches in Matters of Religion of 1642: Our
better cause hath gained by this light: which
doth convince our Miso-musists. That was a
once-off invention that was never taken up
by others. Even after Kunderas reinvention,
it can hardly be called common.
MISWANTING
This word has been lurking in the academic
undergrowth since two researchers, Daniel
Gilbert and Timothy Wilson, used it in an
article, Miswanting: Some Problems in the
Forecasting of Future Affective States, in a
book in 2000. It has suddenly taken on a
higher profile because it was used in an
article by Jon Gertner, entitled The Futile
Pursuit of Happiness, in the New York Times

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on 7 September, and it has subsequently

been taken up by other journalists.
To miswant something means that you
mistakenly believe getting it will make you
happy. Wanting to win the lottery may be
your hearts desire, but as many people who
do win find it brings problems for which they
are unprepared and which often make them
regret winning, to want to win may be a
miswant. Similarly, a new car, or that new
television, or even a new partner, may all
seem to be your ultimate want, but if you
actually get them, the delight often cools
more quickly than you could ever have
imagined, proving that they were really
miswanted.
The real problem with miswanting, the
researchers argue, is that it leads you to want
the wrong things and make poor judgements
about what will really make you happy. As

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they said in their original article: Much

unhappiness ... has less to do with not getting
what we want, and more to do with not
wanting what we like.
It is not the big stuff, hysterical action and
miswanted acquisitions, that changes lives,
but attending to the small details ... and
enjoying everyday pleasures now rather than
looking back at them with a sense of
nostalgia at some point in the future.
Independent, 12 Sep. 2003
Derived from philosophy circles, to
miswant means to erroneously believe that
something will make one happy, or happier
than it actually will.
Observer, 28 Sep. 2003

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It has nothing to do with an episode of the

Sopranos, but is a new word invented by the
mobile telephone firm Vodaphone that
reached many newspaper columns in
November 2004, though whether it will
become an accepted term is open to doubt. It
was used in a press release that also
announced that the firm has launched its 3G

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(third-generation) mobile phone service in

the UK and Europe. A mobisode (from mobile
+ episode) is a specially created minitelevision series suitable for showing on the
two-inch phone screen of these new
handsets. Vodaphone has signed a deal with
Fox in the USA to produce 24 one-minute
spin-off episodes of its drama 24 with a
parallel sub-plot under the title 24:
Conspiracy. Many other providers are also
being signed up to provide video services,
especially sports and news organisations.
Vodafone will begin offering the one-minute
episodes in January in the United Kingdom.
The mobisodes, as theyre being called, will
be introduced later in 2005 in up to 23 more
countries where Vodafone operates, mainly
in Europe, as well as in the United States
through the companys Verizon Wireless joint
venture.

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The Toronto Star, 12 Nov. 2004

Vodafone also plans to introduce a
Mobisodes service next year, in cooperation
with 20th Century Fox, providing short,
made-for-mobile episodes related to
television series like 24. While these will
feature exclusive content, Vodafone
acknowledges that a major goal is to generate
viewers for the TV show.
International Herald Tribune, 11 Nov. 2004

This word has

gained some public attention following its
use in the title of a conference in London on 7
November 2005 organised by the Royal
Society of Arts: Mobile technology and culture
change: how mociology is changing the way
we live.

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The introduction to the conference described

it in some detail. It seems that mociology is
the study of the innovative ways people use
their mobile phones or wireless systems in
daily life. Examples given including buying
concert tickets by phone or having medical
information about your diabetic condition
sent to you the same way.
It has been described as the sociology of the
mobile lifestyle, which seems to be the
genesis of the word (mobile + sociology),
though the coinage is unprepossessing (the
blending suggests that the c is pronounced as
an s). It is said to have been invented by
Ralph Simon of the Mobilium Group of Los
Angeles and London, whose fertile mind has
also created the term mocio-economics,
described as the underlying economics that
drives the fast emergence of mobile
entertainment revenues and economics.

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The same text described mociology as a new

and emerging science, which seems to be a
PR overstatement of a particularly egregious
sort. It is notable that the word has so far
appeared in only one newspaper that I can
trace, though bloggers have reported on it.
It will be interesting to see if it catches on.

The first references to this term I know of

(thanks to Howard Ochman for the
information) were in Scientific American and
the Journal of Biological Chemistry, both in
1989.
The term is slowly becoming more widely
known outside its specialist field. It is one of
many cross-disciplinary techniques being
applied to the study of ancient artefacts, and

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it is sometimes called archaeological

chemistry. As that name implies, researchers
apply a range of sensitive analytical tools to
objects in order to identify substances once
associated with them.
Our knowledge of the early history of wine
has been transformed by it; analysis of
residues on fragments of amphorae found in
Egypt has identified commodities being
traded in the area; work on pots in the tomb
of the fabled King Midas have proved, among
other things, that the Phrygians were
drinking a punch of wine, beer and mead at
his funeral.
The key to linking the differing strands of
evidence may be in a new field of study called
molecular archaeology.
USA Today, Jan. 1998

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Patrick McGovern, a senior scientist at the

University of Pennsylvania, calls his new
science molecular archaeology. He used
techniques from analytic chemistry and
molecular biology to identify the desiccated
leftovers of Midass funeral feast.
Guardian, Jan. 2001

This term describes growing and harvesting

genetically modified crops, with the object of
producing not foodstuffs but
pharmaceuticals. The idea is to use such
crops as biological factories to generate
drugs difficult or expensive to produce in any
other way. Genes from other sources, such as
microorganisms, are spliced into the plants
genetic apparatus, its genome. During normal

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growth these modified plants synthesise

useful compounds, which are then extracted
from the crop. The technique is already being
used to produce vaccines for some animal
diseases, such as mink enteritis virus. Many
others are at the experimental stage, such as
drugs to fight infant diabetes and Crohns
disease. By one of lifes ironies, tobacco
plants are especially suited to this purpose,
so one day they may prove to be more
valuable as a source of pharmaceuticals than
of tobacco. Though the term has been around
for a decade in the specialist literature, it is
slowly becoming more widely known. A
closely related term, pharming, seems more
widely used for genetically modified animals
than plants.
Comparisons and parallels continue to be
drawn between molecular farming and
biotechnology, the latter suffering from more

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bad press and negative perceptions than the

former.
London Free Press, Aug. 1999
Molecular farming has seen vaccines,
mammalian blood constituents, enzymes,
antibodies and low calorie sweeteners
produced in tobacco leaves.
Guardian, Apr. 2000

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Would you eat cockles coated with white

chocolate? Or garlic and coffee creme brule?
Or egg and bacon ice cream with tomato jam?
Or dark chocolate petit fours infused with
pipe tobacco? These are among the oddsounding food combinations that have been
tried by chefs experimenting with a scientific
approach to cooking and food preparation
called molecular gastronomy. Its based on
modern knowledge of the way that the brain
interprets smell and taste and challenges

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traditional perceptions and customs about

what makes a dish worth eating. The term is
best known in the UK, since its closely linked
with chef Heston Blumenthal at his
restaurant The Fat Duck in Berkshire. He
works with specialists such as the physicist
Peter Barham to test various factors in food
preparation, for example, how changes in
technique alter the texture of a food or what
happens when you cook meat at a much
lower temperature than usual. The term, for
which a more appetising alternative could
surely have been found, actually goes back to
the 1980s, having been coined by the French
scientist Herv This. The Fat Duck must be
doing something right, since it has recently
been awarded three Michelin stars, one of
only two restaurants in Britain to have them.
But the Fat Ducks second place also
represents a personal victory for Blumenthal,
37, who is credited with turning cooking into

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a subject of interest as much to physicists as

gastronomes by dint of his trademark
technique, known as molecular
gastronomy.
Independent, 21 Apr. 2004
The late Nicholas Kurti, a physicist in an elite
field called molecular gastronomy, argued
that the best way to cook a perfect threeminute egg is to cook it for one hour at 140F.
Toronto Star, 7 Apr. 2004

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MOLETRONICS
This is an abbreviation for molecular
electronics, the idea that individual elements
of computer circuits could be formed using
single molecules of substances. This would
permit huge increases in the density of
circuits on a chip and allow them to run much
faster and cooler. Actually, the idea and
the term molecular electronics as well as an
older version of the abbreviation,
molectronics go back at least as far as a US
Air Force project in association with
Westinghouse in 1959, before even the
integrated circuit had gone into production.

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That project came to nothing in a couple of

years, because they couldnt work out how to
achieve their goal. This time around,
prospects are more hopeful, as researchers
from Hewlett-Packard and the University of
California, Los Angeles, announced in July
1999 that theyve actually made logic circuits
that use molecular level chemical processes.
These rely on a network of weird organic
molecules called rotaxanes that contain a ring
of atoms threaded on a central molecule, like
a bead on a wire, with blocking elements at
each end to keep it on. Reports have claimed
that we shall soon have computers the size
of grains of sand, which common sense
suggests we should take with a different sort
of grain altogether.
Indeed, the new era of moletronics is
beckoning just as silicon-era technologists
are reaching their own stunning levels of
transistor density.

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New York Times, July 1999

The field of molecular electronics
moletronics is growing fast, and while
researchers are keeping their feet on the
ground for now, the ideas are flowing thick
and fast.
Personal Computer World. Nov. 1999
Several decades ago, I
read a science-fiction
story which predicted
that at some
unspecified future
date all college tuition
would be by a form of
networked television,
with the best teachers becoming the wellpaid equivalent of film stars. Ive long
forgotten the author and title of the story but

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I was reminded of its prescience by coming

across MOOC.
Its an acronym, for Massive Open Online
Course (or Massive Open Online Class), a
course of study indeed taught online using
video. But a MOOC is more than that, as a
recent article explains:
MOOCs are more than good university
lectures available online. The real innovation
comes from integrating academics talking
with interactive coursework, such as
automated tests, quizzes and even games.
Real-life lectures have no pause, rewind (or
fast-forward) buttons; MOOCs let students
learn at their own pace, typically with short,
engaging videos, modelled on the hugely
successful online lecturettes pioneered by
TED, a non-profit organiser of upmarket
mindfests.
The Economist, 22 Dec. 2012.

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In the 1960s the Open University in the UK

was a pioneer of such distance teaching, in
part using BBC radio and television. It has
recently joined with other British universities
to provide course content, lectures and
assignments that follow the MOOC model. US
institutions such as MIT and Harvard are
providing MOOCs, as are several independent
start-ups. They are proving popular, but for
many students a downside is that few
courses lead to a qualification and its
uncertain whether they can be economically
viable in the long term.
These moocs are available free to anyone, but
they do not earn you any credits towards a
degree or diploma. No one has yet figured out
how to make money from them.
Guardian, 30 Apr. 2013.
The term MOOC is taken from online gaming
acronyms such as MMOG (Massively

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Multiplayer Online Game) and MMORPG

(Massively Multiplayer Online Role- Playing
Game). It was coined by George Siemens, a
prominent Canadian educator at the Center
for Distance Education, who with Stephen
Downes created the first MOOC in 2008.

MOUNTAINBOARDING
This may just be the answer to the continual
problem faced by ski resorts what to offer
the customers in the summer; indeed its
predicted to be the Next Big Thing on the
slopes. A mountainboard looks like the

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confused offspring of a skateboard, a

surfboard and a scooter. It has big wheels at
the back, a steerable front wheel, shock
absorbers, and all-important for beginners
brakes. It can be fitted with different kinds
of wheels to suit the local terrain. Its visual
provenance does not deceive: it has to an
extent evolved from all of these, and from the
much longer established grass-skis, through
several intermediate forms such as
outbackboards, grassboards and dirtboards.
Several designs have been produced under
this name by various innovators in recent
years, some with the wheels in-line, others
with them set side-by-side.
Sunday River mountainboarding instructor
Braden Douglass, 16, believes
mountainboarding will catch on at ski
resorts, just like mountain biking did more
than a decade ago.

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AP Online, July 2000

To try mountainboarding, another of the
activities on offer at the weekend, I travelled
to Cheltenham to meet Pete Tatham, a
partner in No Sno, a leading mountainboard
company, and he took me out for a spot of
grass surfing.
Independent on Sunday, July 2000

MUMBLECORE
Though the word can be traced back to 2005,
it has become widely used only in the latter
part of 2007. Its a film genre whose name
reflects the low esteem in which it is held by
critics. In August, the International Herald
Tribune said, Specimens of the genre share a
low-key naturalism, low-fi production values
and a stream of low-volume chatter often

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perceived as ineloquence. Hence the name:

mumblecore.

Hannah Takes The Stairs, directed by

Joe Swanberg and starring Greta
Gerwig, Mark Duplass, Kent Osborne
and Andrew Bujalski.
You might add ultra-low budgets,
independent production, improvised
dialogue and non-professional actors to the
list of features. The genre, the article went on
to say, is more a loose collective or even a
state of mind than an actual aesthetic
movement. However, it has been getting a lot

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of attention recently and has been named a

Hot Genre by Rolling Stone magazine. The
Fort Worth Star-Telegram of Texas reflected
the uncertainty about its enduring value in a
catchline in a story on 4 November about the

Lone Star
International Film Festival: Mumblecore:
The future of cinema or just really annoying
nonsense? Among the mumblecore films
most often mentioned are Funny Ha Ha and
Hannah Takes the Stairs.
The tiny/arty film movement known as
mumblecore has built an entire bemused
worldview out of the perspective of

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overeducated, undermotivated
twentysomething guys who cant commit to a
declarative statement, let alone a career or
girlfriend.
Entertainment Weekly, 18 Oct. 2007
My big complaint about these Mumblecore
movies is that they are not grounded in any
sort of economic reality. Nobody works, and
nobody has trouble making rent while living
their bohemian lifestyle.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 28 Sep. 2007

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/msl dsmf/
Sometimes known as bigorexia, this could be
a new psychiatric disorder. Research in the
US and in Britain among bodybuilders
suggests that some of them exercise
obsessively because they have a false image

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of themselves. No matter how much they

work out they still feel puny, leading them to
hide from other people or wear baggy
clothing to disguise their body shape. Of
those interviewed in a recent study about 10
per cent of male bodybuilders and 84 per
cent of female ones had symptoms of the
disorder. It appears to be an inverted
anorexia, in fact another name for muscle
dysmorphia is reverse anorexia nervosa, and is
a special case of a more general and betterknown condition called body dysmorphic
disorder. In that, individuals believe that
theres something wrong with their body,
perhaps that their nose is too big, ears the
wrong shape, or that their breath smells, and
sometimes become sensitive about their
imagined affliction to the point of shutting
themselves away from other people. The
word dysmorphia on its own usually indicates
a genetic condition in which a part of the

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body has grown out of proportion. The study

of these conditions is dysmorphology and the
adjective is dysmorphic, which is also the
noun for a person with one of the psychiatric
varieties of the disorder.

On 2 November, this word was known only to

a few people, all associated with Montana
State University (MSU). Within two days, it
had turned up in many hundreds of press
reports worldwide, such is the speed of
linguistic evolution in our wired world. The
stimulus was a press release from the
university that announced a discovery by
Gary Strobel, a plant scientist.
He and his team at MSU found a remarkable
fungus living inside the ulmo tree in northern
Patagonia. Unlike any organism previously

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known, the fungus produces a range of

hydrocarbons to fight off competitors; these
are similar to compounds in existing fossil
fuels and he says they could be used in a
diesel engine without modification. Better
still, the fungus feeds on cellulose the main
constituent of the organic waste, such as
sawdust and plant stalks, thats left after
timber and food production so valuable
agricultural land to grow its raw material
wouldnt be needed.
The fungus may be just whats needed to
make biofuels to replace fossil fuels; or the
genes that enable it to produce hydrocarbons
could be transferred to organisms that could
do the job better. Though this discovery has
excited many researchers, its as yet a long
way from being a practical method of making
biofuels.

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The word includes the prefix myco-, an

irregular creation from Greek mukes, a
fungus or mushroom, which is in words such
as mycology, the scientific study of fungi.
Scientists were amazed to find that it was
able to convert plant cellulose directly into
the biofuel, dubbed myco-diesel. Crops
normally have to be converted to sugar and
fermented before they can be turned into
useful fuel.
Press Association, 4 Nov. 2008
Some car manufacturers who shun ethanol
might consider myco-diesel or fuels
produced by other microbes, said a MSU
release.
The Hindu, India, 4 Nov. 2008

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A PR persons dream, this term is bound to

make anybody sit up and take notice. Rest
your pounding pulse, this is all about the
unsexy subject of traffic management. To
disrobe a street, you remove all the
conventional methods of controlling vehicles
and keeping them separate from pedestrians.

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Traffic lights, barriers, signs, curbs, and

pedestrian crossings are all taken out. The
idea behind it is to make the road space less
predictable. Instead of drivers being able to
rely on road markings and charge along on
the assumption that pedestrians are all
corralled safely out of the way, they will have
to continually interact with people, make
decisions about how fast to drive and
generally take more responsibility for their
actions. London is trying the idea in
Exhibition Road, Kensington, in which some
of the capitals biggest museums are sited.
The idea sounds extraordinary, so much so
that the British tabloid newspaper the Sun
wrote in an editorial: Have you ever, in your
whole life, heard of anything more stupid?
Apparently the idea was conceived in
Holland, where everyone is on drugs and
drives slowly anyway. It was indeed
pioneered in the Netherlands, but by the

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soberest of traffic planners, who claim

success in significantly reducing accidents.
The concept of the naked street was
spearheaded by the Netherlands, where
traffic lights and markings have been
stripped from several junctions in recent
years.
Denver Post, 14 Feb. 2005
In the Danish city of Christiansfeld, a busy
intersection known for traffic jams and
accidents was given the naked street
treatment four years ago. Since then, there
have been no fatal accidents.
Australian, 10 Feb. 2005

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/nn()fud/
Whenever the prefix nano- appears, referring
to any manipulation of matter at nearmolecular levels, controversy follows.
Opponents of such techniques hold in
particular that they shouldnt be used in
foodstuffs until we know much more about
their effects on human bodies.
Nanofood refers to the employment of
nanotechnological techniques in any part of
the food chain cultivation, production,
processing or packaging not just in food
itself. Big companies are researching the

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possibilities, some of which sound like

science-fiction smart dust thats inserted
into plants and animals so that farmers can
monitor their health in real time; packaging
that includes smart sensors that can sniff out
gases given off by deteriorating food or
alternatively tell you when it is ripe; a drink
whose flavour can be changed just by
microwaving it; and stabilise nutrients in
food, such as omega-3 fats, iron or vitamins
which degrade quickly in storage by
enclosing them in separate tiny containers.
The only foodstuffs currently available that
have been modified through nanotechnology
are a few nutritional supplements, but this is
expected to change within a year or two.
The word first came to public attention as the
title of a report of in 2004 by a German firm,
the Helmut Kaiser Consultancy. It is in the
news because of another report, published by
Friends of the Earth in March 2008, which

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takes an extremely sceptical view of the

technology and the likelihood of it being
accepted by consumers.
Food packaging using nanotechnology is
more advanced than nanofoods, with
products on the market that incorporate
nanomaterials that scavenge oxygen, fight
bacteria, keep in moisture or sense the state
of the food.
Sydney Morning Herald, 27 Mar. 2008
But while the food industry is hooked on
nanotechs promises, it is also very nervous.
For if British consumers are sceptical about
GM foods, then they are certainly not ready
for nanofood.
Daily Mail, 20 Jan. 2007

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NANOPUBLISHING
This word has been around for nearly two
years, though it has only in recent months
begun to be at all common. Its a
development of the blogging revolution.
Some bloggers have realised that the format
allows them to reach large numbers of people
very quickly and cheaply and that through
a mixture of sponsorship, donations and
targeted links to online marketing sites such
as Amazon it is possible to make money.
The essence of the approach is to provide a
targeted audience with informed news and
comment on some specialist subject, whether
its political gossip or the latest in electronic
gadgets (or even the English language). The
idea behind the name for the technique uses
the prefix nano- in a figurative sense of
something extremely small-scale.

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It was launched by New York-based Brit Nick

Denton who also started the ultra-hip blog
site Gawker.com, a mix of New York party
gossip and news. Dentons approach to online
publishing is part of a trend thats been
dubbed nanopublishing.
Newsday, 16 Feb. 2004
In a final piece of nanopublishing news, the
pair behind Guardian blog award-winning
The Big Smoker have relaunched as the
London outpost of the blog network
Gothamist.
the Guardian, 18 Nov. 2004

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NASSA
noradrenergic and specific serotonergic
antidepressants
This month a novel drug has been launched
in Britain, named mirtazapine (trade name
Remeron in the US and Zispin in Britain). Its
the first of a new class of mood enhancers
which has been named noradrenergic and
specific serotonergic antidepressants,
unsurprisingly abbreviated to NaSSA. In
contrast to the previous generation of antidepressants of which Prozac is the best
known example which act only on
serotonin (hence their generic name of
selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors or
SSRIs), these new drugs act on two
neurotransmitters, noradrenaline and
serotonin, but in the case of serotonin do so

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selectively. It is claimed that not only does

mirtazapine work more quickly and more
effectively, but that it lacks some of the side
effects of earlier anti-depressants, which
include nausea, restlessness, and
disturbances of libido and sleeping patterns;
it also seems to be less dangerous when
taken in excess. As always, though, there is a
down-side: it acts as a mild sedative and
causes some patients to gain weight.

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NDM-1

Press reports in
August 2010 predicted the end of the
antibiotic era if bacteria that generate an
enzyme thats known as NDM-1 (New Delhi
metallo--lactamase-1) spread widely. The
enzyme is able to counter all known
antibiotics. Bacteria containing it are
potentially a more serious threat to public

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health than the most resistant kind currently

known, MRSA (methicillin-resistant
staphylococcus aureus).
As its full name suggests, NDM-1 is linked to
India, first being identified in a Swedish
patient who received medical treatment in
New Delhi in December 2009. It is spreading
to other countries as a result of medical
tourism, in which people travel to the Indian
subcontinent to get less expensive medical
treatment. The gene that generates NDM-1 is
at the moment known to exist in two species
of bacteria, which can respectively cause fatal
pneumonia and urinary tract infections.
However, in common with other bacterial
genes it can transfer to other species, so
potentially widening its impact.
The threat was reported in the journal Lancet
Infectious Diseases on 11 August, which
concluded that NDM-1 is potentially a major

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global health problem and that coordinated international surveillance is

needed. The Indian government has
responded angrily to the claim that it
originated in India and in particular to its
name.

NDM-1-producing bacteria are resistant to

many existing antibiotics including
carbapenems a class of drugs often
reserved for emergency use and last resort
treatment.

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Daily Mail, 12 Aug. 2010.

A team of researchers from a leading private
hospital in Mumbai came to similar
conclusions as the British study, which
warned that foreigners coming to India for
cut-price treatment could pick up NDM-1 and
spread it worldwide.
Vancouver Sun, 13 Aug. 2010.

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Debates in the US Congress have recently brought

this term to wide public attention inside and
outside the US. The questions sound simple: should
the Internet remain equally accessible to everyone,
or should a two-tier system be created that
requires companies who pay more or who use
more of the Nets capacity to pay a greater share of
the cost? And should those who want a faster and
higher quality service be asked to pay more for it?

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The telecommunications companies (the telcos)

argue that firms such as Google, eBay and Amazon,
and online telephone companies like Skype, have
built highly profitable businesses on the Net
without contributing their fair share of the cost of
running it. Providers of bandwidth-hungry
technologies like video-on-demand should pay a
higher fee to recognise the risk that they will clog
the network. The decision by Channel Four, a
British network, to stream many of its broadcasts
online at the same time as they are transmitted
conventionally is an example of what theyre
worried about. Earlier this year AOL and Yahoo!
announced they were introducing a two-tier e-mail
system, in which senders of messages who paid a
fee would receive faster service, bypassing the
spam filters and other checks that slow
transmission.
Opponents argue that a dual-pricing system would
remove the key characteristic of the Net that it
is equally accessible to all comers. They point out

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that this neutrality is the reason why it has grown

so spectacularly. They are afraid that the scheme
would hand power to big businesses at the cost of
the individuals and small groups who are its
current main users. It might Balkanise the Internet
into fiefdoms that would be controlled by
individual telcos and ISPs, a possibility which Tim
Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web,
has described as an Internet dark age.
The earliest example of the term I can find is in the
title of a conference held in Washington in June
2003. A supporter of net neutrality is a net
neutralist.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and
that idea is often borne out by overzealous
regulation, which often has entirely unexpected
side effects. Despite net neutralitys proponents
claims, such regulation might actually mean that
somewhere down the line, all of us will be stuck on

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a dirt road instead of an information

superhighway.
The Motley Fool, 30 Jun. 2006
Net neutralists also fear that telcos will use the
new freedom to block content that interferes with
their own business interests. Telcos could do this
by charging extortionately high rates to
competitors, slowing down their bits so that their
applications do not work well or simply blocking
them outright.
New Scientist, 24 Jun. 2006
Alzheimers disease, with its
attendant confusion and memory
loss, is rapidly replacing the Big C
as the condition people fear most.
Though pharmaceutical
companies are pouring money
into finding new drugs to treat it,

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success is as yet elusive. Some researchers say that

vitamin B12 and regular exercise help to slow the
progress of the disease. Others advocate a use it
or lose it view , arguing that keeping the brain
active into middle and old age helps to stave off
symptoms. Neurobics was coined in imitation
of aerobics (it seems by Dr Lawrence C Katz and
Manning Rubin in their 1999 bookKeep Your Brain
Alive) to cover mental exercises invented to help
do that. Remaining mentally active, its argued,
keeps the links between brain cells alive and busy.
An example might be brushing your teeth with the
other hand, or moving items around so you dont
get in a mental rut, or doing things with your eyes
closed. Such claims are viewed with scepticism by
the medical profession, but everyone agrees that at
least they can do no harm. Unlike so many briefly
fashionable terms that explode into the night sky of
the popular press but soon fade, this one shows
slight signs of continued life.

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Others insist that you cannot separate the minds

software from its hardware and that the true aim
of neurobics ought to be to keep the connections
between brain cells flexible and strong, perhaps
even growing new connections and new brain
cells.
New Scientist, Nov. 2001
He [Lawrence C Katz] and co-author Manning
Rubin developed a series of mental exercises they
say increases the range of mental motion by
activating different parts of the brain. Called
neurobics, they enhance the brains natural
drive to form associations between different types
of information, Katz says.
Washington Post, Feb. 2002

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In essence, this is the study of the way watching

films affects the human mind. The term was
invented in a paper by Uri Hasson in 2008, which
showed that some films exert considerable control
over brain activity and eye movements but that
this depended as one would expect on their
content, editing, and directing style. The paper
suggested that this work, using magnetic
resonance imaging, could lead to a fusion between
film studies and cognitive neuroscience and
suggested the nameneurocinematics for it.
In February 2010, research by Professor James
Cutting and his team at Cornell University was
widely reported. They measured the length of
every shot in 150 high-grossing Hollywood films
released between 1935 and 2005. The more recent
the film, the more likely it is that the pattern of
duration of shots matches the attention span of its
audience. This pattern, known as the 1/f rule

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or pink noise rule, had been deduced in earlier

studies of volunteers working on tasks. It seems
that, through experience, film editors have intuited
the formula.
The term has appeared a number of times online
but only rarely in print. As yet, its a niche
formation and may not survive.
Such results have given rise to the term
neurocinematics, which measures the level of
experiential control that popular media have on
peoples brains.
The National, 18 Jan. 2009.
Given the gargantuan cost of blockbusters like
Avatar, it wouldnt be surprising if Hollywoods
next step is to use brain scanners to get inside the
heads of movie-goers. Its impossible to translate
brain activity into Oscar buzz, though, so the
potential of neurocinematics is unproven.
New Scientist, 20 Feb. 2010.

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Yet another new term in neuro-, suggesting that the

prefix is rapidly becoming a successor to e-, cyberand other
fashionable
affixes of the last
decade. The
earliest example
of this term Ive
traced is in an
article that
appeared a year ago in The Flame, the magazine of
Claremont Graduate University in California. The
proponent of this new field is Paul Zak, Associate
Professor of Economics at that university. He said
in the article, Most economists theorize about how

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human beings behave instead of going out to

observe. In neuroeconomics, our goal is to observe
and measure whats happening in the brain when
people are making decisions. His team uses
magnetic resonance imaging and blood sampling to
observe the way a persons
brain works during the process, for example
during a game of trust with other players. Its
starting to look as though there may be
biochemical underpinnings to our willingness to be
co-operative and generous in our economic
negotiations, perhaps associated with a hormone
called oxytocin. The field is expanding: the
University of Minnesota held the first conference
on neuroeconomics in October last year and plans
to hold a second this year.
One definition of neuroeconomics might be
animal spirits explained.
Minneapolis Star Tribune, 17 Nov. 2002

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Zak is a leading protagonist in the relatively new

field of neuroeconomics, which aims to understand
human social interactions through every level from
synapse to society.
New Scientist, 10 May 2003

sciences of the brain have made vast advances in

the past two decades. A new generation of
scanners has made it possible to see whats
happening inside it while its working. The most
potent of these new technologies is functional
magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI for short, which
takes a series of snapshots of brain activity; its

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capable of showing moment by moment what parts

of the brain are active when a person undertakes
some task, perhaps looking at a picture or listening
to an audio soundtrack. The fMRI technique is a
valuable research tool, but its creating ethical
issues for some neuroscientists, who worry that it
may infringe a persons privacy. It is suggested that
the technique might provide insights into the way
people respond to some product when they are
thinking of buying it, a close relative
of neuroeconomics. At least one US company is
already using the technique to suggest to
companies what people think of their products and
television commercials.
Neuromarketing could be useful in finding out how
a consumer experiences a product. For instance,
does the brain respond first to the crunching sound
of a candy bar, or to its flavor? Neuromarketers are
still exploring exactly what kind of information
they can tease out of test subjects with
questionnaires and fMRI scans.

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Newsweek International, 22 Mar. 2004

Gary Ruskin, of Commercial
Alert, doesnt buy the pitch
that neuromarketing will
help people. I think theyre
spinning faster than a drill
bit, he said. Its plain old
market research taken to a
new and potentially more
damaging level.
Atlanta Journal and
Constitution, 1 Feb. 2004

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NEUROSEXISM

A book by the British psychologist Dr Cordelia

Fine, Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind
Sex Differences, has brought this word to the
review pages and wider public attention.

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This refers to the widespread belief, which she

denies, that the brains of men and women are
wired differently, so that perceived differences
between the capabilities of the sexes are innate
and unalterable. Though male brains are indeed
physically slightly different to female ones, she
argues that all brains are sufficiently plastic in
their ability to learn that most of the traits
commonly associated with the sexes are a result of
cultural conditioning that children absorb
subconsciously. She believes that the results of
recent brain research that show differences
between the sexes has been misunderstood. She
suggests that neurosexism holds back the
education of children because the preconceived
views of teachers and parents about the differing
abilities of boys and girls put obstacles in their
way.
The earliest example of the word I can find is from
an article by Dr Fine in the online
journal Neuroethics in March 2008. It seems

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certain that she coined the word. As almost all

references to it are in the context of discussions of
her work, it is as yet uncertain whether it will
become part of our permanent vocabulary.
What is remarkable, she [Dr Fine] says, is how
similar the two sexes become psychologically
when gender fades into the background. And
opportunity is equal rather than predetermined
culturally. There is nothing at all frightening about
good science. It is only carelessly done science, or
poorly interpreted science, or the neurosexism it
feeds, that creates cause for concern.
Buffalo News, 15 Aug. 2010.
But now a growing number of scientists are
challenging the pseudo-science of neurosexism,
as they call it, and are raising concerns about its
implications.
The Age, Melbourne, 9 Sep. 2010.

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824

This new and emotionally charged scientific field is

trying to find out what effect the workings of the
brain have on religious belief. One of the stimuli for
such investigations is that some people who suffer
from temporal-lobe epilepsy experience religious
revelations or hallucinations during seizures, even
if they are atheists. Work in the field roughly
divides into two types: either stimulating spiritual
experience with drugs, or studying brain activity
during such experiences using imaging techniques
to see which regions of the brain change. Such
events seem to exist outside time and space and
the evidence suggests they are caused by the brain
losing its perception of a boundary between the
physical body and the outside world. It may be that
what causes these spiritual experiences also leads
to other kinds of intangible events, such as reports
of alien visitations, near-death episodes, and outof-body experiences. The word was used as the
title of a book by Laurence O McKinney in 1994;
the earliest example Ive heard of is in the title of

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an article in Zygon: Journal of Religion and

Science in September 1984.
The neurotheologians have done a useful service in
showing how these deep and life-changing
experiences operate in the brain. In doing so, they
have not explained them away; but they do help to
explain the persistence and even the validity of
religion in a secular society.
The Dominion (Wellington, New Zealand), 2 Jun.
2001
To adherents of a controversial, fledgling science
called neurotheology, these moments of serenity
are little more than common blips in brain
chemistry.
UFO Magazine, Jan. 2002

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NEW PURITANS
Were hardly short of names with new on the front.
Theyre intended to suggest that an old idea has
been revitalised, often alas only to the extent of
putting new wine in old bottles. In recent decades
weve had the New Age, the New Romantics, New
Men, the New World Order, and the British New
Lads and New Labour. And in only one sense isNew
Puritans a new tag, since there have been new
puritans for decades, with or without

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capitalisation, for example as the name for a sexual

backlash to AIDS in the USA in the eighties. But
these British New Puritans are newer than any
other new puritans. Its the name for an artistic
movement founded by Nicholas Blincoe and Matt
Thorne, whose founding philosophy appeared in
an anthology last autumn, called with what you
may feel is a touch of hubris All Hail the New
Puritans. The rules were made explicit in a tenpoint manifesto: writers must be dedicated to
narrative, eschew poetic licence, aim at clarity, and
have a moral purpose. In other words or at least
the words of Nicholas Blincoe New
Puritan fiction is fiction in its purest and most
immediate form. The movement has come in for a
fair amount of derision; in the nature of artistic
movements that suddenly burst on the scene, its
hard to be sure how long it will survive.
Like the Dogme film-makers, the New Puritans
seem to be guided by the idea that because

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something is simpler in expression it is also purer

in content.
Independent on Sunday, Sept. 2000
But instant movements tend to be unreliable, and
the New Puritans were accused of being antiliterary and opportunistic.
Guardian, May 2000

A nocebo is something that induces a feeling of illhealth for no very good medical reason, the

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opposite of a placebo. (The latter is the medical

term for a medication or other treatment which is
given to a patient for the psychological benefit it
will bring rather than for any likely therapeutic
effect. The word is also used to describe dummy
drugs given to some patients in clinical trials,
because medical researchers have to take into
account the positive effect on patients of giving
them a medication of any kind, even if it isnt
effective. In Latin placebo means literally I shall be
acceptable or pleasing, from the verb placere, to
please. It came into medical terminology from
liturgical Latin near the end of the eighteenth
century.) Nocebo, on the other hand, is a very
modern word; its recorded only from the 1990s
and until recently you wouldnt have come across
it outside specialist research publications. Its
obviously modelled on placebo, but it comes
instead from nocere, to harm, and so has a literal
meaning of I shall cause harm or be harmful. The
word has come into being because researchers

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have become aware they also have to take into

account factors that might have a negative effect on
treatments. These arent usually medications but
influences such as beliefs, attitudes and cultural
factors.
Research has also shown that the nocebo effect can
reverse the bodys response to true medical
treatment from positive to negative.
Robert S and Michle R Root-Bernstein, Honey,
Mud, Maggots and Other Medical Marvels (1997)
He stresses that while most everyone is familiar
with the placebo effect, few are aware of the
nocebo effect the ability of negative beliefs and
expectations to actually cause harm.
Skeptical Inquirer (Committee for the Scientific
Investigation
of Claims of the Paranormal), Sept. 1997

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This term dates from about 1997, though an

American firm claims to have been promoting the
technique under a different name since the 1980s.
However, it has only started to become at all
widely known in the last couple of years and is
fairly new in the UK. It is from a Finnish method of
training cross-country skiers during the summer
months. The idea is that you use poles to walk with

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an action much like that of skiing. This is said to

increase upper arm movement, exercise the main
muscle groups and burn more calories than
walking by itself. Nordic walking has been taken up
as a way for people to get slim and fit even if
theyre never likely to strap on skis.
The new fitness craze of Nordic walking has given
rise to a host of activity holidays dedicated to the
sport. A cross between high-altitude power
walking and cross-country skiing, Nordic skiers
stride up mountains using a side-to-side rhythm
that burns 20 per cent more calories than normal
walking.
The Observer, 8 Aug. 2004
In the winter, cross-country skiing rules and the
Finns seem to miss it so much in summer that they
invented a new exercise, Nordic walking, which is
walking with ski poles.
The Toronto Star, 1 Apr. 2004

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833

As nu here is the common pop-music respelling

of new, the term pretty much explains itself its a
revitalised form of the heavy metal musical genre
of the seventies and eighties, a style of loud,
vigorous and often harsh-sounding rock music that
was linked to an intense and spectacular
performing style. Metal drifted out of fashion in the
nineties, though it never went away completely.
The nu-metal format is most closely associated
with bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, the
Deftones, Amen and Papa Roach, and the genre is
often linked to the American music producer Ross
Robinson, often called the guru of nu-metal. The

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performing style is still as heavily amplified and

intense as ever; nu-metal gigs were described
recently by Nicholas Barber in the Independent on
Sunday as being costumed, pyrotechnic riots of
blood, sweat and earth-shaking volume, though he
also complained that the lyrics were self-pitying
and peevish.
At the same time, the tremendous popularity of numetal acts like Korn and Limp Bizkit means kids
are getting into heavier music again and thus might
harbour a new interest in some of the longer-lived
bands on the metal circuit.
Toronto Star, Jun. 2000
They call his music nu-metal but it sounded
pretty old to me. Pounding guitars, hammer horror
keyboards and bam bam drums compete with
Mansons creaky old hag-like voice which bears
an uncanny similarity to Mr Punchs wife Judy.
The Mirror, Jan. 2001

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NUTRACEUTICAL/njutrs(j)utkl/
Yet another blend, this
combines nutrition and pharmaceutical to describe
foods containing supplements from natural
sources that are thought to deliver a specific health
benefit.
Other terms employed are functional
food, pharmafood and FoSHU (Food for Specified
Health Use). One nutraceutical that has been in

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836

the news is beta-carotene, used as a dietary

supplement to stave off heart attacks, but whose
efficacy has been challenged by recent studies.
The field is diffuse and difficult to define exactly, as
the term includes many natural remedies known
for centuries, such as valerian, ginseng, and herbal
teas, as well as substances that have been
extracted from natural products, such as Vitamin E,
and natural biological flora, often called probiotics.
The difference now is that they are either
produced in purified or concentrated form by
bioengineering methods, or are enhanced through
genetic methods, as in a range of vegetables now
being put on the market which contain elevated
levels of naturally-occurring substances believed
to ward off cancer. Another characteristic, their
proponents argue, is that such supplements have
proven health value.
Nutraceuticals pose problems for regulatory
authorities who are still working out whether they

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are primarily foodstuffs or whether they should be

controlled by the much stricter guidelines applied
to medicines.
Yakult is one of a new generation of functional
foods or nutraceuticals, so called because they
are said to be something of a cross between good
old fashioned food and pharmaceuticals.
Guardian, Apr. 1996
Functional foods also called nutraceuticals and
pharmafoods are medicines to tickle the taste
buds.
The European, May 1996

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Yet another term in -genomics for us to add to

pharmacogenomics, toxicogenomics,
chemogenomics and even aromagenomics. Our
current obsession with genes is reflected in this
growing list of words that borrow the
word genomics, the study of the human genome, to
create fashionable but often unlovely neologisms.
This term refers to the study of our food and how it
influences our health through interactions with our
personal genetic make-up. It is suggested, in the
hand-waving way of futurist commentators in this
field, that one day many of our ailments might be
treated not with drugs but with special diets.
However, the complexity of the factors influencing
health not merely diet and heredity, but also
economic and social conditions, culture and

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839

behaviour are likely to make it difficult to isolate

the influences of food from all the others.
Though it is often confused with nutritional
genomics, from which the name seems to be
derived, the latter speciality usually refers instead
to the genetic manipulation of plants so that they
generate valuable vitamins and minerals to
improve diet.
Nutrigenomics researchers hope to do away with
such blanket generalizations and instead target
diets to specific people.
Newsweek, Sep. 2002
Nutrigenomics is the study of how different foods
can interact with particular genes to increase the
risk of diseases such as type 2 diabetes, obesity,
heart disease and some cancers.
United Press International, Jan. 2003

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840

A strange-looking word, it comes

from obese plus the ending -genic, something
tending to generate or create. It refers to
conditions that lead people to become
excessively fat a worrying trend in
developed countries, especially among young
people, who are eating too much of the

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wrong things and not taking enough exercise.

The problem is variously put down to social
causes (too many sedentary pursuits
available; fear that the outdoors in cities is
dangerous, leading to less cycling, walking
and running about) or to the results of our
consumer lifestyle (eating pre-prepared
meals that contain excessive sugar and fats).
The term seems to have appeared in the last
decade (the first example I can find is from a
British newspaper in 1996) and is not as yet
mainstream, though it is increasingly turning
up in newspapers and medical journals. Its
opposite is not often called for, but if you
need it, its leptogenic, leading to weight loss,
from Greek leptos, thin, fine or delicate.
A rather splendid word entered the UK
political lexicon in 2012. It was uttered in the
House of Commons during Prime Ministers
Questions on 18 April by the Labour leader of

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the Opposition, Ed Miliband. He called the

coalition government of the Conservatives
and Liberal Democrats
an omnishambles because of several serious
policy and public-relations blunders,
including some unexpected consequences of
the Chancellors budget of the previous
month. The Daily Mail commented
thatomnishambles described the
combination of tragedy and farce that
characterises modern politics and the word
has been gleefully taken up by many
commentators, some even in the
Conservative press.
It began life in The Thick of It, a satirical BBC
TV series about Westminster politics created
by Armando Iannucci. It was said in an
episode in October 2009 by the foul-mouthed
government head of communications
Malcolm Tucker, played by Peter Capaldi,
though he meant by it one particular persons

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incompetence in everything she did (you are

a fucking omnishambles, thats what you
are!).

The word appeared a few times following the

broadcast but Ed Milibands use set it
trending, as they say over on Twitter. Its
instant popularity was indicated through a
number of compounds that were soon
coined,
including omnishambolism andomnishamboli.

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Omnishambles. It is a great word to

encapsulate the governments serial
misjudgments and misadventures,
from granny taxes and petrol panics
to the boomeranging budget and
Theresa Mays lost day. ... Does this
mark a significant turning point or is
it merely a passing blip? It doesnt
look like a blip certainly not a
fleeting one. The government has
been in a state of omnishambolism
since the budget more than a month
ago.
The Observer, 22 Apr. 2012
The term omnishambles had become
part of the political lexicon. While
ministers publicly deny the
similarities between life in Whitehall
and Armando Iannuccis acclaimed
political satire The Thick of It, weary
Downing Street insiders believe the

844

TURN OF PHRASE

845

portrayal of a spin-obsessed
government pouring salt into wounds
caused by shots to their own feet was
all too painfully accurate.
Independent on Sunday, 29 Apr.
2012.

Offshoring is a well-known term for moving a

business activity to another country in order
to take advantage of lower costs or tax breaks
a controversial example is the way that
many companies telephone call centres have
been transferred to the Indian subcontinent. Onshore offshoring is almost a
reverse process, in which skilled but
comparatively low-paid workers are brought

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from overseas to work in the businesss

country of operations. The term has only
recently started to appear, at first in the USA,
but it and the activity has come to
public notice in the UK through the discovery
by the Association of Technology Staffing
Companies (ATSCo) that 21,000 foreign IT
workers, mostly from India, have been given
work permits in the past year alone. This
rather clunky term has had to be created
because jargoneers have already used
up onshoring for a related technique that has
also been been given the name homeshoring.
We must expect some businesses to
explore the option of onshore
offshoring in the UK, regardless of the
potential social and economic impact
this may have long-term after all, it
is the job of the government, not
business, to regulate working
opportunities and environments.

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Datamonitor CommentWire, 24 Nov.

2005
ATSCo said its findings, based on
Home Office figures, are the first
evidence that multinationals
recruiting workers in low-cost
economies and transferring them to
high-cost ones a phenomenon
known as onshore offshoring in the
US may have become widespread
in Britain.
Guardian, 21 Nov. 2005

847

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/p()n ss/
This is a buzzphrase of the computer
software world, one that, if you believe all the
hype, is making Microsoft quake and
promises a new era of ease and contentment.
The concept is that computer software firms
should make their products available in the
normal executable form, but should also
publish the source code, the text files from
which the applications are compiled. This
permits users to inspect the code, perhaps to
find and fix bugs or check its compatibility

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849

with other software, and also to modify it to

meet their specific needs. Theres nothing
new about making source code available
mainframe computer firms have commonly
done so, and there is a similar tradition in the
freeware field. But now more producers of
commercial software are toying with the idea
and free open source software is gaining a
new respectability. The first to gain much
public notice was Netscape, which in 1998
made available the source code of the newest
version of its browser. One major force in
open source software has been the rise in
interest in an alternative to the UNIX
operating system called LINUX, which it is
reported some companies are considering as
an alternative to Windows NT.
IBM is contributing to the momentum of the open
source software movement by freely distributing
original (source) code to a new e-mail program
called Secure Mailer which, like products such as

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Sendmail, Q Mail, and Microsoft Exchange, stores

and forwards e-mail messages with a high degree
of security.
Edupage, Dec. 1998
The open source crusade moved into new territory
when real-time specialist Cygnus promised to support
the open source operating system eCos, claiming the
OS could rival Windows CE in the same way that
Linux threatens NT.
Computing, Jan. 1999

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optogenetics
News of this field, as yet in its early stages of
development the term optogenetics is
first recorded in an article in Nature in April
2008 has begun to emerge from research
laboratories because of its astonishing
results.

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Neuroscientists have inserted genes that

code for light-sensitive brain proteins into
animal subjects. By firing laser light deep into
the animals brains via fibre-optic cables,
they have been able to to turn brain cells on
and off at will, like clicking a light switch. It
has proved possible to stop the electrical
activity of various kinds of neurons, such as
those that control movement or the
establishment of memories. The technique
can also be used as a research tool to monitor
when neurons fire.
There is some hope that one day a method
like this might be used, for example, to
control epilepsy and other neurological
conditions in humans. However, the need for
genetic modification via gene therapy and
insertion of fibre-optics in the brain make the
idea very unattractive at the moment.
An even newer technique, magnetogenetics,
uses a magnetic field rather than light to

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influence the modified neurons, so avoiding

having to implant optical fibres.
The team were able to pinpoint the
phenomenon by working with a
technology called optogenetics,
where nerve cells are rendered
photo-sensitive so their action can be
turned on or off by different
wavelengths of light.
Daily Mail, 10 Mar. 2011.
For their study, Murthy and his
colleagues at Harvard and Cold
Spring Harbor Laboratory used light
instead, applying the infant field of
optogenetics to the question of how
cells in the brain differentiate
between odours.
The Times of India, 18 Oct. 2010.

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OREXIN /rksn/
The name given to a pair of hormones
recently identified in the brains of rats by Dr
Masashi Yanagisawa and his team at the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the
University of Texas. They found that these
substances were generated when blood sugar
levels dropped and that they acted as a
trigger that caused rats to eat.
Whenorexins were injected into rats brains
they became ravenous and ate anything up to
ten times as much food as normal. These
experiments raise the possibility that it may
be possible to control orexin levels by drugs
and so suppress appetite in obese people or
improve appetite in people suffering from
post-operative stress. The name was derived

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by Dr Yanagisawa from the Greek orexis,

appetite. Its not entirely new: it had been
previously applied at the end of the
nineteenth century to a derivative of
quinazolin which was thought for a while to
be useful in increasing appetite.
Of the hormones besides orexin that
are believed to be factors in appetite,
one is leptin, an appetite-suppressing
protein made by fat-filled adipose
cells.
Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb 1998
The highly specific expression
pattern really excites people because
it implies that orexins may not have a
lot of other functions, says
Yanagisawa. So drugs that interfere
with these proteins could have few
side effects.
New Scientist, Mar 1998

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In full, orthorexia nervosa, showing its close

link to the much better-known psychological
condition anorexia nervosa.
Instead of an obsessive desire to lose weight,
those who suffer from orthorexia have an
unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. In
their search for dietary purity, they may
become so restrictive about what they eat
for example, avoiding fatty foods, those
containing preservatives, those with salt or
sugar that eventually they become as
dangerously thin as an anorexic.

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The word, and the identification of the

condition, is attributable to a Colorado
specialist, Dr Steven Bratman, who published
a book on it in 2001, describing the condition
as a fixation on righteous eating. He
coined orthorexia in 1997 on the pattern
of anorexia, from Greek orthos, correct or
right, plus orexis, appetite. A person with
the condition is an orthorexic.
Until a few years ago, doctors usually
included sufferers under the catch-all label
ofEDNOS Eating Disorders Not Otherwise
Specified because numbers were so low. It
has taken time for the condition to be
recognised as a separate eating disorder and
by no means all clinicians are yet convinced it
should be.
Dr. David Hahn, the assistant medical
director at the Renfrew Center, an
eating disorders clinic in
Philadelphia, also thinks that

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orthorexics are anorexics in disguise.

I see many patients that are overly
concerned with the quality of their
food, and thats the way they express
their eating disorder, he said.
The New York Times, 26 Feb.
2009.
There is a fine line between people
who think they are taking care of
themselves by manipulating their diet
and those who have orthorexia.
Observer, 16 Aug. 2009

858

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859

Photographs show vibrating heaps of tiny

brass balls forming themselves into patterns;
fascinating, but hardly the stuff of
fundamental science, one might think. But
some deceptively simple experiments at the
University of Texas at Austin may have
discovered a completely new phenomenon,
which may just be the basic building block of
all patterns everywhere. The experiments are
reminiscent of those school science projects
in which we dusted sand on to a metal plate,
made it vibrate using a bow and observed the
patterns formed, which go by the name of
Chladni figures. The researchers realised that
these figures say more about the vibrations

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in the plate than in the sand and created an

experimental setup using a shallow layer
of those brass balls in a vacuum that
minimised outside effects. When they
vibrated the plate at a critical amplitude, they
found that the balls spontaneously formed a
localised vibrating column which lasted
indefinitely. They named this self-sustaining
state the oscillon, by analogy with its closest
large-scale analogy, the soliton, which is a
localised wave that maintains its integrity as
it moves (bores on rivers are solitons).
Nobody quite knows what to make of
oscillons at the moment: they clearly have
connections with the mathematical theory of
chaos and may give insights into the way
atoms organise and interact.

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OTPOTSS
Finding suitable non-controversial labels for
minority groups is often difficult. Its good
that attempts should be made to find names
that are both accurately descriptive and also
neutral and inoffensive. However, thats often
harder to do than the casual observer might
think, since inventing new terms isnt easy.
The British Department of Trade and
Industry is drafting new anti-discrimination
laws and feels that homosexual is no longer
the way forward in defining sexual
orientation. It is reported this week to have
decided instead to use OTPOTSS, which
stands for orientation towards people of the
same sex. Any abbreviation that saves
having to say that mouthful is probably an
improvement, but not by much. And
somebodys bound to point out pretty soon
that its an anagram of tosspot.

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My own feeling is that its going to have a

niche existence, like the term introduced by
the US Bureau of the Census in the late
1970s: POSSLQ, Person of Opposite Sex
Sharing Living Quarters. William Safire
argued this was discriminatory, and should
be changed to PASSLQ, Person of
Appropriate Sex Sharing Living Quarters.
The DTIs suggestion is actually very similar
to one that has been widely used online:
MOTSS, members of the same sex, and
which has been in the title of a Usenet
newsgroup since 1983.
The British press has been having some
mildly satirical fun with OTPOTSS, as
theGuardian quote below suggests. Philip
Hensher, in his piece in the Independent on
Tuesday, suggested with tongue firmly in
cheek that the DTI should go back to its roots
and use sodomite instead.

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Otpotss? I suppose it could catch

on, given time.
Independent, Nov. 2002
We otpotsses and our otpotss-hag
friends spend much of our time
thinking up our own new and
often rather insulting ways of
describing homosexuals.
Guardian, Nov. 2002

863

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A word, obviously coined as the antonym

of underclass, which sprang into prominence
in the US in 1995 but which has only just
reached Britain, and in which it is unlikely to
become common because of differing social
structures. The overclass, it is argued,
comprises a small homogeneous elite group
of individuals who run American institutions,
who form what Michael Lind, in Harpers
Magazine, called a guild oligarchy, separate
from and superior to the traditional middle
classes. One of the defining characteristics of
members of the overclass is their tendency

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towards isolation, using their resources to

exclude themselves voluntarily from society,
as the antithesis of the underclass, which is
excluded by its poverty.

The name of a country which does not, yet, exist.

Roughly though theres no agreement on this
its the area of Italy from Umbria and Tuscany

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northwards, including Florence, Genoa, Bologna,

Turin, Milan and Venice. It is an area larger than
England and Wales, with some 31 million
inhabitants, the industrial and economic
powerhouse of Italy. A local political party, the
Northern League, led by Umberto Bossi, would like
to see Padania become an independent country
within the European Union. Despite significant
votes being cast for the League in some areas in the
general election in April 1996, support for it was
insufficient for it to be able to press its demands
through parliamentary channels. However, in
September 1996, Mr Bossi unilaterally proclaimed
independence in Venice, his proposed capital,
though he deferred this for one year. The name
derives from an Italian term for the Po
valley,pianura padana. The adjective is Padanian.

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PAINIENT
This and the related
words painism and painience are creations of
Dr Richard Ryder, a British psychologist and
ethicist, a retired professor and former
chairman of the RSPCA. He has a longstanding concern for animal rights he
claims to have coinedspeciesism in the 1970s
to refer to what he called in 1975 the
widespread discrimination that is practised
by man against other species.
He made painient and painience from pain by
analogy with sentient and sentience, so
that painient means being able to feel pain,
while painience is the quality or state of being
painient. Painism is his term for the moral
theory that requires us to reduce the pain of

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others who suffer the most, especially that of

individuals.
All three words have been known since the
middle 1990s, though they remain
rare.Painism gained attention in 2001
through his book Painism: A Modern Morality;
in it he argues that anything that can feel pain
can suffer and so must have rights,
specifically in the case of animals to be
protected from human use and abuse.
He wrote recently in a newspaper article:
Our concern for the pain and distress of
others should be extended to any painient
being regardless of his or her sex, class, race,
religion, nationality or species. Indeed, if
aliens from outer space turn out to be
painient, or if we ever manufacture machines
who are painient, then we must widen the
moral circle to include them.

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PALERMO
SCALE
If you were paying close attention recently,
you may have heard a report flash past that
the Earth was going to be hit by an asteroid
named 2002 NT7 on 1 February 2019. Within
days, this had been put back to possibly
sometime in 2060, or possibly never. The
orbits of newly-discovered asteroids need
time to be worked out in detail, but the press
latched on to early reports without waiting
for more accurate later figures.
For some years, there has been a rating
scheme, the Torino scale, that estimates the
risk of a body like this knocking us back into

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the Stone Age: it runs from 0 (no risk) to 10

(global catastrophe). That isnt helpful for the
great mass of asteroids, for whom the Torino
figure is zero, but for which there may be risk
of impact. So astronomers have just invented
the Palermo scale, a more complex and subtle
measure, which rates the impact risk of a
cosmic body against the average risk of an
impact by a body of the same size over a long
period of time.
Unfortunately, it gives newspapers yet
another incomprehensible number to quote,
especially as it can become negative,
somehow implying a less than zero chance of
impact. Values less than -2 reflect events for
which there are no likely consequences;
values between -2 and 0 indicate situations
that merit careful monitoring. Positive values
suggest that some level of concern is merited.
2002 CU11 has been rated as less
threatening than the general, or

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background, risk of any other impact;

as of last week, it had a value of minus
1.28 on the Palermo scale.
Dallas Morning News, Apr. 2002
That gave 2002 NT7 the highest ever
score on the Palermo scale, a rating
system developed to help
astronomers categorise impact risks.
New Scientist, Aug. 2002

871

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This is a psychological condition in which the brain

falsely creates meaningful patterns, usually
pictures of the human face, out of random patterns.
This ability lies behind many supposedly
miraculous appearances, such as that notorious
face on Mars, the image of Jesus Christ on the wall

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of a church in Ghana last year, or even the Man in

the Moon. It can be auditory instead, which has led
to the paranormal episodes known as electronic
voice phenomena (EVP), in which people claim to
hear messages in the random noise of audio
recordings. The word is from Greek para-, almost,
plus eidolon, the diminutive of eidos, appearance or
form.
As to the image ... it is nothing more than the
human ability called pareidolia to interpret
essentially random patterns as recognizable
images such as seeing the face of the Man in the
Moon.
Skeptical Inquirer; 3 Jan. 2005
The talents of people who believe in the
paranormal dont end there. It seems that they are
also better than non-believers at perceiving
meaningful patterns in apparently random noise.
The classic example of this trait, which is known as
pareidolia, is when people claim to see images of

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the Virgin Mary, say, on the wall of a building or a

tortilla.
New Scientist 28 Jan. 2006

QUBIT /kju:bIt/
This is a key concept in the very new field
of quantum computing. The aim is to produce
a device which is the quantum equivalent of

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the digital computer. The qubit (pronounced

exactly the same was as the Old Testament
measurement, the cubit) is a quantum bit,
the analogue at quantum dimensions of the
ordinary computers 1 or 0, on or off, heads
or tails binary digit or bit. Unlike such digital
representations, a qubit remains in an
indeterminate state until it is observed, like a
tossed coin that is still spinning. It was shown
recently that in theory a quantum computer
could solve certain mathematical problems,
such as factoring large numbers, much faster
than conventional ones, and so could be used,
for example, in codebreaking. It might even
be possible to employ the action at a
distance properties of quantum mechanics
to transport information instantaneously
over great distances without loss. This may
all sound like SF, but the first two-bit
quantum logic gates were actually
demonstrated at the end of 1995. If this field

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takes off, we shall probably see a whole

series of new portmanteau words beginning
in qu. Anyone for quanputer?

RAW FOODISM
This is an extreme form
of vegetarianism, in
which all cooking is
eschewed in favour of
raw ingredients as near
their natural state as
possible. The rationale is that cooking is an

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unnatural process which destroys many vitamins,

minerals and essential food enzymes. Starting as
an minority interest in California, raw foodismis
apparently gaining some support, though its
adherents even now form only a very small
proportion of all vegetarians. About 70 per cent
of the diet of raw foodists is fruit taking that in
a broad sense to include peppers, tomatoes and
cucumbers with the rest made up of raw
vegetables, rice and other grains, and nuts.
Another term for raw foodism is living foodism,
though some apply the latter more strictly to raw
foods whose enzymes are thought to be in a
naturally activated state, as opposed to those,
such as seeds, which are dormant and need
soaking to activate them. Some even subdivide
the practice further into sproutarians (who
mainly eat sprouts and leafy green
plants), fruitarians (who eat fruits exclusively),
and juicearians (who stick to fresh fruit and
vegetable juices). Natural hygienists use fasting
in combination with one or other of these diets to

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cleanse the body. Raw foodists are sometimes

known as rawists.

REALITY FIGHTING

A
fashionable name among its supporters in the USA
for what used to be called bare-knuckle fighting, so
called apparently because such fights closely
resemble anything-goes real street fights the
fighters are not only bare-fisted, but are permitted
to kick, head-butt and choke (though eye-gouging
AA

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879

and biting are prohibited). Matches take place in a

27-foot diameter circular ring separated from
spectators by fencing. Other names for it
are extreme fightingand ultimate fighting.
Whatever it is called, it has been widely
condemned as a brutal and savage activity, New
York state senator Roy Goodman calling it human
cockfighting; it is banned in many US states. It is
reported that interest in Britain is growing, with
sales of videos of US fights being brisk and their
organisers negotiating with cable companies for
pay-per-view rights.
RECESSIONISTA

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880

A new term for our credit-crunched and straitened

times,recessionista is a play on the much older
term fashionista, known from 1993, for a devotee
of the fashion industry or a wearer of high-fashion
clothing.
Michael Gore wrote about recessionista in The
Times on 6 October 2008: Apparently a
recessionista is a fashionista (natch) who is
decisively on trend in these straitened times and
dresses exclusively in black (its grim), vintage (its
all we can afford) and long skirts (going short

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during bad economic times is as frowned on in

hemlines as it is in hedge funds). Another term for
it is recession chic.
Recessionista had previously been sighted in
the San Francisco Chronicle, the Minneapolis Star
Tribune, the Washington Post and the Daily
Mail and first appeared as far back as November
2007 inUS News & World Report. But in that last
report it had the sense of an economist who
considered a recession to be a desirable corrective
for surging house prices and untrammelled
financial speculation.
Terms such as recessionista and fashionista borrow
the -ista suffix for a committed supporter of a
person or organisation.
Welcome to recession chic and its
personification, the recessionista, the new name
for the style maven on a budget.
New York Times, 24 Oct. 2008

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882

You are the new recessionista, a woman who

chooses her Gucci, Prada or Fendi outfits with care,
who doesnt feel guilty any more because she isnt
spending big bucks on mega brands. The
recessionista is for the fashionista on a budget.
Shes chic, uber cool, most definitely not cheap and
yes, her wallet is always happy.
India Today, 15 Sep. 2008

RECREATIONAL GRIEF
The British think tank Civitas published a report
this week under the title Conspicuous Compassion.
Its author, Patrick West, argues that public
outpourings of grief, such as those after the death
of Diana, Princess of Wales, and following a
number of recent child murders, show that society
has not become more caring or altruistic, but more
selfish.

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He asserts that
what seem to be
public signs of
caring such as
wearing coloured
ribbons, signing
Internet
petitions, and
carrying banners
saying Not In My
Name are
part of a culture
of ostentatious
caring which is
about feeling good, not doing good; of projecting
ones ego and thereby showing others what a
deeply caring individual you are, not actually doing
anything that makes a difference.
My reason for describing his thesis is not to
promote discussion of it, but to give the context for
the language with which West girds his polemic. He

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includes many emotive phrases that have been

used in recent years, both in the USA and the UK, to
refer to such public displays: the conspicuous
compassion of his title, plus recreational grief, grieflite, mourning sickness, post-emotional age, passive
victimhood, and the lapel loutism of empathy
ribbons; he talks about the Three Cs of modern life
(compassion, caring and crying in public) and the
way that the traditional one minutes silence has
lengthened and so has undergone compassion
inflation.
Most of these phrases have been independently
reinvented several times, though recreational
grief and grief-lite seem to have been coined by Ian
Jack in Granta magazine in December 1997 in an
article about the events in London in the days after
Princess Dianas death.
What has been termed recreational grief can be
expressed in any part of the country. Shrines,
vigils, soft toys, flowers, ribbons on lapels and

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silences at matches form the etiquette of 21stcentury public mourning. Not since the Victorians
who turned grief into an Olympic sport have
hearts been worn on so many sleeves.
Western Mail, 18 Oct. 2004
Politicians suffer from the genuine delusion that
spending other peoples money on causes which
they hope will get them re-elected is somehow
morally good. It has an echo in the public attitude
so well described earlier this week of ostentatious
mourning as a form of self-indulgent recreational
grief.
Daily Mail, 27 Feb. 2004

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886

There have been several examples recently in the

London theatre of what show business calls crosscasting: men playing female roles or women mens,
the latter being much more common to offset the
much larger proportion of male parts in plays -- we
have had Kathryn Hunter playing King Lear and
Fiona Shaw as Richard II. More fundamentally,
there has been a call by Helen Alexander inEquity
Journal (the magazine of the British actors union)
for plays to be regendered to provide more female
parts, by which she means the rewriting of texts to
convert male parts into female ones.

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887

This is a specific use of a term with broader

application in the field of feminism and gender
studies, in which it refers to a conscious or
unconscious change in the sexual perception of
some cultural or social activity, such as the
implications of women taking on work that is
traditionally considered a male preserve, or shifts
in the sexual interpretation of historical events.
In common with related words
like genderless, genderquake,ungendered,
and transgendered it takes gender to mean sex, a
usage designed to stress the social and cultural
distinctions between the sexes rather than the
biological ones. This annoys traditionalists, for
whom gender can only refer to constructions in
grammar, never to living things. But it is now well
established, and increasingly appears in more
general writing as an euphemism that avoids
confusion with the use of sex to imply sexual
activity.

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888

RELIGITIGATION
It takes a moment to work this out. Religitigation is
a blend of religion and litigation. It is a specifically
British term that refers to legal action that sets the
faith-based views of religious groups against
human-rights and other legislation that prohibits
discrimination. Someone engaged in such a case is
a religitigant.
Recent cases include that of a Christian registrar
who failed to exempt herself from conducting civil
partnerships ceremonies for gay couples. A Jewish
school in London took a case to the supreme court
over its decision to refuse admission to a pupil but
lost on the grounds that its decision amounted to
race discrimination. An airline employee lost her
claim to the right to wear a crucifix at work. A
Muslim child in Wales failed to claim the right to
wear the jilbab at school when school rules
specified the shalwar kameez. Two Christian

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hoteliers lost a discrimination case against a gay

couple whom they refused to allow to occupy a
double-bedded room.
The term has been around for at least the past
couple of years. It is currently restricted to legal
and human-rights circles and it is rare to see it in
the press.
If there is one clear trend in contentious litigation
in recent months, it is the increase in cases that pit
the rights of religious communities against the
prohibition on discrimination. Religitigation, as it
is becoming known, is manifest in increasingly
diverse ways.
The Guardian, 23 Jan. 2011.
They were the victims of what Im tempted to call
the religitigationculture, and their case shows that
religious believers themselves can be the victims of
it just as much as anyone else.
headoflegal.com, 16 Dec. 2009.

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RETAIL
ANTHROPOLOGIST
You cant even go shopping now without being
watched and studied. This term has turned up in
several places recently, but in every case it can be
traced back to the same retail consultancy firm in
New York, Envirosell, so its probably a clever
piece of PR rather than a genuine addition to the
vocabulary. The founder of the firm, the selfstyled retail anthropologist Paco Underhill, calls it
the science of shopping, which just happens to be
the subtitle of his recent book, Why We Buy. The
idea is that observing shoppers as though they
were members of an alien culture develops
insights that can help stores persuade people to
spend more. Simple things can pay dividends
display shirt and tie combinations, because men
hate shopping and want it made as simple as

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possible; dont put expensive merchandise just

inside a shop doorway because this is where
shoppers are adjusting to the ambience of the place
and arent noticing things; place goods so shoppers
have plenty of room to inspect them without being
bumped by passers-by in the aisles; organise
displays to take account of the way that people
unconsciously navigate a store in general
respond to the psychology of the customer.
Paco Underhill, retail anthropologist and
passionate shoppers advocate, gave me a
withering look. Macys, the look said, wasnt doing
its job, and he was mad about it.
New York Times, May 1999
According to retail anthropologists, who base
their findings on hours of videotapes of shoppers,
the percentage of shoppers who buy some items if
they pick up a basket: 75.
Independent on Sunday, July 1999

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Though the abbreviation, for Radio Frequency

Identification, has been known in the specialist
literature since at least 1995, it has risen to much
wider public notice in recent months. RFID refers
to tiny passive tags, as small as a grain of sand.
When triggered by a radio query, they send back a
unique identification number.
Retailers love the idea, especially if manufacture in
bulk brings the price of each tag down to a few
pennies. Theyre just whats needed to run an
automated stock control system and reduce theft.
They will make checkout much easier, too: no more
painstaking swiping of bar codes but just one pass
across a sensor with your purchases. The potential
is very great it has been suggested, for example,
that banknotes should have chips embedded as a
precaution against fraud. The US military are

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already using it to monitor shipments of supplies

and personnel in Iraq.
The controversy arises from potential problems of
privacy if the tags are left active once you leave the
store. Imagine buying an item of clothing that
contains an RFID tag. Every time you wear it, the
tag could be triggered by a sensor, so recording
where you go. A trial in a Tesco store in Cambridge
this year photographed anyone removing a packet
of a frequently stolen brand of Gillette blades from
the shelf, and again when it was presented at the
cash desk. Though it was denied this was a security
measure, customers got the trial stopped.
We shall be hearing much more about such
concerns. For the moment, some retailers, such as
Wal-Mart, have backed away from using the
technology in stores, mainly, they say, because it
isnt yet robust enough for the real world.
Soon after this backlash, the RFID industry started
talking about kill switches that would, if the

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customer wanted, deactivate tags at the checkout

stage. This, along with assurances that all RFIDtagged goods will be marked as such, has become
the main means to quell privacy fears.
Guardian, 19 July 2003
Starting with RFID in the supply chain instead of at
the item level might also give the industry time to
deal with consumers privacy concerns. The
industry needs to assure customers that RFID tags
on items cant be used to collect information on
products outside the store.
InformationWeek, 16 June 2003

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RISKOMETER
It all started out so helpfully. Dr Frank Duckworth
of the Royal Statistical Society (who with Tony
Lewis invented the cricket scoring system now in
use in Britain) knew that people found it extremely
difficult to judge relative risks. So at the RSS annual
conference last week he presented a scale, similar
to the Richter scale for earthquakes, designed to
make the risk of various activities more obvious.
This has been described as a riskometer, a term

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which has been independently invented by several

people down the years in other contexts. Level 0 in
the scale is safety, at least to the extent of surviving
for a year; you reach Level 8 by playing Russian
Roulette with every chamber of the gun filled (a
dead certainty, as you might say). What he didnt
allow for was the inability of people to understand
the logarithmic scale involved (thus making Level
4, for example, seem too close to Level 6); nor did
he expect vilification from so many women, who
pointed out that most of his examples were male
activities such as rock-climbing or deep-sea fishing
(At the risk of seeming sexist, I must say that he did
provide some estimates of household chores, such
as dying while washing up or vacuuming these
have a risk factor of 5.5.)
Perhaps the Society should consider initiating a
debate about the need for appropriate forms of
national riskometer, to provide easily
understood operational guidance to the public

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about everyday risks, and to enable new risks as

they arise to be calibrated against familiar ones.
Professor Adrian Smith, Address of the President to
The Royal Statistical Society, 12 June 1996
The riskometer originated from a call by an ex-RSS
president for a scale to help the public grapple
with bafflingly big figures and Whitehall evasions
like a small but significantly raised risk.
Guardian, July 1999

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The acronym is
short for
Severe Acute
Respiratory
Syndrome.
Much medical
and media
attention has
focused on this mysterious new disease in the
fortnight since Gro Harlem Brundtland, the

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director of the World Health Organisation, took the

unusual step of issuing a warning. However, press
coverage has been muted because of the war with
Iraq. As of 2 April 2003 it had claimed a total of 78
lives, with at least 2300 people infected in 23
different countries. The disease also
named super pneumonia because a life-threatening
pneumonia is a major symptom is causing
concern because of the ease with which it can
spread at close quarters. Its cause is as yet
unknown, although a virus is strongly suspected,
most probably a previously unrecognised member
of the coronavirus family; despite some press
reports, it isnt a form of influenza. Its thought the
illness may have began in Guangdong Province in
China some months ago, and the greatest impact
on the public has been in South-East Asia,
especially in Hong Kong. As a result, another name
that has emerged for it this week is Asian
pneumonia.

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SARS is believed to be the first new, often lifethreatening disease to emerge in decades that can
be spread from one person to another.
Washington Post, Mar. 2003
SARS has been tentatively identified as a virus
similar to those which cause measles, mumps and
canine distemper.
The Scotsman, Mar. 2003

SAVIOUR
SIBLING
A saviour sibling is a child selected as a result of
genetic screening to have some innate
characteristic that will help save the life of an
existing brother or sister.
The term first appeared in the Journal of Medical
Ethics in October 2002 but began to be widely used

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in the press the following year following the birth

of Jamie Whitaker. He had been screened as an
embryo by preimplantation genetic diagnosis to
provide a genetic match for his brother Charlie,
who was suffering from the fatal blood disorder
Diamond-Blackfan anaemia (named after Louis
Diamond and Kenneth Blackfan of Harvard
University, who described the disorder in 1938). It
was hoped that stem cells from Jamies umbilical
cord would cure the condition. Jamie was found to
be a perfect match and the treatment was
successful.
The case raised deep ethical issues about whether
it was ever right to create one life in order to save
another. It also contributed to concerns over the
creation of what are pejoratively called designer
babies, though the latter is a broad term for
children created to any sort of parental
specification; saviour siblings are specifically
created to help an existing child. Concerns have
also been voiced about the potential adverse

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psychological effects on a child born not for itself

but to save another.

The
UK regulatory body, the Human Fertilisation and
Embryology Authority (HFEA), refused permission
for the Jamie Whitaker screening; the parents had
to travel to Chicago to get it done. Part of the
reason for the refusal was that there was a risk
that Jamie could also be born with DiamondBlackfan anaemia, a condition for which there is no
pre-birth genetic test. Following legal action in
2003, the HFEA did allow screening for another

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child, Zain Hashmi, who has beta thalassaemia, but

by 2007 no suitable embryo had been conceived.
The HFEA changed its rules in 2004. The
term saviour sibling came into the news again in
2005 in connection with Zain Hashmi, whose
situation was taken to the House of Lords as a test
case. The law lords ruled that it is lawful to use
modern reproductive techniques to create a
saviour sibling.
In 2007, a committee of both houses of the UK
Parliament was considering a draft bill on human
tissue and embryology regulation. In July, it
recommended that screening should be permitted
to provide a sibling match for children suffering
from serious conditions as well as life-threatening
ones.
Taranissi was the doctor who lobbied the HFEA
hardest for permission to help couples conceive a
saviour sibling a baby genetically matched to

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provide life-saving cord blood that could be

transplanted into a sick brother or sister.
Guardian, 30 Jun. 2007
Any move to make it easier to create a saviour
sibling will anger campaigners who argue that
genetic screening of embryos for useful
attributes turns children into commodities.
Daily Mail, 1 Aug. 2007
Elections are often good
sources of coinages. This is
one peculiar to the current
British election, which is
being used by the Labour
Party to emphasise its
family-friendly policies on
child benefit, child tax

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credits, and investments in childcare. Its a linear

descendent of Labour stereotypes from the 1997
and 2001 elections Worcester woman (a
married, middle-aged, lower-middle-class woman

from a provincial town, seen as a crucial swing

voter) and Mondeo man (a 30-something middleincome homeowner, named after his unexciting
car, the Ford Mondeo). All these terms are on the
same model as American coinages like soccer mom.
Another from this election is Do-it-all woman (one
in her thirties or forties who juggles commitments

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at work and at home, probably with both children

and elderly relatives to look after, an inversion of
the Have It All woman of 1980s advertising).
Ross Kemp has been drafted in by the Labour party
to appeal to the one million school gate mums
who are currently floating voters and who could
swing the election result one way or the other.
News and Star, 24 Apr. 2005
Tony Blair and his culture secretary, Tessa Jowell,
yesterday tried to woo school gate mums by
offering their children more sport, healthier
lunches, and a purge on junk food adverts on TV.
The prime minister also pledged a nurse for every
secondary school.
Guardian, 20 Apr. 2005

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/skrined/
You must have met one of these; you may even
have one or two sprawled about the
house. Screenagers are techno-savvy young people,
reared on television and computers. The term was
coined in 1997 by Douglas Rushkoff in his
book Playing the Future. He argues that young
people who have used computers and other
microchipped devices since infancy will have
effortless advantages over their elders in
processing information and coping with change
when they reach adulthood. Their short attention

TURN OF PHRASE

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spans, now disparaged by educators and parents,

may be an advantage in coping with the huge mass
of disparate bits of information that will bombard
the wired person of the 21st century. Some critics
point out that these arguments are not new, that
people have long argued that we should learn from
our children, and have savaged the books thesis as
the eternal generation gap dressed up in digital
clothes. But the renowned journalistic ability to
spot a good catchword means that the term is
likely to have a good innings.

Theres a famous quip attributed to Mark Twain;

he advised readers to buy land because they
werent making it any more. Since two-thirds of
our planet is ocean, theres still a lot of real estate

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out there, though admittedly rather damp and

often inclement.
The idea behind seasteading is to establish
miniature independent countries out at sea,
perhaps initially on refitted oil rigs or cruise liners.
The word is clearly a play on homesteading. Its far
from new: it first appeared in the Stratton Report,
a US study of 1969 that developed a plan for
innovative use of the sea, as reported here:
One proposal of Strattons group attempts to
revive the spirit of homesteading. To encourage
aquaculture, recreation projects and other uses of
the sea, the commission recommended the leasing
of submerged lands on easy terms to small
investors. It proposes to call the arrangement
seasteading.
Time, 24 Jan. 1969.
The idea was taken up by individuals who were
more interested in the potential for creating

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communities independent of existing national

governments and what were seen as their onerous
interference with personal liberty than in
productive uses of the seas. Several tries at extranational seaborne institutions followed, including
various pirate radio stations and Sealand, based on
a World War Two sea fort in the Thames estuary.
This century, a key focus for the movement has
been the Seasteading Institute, founded in 2008 in
California by Patri Friedman, which has gained
from the support and investment of Peter Thiel,
founder of PayPal. It was in the news in August as
the result of a widely-quoted feature in Details
magazine. The vocabulary has extended:
a seasteading community is called aseastead and its
promoters and inhabitants are seasteaders.
The ultimate goal, [explains] Patri Friedman,
grandson of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton
Friedman, a former Google engineer and the man
behind a concept he calls seasteading, is to open

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a frontier for experimenting with new ideas for

government, to build a country where there is no
welfare, little gun control, no minimum wage and
looser building codes.
The Globe and Mail, 19 Aug. 2011.
Friedman called on his fellow libertarians to give
up on the whole idea of the democratic nationstate and join his movement in favor of
seasteading, or the creation of new, microscopic
sovereign states on repurposed oil derricks, where
people who think that Atlas Shrugged is really
cool can be in the majority for a change.
Salon, 30 Aug. 2011. Atlas Shrugged is a dystopian
novel by Ayn Rand, published in 1957.

SELF-QUANTIFYING
The wired world of electronics and the net is
beginning to affect us in ways that would have

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been regarded as SF only a few years ago. A rapidly

developing area is variously called selfquantifying, self-tracking, body-hacking or lifelogging.
The idea behind it is to record data from your
everyday activities and use it to improve your life
by changing your behaviour. Athletes have long
been familiar with tracking variables such as the
foods they eat, how much they sleep, the content of
training sessions and other matters to help them
achieve peak fitness. The difference today is that
the widespread availability of smartphones with
features such as GPS and accelerometers plus a big
variety of apps means that everybody can join in.
People are monitoring their sleep rhythms to learn
what combination of food and exercise gives them
a really good nights sleep. Others are continually
checking life signs to control medical conditions,
including asthma and Parkinsons disease. Some
are going further, sharing their data with groups of

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users to provide mutual support; these databases

are becoming useful for researchers who are
looking to identify behavioural factors that affect
peoples health.
Self-quantifying is being taken seriously by startups, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, which are
launching new devices and software aimed at selftrackers. It may even provide a glimpse of the
future of health care, in which a greater emphasis
is placed on monitoring, using a variety of gizmos,
to prevent disease, prolong lives and reduce
medical costs.
The Economist, 3 Mar. 2012.
With life-loggers and quantified-selfers now
tracking all aspects of their own lives online, Little
expects that freely available data of potential use to
healthcare will become increasingly available.
New Scientist, 7 Jul. 2012.

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This term describes a specialised computer which

translates incoming digital signals into a form
suitable for viewing on a standard television set.
The source of the signals could be a digital satellite
or terrestrial broadcast, a cable television channel
or a video-on-demand programme sent down a
telephone line. Other projected uses for the set-top
box include control of interactive viewing, for
example with a home-shopping channel or WebTV;
it may also decrypt signals on subscription or payper-view channels. The term is an obvious
compound, helped towards acceptance by its form
and rhythm, even though, as one commentator
remarked, it is normally found under the set rather
than on top of it. The set-top box is posing a
particular problem in Britain, where Rupert
Murdochs BSkyB will start digital broadcasting
from satellite shortly before the terrestrial

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channels introduce their own digital service using

a different encoding system. This would require
viewers to buy two boxes, something that
everyone in the business agrees is unlikely. So the
first to go live may scoop the pool unless some
muscular regulator forces everyone to use the
same system. SHOCK AND AWE
This looks set to be the Second Gulf Wars
signature phrase, much as mother of all ... was of
the first. Its all over the press reportage of the
conflict, it being the Pentagons term for the
process of instilling fear and doubt in the minds of
Iraqis.
The phrase first appeared publicly in the book of
the same title by Harlan Ullman and James Wade in
1996, which came out of a report by the Rapid
Dominance Study Group, an informal association of
mainly ex-military men. The concept they put
forward was, as Harlan Ullman explains it, one that
involved inflicting minimum casualties and doing

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minimum damage using minimum force. Shock

and Awe is not about destruction but about power.
By demonstrating such might that an opponent is
stunned into surrender, and by concentrating on
matters that reduced the ability to resist, it
combines military force with psychological
warfare. Their book argued that The ability to
shock and awe rests ultimately in the ability to
frighten, scare, intimidate and disarm.
Mr Ullman is reported as saying that the way the
Pentagon has used it has not been helpful
because it has put too much emphasis on a
Doomsday approach, though this could itself, of
course, be just another application of Shock and
Awe.
It is all part of the administrations basic approach
toward foreign policy, which is best described by
the phrase used for its war plan shock and
awe. The notion is that the United States needs to
intimidate countries with its power and

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assertiveness, always threatening, always

denouncing, never showing weakness.
Newsweek, Mar. 2003
Washingtons assessment that a shock and awe
bombing campaign would crumble the Iraqi
regimes morale, or even kill its leaders in the first
round, has not so far proved correct.
Toronto Star, Mar. 2003

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SHOPDROPPING
This word featured in an article by Ian Urbina in
the New York Times on 24 December 2007. Its a
curious process that the writer succinctly
described as reverse shoplifting.

Shopdropped cans

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Its origins lie in a US west-coast guerrilla-art

movement that wants to take over part of the
public spaces of stores for artistic and political
purposes. One aim is to subvert commercialism as
a form of culture jamming. As one example, an
artist might replace a product label with another
that features a political or consumerist message.
To judge by the New York Times article, the term
has since spread beyond its artistic origins to refer
to any unauthorised placing of materials in stores.
Some is still political or consumer activism, but the
technique is now used, among others, for religious
proselytising, advertising and promotion.
Independent bands, for instance, put copies of their
albums in stores to promote them.
Early appearances of the term were linked to the
California artist Packard Jennings, one of which
was as the title of an exhibition in San Francisco in
March 2005 that included some of Jennings work.
Ryan Watkins-Hughes sent me a copy of a flyer he

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distributed at the New York gallery Participant Inc

in 2004, which is probably the earliest public
appearance of the word.
Another term, which specifically refers to putting
copies of CDs in record shops, is droplifting, which
was coined in 2000 by Richard Holland of
Turntable Trainwreck and The Institute for Sonic
Ponderance.
Similar to the way street art stakes a claim to
public space for self expression, my shopdropping
project subverts commercial space for artistic use
in an attempt to disrupt the mundane commercial
process with a purely artistic moment.
Ryan Watkins-Hughes, on shopdropping.net, 26
Dec. 2007
At Macs Backs Paperbacks, a used bookstore in
Cleveland Heights, Ohio, employees are dealing
with the influx of shopdropped works by local

TURN OF PHRASE

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poets and playwrights by putting a price tag on

them and leaving them on the shelves.
New York Times, 24 Dec. 2007

This belongs with other generators of excessive

adrenaline (I speak as a sedentary older person
fond of a quiet life and intact body) such
as zorbing, bungee-jumping, street-luging, and

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base-jumping. Its a cross between skateboarding

and sky-diving in which you jump out of an aircraft
with a board strapped to your feet. You use the
board during free fall to execute acrobatics by
working against the slipstream, so you really are
surfing, but on air rather than water. Some of these
acrobatics look spectacular, but they can be
extremely dangerous if theyre not done just right,
because you can get into a spin thats impossible to
recover from. This is regarded as just about the
most dangerous but also the most exhilarating
of all the extreme sports, and requires a lot of
training. At one time known as skyboarding, the
sport has been around for about a decade, but it
has only become more widely known in the past
five years. Those taking part are often called skysurfers.
In my sky surfing, I have centrifugal force, so it
gives me much more a sense of speed. Thats pretty
cool.

TURN OF PHRASE

923

Dallas Morning News, Mar. 1998

Skysurfers compete in pairs with one member of
the duo filming the other as he executes a series of
incredible aerial manoeuvres.
Independent on Sunday, Dec. 1998
Back in 1989, slow food was created
in Italy as a reaction to the
increasing globalisation and
standardisation of food, especially
fast food (hence its name). Its aim
was to preserve, encourage and
promote local culinary specialities.
That idea has since spread widely. Now we are
seeing a cousin beginning to make headlines.
Slow travellers eschew plane travel and especially
short breaks in distant places. They prefer to travel
more gently, by train, bus, cargo ship, even bicycle.
They want to luxuriate in the experience of a

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stress-free journey, not rush to a destination. That

such slow travel is kinder on the environment
because of its lower carbon footprint is a bonus.
For most travellers,
the thought of trying
to get to some longhaul destination by
train or ship is
daunting. It takes
too long or its
difficult to arrange
and more expensive
than by plane. A
recent news story
about a woman from North Wales who got to a
friends wedding in Brisbane by train, bus and boat
via Moscow, Beijing, Hanoi, Singapore and Darwin,
taking two months, is either an awful warning or
an inspiration. Most slow travellers stick to
European destinations where the good rail system
makes access easy.

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Slow Travel is also gaining traction in other

countries. The global affliction of the hurry virus
has afflicted every corner of the planet, says Carl
Honor, the London-based author of In Praise of
Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed.
Time Magazine, 25 Sep. 2006
The West family obligingly took the train to
Tuscany rather than travelling by air, to test out
the delights of slow travel. Two days and three
hours later, they finally arrived, after one missed
train, broken air-conditioning in the sleeper
compartment and a couple of sightseeing stop-offs.
The Independent, 25 Jan. 2007

SMART GUN /smt n/

We have had several terms in smart appear in
recent years smart card, smart house, smart
phone all indicating that a device has been

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augmented by adding in a microchip to create a

system capable of making decisions. The term is

little more than marketing-speak, because the

intelligence thats exhibited is pretty basic. This
example refers to a handgun which can only be
fired by its owner, something which several US
States are considering making a requirement for all
new weapons sold. Some of the techniques that
have been proposed rely on biometric measures
such as detecting the owners fingerprints or hand
size. The one which is nearest reaching market

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requires the owner to wear a wrist strap

containing a low-powered radio transmitter that
broadcasts a unique identifying code. The hope
among weapons manufacturers is thatsmart
guns will reverse the decline in gun sales in recent
years, and make their possession more acceptable
to critics of the gun lobby.
Fulton Arms, Houston, says it will have a smart gun
on the market in a matter of weeks that unlocks by
reading a magnetic code, similar to the magnetic
strip found on the back of a credit card.
Philadelphia Inquirer, June 1998
In political circles, the prospect of a smart gun is
quickly turning the gun policy debate on its head.
Gun-control advocates find themselves supporting
a weapon that promises to make gun owners of
millions more Americans.
Los Angeles Times, Oct 1998

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In

the past two decades, manufacturers have

delivered us laptops, notebooks, mini-notebooks,
subnotebooks and netbooks in successive attempts
to achieve lightweight computing on the
move.Smartbook may be the jazzy new term for
2010.
They are small portable computers that look like
netbooks but have different processors, which
means that they wont be able to run Windows.
Instead they will operate using one of the many
varieties of Linux. They are being touted as giving
better battery life than netbooks (though with 11
hours life currently being advertised for one type
of netbook, perhaps that isnt so important an
issue). So far as their functions are concerned, they
fit somewhere between netbooks and
smartphones.

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One obstacle to the term becoming a generic

description is that Smartbook is a trademark of a
German company, Smartbook AG, which is suing
the US company Qualcomm, one of the promoters
of the new term, in a German district court for
infringement.
In a quest to promote a new type of mobile
computing device called the smartbook, Qualcomm
unveiled a new Lenovo gadget Thursday. The
wireless technology company is betting that
consumers will gravitate to smartbooks, which are
designed to combine the most appealing features
of smart phones and laptops.
Forbes, 12 Nov. 2009.
Id shed no tears if the chip companies and others
behind the new gadgets were forced to find a new
name for their platform. Unless you want to argue
that smartbooks are, indeed, the smartest
computing device to date, the term isnt

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descriptive. Unlike desktop or notebook its just

marketing-speak.
PC World, 25 Nov. 2009.

An article in the
journal Chronobiology International suggests that
many of us are living as though permanently in the
wrong time zone, because our body clocks are out
of step with the routines of daily life. Though the
bodys natural internal rhythm what
researchers call our chronotype is largely

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genetically determined, its also reset by daylight.

Office workers, who spend long hours staring at
computer screens in artificial light, have body
clocks that tend to run free, uncorrected by reality.
That could help to explain why so many of us have
trouble getting up in the morning. A study of more
than 500 volunteers by Prof Till Roenneberg of
Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich has
suggested what may be an even more serious
consequence of this social jet lag, that the more out
of step your natural cycle is with reality, the more
likely you are to become a smoker.
Prof Roenneberg said the problem was revealed at
the weekends, when people reverted to more
natural sleep patterns. Those worst affected by
social jet-lag slept for about half their time off,
simply to recover, he said.
The Scotsman, 30 Mar. 2006
Only around 10 per cent of people living within an
hour of their natural body clock were smokers, but

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this rose linearly to around 70 per cent of people

with 7 hours social jet lag or more, as measured by
the difference between the mid-point of their sleep
time on work days and free days.
New Scientist, 1 Apr. 2006

The term has been around for more than a decade,

though not always with the meaning that is now
evolving (it seems to have first been used in the
early 1990s as the name of a software company).
In the last year or so it has become a buzzword; the
topic was aired at the OReilly Emerging

TURN OF PHRASE

933

Technology Conference in Santa Clara at the end of

April.
The idea is new enough that people are groping for
a definition. Some use it as a term for any
computer software that supports group
communications across networks. In that sense, it
encompasses chat rooms, mailing lists, online
gaming communities, Usenet newsgroups, MOOs,
weblogs (blogs), and more. Others would like to
limit it to newer software in which the emphasis is
on the community, not on the technology that
makes it possible, and which is adaptable to the
ways in which people want to interact rather than
imposing a structure on them.
Proponents see possibilities in education, health,
politics, and other areas. Some newspapers and
media groups, such as the BBC, are keen to see the
traditional one-way process of journalism become
a dialogue and want to use the software to build
communities. Its as yet unclear what these

TURN OF PHRASE

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systems will look like in practice some critics

worry theres too much talk and not enough action
but the BBC has plans to roll out a package in
October 2003.
The artist-engineer, tinkering with alternative
human-machine interfaces, social software, digital
aesthetics and more has effectively been operating
in a self-imposed vacuum.
Afterimage, Sep.-Oct. 2002
In trial since early November, the service allows
users to create a profile mapped to their postcode,
and enter into discussions with people close to
their location. Its this element of location which
has lifted UpMyStreet Conversations out of the old
bulletin-board arena into the trendy new area of
social software.
Guardian, 9 Jan. 2003

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SOLAR SAIL
Like so many ideas
concerning space travel, this one has been around
for decades, mostly in science-fiction stories,
though it has in recent years been considered
seriously as new materials become available. In
2010 the Japanese space probe IKAROS to Venus
was the first spacecraft to employ a solar sail.
The idea is that a spacecraft would unfurl a huge
but incredibly thinsolar sail, perhaps a kilometre in
diameter. The pressure of sunlight on the sail
radiation pressure would be tiny, but it would
be there. A craft massing several tonnes could
accelerate to more than a kilometre per second
within days, and then go on accelerating so long as
it remained relatively close to the sun. It is

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suggested that an initial shove could be given by

giant ground-based lasers (as described in Larry
Nivens novel The Mote in Gods Eye). It would even
be possible to tack the craft by angling the sail. A
combination of lasers and a solar sail could make it
possible to send a craft anywhere within the Solar
System.
The name was popularised by Arthur C Clarke, in
his short storySunjammer of 1964 (reprinted as
the title story of The Wind from the Sun in 1972),
though the concept in science fiction goes back at
least as far as Cordwainer Smiths The Lady who
Sailed the Soul of 1960. In factual speculation it is
even older: the Russian aeronautics pioneer
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and his colleague Fridrickh
Tsander wrote in 1924 of using tremendous
mirrors of very thin sheets and using the
pressure of sunlight to attain cosmic velocities.
The term itself seems to have been coined in the
late 1950s by the American engineer Richard
Garwin.

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Ed Gabris, a senior engineer at NASA, wrote: Solar

sailing is more than a science fiction fantasy. NASA
used solar sailing to increase the experiment time
for the Mercury Mariner spaceprobe in 1974-75.
The sail was the spacecrafts solar panels. And by
controlling the attitude of the spacecraft and the
angle of the solar panels to the sun, the operations
team was able to cause the spacecraft to visit
Mercury several times more than would have been
possible with the on-board liquid propulsion
system.

SOLUTIONS JOURNALISM
/sl(j)unz dnlz()m/
Journalists
instinctively go for
stories that have
conflict and drama as
well as
newsworthiness.

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Almost inevitably that means reports that feature

bad news rather than good, good news usually
being deemed worthy or bland. Now a small trend
seems to be developing in the US to use the same
principles of tough-minded, appraising journalism
to cover news that is broadly positive, without
falling into the trap of generating saccharine
stories, puff pieces or articles with no strong point.
The journalist Susan Benesch has written about
new newspaper sections and even new journals
that take such an approach, which has been
dubbed solutions journalism. Its writing which she
says differs from other good journalism in one
simple way: instead of pointing out whats wrong
in the hope that someone will fix it, solutions
journalism points out whats right, hoping that
someone can imitate it. Many experienced
journalists are sceptical, because attempts at
writing in this way are seen in the profession as
boosterism or cheerleading.

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Solutions journalism tries to document the most

successful points of light so that other people can
kindle them elsewhere around the country or
around the world, or at the least, so that readers
will feel inspired and comforted by evidence that
solutions exist.
Civnet, Oct-Dec 1997
A solutions story about government is rare, raising
the criticism that solutions journalism implies all
problems can be solved by hard-working
neighbors.
Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 1998

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If there was ever a phrase

that burst upon the world in a moment, this is it. I
can find no reference to it before the end of March
2001, but by the middle of May there were
hundreds of news reports on file that included it.
Its the name that Boeing have given to their new
small subsonic passenger plane, of a radically
different design to previous models, which is
expected to fly at just under the speed of sound
and at higher altitudes than current airliners. The
firm outlined its plans for the new plane after
admitting it had given up attempts to create a
wide-bodied version of its 747, with 520 seats, in
competition with the Airbus A380. Interestingly,
the name is given in lower case in internal Boeing
references, which suggests that it will probably
only be temporary, perhaps replaced by something
really exciting, like Boeing 797, even if it ever gets

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built, which many industry watchers are sceptical

about.
By flying much faster, just below the sound barrier,
and at higher altitudes than todays planes do,
Mulally said the Sonic Cruiser would save an hour
and a half on a North Atlantic route and two and a
half hours across the Pacific.
Forbes Magazine, May 2001
Virgin Atlantic today became the first airline to
sign up publicly for Boeings Sonic Cruiser despite
the proposed new aircraft being still firmly on the
drawing board.
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, May 2001

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SONOFUSION
Cold fusion is the general name given to processes
that fuse atomic nuclei at or near room
temperature. In theory these would provide useful
energy without the complex apparatus required to
emulate the nuclear fusion that powers the stars.
The latter needs temperatures approaching 100
million degrees.
However, if you mention cold fusion to most
scientists, they tend to back off. The subject has
almost been relegated to pseudoscience since the
controversy concerning the experiments by
Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman some 15 years
ago. But recent events suggest the idea is gaining
respectability once again. The US Department of
Energy is to review the evidence from more recent
research which claims to provide a theoretical
basis for the idea. Some types of cold fusion are

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certainly known to be possible, such as the one

formally called muon-catalysed cold fusion.
The situation is now complicated by a report by
Rusi P Taleyarkhan of Purdue University in a
journal of the American Physical Society, which is
causing controversy among specialists. For several
years, Dr Taleyarkhan has been working on
experiments that combine bursts of high-frequency
sound waves (ultrasound) with pulses of neutrons
in a process that he describes
as sonofusion or tabletop fusion. He claims to have
detected fusion reactions taking place, though his
results are disputed by other experimenters.
Nuclear engineer Rusi P. Taleyarkhan, of Purdue
University, said his sonofusion device cost less
than $1,000 and in the short-term could probably
be engineered as a cheap source of neutron
emissions for use in portable detection devices.
Washington Post, 8 Mar. 2004

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The bigger issue is the knock-on effect

Taleyarkhans ... paper could have for others in the
field. If funding agencies start to think sonofusion
is nonsense or simply being done badly, it could
become as big a fiasco as cold fusion.
Guardian, 11 Mar. 2004

SOUS-SHERPA
The G8 summit in Gleneagles in July 2005 resulted
in this term of the diplomatic trade popping briefly
into wider public view. A splendid amalgam of
French and Tibetan, it literally means under
Sherpa, in reference to the mountain guides and
porters of the Himalayas.
It refers to the permanent officials and experts of
nations who prepare to hold a summit meeting,
who work behind the scenes to give advice and
prepare position papers. The most senior officials,
one for each national delegation, are the sherpas,

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who hold regular meetings in the period before a

summit meeting. Each is supported by a number
of sous-sherpas and by even more lowly assistants
called sous-sous-sherpas.
A report in an American newspaper in 1997
remarked that: Like the guides who carry packs of
supplies up the Himalayas, the sherpas for each
country do the heavy lifting all year to prepare the
economic and political communiques and
statements for the meetings. Subscriber Thomas P
Thornton tells me that sherpa was in use in
Washington in the time of Jimmy Carter in the late
1970s (the Oxford English Dictionary has its first
example of sherpa from 1980). Others suggest it
may be even older. However, sous-sherpaseems to
be a more recent development.
All the early examples are from either the USA or
Canada, which made me wonder whether soussherpa was invented in French, or was an English
joke on the model of sous-chef. But Le Petit

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Robertknows the diplomatic sense

of sherpa (Personne qui participe la prparation
dun sommet politique ou qui y reprsente un chef
dtat), so it may indeed have originally been a
French term.
If Edson doesnt have
that information, he
will ask for help from
sous sherpas, or
assistant sherpas,
anxiously waiting
outside the official
meeting room. The
sous sherpas will
then hurtle the
presidents request
to Washington,
where staff members
will be at the ready
to return information
equally fast. The other G-8 sherpas will rely on

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their assistants and capitals for such backup

support as well.
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 1 June 2004
The meeting will be led by eight sherpas, the
chief officials from the G8 leading industrialised
countries charged with preparing the communique
for world leaders to sign at the summit in
Gleneagles next Friday. Sitting behind them will be
their assistants, known in this corner of officialdom
as sous-sherpas.
The Guardian, 30 June 2005

Every new technology brings forth new ways to

subvert it. This is the most recent example on the
World Wide Web. Those who create commercial
Web sites obviously want as many visits (hits) as

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possible. Some have attempted to increase their hit

rate by fooling the search engines which hunt out
and index sites into putting their pages near the
top of lists produced in response to search queries.
By burying many repetitions of key words within
comments in their Web pages, they hope to fool
search systems which rank sites by their relevance.
This process is called spamdexing, a blend
ofindexing with spam, a much older Internet term
for posting an advertising message to many Usenet
newsgroups, which comes from the Spam sketch
in Monty Pythons Flying Circus, in which the word
is repeated many times. The verb is spamdex. This
may prove to be a temporary term, as those who
run search engines are working hard to program
their search tools to disregard spamdexedsites.

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SPERMODYNAMICS
Its not every day that a researcher claims to have
invented a new science, but that is the bold
statement made recently by Dr Richard Green of
Glasgow Universitys department of aerospace
engineering. In a cross-disciplinary association
thats unusually broad even by the standards of
these collaborative days, his group worked with
fertility experts at Sheffield University to apply
techniques of their craft to the problem of
determining the potency of sperm. The previous
test required three separate checks by an
andrologist that were time-consuming and
subjective. But aerospace engineers, who have long
used automated methods for counting smoke
particles in the air flow inside wind tunnels, have
now applied the techniques to fertility
investigations by zapping the sample with a laser
and so tracking the movement of individual sperm.
A test that would previously have taken several

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days can now, the researchers claim, be done more

accurately in minutes. Dr Green is clearly a master
of the neologism; not only has he
coinedspermodynamics for the new process, but he
is quoted as saying that in a sense, we are
providing a man with a reading of his
vigourosity.
One in seven couples suffers from fertility
difficulties and in about 30 per cent of these cases
the problem can be traced to the man. But
establishing that the problem lies with his sperm
can be tricky... Such measurements can take days
with highly variable results. By contrast, the
spermodynamics counter takes only a few minutes
and produces consistent results.
Observer, 7 Mar. 2004
Project leader Dr Richard Green, of Glasgow
University, said: We have developed a new science
spermodynamics. The device is important as it
means we can quickly spot if it is a woman or man

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who is the source of an infertility problem and take

action to help.
Mirror, 8 Mar. 2004

/spntrnks/
This is a new technological discipline which aims
to exploit the subtle and mind-bendingly esoteric
quantum properties of the electron to develop a
new generation of electronic devices. Its potential
is sufficiently great that the US Department of
Defense has invested more than $50 million dollars
in spintronics research in the past year. The word is
a blend of electronics with spin, the quantum

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property it exploits. Like so many words applied to

the subatomic realm, spin has to be taken
figuratively as a convenient label for a property
that has no equivalent in gross matter. Every
electron exists in one of two states, spin-up or
spin-down; it is possible to make a sandwich of
gold atoms between two thin films of magnetic
material that will act as a filter or valve that only
permits electrons in one of the two states to pass.
The filter can be changed from one state to the
other using a brief and tiny burst of current. From
this simple device its hoped to make incredibly
tiny chips that will act as super-fast memories
whose contents will survive loss of power. The
adjective is spintronic.

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SPOKEN WEB
Though the Web has evolved to provide audio,
pictures and video, for most of us our primary
interaction with the online world is via the written
word, typed text in particular. This is a barrier for
many, especially in developing countries. Imagine,
for example, how an illiterate person could use it,
or somebody with no access to a computer or any
understanding of one.
A new project from IBM India Research Laboratory
called theSpoken Web is trying to resolve this
problem. In essence, it creates Web sites based on
the spoken word, VoiceSites, accessed by the
spoken word using mobile phones. Computers are
not widely available in India, but more than 200
million have mobile phones, albeit low-end ones
without the browsing or data-transfer facilities
that are now common in developed countries. The
key to adoption of the new system is the ease of

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creating the VoiceSites, which are then given

telephone numbers equivalent to the URLs of Web
sites. Callers navigate through the Spoken Web by
voice responses using a simple audio browser.
IBMs plans extend to other countries as well as
India. It also proposes to introduce facilities such
as an instant translation service, social networking
and emergency mobile health care.
The Spoken Web project aims to transform how
people create, build and interact with e-commerce
sites on the world wide web using the spoken
word instead of the written word... Farmers need
to look up commodity prices; Fishermen need
weather info before heading out to sea; Plumbers
can schedule appointments; and Grocery shops can
display catalogues, offer order placement, display
personalized targeted advertisements or
reminders.
Business Standard, India, 13 Nov. 2008

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A callers experience of an individual VoiceSite is

similar to the interactive voice response (IVR)
systems that customers encounter when calling,
say, an airline or their bank. However, where the
spoken web differs from these systems is that
different VoiceSites can be linked, just like in the
internet.
New Scientist, 24 Oct. 2008
SQUALAMINE
This substance shows promise
for cancer therapy; it is about to
begin clinical trials with patients
suffering from brain or breast
cancers. Squalamine was
discovered in 1993 in the
stomach and liver of the dogfish,
a type of shark. Its name is a
compound ofamine with squalus,
the name of the dogfish genus,
which derives from the

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Latin squalum for a type of fish. The compound is

believed to act by preventing blood vessels in the
human body from obeying commands from cancer
cells to link to them, so starving them of the blood
supply that is essential for growth. One of the main
hopes for this new drug is that cancers will fail to
develop resistance to it because it doesnt act on
the cancer cells themselves, but on the existing
blood vessels. Several related types of compound
have been discovered recently,
including magainins from the African clawed frog,
all of which are members of a class of substances
calledpeptidomimetics which mimic the action of
peptides in the body to block abnormal or
unwanted growth. Many of them,
includingsqualamine, also seem to have
antibacterial or antiviral action and a couple have
shown promise as treatments for AIDS.

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STAG-DEFLATION
This new term is yet another consequence of the
interesting times were living through. Its first
known use was by Nouriel Roubini, a professor of
economics at New York University, writing
in Forbes Magazine on 29 October.
Its obviously enough a combination of stagflation,
persistent high inflation combined with stagnant
demand, with deflation, which is being discussed as
a likely outcome of the current global financial
turmoil. Deflation is thought a greater evil than
inflation because it leads to people hoarding
money rather than spending it because of
expectations that prices will fall. Stagdeflation combines stagnant deflation with
recession, leading to a state in which the economy
stalls and unemployment rises rapidly, while
commodity and goods prices continue to fall.

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The term has received much attention, as much for

its intriguing neologistic flavour as for the recipe
for gloom that it foretells.
People who own things like houses and publicly
traded financial instruments and so forth, theyre
walking around looking as deflated as the value of
their acquisitions while the world slouches toward
depression or recession or stag-deflation or
whatever odd neologism they coin for the
impending global economic trainwreck.
See Magazine, Canada, 19 Nov 2008
For now, the prospects of the euro being the next
victim of a rate cut have already turned that
currency back towards the low road, and the
growing odds of some kind of stag-deflation in the
US and Europe spreading to Asia have
commodities speculators selling into rallies.
International Business Times, 30 Oct 2008

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A staycation is a stay-at-home vacation.

It has been said that it was invented by the writers
of the Canadian TV comedy show Corner Gas in an
episode broadcast in October 2005. However, the
word appeared in print a little earlier, in an article
in the Washington Post on 4 August 2005: The city
empties out. The commute becomes bearable. Its
the perfect time for a staycation, to dig in those
heels and enjoy the comforts of home: 300-thread-

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count sheets, stainless outdoor fire pit, wellstocked fridge.

Staycation is a blend of stay-at-home and vacation.

It was probably generated from the rather
older daycation for a one-day vacation, a day-trip,
which is recorded in that sense from 1986; that
word has also appeared, usually as day-cation, in
the sense of a one-day special educational event (in
which the second element is instead a truncation
of education).
After a couple of appearances in 2007, the word
became significantly more visible from March 2008
onwards, largely because of financial concerns as
the economy weakened and fuel prices increased.

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Other reasons were given in the Washington

Times on 23 March: Increasing concerns over the
environment as well as the desire for more family
time add to the staycations popularity.
The word has since become established enough to
be added toMerriam-Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary in July 2009.
It has become known in other countries, too,
including the UK. This is mildly surprising,
because vacation in British English is a formal term
used mainly for institutional breaks between terms
by universities and the legal profession. People
take holidays. However, the term is understood
and exposure to the American sense through films
and television has clearly helped staycation to be
accepted. In the UK, the sense has evolved to refer
to a holiday taken within the country rather than
travelling abroad.
A person taking a staycation is sometimes called
a staycationer.

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It might not be a coincidence that big numbers are

coming out to the free community shows this
summer, the year of the so-called staycation,
thanks to a rough economy. A bunch of small trips
to the local park for some free music and a family
night out may fill in nicely, to a degree, for
traditional, more expensive outings.
Oakland Tribune, 10 Aug. 2008.
A staycation extravaganza, Butlins has managed to
overcome its image problem with the British
public.
Daily Mail, London, 22 Jul. 2009.

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STOOZING
This largely British slang term refers to ways of
making money from special offers by credit-card
companies.
The easiest way is to take advantage of the
cashback systems promoted by some issuers in
which the company pays you a small sum based on
the value of purchases. A riskier method is to
exploit the interest-free credit periods offered by
some lenders by borrowing money on a card and
investing it in a savings account. If the loan is

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repaid before the end of the interest-free period,

whatever has been earned in the savings account is
pure profit.
There are now a number of Web sites which
provide advice to prospective punters about offers
and how to circumvent the risks of damaging their
credit history.
The term has been around online since early 2004.
Its origin is one of the oddest examples of word
formation of recent times. It started in the
discussion forums of the Motley Fool financial Web
site, where a user with the
nickname Stooz advocated the combined
borrowing and saving method. Someone else
referred to doing a Stooz and the technique became
known as stoozing; a person who does it is
a stoozer.
Even now there is always someone prepared to
offer an introductory deal. Even if it is not 0 per

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cent it is still possible to make money from

stoozing.
Sunday Telegraph, 7 Nov. 2004
Revenge is sweet. And littles sweeter than hitting
back at credit card companies. This is my practical
guide to stoozing legally making risk-free cash,
running into 100s a year (for some 1000s) out of
credit cards.
Guardian, 5 Nov. 2005

SUBPRIME
/sbprm/
This term dates back
to the 1920s and is
originally and
mainly American. It
appears first in the
obvious sense of something, often food, that is
below the highest quality or grade, inferior. By the

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1970s it had begun to be linked with finance, at

first in the sense of a commercial lending rate
lower than the prime rate, one that was typically
offered only to the most desirable borrowers. At
that time to be offered a subprime loan was a mark
of your creditworthiness and financial stability,
ironic in view of what happened later.
The word began its slide into notoriety in the early
1990s. It started to mean a loan, often on
unfavourable terms, to borrowers who didnt
qualify because of a poor credit history or other
circumstances those who in plain language
would be called bad risks, who had court
judgements against them, who had financial
problems due to redundancy or divorce, or who
were simply poor. Though subprime could be used
for borrowing money for any purpose, the most
significant use has been for mortgages.
There have always been firms who were prepared
to lend money to people in these groups, at a price,

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but in the nineties established lenders moved into

this market. A surprisingly large number of
euphemisms were coined, including substandard, impaired credit,B-paper, nonconforming, near-prime, and second chance,
butsubprime has become the most common.
Lenders wanting to offset the risks of such loans
began to package them into complex and ingenious
financial instruments which they sold on to banks
and hedge funds, who were keen to acquire them.
Unfortunately, the rising levels of mortgage
foreclosures in the US during 2006 and 2007 has
left many of these instruments valueless and
created a worldwide crisis in banking.
Shares in Bradford & Bingley today tumbled 13%
after it admitted to larger-than-expected losses
from investments on the subprime mortgage
market.
Evening Standard, 13 Feb. 2008

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Immortalized as the practice of making loans to

borrowers with deficient credit histories, subprime
lending has led to more than 100 major mortgage
lenders closing their doors.
La Prensa (San Diego), 16 Nov. 2007

with no repeats.

Sudoku refers to a puzzle

consisting of a 9-by-9 grid of
squares, each divided into
nine 3-by-3 squares. Some of
the squares already contain
a number. The aim is to fill in
the remainder so that every
horizontal and vertical line,
and every 3-by-3 square,
contains the numerals 1 to 9

The puzzle first appeared in the USA in the early

1980s under the name Number Place and was

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taken up by the Japanese publishing house Nikoli

in 1984. Its current Japanese name is formed from
the original title at that time, which may be
translated as only single numbers allowed. The
short form is a compound of the Japanese
words su and doku, which respectively mean
single and number.
It has recently become a widespread and addictive
craze here in the UK (the derived
term sudokumania has been coined for it). It has
now returned to the USA and has also become
common in other countries.
The first puzzles were featured in The Times back
in November 2004 and soon after in the Daily
Mail and several other newspapers, though the
craze really took off around May 2005. TheMails
puzzles are comparatively easy, Im told, with 32 of
the 81 squares already filled in. Others have fewer
and are correspondingly harder.

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There is no adding up, subtraction, multiplication

or division in Sudoku. You do not even need to
know that two plus two equals four. But, boy, can it
make your brain ache, your pulse race and
knuckles whiten as you grip your pen in
exasperation or, finally, ecstasy!
the Daily Mail, 12 May 2005
And filling the committees is a complex task, like
trying to complete 30 inter-related Sudoku puzzles
simultaneously.
the Independent, 22 Jul. 2005

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SYNTHESPIAN
The electronic characters Woody and Buzz
Lightyear in the film Toy Story and the dinosaurs
in Jurassic Park have shown that computer imaging
systems can generate extraordinarily plausible
animated images.

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The next stage, presaged by that eighties creation

named for a multi-storey car park sign, Max
Headroom, has been to simulate actors with
accurate depiction of movements and expressions;
such a character is described by William Gibson in
his 1996 novel Idoru: She is Rei Toei. She is a
personality-construct, a congeries of software
agents, the creation of information-designers. She
is akin to what I believe they call a synthespian, in
Hollywood.
The state of the art is now such that computergenerated actors, synthespians, can be rendered
with considerable realism. Examples include
Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Yoda in
the Star Wars films, and Davey Jones in Pirates of
the Caribbean, Dead Mans Chest. The technique is
becoming so common as to be unremarkable.
The term synthespian is a blend
of synthetic and thespian. In the USA, the word has
been a trademark since the late 1980s of the

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Kleiser-Walczak Construction Co., whose

principals, Jeff Kleiser and Diana Walczak, worked
on Judge Dredd and many other films, and have
pioneered many of the techniques.
Other terms sometimes used are cyberhuman, Vhuman (for virtual human) and vactor (for
virtual actor).
A failing filmmaker constructs a synthespian, a
digital actress, whose beauty and charisma quickly
impress movie fans across the world but the
adoring public are convinced she is real, forcing
him to resort to desperate measures to maintain
the deception.
Evening Standard, 21 Feb. 2005
V-humans have only recently become feasible
cause of the sheer amount of computer power
required to render them in real-time. In the movie
industry, the use of entirely computer-generated
actors, or synthespians, is becoming big business.

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Many of the crowd scenes in the movie Titanic for

example, used only synthespians not an extra in
sight.
Personal Computer World, Oct. 1998
Biotechnologists are
beginning to move
on from modifying
organisms through
changing their DNA
(by genetic
engineering) to
building them from
scratch. Synthetic
biology refers to
such creation of
artificial life from
raw materials. This
new field is regarded
by many experts as

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the next big thing in science, but one which may

also have disastrous consequences if mishandled.
It was in the news in the UK last week as the result
of a visit by the maverick US scientist, Craig Venter,
who ran one of the two projects that mapped the
human genome. He has hinted that his team has
already created a minimal bacterial genome from
its chemical building blocks and
may shortly succeed in making an
artificial organism. He attempted
to allay the fears of critics, who
worry that artificial life such as
bacteria might escape into the
environment and cause
unpredictable consequences, or be
used to make military bioweapons.
The former eventuality has been
called bioerror by the astronomer Sir Martin Rees,
the president of the Royal Society. Other critics

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object on religious grounds, arguing that scientists

ought not to play God by such experiments.
The term synthetic biology was first applied to this
field of research in 2003 but is only slowly
becoming known to the general public. A
researcher is a synthetic biologist, a term that may
make the humorists among us smile. Much more
recent is synbio, its abbreviation, which is showing
signs of becoming fashionable.
Synthetic biology can help in the fight against
emerging infections, rather than aid the design of
bio-weapons, controversial scientist Craig Venter
has told reporters ... Synthetic biology could
provide the most effective way of stopping
infections in developing countries, such as malaria,
and emerging drug-resistant superbugs.
BBC News, 24 Oct. 2007
Synthetic biology now occupies roughly the same
space on the publics radar that computing might

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have done in the 1960s or genetic modification in

the 1970s its largely unheard of by anyone
except the scientific community and its geeky
observers. But as the pace of breakthrough in this
area quickens, the sense of being on the edge of an
extraordinary technological revolution is giving
even the scientists involved vertigo.
Guardian, 21 Oct. 2007

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TAPHONOMIST
TAPHONOMIST
Change and decay in all around I see, hymned
Henry Francis Lyte in Abide With Me. Nobody is
more conscious of that than a taphonomist. I found
the word over Christmas in a dystopian SF
book, Zero Point by Neal Asher, in which a future
dictator used computer technology to
simultaneously kill off eight billion human beings
and then had to work out what to do with the
bodies.

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Asher defined the word as a specialist who studies

the decomposition of dead organisms. Thats pretty
much correct, though theres more to it and the
timescales can vary hugely. A subdiscipline, forensic taphonomy, takes a relatively
short-term view, looking into ways in which
human remains decay through natural processes
as a way to guide police investigations you may
have heard of macabre studies in which corpses
are left out in the open so their decomposition can
be studied. The main focus of taphonomy,
however, is on processes that take much longer
ones by which dead organisms transform into
fossils.
Taphonomy was coined in 1940 by a Russian
palaeontologist (and SF author), Ivan Efremov. He
took it from the classical Greektaphos, a grave, plus
the -nomy ending for a specified area of knowledge
that originated in nomos, law. German scientists
had been working in the field since the 1920s but

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the specialism gained much greater prominence in

the 1970s.

TAQWACORE
Taqwacore is a recent musical genre. The name
combines the Arabictaqw, which may be
translated as piety or the quality of being Godfearing, with the music term hardcore.
Its inspiration is a fictional work of 2003 by a
white American Islamic convert, Michael
Muhammad Knight, which featured a fictitious
Muslim punk scene in the US. This led to real-life

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imitations, with bands rebelling against what they

see as the stultifying convention and religious
dogma of Islam while maintaining their faith.
Its variously seem as a backlash against hate and
fundamentalism, as a protest against Islamophobia
in the US (9/11 is mentioned a lot), as a way to find
an identity as a child of immigrants, or as a
rebellion against the attitudes of their parents.
The genre has received public attention as the
result of a Canadian documentary, Taqwacore, and
a feature film, The Taqwacores, screened at the
Sundance Festival earlier this year.
There are probably as many definitions of
taqwacore as there are people connected to
taqwacore, and that is a great thing because to me,
it is about an openness. It is somewhat ironic that
taqwacore is becoming a label, just by the nature of
it being a name assigned to a group of people, but
at its essence, it is about removing labels.
Newstex Blogs (USA), 4 Feb. 2010.

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Mixing punk sounds and attitude with Hindi lyrics,

doses of bhangra and other south Asian beats, the
Kominas are part of an emerging musical scene
known as Taqwacore.
Guardian, 11 Jun. 2010.

/timspes/
This is a recent business term describing types of
workplace accommodation that are designed to
support collaborative effort. A significant
proportion of office workers now work in teams,
but conventional office layouts still assume
workers are individuals. This can be a problem, for
example in trying to arrange areas in which to hold
impromptu discussions. Project teams have been
known to move voluntarily to inadequate

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accommodation, say in the back of a warehouse,

just so they can be together. Experts say that welldesigned teamspaces must permit workers to be all
in the same place and should allow flexibility of
furniture layout to cope with meetings and
changes of personnel. Sometimes the teamspaceis
one large room, sometimes its broken into whats
been called acaves and commons system, with
private individual work areas around a communal
area. Capitalised, its the trademark of a computer
application designed to assist team working.
Also, managers and teams need training in the new
work practices, technologies and in how to utilize
the team space as the tool to enhance team
effectiveness in order to reap the productivity
rewards they seek.
IDRC Communicator, July 1998
A new report by IDRC, a property research
organisation, concludes that companies now
realise that teamspace is what is needed, since

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one-fifth of workers in most companies operate in

teams.
Economist, Aug. 1998
TECHGNOSIS

The word techgnosis was invented by Erik Davis in

an article in 1994 and used as the title of his 1998
book, subtitled Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the
Age of Information. His is not the easiest book to

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read or summarise Publishers Weekly called it a

deluge of information and theory because he
ranges very widely over spirituality and its
interaction with technology. He argues that for
many Net users theres a spiritual component to
their links with it, and that valid comparisons can
be made with earlier technological developments
that also became metaphors for our view of the
world. He cites the example of the Extropians, a
Californian sect which believes it may one day be
possible to download the essence of the human
mind into a computer and so achieve immortality,
and suggests this has elements in common with the
Christian belief in the afterlife. He argues this
spiritual feeling is a high-tech update of gnosis, an
early Christian belief, hence his title and the
wordtechgnosis for its modern equivalent. The
topic is techgnostics and someone who studies the
subject is a techgnostic. Spelled with an internal
capital, TechGnosis, its the trading name of an
American computer company.

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The moment you have that notion that we are

really information instead of bodies or souls, then
you have that possibility of techgnosis.
Erik Davis, Techgnosis, 1998
Davis suggests that techgnosis is a kind of
information age update of gnosticism, a Christian
heresy in which believers rejected the world of
matter and yearned for gnosis, a flash of
transcendent illumination in which individuals cast
off the body and ascended to the real world of the
spirit.
Guardian, Dec. 1998

/tknrilst/
A group of a dozen writers and commentators on
the media launched a manifesto under this title in
March 1998. Though the group might appear to be

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referring to all new technologies, it seems actually

only to be concerned with telecommunications,
particularly the Internet. The manifesto argued
that attitudes concerning the technology are
deeply polarised, with little reasoned debate taking
place on its implications. It advocates a middle way
between the extremes of believing either that all
new technology should be uncritically accepted, or
that it ought to be opposed at all costs. Their
statement makes a number of points, among them:
technologies are not neutral but always have
economic and social implications; the Internet is a
wonderful new medium but isnt Utopia and is
coming to reflect society in general, both for good
and ill; government has a role to play on the
electronic frontier; information is not knowledge
and ease of reception should not be confused with
comprehension; providing Internet access in
schools will do nothing to resolve their
shortcomings. The early response to the manifesto
was in the main either uncomprehending or

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negative, drawing adverse comment from both

extremes of the debate.
As technorealists, we seek to expand the fertile
middle ground between techno-utopianism and
neo-Luddism.
Technorealism manifesto
If the technorealists ideas are so obvious, I wonder
why we continue to hear so much breathy drivel
about how the Internet is remaking reality?
Washington Post, April 1998

/tlvst/
A blend of telecommunications and university, the
word televersitydescribes a new type of further
education not yet achieved anywhere, though
experiments are taking place at various sites. One
proposal is that Suffolk College in Britain should

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become a university without a campus, teaching

students using the resources of information
technology, especially Internet communications
and multimedia. This is in effect a high-tech update
of the existing Open University concept, in which
its proponents argue the new university would
become something like a knowledge broker,
supplying learning materials on demand both to its
own students and to students registered at other
universities in Britain and Europe. A related
scheme is the European Televersity Project, which
sees the value of reaching remote communities
which could otherwise not gain access to higher
education, as well as individuals prevented
because of their work, disability or social
disadvantage. Another name used for various
versions of this concept is virtual university.
TELEVISION 2.0

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Television 2.0
This is a spin-off term from Web 2.0 and refers to
the convergence between Internet services and
television.
The term has been
around for a couple of
years, but is only
slowly becoming
known outside the
business, though the
rush of conferences
currently being held to
discuss the future of digital media may cause it to
appear in newspapers from time to time. The key
word here is convergence, one in the minds of
communications companies these days, which are
working towards what they sometimes
call quadruple-play services (Internet, television,

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fixed-line telephone and mobile telephone),

exploiting the possibilities of linking them
together.
It was only a matter of time, one commentator
wrote in May 2006, before the Internet changed
TV in a way more profound than color or cable.
The World Wide Web is seen as the new
distribution medium for TV; companies hope to
persuade their subscribers to download
programmes, which can be viewed on personal
computers or mobile phones, not even needing a
television set. One problem is the vast amount of
video that is potentially available; one challenge
will be to create a reliable Internet-based filtering
and search system so online viewers can find both
what they want and what they might like if they
only knew it existed.
But the biggest problem, everyone agrees, is how
to keep the money flowing in when there are no
commercial breaks in the programmes the new

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Television 2.0 audience is viewing. One

commentator said at a media conference recently
that the key issue was revenue, revenue, revenue.
A room full of executives planning television 2.0
suddenly realised that the internet can come to the
TV set, as well as vice versa. And panicked a bit.
Guardian, 12 Feb. 2007
Explore the new frontier of digital content and
entertainment user generated media, television
2.0 and the fully connected universe.
Business Wire, 29 Sep. 2006

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therapeutic cloning
Last weeks decisions in principle by the British
and US governments to permit experimentation on
human embryos for limited purposes has aroused
controversy, especially among religious groups and
those opposed to abortion. At the moment, cells
taken from embryos at an early stage of division
are the only source of stem cells, which can grow
and specialise into any part of ones body. The

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hope is that eventually it may be possible to use

such cells to grow replacement parts for organ
transplantation: new livers, kidneys, skin, even
pancreatic islet cells to help cure diabetes. The
eventual aim is to persuade adult cells to revert to
stem cells so that organs can be cloned from ones
own tissues and will therefore not be rejected. The
creation of organs in this way has been
namedtherapeutic cloning, in order to make a
careful distinction between this and reproductive
cloning, the creation of a complete new copy of a
human being from an adult cell. Experimentation
leading to the latter has been outlawed in most
developed countries, and is not the aim of the
proposed experiments.
The focus of ethics and public policy has shifted
from an alarmist and rather fanciful preoccupation
with human reproductive cloning to an emphasis
on therapeutic cloning for cell and tissue
replacement and repair.

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New Scientist, Feb. 1999

The council acknowledges the advantages of using
cloning, which enables doctors to grow a patients
own tissue, and supports the use of so-called
therapeutic cloning with sufficient safeguards,
notably to ensure that donors consent to such
research.
Daily Telegraph, Apr. 2000

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THIN THIN

Thin CLIENT
A buzzword that has been thrown up by the
struggle of some computer manufacturers to create
an alternative to the PC. The driving force is the
desire to limit Microsofts control of the desktop
software market through its Windows operating
system, and Intels dominance of microprocessor
production (the two together are often referred to
as Wintel). A thin client is another term for
thenetwork computer or NC, a stripped-down
computer without local storage facilities. Data, and

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the applications to manipulate it, are downloaded

to these client machines from central network
servers. Derided when it was first proposed, the
concept has won the support of many large
companies, who need to reduce the cost of
providing computers to staff. The term came about
as a mocking alternative to what its proponents
see as fat clients: conventional PCs with large
amounts of memory, disk storage and other
facilities running Microsoft Windows. One of the
key attributes of thenetwork computer, it is argued,
is that it will use communications mechanisms
similar to those employed by the Internet; if
applications are written in the
generalised Java language, it is claimed client
machines dont require any particular
microprocessor inside them and so removes
dependence on Intel microprocessors.
THINSPIRATION

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This is one of the

key words
associated with a
deeply disquieting
online trend. In the
past couple of
years or so a
number of Web
sites and
chatrooms have
appeared which
actively promote
anorexia nervosa
(known on the sites
as ana) and other eating disorders as lifestyle
choices. Since 90% of anorexics are young women,
thesepro-ana sites are usually run by and attract
that group (one term for them sometimes used by
unaffected people is weborexics). Sites offer
suggestions on how to become and remain thin,

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often through tips on avoiding eating, and how to

disguise ones condition from family and friends.
Other themes often featured on such sites are selfmutilation (cutting) and bulimia (mia). Thin
women, such as supermodels and Calista
Flockhart, are presented as thinspirations,
examples to emulate. Sites have had names such as
Starving for Perfection, Wasting Away on the Web
and Dying To Be Thin. Medical professionals in the
US and UK are deeply concerned about them,
because they accentuate the low self-regard of
young women, who are particularly prone to eating
disorders, put their lives at risk, and discourage
them from facing their illness and seeking
treatment for it.
The Internet is home to a number of pro-eating
disorder Web sites, places where sufferers can
discuss tips, trade low-calorie recipes and
exchange poems and art that may be used as
triggers or so-called thinspiration.

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Calgary Sun, Feb. 2002

A new trend among young adults has been
sweeping the nation: pro-anorexia Web sites. Also
known as pro-ana, these sites glorify anorexia
nervosa and offer thinspiration on maintaining a
starvation lifestyle.
University Wire, Apr. 2002

This phrase is far

from new, having
in modern times
been used as the
title of a variety
of movements,
organisations
and political parties. One application has been as a
name for systems which blend the best features of

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planned and market economies within a broadly

liberal democratic political framework Sweden
was at one time the country that came nearest to
this model. Its most recent manifestation derives
from US politics. President Clinton said in a State
of the Union message: We have moved past the
sterile debate between those who say government
is the enemy and those who say government is the
answer. My fellow Americans, we have found a
third way. This has been picked up by the British
Labour government and threatens to replace Cool
Britannia as its current favourite buzz phrase. It is
now firmly part of the governments long-term
policy, and is frequently capitalised. A campaign to
publicise it was launched by the Foreign Secretary,
Robin Cook, in a major speech in mid-April, which
was long on rhetoric but rather short on specifics,
though it focused on the need to improve society,
limit the impact of ideologies, and empower
individuals, rather than imposing progress from
the top down. The phrase itself is of considerable

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antiquity, traceable back to Thomas Aquinas Third

Way, which itself echoes classical authors.
Last night ... the former home secretary, Michael
Howard, led an Opposition attack on the Third Way
campaign, recalling in the New Statesman that the
phrase was used by inter-war fascists, panArabists and Euro-communists in the 60s.
The Guardian, April 1998
In truth, it is hard to find much that is concrete, let
alone distinct and consistent, in the principles on
which Mr Cook says New Labours third way is
built.
Economist, May 1998
TOXICOGENOMICS

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TOXICOGENOMICS
This is a scientific sub-discipline that combines
toxicology (the study of the nature and effects of
poisons) with genomics (the investigation of the
way that our genetic make-up, the genome,
translates into biological functions). It has come

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into being only in the past couple of years. It has

been made possible through an investigative
technique using microarrays (also called DNA
chips), which contain many hundreds or thousands
of short DNA strands, each in its own
compartment. By washing a solution of a substance
over the whole chip at once, the section of DNA
affected can be made to fluoresce, so indicating
which genes are turned on by the substance and so
suggesting its likely effect on the body (in the
jargon of the business, taken from computing, the
chips aremassively parallel discovery processes). It
may soon be possible to include the whole human
genome on such a chip and so test all of it at once
for possible adverse effects.
[Im grateful to Mike Anglin for telling me about
this term.]
The most exciting thing about toxicogenomics is
that were going to start investigating genes we
never would have thought of looking at, says

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CTLs Kimber. Thats where the big surprises

and big benefits are going to come from.
Science, May 1999
An interest in new technologies, such as
toxicogenomics and the use of computerised
systems for prediction of safety, as well as in other
scientific advances which can contribute to safety
assessment would be advantageous.
Advertisement in New Scientist, Jan. 2000
TRAFFIC EVAPORATIO

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TRAFFIC EVAPORATION
/trfk vpren/
Its been known for
some years that if
you build a new
road to meet
expected traffic
flows, the very
existence of the
road is a stimulus
for traffic growth.
This was obvious, for example, following the
construction of the M25, the orbital motorway
around London. But if building new roads
generates traffic, it ought to follow logically that
restricting access to roads should decrease it. And
this is what has been found: a study from London
Transport and the Department of the Environment,
Transport and the Regions suggests that road
closures do persuade many drivers to transfer to

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other kinds of transport, not just while congestion

from the closure exists, but permanently, a
phenomenon thats been dubbed traffic
evaporation by road engineers. It seems it happens
when drivers have a choice of methods of
travelling, swap to another such as public
transport when their normal road route is closed,
get used to travelling the new way, and dont
change back when it reopens. The report is
predicted to have a big effect on roads policy in
urban areas where there are more methods of
transport than just the private car and may even
encourage the creation of new public transport
links in tandem with road restrictions.
TRANSITION TOWN

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Transition Town
The recent huge hike in oil prices has made people
in developed countries think more deeply about
ways to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels.
One scheme for doing so that has been getting
more attention in recent months is the transitiontown initiative.
The principle is that people in developed nations
are going to have to learn to live with less energy
and that its better to plan for that in advance

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rather than suffer the pains of sudden deprivation.

The idea is to create community-based schemes
that will search out ways to reduce energy
consumption. Suggestions include limiting car
travel by cycling, walking and using public
transport as well as growing your own food and
shopping locally to reduce the transport costs that
are incurred by supermarkets (an initiative known
in the US by the term locavore).
Its instigator is Rob Hopkins, who in 2005 helped
create the first two transition towns, in Kinsale in
Ireland and Totnes in Devon.
Rob Hopkins, of the Transition Town movement,
says it currently has up to 700 communities
registering an interest in joining, most from the UK
but some as far afield as Australia.
Observer, 15 Jun. 2008
At the heart of it, Transition Towns are about
whole communities getting together to support

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one another, shopping, working and relaxing

locally. When the fuels finally do run out there will
be no choice, and this way we can all be prepared.
Western Morning News, Plymouth, 10 Jun. 2008
T-RAY

Doctors may soon have a new diagnostic

technique, which penetrates just a few millimetres
below the skin, an area of the body that other
procedures like X-rays cant easily image.
The scanning technology is based on T-rays, short
for terahertz rays. This is a type of radiation similar
to X-rays and light, but with frequencies around a
million million cycles per second (the prefixterarefers to a factor of 10 to the power of 12). These
rays lie in the region between infra-red and
microwave radio frequencies, a region thats

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sometimes called quasi-optics. Its a type of

radiation that has been hard to generate in the
past, but a team at the Toshiba Cambridge
Research Laboratory has recently found a
relatively simple way, by firing a laser at a
semiconductor crystal.
T-rays are sensitive to very small changes in the
composition of the materials they pass through, so
theyre excellent for imaging. They also have the
highly desirable property that they dont damage
living tissues. Its likely that the first medical
application will be to image skin cancers prior to
surgery.
Various reports suggest that T-rays time is coming
theyre also being investigated for many other
purposes. Because they penetrate clothing,
security experts hope that T-rays will prove useful
in airport scanners to show up concealed
weapons, for example. They may help to create
ever-more-detailed semiconductor displays. And

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astronomers hope that they may reveal details of

comets and other astronomical bodies.
Recent breakthroughs combined with a range of
potential applications stretching from diagnosing
cancer to detecting dangerous flaws in space
shuttle components are moving T-rays out of
the world of academic curiosity toward the
mainstream.
U.S. News & World Report, 28 July 2003
T-rays could also be used for real-time imaging
during surgery, to highlight tumour cells the
surgeon has missed.
New Scientist, 30 Aug. 2003
TRIPLE-DRUG THERAPY

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Triple Drug Therapy

This is the name given to a radically new treatment
for AIDS which involves a cocktail of three drugs.
Two are AZT (zidovudine) and 3TC (lamivudine),
older reverse transcriptase inhibitors, which reduce
the rate at which the RNA in the virus can be
transformed into its DNA equivalent, essential if
the virus is to copy itself. The third drug is a new
type, a protease inhibitor, of which three have just
been licensed in the US and Europe with generic
namesindinavir, saquinavir and ritonavir. The new
protease inhibitors stop a later stage of
reproduction, when the DNA has been used as a
template to make new molecules but an enzyme
called HIV protease is needed to break them into
useful bits. Some startling results have been
reported in initial trials, suggesting that a
combination of the three drugs can sometimes be
much more effective than any alone or in pairs. A
few individuals in an advanced stage of the disease

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have had the amount of virus in their bloodstreams

(the viral load), reduced to virtually undetectable
levels. The major problem remaining is the
expense of the therapy, a years treatment costing
about $10,000 (6,600 pounds sterling), which
makes it inaccessible to poor patients. The
treatment is also known as combination therapy.

TRUTHINESS
Its not often that a bunch of word experts project a
newly-minted term into the limelight, possibly
saving it from the oblivion that threatens all new
words. (I say possibly because time hasnt had time
enough to tell yet.)
It started on 17 October 2005, in the
inaugural Colbert Report, a satirical mock news
show broadcast on the Comedy Channel. Satirist
Stephen Colbert plucked the word out of nowhere
shortly before going on air. He used it for the

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quality of stating concepts or facts one wishes or

believes to be true rather than those known to be
true. It was a sarcastic way of referring to people
who prefer to justify their actions from the heart
rather than the head.
The word, despite such a high-profile start in life,
might have disappeared again pretty soon had not
the members of the American Dialect Society,
confounding all predictions, chosen it as their
Word of the Year at their annual meeting in
Albuquerque, New Mexico, on 6 January 2006. The
press went somewhat wild over this choice
because it was such an odd word and one that up
to then had hardly had any public notice at all.
There have since been signs that truthiness in
Colberts sense is achieving some circulation as a
useful word, but also worryingly that it is
more often being used wrongly as a synonym for
truthfulness.

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One of the odder aspects of the story is

that truthiness isnt actually new. The Oxford
English Dictionary has one example, from 1824:
Everyone who knows her is aware of her
truthiness. The writer was using it as a noun
formed from the rare dialectal adjectivetruthy,
meaning truthful, with truthiness therefore
meaning truthfulness. Those using it wrongly
therefore have history on their side.
Instead of asking for an independent and skeptical
press that questioned authority, they look to their
latest source of truthiness, just so they can be
told theyre OK.
Wisconsin State Journal, 30 Apr. 2006
Theres a saying in sports: Its not how you start,
its how you finish. That has the virtue that has
come to be known as truthiness it is something
that managers, coaches and athletes believe to be
true. It sounds true. And frequently it is true.

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Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 3 Apr. 2006

TWEENAGER
This is a currently fashionable marketing term for
pre-teens, girls in particular, aged between 7 and
11, a group having substantial purchasing power.
They are more worldly-wise, fashion-conscious
and media-aware than children of this age used to
be, and are growing up faster. Its a younger group
than that identified bytweenie. The term has
appeared sporadically since the 1980s, though
early sightings suggest it used to refer to the 10 to
13 age group, and the Oxford English
Dictionary database has an example from 1952, in
the title of a book by A A Macfarlan: New Games for
Tween-agers. But it has become more visible only
in the past couple of years or so, even though it is
still principally a specialist term within the
marketing field. In Britain, people have become
more aware of it as a result of a recent BBC
television documentary, Little Women A Day in

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the Life of a Tweenager. The word is obviously

formed from the second part of between, on the
model ofteenager.
If you think teenagers are growing up too quickly,
take a look at their younger sisters, the 7 to 11year-olds the marketing industry has branded as
tweenagers.
The Guardian, Mar. 2001
Kids Klub and Tweenager Club for pre-teens meets
Wednesdays.
Tampa Tribune, Mar. 2000
TWEENIE/twini/
This term has started to appear in British
newspapers, though it isnt that new, nor is it
British in origin. Its sudden visibility has been due
to the appointment of Andi Peters, who used to be
the friendly face of BBC childrens television, to
help run Channel 4s childrens programming. In

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particular, he is to revitalise the tweeniezone, the

time between 6pm and 7pm when those aged
between about 10 and 15 watch television most.
The term seems to be fairly common marketing
jargon in the broadcasting field for this age range,
who dont regard themselves as children and so
dont want to watch programmes for younger
viewers (sometimes calledtweenagers), but are
still thought too young to understand and enjoy
material for adults. The name is a diminutive form
of the second part of between, which may have
been influenced by the much older and now
defunct British English word tweeny for a between
maid, a very junior servant who helped both cook
and parlourmaid, so named because she work both
downstairs in the servant quarters and upstairs
and so was continually moving between floors. The
limited evidence I have suggests the new meaning
is of North American origin, most probably
Canadian.
TWIXTER

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The cover story in Time Magazine of 24 January

2005 argued that a shift has taken place in the
culture of young people between the ages of about
20 and 28, usually college graduates who are often
unmarried and living at home, often with no
settled employment. The article wasnt kind to
them, calling them permanent adolescents and
twenty-something Peter Pans, stuck between
childhood and the adult world; it also
coined twixters for them because they were
betwixt and between, perhaps modelled on the
established terms tweens and tweenies for those a
little younger than teenagers. As the article
implied, theres nothing particularly new in
identifying this age group as one with special
problems: psychologists have in the past coined
terms such
as kidult,youthhood, adultescent, emerging
adulthood, and boomerang kidwhen writing about
it, none of which have been especially successful in
linguistic terms. The piece got a lot of attention,

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including criticism from members of the group,

who argued that it was economics, not arrested
development, that has led to their situation. Its too
early to say whether twixter stands any greater
chance of catching the public imagination than
previous creations. Early indications, mainly that
few other writers have borrowed it, suggest it isnt
likely to become part of the permanent lexicon.
And what might a twixter be? Those in their
middle-to-late-20s experiencing a period of limbo
between the college years and the permanence of
adulthood (career, marriage, children).
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 31 Jan. 2005
In his view, what looks like incessant, hedonistic
play is the twixters way of trying on jobs and
partners and personalities and making sure that
when they do settle down, they do it the right way,
their way. Its not that they dont take adulthood
seriously; they take it so seriously, theyre

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spending years carefully choosing the right path

into it.
Time, 24 Jan. 2005
TWO-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION
Why, you may reasonably ask, is this arcane bit of
computer jargon popping up here? Agreed, its
never going to trip lightly off the lips of your
neighbourhood bank teller, but it refers to a trend
in banking thats likely to affect all of us, even if we
never come to know it by that name.
The problem is that of security, or rather the
insecurity of the usual form of security, passwords.
Everybody knows theyre bad at their job: people
forget them or create ones too easy to guess,
mislay them, write them down where somebody
unauthorised can read them, or can be all too
easily persuaded to give them over the phone to a
conman with a plausible line of patter. Online,
matters are even worse. Banks spend huge

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amounts of effort trying to stem the flood of

phishing sites that pretend to be the real thing so
that they can grab your log-in details and plunder
your accounts.
So the quest has been on to improve online
security in a way that works and which wont be
too much trouble to use. The basic idea is to add a
second level of protection to the password so
two factors of authentication. Methods like this are
now widespread, summed up by the phrase
Something you have and something you know. In
a store, the something you have is your credit card,
while the something you know is your PIN.
Online, the something you know (your password)
is easy to implement, but the other level of
authentication (the credit card or another physical
token), is not. Practicality rules out methods like
retinal or fingerprint scans, so the current focus is
on a little electronic device that does the job for
you. You plug in your card and enter your PIN. The

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device issues you with a time-sensitive code (in the

jargon, a one-time password) that you must type in
to gain access.
The term two-factor authentication has been
around since the early 1990s and appears widely
in technical documents, though its still rare in
general media. (Theres also multi-layer
authentication as a broader term.) The devices are
common in businesses, for example to give
employees access to secure office systems while on
the road. They are now beginning to be made
available to bank customers. Security experts
warn, however, that they wont stop every kind of
attack and may indeed be most useful by building
awareness among customers of the need for
security.
Banks realise that two-factor authentication is an
off-putting term and those in Britain who are to
introduce the scheme in 2007 have invented chip

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and pin at home as a more easily understandable

alternative.
Barclays said last year that it would offer twofactor authentication via card readers to all of its
two million banking customers.
Computer Weekly, 24 Apr. 2007
Most of Britains top banks except HSBC and
First Direct are due to send out millions of chip
and pin at home gadgets to customers who bank
online, as an extra defence in the anti-fraud battle.
Guardian, 12 May 2007

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UMTS/jumtis/
This stands for Universal Mobile
Telecommunications System. It is a high- capacity
system for portable telephones that is also
designed to allow multimedia techniques such as
videoconferencing as well as high-speed Internet
access. More importantly, this is the first standard
for mobile phones that is genuinely universal and
which will permit users with a single handset to be
called anywhere in the world. One handset will
combine fixed, mobile and optional satellite access
from several operators but on one phone number.
The cellular system will use a range of cell sizes to
cope with various densities of traffic, ranging from
tiny ones designed for domestic operation up to
macro ones with a radius of thirty kilometres or so,
above which satellites will take over to cover more
sparsely-populated areas. Agreement was reached
earlier this year between two groups of
manufacturers with rival systems, so preventing a
damaging standards war and, unusually, producing

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a compromise standard that industry observers

suggest may be better than either of the competing
proposals. UMTS is being developed by a
consortium that includes Sony, Alcatel, Motorola,
Italtel, Bosch, Nortel and Siemens. The first
telephones to the new standard may arrive in
2002.
By 2005, the Department of Trade and Industry
hopes, UMTS will be fully operational, enabling
consumers to have a single handset that could act
as both a home and mobile telephone with a single
number, multimedia capabilities and world
roaming.
Daily Telegraph, Feb. 1998
UMTS could take the penetration of mobile phones
up to as much as 60 per cent of the UK population,
compared with around 15 per cent now, according
to ABN Amro.
Independent on Sunday, May 1998

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UNCONFERENCE
To hold an unconference sounds like a
contradiction. In fact, its practical anarchy applied
to a discussion meeting. A participant was quoted
in the Guardian in September 2007 as saying that
unconferences are coffee breaks that last all day.
Putting it more formally, an unconference has an
open-ended agenda in which the topics discussed
are driven by the participants, who are all
encouraged to contribute. As the writer of the
Guardian article described it, You join an informal
group on a particular theme that interests you,
listen, discuss and then, if you find something
boring, move on to another group. In Podcasting
for Profit (2007), Allan Hunkin notes another
feature: What makes the unconference model
different from a conference is that attendees dont
pay to register, speakers arent paid to speak, and
expenses are covered by sponsors. The term is
originally from the US and goes back a long way.
The first example I know of appeared,

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appropriately, in a list of anarchist summer events

on Usenet in April 1993. It has remained a niche
term until recently, but is becoming more common,
especially in the computing and IT worlds.
So how does an unconference work? Its designed
to perpetuate the buzz arising during the
traditional breaks for coffee, lunch and tea when
people communicate informally.
Guardian, 18 Sep. 2007
There is no set program for BarCamp Orlando,
which is billed as an unconference because of its
loose structure. The agenda will be determined the
day of the event by those who post on a sign-up
board at the door, notes co-organizer Larry Diehl,
20, an information-systems student at UCF.
Orlando Sentinel, 11 Sep. 2007
UNFRIEND

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Its a verb, meaning to remove a person as a

friend on a social networking site such as
Facebook.
I have Facebook friends who subsequent to my
accepting their offers of Facebook friendship
accepted jobs as publicists for elected officials.
Must I unfriend them now to avoid the
appearance of a conflict of interest?
Chicago Sun-Times, 5 Sep. 2009.
It was chosen as Word of the Year 2009 by the New
Oxford American Dictionary. Christine Lindberg,
senior lexicographer for Oxfords US dictionary
programme, was quoted as saying Unfriend has
real lex-appeal. She wrote in the Dictionarys blog:
It has both currency and potential longevity. In
the online social networking context, its meaning is
understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form
makes this an interesting choice for Word of the
Year.

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The New Oxford American Dictionarys editors have

been criticised for selecting it (Frank Schell in
the Chicago Tribune called it an act of wanton
barbarism) and the word itself has gained few
friends among writers (The Irish Times remarked
that it was a word that will cause lovers of the
English language to wince). The main objection to
it apart from its inelegance is that it ought to
bedefriend, which is also used, which would
parallel the standard English befriend. However,
the Dictionarys editors found unfriendwas much
more common. It is presumably modelled on terms
such as unsubscribe. What makes it odd is that few
verbs are created using the un- prefix and that the
verb sense of friend is itself rare.
Twitter has a similar form, unfollow. This is from
the Twitter concept of members who follow
others by regularly reading their postings. If you
cease to do so, you unfollow them.

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Historically speaking, theres nothing strange

about unfriend. The noun was once fairly common,
with evidence going back to medieval Scots. Its
sense could range from of a person with whom one
is not on friendly terms to a full-blown enemy.
After going out of favour around 1600 it was
reintroduced by Sir Walter Scott in 1814 but then
disappeared again. The verb has been recorded but
is very rare, though the adjective unfriended has
been fairly successful for some centuries:
But I believed, niece, you had a greater sense of
propriety than to have received the visits of any
young man in your present unfriended situation.
The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe, 1794.
UNITASKER
A unitasker is a tool or device that does only one
thing. Before it meant that, it was a dismissive term
for a person who does one job at a time before
moving to the next, the opposite of a multitasker.

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Definitely a unitasker
Its one of those slow-burn words that seems to be
creeping up on us in a variety of fields, becoming
accepted because its a useful term of abuse to
describe those gadgets we buy because they seem
like a good idea at the time. This is despite
experience teaching us that their advantages dont
justify their cost or the space they take up or that a
general-purpose item could do the job as well. Its
used in particular for specialist kitchen gadgets
(electric gravy boat warmers, strawberry slicers,
watermelon knives) and odd computing
contraptions (USB foot warmers). Unitasker has

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been popularised by the American TV chef Alton

Brown and the website unclutterer.com.
Not all unitaskers are bad, of course; some of them
are invaluable and their limitations are a strength,
not a weakness. Whats wrong with a fire
extinguisher? It does one job well. (OK, you can use
it to prop the door open or brain a burglar, but
were talking about intended uses here.) And one
persons useless unitasker is anothers onion-ring
holder or USB fragrance oil burner.
While Im skeptical of tools intended for only one
purpose, I like the Kindle because its a unitasker.
You cant really use it for the Web or Twitter or email: Its for reading and thats it.
Macworld; Dec. 2010.
UPSIZING
This word has turned up on occasion in recent
years in the computing field, where it is used as the
opposite of the much more

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common downsizing with the sense: (the action

of) replacing a smaller system with a larger one,
especially one with networking capabilities (or, as
some wags have put it: bringing the mainframe
back from the dead). It may be about to become a
fashionable word in business, if we are to judge
from an article in the Economist, which asked Will
upsizing be the next management fad? and
answered its own question with a qualified yes.
The words root sense in this context is increasing
the size of an organisation (by hiring staff), but
like downsizing it has undertones of a formal
policy forcefully pursued, perhaps for doctrinaire
reasons. The management gurus argue
that upsizing is the natural consequence of
downsizing: companies which have shed surplus
staff and returned to their core competencies are
now beginning to recruit staff better suited to their
new needs. Opponents of downsizing and they
are now many say that upsizing is needed
because businesses have reduced in size too

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vigorously and find they cant even carry out their

core functions properly. The agent
noun upsizerand the verb upsize are also used.
UPSKILLING/pskl/
This is a moderately common technical term which
hasnt yet reached any of the standard dictionaries
Ive searched, though theSecond Additions
Volume of the Oxford English Dictionary cites a first
use as long ago as 1983. Upskilling refers, as you
would expect, to increasing the skills of workers,
usually through training. But its introduction
reflects substantial changes in the nature of work
in developed and developing countries. In the past
two decades a substantial proportion of all jobs
have become more technical and varied. Much of
this is due to the introduction of computers, which
require many workers to take on tasks like wordprocessing or financial analysis which once would
have been done by specialists. Trainers and
employers both argue that to upskill workers

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improves their employability. But critics say

that upskilled workers are not necessarily better
paid, nor do they have better promotion prospects,
and that upskilling benefits the employer rather
than the worker. Upskilling may be distinguished
from reskilling, which usually refers to giving
people new skills to cope with a new job, usually
an enforced one.
Business Process Reengineering can result in more
upskilled work and more integrated and
interesting jobs, but upskilled work doesnt
necessarily mean better wages and promotional
possibilities.
Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, Vol 8,
No 2, 1996
Measures to promote upskilling and lifelong
learning can raise the mobility and employability
of workers, mitigate the costs of job displacement
resulting from rapid technological change and
reduce resistance to reform.

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Structural Reform and Adjustment, OECD Report

(1998)
URBAN GAMING
In the USA, this term most frequently refers to the
controversial issue of casinos being operated by
Native Americans within cities. But it has recently
started to refer to a different sort of game, one
which combines computer technology with the
actual geography of a town.
One game in London is called Uncle Roy All Around
You, in which players use handheld computers to
search for Uncle Roy, aided by a map and by
incoming messages from online players who help
them to reach their destination. The games firm
Hasbro is setting up another, also in London, that
uses specially equipped taxis to play an interactive,
virtual-reality Monopoly game in the real locations
of the British version of the board.

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In a related case, researchers in Singapore have

created a version of the arcade game PacMan that
superimposes the game world on to the real
environment by means of special goggles and
headsets. Players move about a set play area to
collect the little energy pills, which they can see
through their interactive goggles, all the while
being chased by ghosts who can kill them if they
catch them. This version of the idea builds on a
virtual-reality concept called augmented reality,
but its not likely to prove practical until electronic
locating systems can be made much more accurate.
He also happens to be a pioneer of a new social
phenomenon, urban gaming. If you thought the
computer games of the 21st century are only ever
played by couch potatoes addicted to the new
generation of Xbox, Nintendo or PlayStation
consoles, youd be mistaken. For urban gamers are
harnessing the power of global positioning systems
(GPS), high-resolution screens and cameras and
the latest mobile phones to play games across our

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towns and cities, where they become spies,

vampire slayers, celebrities and even Pac-Man.
New Scientist, 11 Jun. 2005

VEHICLE-TO-GRID
This term and its abbreviation V2G are likely
to be appearing more often in the future as its
being promoted as a way to boost renewable
energy sources.
Its based on the fact that electric vehicles all
contain capacious storage batteries, which are

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connected to a power supply for charging when the

vehicles arent being used. V2G connects the
batteries to the electricity grid and temporarily
borrows the energy stored in them to supplement
the electricity supply instead of, for example, firing
up another power station. The vehicle batteries
would then be topped up again using off-peak
power, perhaps from renewable resources such as
wind turbines, whose generated power would
otherwise be going to waste. Owners of electric
cars would benefit through their vehicles earning
money while idle.
The term and the concept have been promoted for
at least the last decade, are now common in the
technical press but are only slowly becoming more
widely known as the number of electric vehicles
grows.
There are also some energy storage technologies
that are under development at the moment and are
being touted as being the next revolution in the

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industry. These include Superconducting Magnetic

Energy Storage systems, hydrogen technologies,
ultracapacitors, and Vehicle-to-Grid.
Energy Weekly News, 4 Feb. 2011
The global vehicle-to-grid market is projected to
grow at a blistering growth rate during the forecast
period 2012-2020. The key enablers of V2G
transition will be the smart grid, as well as the
evolution of high performance vehicle batteries.
Entertainment Close-up, 24 Jan. 2011
VIATICAL/vatkl/
This adjective is first cited in the OED from 1847,
deriving from the Latin viaticum, related to via,
way; road, which has been used in English since
medieval times in the Roman Catholic Church for
the Eucharist given to someone dying or in danger
of death; in more general usage, though it is a rare
and rather formal word, it retains the original Latin
sense of articles for use on a journey; travelling

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expenses. Since about 1991, viatical has taken on

a new figurative sense referring to the purchase of
a dying persons insurance policy to give
immediate cash for medical treatment and living
expenses; the full term is viatical settlement. The
scheme developed to help people with AIDS but
has since been extended to any terminally ill
person needing money. The technique can bring
valuable benefits to those helped but unscrupulous
operators have sometimes taken unfair advantage
and there are ethical implications when health
organisations or doctors become involved. The
purchaser of the policy has to continue to pay the
premiums until the subject of the policy dies, so he
is in effect betting on how long the seller will
survive. For this reason, such purchases have been
dubbed death futures. A person selling a policy in
this way is sometimes called in legal English
a viator. The popularity of the scheme has waned
in recent times as the success of treatments for
AIDS has extended life expectancy.

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VIROSPHERE
The virosphere is all those places where viruses are
found or in which they interact with their hosts. It
has also been spelled asviriosphere, though this is
less common and seems to have been supplanted
by the other form.
Its appearance shows how scientists are coming to
realise that the viruses are not mere causes of
disease and parasitic nuisances on the fringes of
life but a key part of the living world. Vastly more
virus species exist than previously thought (100
million or more, outnumbering any other type of
organism) and they are to be found in pretty much
every environment on the planet. They contain
more genetic material than the rest of life, so much
of it unique that its no longer possible to dismiss
them as a irrelevant aside but a separate class of
biological existence that may be even older than
bacteria. A significant part of the human genome
turns out to consist of viral genes and it is

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beginning to look as though the ability of viruses to

transfer genes to and from their hosts and each
other so spreading genes throughout the
biological world may have been an important
factor in the evolution of species.
The term appeared no later than 1997 in a poster
issued by the International Committee on
Taxonomy of Viruses, in the slightly different sense
of the diversity of virus types. Professor Curtis
Suttle of the University of British Columbia used it
in the current sense (but spelled viriosphere) in the
journal Environmental Microbiology in 2005 and its
current usage dates from that. It remains
uncommon, even in scientific literature, but a few
straws in the wind suggest it is becoming a
standard term.
The need to periodically update the classification
schemes testifies to the dynamic nature of the
virosphere.

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Animal Viruses, by Thomas C Mettenleiter and

Francisco Sobrino, 2008
Only three of these systems survive to this day in
the form of the three domains of cellular life; much
of the rest lives on the virosphere.
New Scientist, 30 Aug. 2008
VIROTHERAPIST
This term is currently very rare. The name for the
field of study,virotherapy, has been known for a
decade but has only occasionally strayed outside
specialist or academic publications. The
magazineScientific American explained its meaning
succinctly in a headline to an article in October
2003: virotherapy harnesses viruses, those banes
of humankind, to stop another scourge cancer.
Anecdotal reports have appeared for more than a
century that certain viruses can counter tumours,
but it has only been in the past couple of decades
that a growing understanding of genetics has

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enabled medical researchers to begin developing

treatments using oncolytic (cancer-attacking)
viruses. The then state of the art was summed up
in a report two years ago:
Research has shown that virotherapy, in which
viruses are programmed to attack cancer cells,
leaving healthy cells undamaged, could be
beneficial, but this treatment is at present
experimental.
Daily Telegraph, 21 Mar. 2011.
The field has moved on since then. A viral therapy
to treat prostate cancers and one to help treat
cancers of the head and neck are currently working
their way towards approval in the US. Others are
stymied for lack of funding.
VIRTOPSY
In 2007, New Scientist magazine mentioned a term
that Ive since learned appeared first in a series of
academic articles in 2003 but which is not well

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known. That may in part be because its specialist,

but also because its subject matter is gruesome.
Autopsies are very messy procedures, involving
extensive post-mortem surgery that by its nature is
destructive. So much depends on the skill and
observation of the pathologist, who may miss
things. A team at the Institute of Forensic Medicine
at the University of Berne in Switzerland has been
working for the past 15 years on creating a virtual
alternative a virtopsy that doesnt involve
cutting into the body.
This makes use of non-invasive techniques such as
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed
tomography (CT) and surface scans, which can be
recorded and re-analysed later by an independent
specialist. Guided by these scans, a surgical robot
dubbed a virtobot can then take samples for
analysis.

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Other forensic pathology laboratories around the

world have introduced imaging techniques into
their autopsy procedures, but the Bern operation
which performed its 100th virtopsy last year
is by far the most advanced. ... Taking automation
to the next level, they added a robot, the Virtobot,
that can be fitted with a needle and manoeuvred
into position by a remote computer, to take a tissue
sample should the pathologist need more
information.
Independent, 31 May 2010.
According to two autopsy and body imaging
experts at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, the notion
that virtopsy could replace traditional autopsy
made popular by such TV dramas is simply not
ready for scientifically vigorous prime time. The
latest virtual imaging technologies including
full-body computed tomography (CT) scans,
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound, Xray and angiography are helpful, they say, but

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cannot yet replace a direct physical inspection of

the bodys main organs.
Health & Medicine Week, 3 Feb. 2012.
VIRTUAL WATER
During the World Water Week conference held in
Stockholm in August 2008, the environmental
group WWF released a report that demonstrated
the extent to which the UK consumes the water of
other countries.
The concept of virtual water was created by
Professor John Allan of Kings College, London, who
was awarded the 2008 Stockholm Water Prize for
it. It measures the amount of water thats used in
food production and in industrial processes such
as the manufacture of textiles. The WWF report
says 62% of the water consumed in Britain is
virtual water from other countries.
Another term for it is embedded water. Other terms
environmentalists use when discussing problems

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of water supply are water footprint, the amount of

water, both virtual and visible, used by a country, a
business or an individual (a term closely related
to carbon footprint), and blue water, water thats
withdrawn from ground and surface reserves, as
opposed to green water, which is taken directly
from rainfall.
The concept of virtual water holds immense
relevance for the water-scarce countries. Much
water can be saved by cultivating only those food
crops which need less water and importing the
food items and other agricultural produce that
need high amounts of water.
Khaleej Times, Dubai, 22 Mar. 2008
Academics behind the virtual water calculations
have also created a worldwide league table for the
water footprint of different countries. The US is the
biggest offender, with a water footprint of close to
2,500 cubic metres per year per capita, while Italy
is a close second. Britains water footprint is

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relatively modest at 1,245 cubic metres per year

per capita.
Belfast Telegraph, 21 Apr. 2008
VLOGGER
First we had web logger, which soon
became blogger, for a person who creates Web
pages, blogs, that contain diary entries detailing
their activities, interests or thoughts on life. The
concept was extended by adding photographs to
blogs (especially taken using the camera functions
of mobile phones, so often called moblogging), then
recorded sound (which some call audio blogging,
though there doesnt seem to be a common
abbreviation for it).
In the past year or so, some bloggers have
experimented with video, taking advantage of
cheap digital camcorders to provide a continuing
television news report on personal events.
Obviously enough, this has been called video

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blogging or video weblogging,vlogging for short,

with the person creating the vlog being thevlogger.
(Ive never heard any of these words, but I have
been assuming theyre all said with a separate
initial v, for example, vee-logger, mainly
because an initial vl is unknown in modern
English. However, some subscribers tell me they
do say them as words.) Many observers feel that it
will be slow to catch on, because the tools are
relatively expensive, video demands too much
bandwidth to transmit, and above all too few
potential vloggers have the technical skills to make
watchable recordings.
An extension of blogging is to collect, display and
store all types of digital information about ones
life in a single place for ones family and friends to
access. Such a collection has been called a lifelog,
though trendwatching.com recently dubbed it life
caching. One pundit sourly remarked that it was an
excellent way of proving to everyone how boring
ones life really is.

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In its most basic form, vlogging does not require

very hi-tech equipment: a digital video camera, a
high-speed connection and a host are all that is
needed.
The Guardian, 7 Aug. 2004
Jeff Jarvis, an early champion of vlogging and
founder of BuzzMachine.com, a blog that deals
with politics and the media, sees great potential in
the phenomenon. Vlogs are a weird, new kind of
way that people can document their lives, says
Jarvis.
Time, 19 Apr. 2004
V-MAIL
This term first appeared more than 50 years ago
for a method of microfilming US forces mail to and
from home to cut down shipping costs (the V stood
then for victory). Its also been used much more
recently, again mainly in the USA, as an
abbreviation for voice mail. Its most recent

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incarnation is as a short form of video mail, the

video equivalent of e-mail. Though it has been
around in experimental conditions for some time,
the term itself seems to be no more than a couple
of years old. V-mail is only very slowly becoming a
practical proposition, because until recently the
size of video clips made it impracticable to use
them in Internet messages and there was no
simple way to record and edit them. But now
software is becoming available that permits video
clips to be created and viewed and then
compressed to ease transmission. Industry pundits
are predicting that within a few years it will be as
common to see e-mail messages with video
attached as it is now to get them with sounds or
still pictures. But even with compression, a oneminute video clip takes up about a megabyte, and
information technologists worry that the
introduction of v-mail will be yet another strain on
the data-carrying capacity of the Internet. We shall
also have to decide how to spell it: the term is

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currently going through the same stages as e-mail,

with and without an initial capital V or a hyphen.
Sending short video messages by e-mail dubbed
v-mail is to become a lot easier, thanks to a $99
system from Philips of the Netherlands.
New Scientist, Nov. 1998
A V-Mail takes megabytes to convey a message that
could travel as a kilobyte of text.
Personal Computer World, Mar. 1999
VOLUNTOURISM
The term combines volunteering with tourism, far
from a new concept, but one its proponents claim
is rapidly becoming the next big thing in travel. It
began to appear in the press early in 2005,
joining responsible tourism, ecotourism and similar
terms that also imply giving something back to the
communities one visits. It might be something as
easy-going as giving time to local libraries and

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schools, as straightforward as taking a day out to

clear paths in a national park, or as hard work as
constructing new homes or digging latrines. It
differs from much organised volunteer activity by
taking place within a conventional one- or twoweek holiday, usually combined with more
conventional vacation activity. It is also
increasingly being tailored to suit the abilities of
participants over a wide age range, including those
in their 50s and 60s. US commentators have noted
the rise in popularity of the idea since Hurricane
Katrina, which has persuaded large numbers of
people to spend vacation time helping to rebuild
New Orleans.
Voluntourism is catching on in college campuses,
where many students would rather spend spring
break doing something altruistic than carousing.
Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, 29 Mar. 2007

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He describes voluntourism as the practice of

devoting some vacation time to building housing
and schools or other community service.
Chicago Tribune, 7 Mar. 2007

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This weird term

was the word of the year 2007 from the dictionary
maker Merriam-Webster. It presented a list of 20
words on its Web site that had been the subject of
a large number of searches during the past year
and asked visitors to vote. W00t came out top.
W00t is spelled with a couple of zeroes in the
middle but its said as woot. Its a small cry of joy,
perhaps after completing a task, after besting an
opponent, or for no reason at all. Merriam-Webster
says, It became popular in online gaming as part
of what is known as l33t (leet, or elite) speak, an
esoteric computer hacker language in which

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numbers and symbols are put together to look like

letters.
Its origins are disputed. Some say its a blend from
the cry Wow! Loot!, one that might be uttered when
a Dungeons & Dragons player came across
treasure; Merriam-Webster notes that it has been
said to be an acronym for we owned the other
team (meaning that our team bested them utterly);
others argue that it derives from the Scots hoot!,
which really is a bit of a hoot, since the Oxford
English Dictionary describes that as an ejaculation
expressing dissatisfaction with, or impatient and
somewhat contemptuous dismissal of, a statement
or notion, which hardly fits the context.
Grant Barrett, who runs the Double-Tongued
Dictionary site, is sure these are all folk
etymologies. He says that woot was most likely
derived from and popularised by the US dance
catchphrase of 1993, whoot, there it is! In clubs
and on dance floors across the country, in half-time

TURN OF PHRASE

1061

shows and in baseball stadiums, whoot, there it is

and plain woot! were shouted long and loud by
millions. It was used by hype men at hip-hop
shows, dancers and cheerleaders at ball games, DJs
at discos, and probably by ball-callers at bingos.
But what of its future? Allan Metcalf, executive
secretary of the American Dialect Society, was
quoted in an Associated Press story as being rather
less than w00tish about it. Its amusing, but its
limited to a small community and unlikely to
spread and unlikely to last.
WAP
This is short for Wireless
Application Protocol and is a
scheme that expands the
functions available on mobile
phones. Both the full term
and its abbreviation are
beginning to appear in newspapers and periodicals
because products using WAP are coming on to the
v

TURN OF PHRASE

1062

market. The system allows users to connect to the

Internet via a small text screen running
a microbrowser. In theory it then becomes possible
to do a whole range of useful things: examples
given in articles include downloading a local street
map, checking the time of your flight, or making a
theatre booking. Industry pundits predict that its
impact on mobile telephony will be as great as the
World Wide Web was on the Internet, turning
mobiles from voice devices into data ones. Recent
strategic alliances including one between
Microsoft and Ericsson have generated
predictions that within a few years most Internet
accesses will be via mobile phones rather than PCs.
A related term is WML (Wireless Markup
Language); this is a specialised type of tagging
forming a key part of the WAP scheme, as it
permits formatted text to be displayed on the
phone. Its closely related to HTML, the tagging
scheme for the Web.

1063

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The Wireless Markup Language specification

portion of WAP is based on the HDML (Handheld
Device Markup Language) specification and is an
XML (Extensible Markup Language)-based
language.
PC Week, Oct. 1998
Thanks to WAP, GPRS and some other hot new
acronyms in mobile communications, your phone
can be used to settle all sorts of shopping and
business transactions.
Data Communications, Sep. 1999

WW
W

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WC
HALKING
The name refers to chalk symbols that indicate to
those in the know that an unsecured wireless
networking station is nearby that can be used to
tap into a corporate network and get illicit free
Internet access. The term and the code were
created by Matt Jones in the UK, based on the
symbols that tramps and hobos once chalked on
walls and doors to pass on information to others
about houses to avoid or where a meal was to be
had. Within days of appearing on his web site, the
idea had been picked up by SlashDot in the USA
and his symbols had been seen in London, New
York, and Seattle.

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This is just the most recent of a set of

terms which is threatening to
turn war into a geek prefix meaning
something like attempting to gain
unauthorised network access. The first
was the 1980s term war dialling for the
way that hackers systematically dialled
telephone numbers in search of a modem that
might give them network access. More recent
examples include war driving (driving around with
a portable computer, looking for unsecured
wireless networks) and warwalking (the same
idea, but on foot). In a sign of its
vitality,warchalking has already given rise to the
parody termschalkchalking, pubchalking,
and blogchalking and it is being seriously
suggested that the symbols should also mark
legitimate access points.
Warchalkings rise to infamy has even been given
an air of governmental legitimacy, at least in the
US: the state of Utah is planning on using the

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warchalking symbols on 250 government

buildings.
Guardian, July 2002
Whether it be a coffee shop in Seattle, a chip shop
in Newcastle or an airport lounge in Hong Kong,
any place that offers free wireless access to attract
customers should be encouraged to adopt the
conventions of warchalking to specify its network
capabilities.
Personal Computer World, Sep. 2002
WATER BANKINW

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/wt bk/ In the mid-west of the United

States, getting enough water for crops and people
is an ever-increasing problem. For seven US states,
a crucial source is the Colorado River, for which
each has a set allocation laid down in rules called
the Law of the River or theColorado River
Compact that have existed since 1922. Because
Arizona doesnt use all its allocation, it has begun
to store the part that it doesnt immediately
consume in underground

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aquifers against future need. This technique,

called water banking, is starting to reshape water
policy in the area, especially since Nebraska plans
to use the same storage as Arizona for a similar
purpose; Bruce Babbitt, the US Interior Secretary,
approved draft regulations in January 1998 for
such transfers. California has for some time relied
on unused allocations by upstream states to supply
part of its needs, but the new system, called
the Arizona Water Bank, means it will have to find
other sources of supply.

Water Poverty
Humans can, at a pinch, make do without a lot of
things, but they must have water. Some people in

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developing countries have access only to water

that is unfit to drink. In other countries, even some
prosperous ones such as the oil-rich nations of the
Middle East, there isnt enough water for their
populations.
The term water poverty for the lack of access to
potable water isnt new: its on record as far back
as 1950 in reference to the problems of Texas
farmers during a prolonged drought. But it has
become widely used only in the past decade. In
February, a report from the Joseph Rowntree
Foundation used the term to describe the state of
four million British low-income households who
struggle to pay their water bills.
She concluded that Jamaica was suffering from
water poverty, as it is a nation that cannot
constantly afford the cost of sustainable clean
water to everyone.
Jamaica Observer, 3 Aug. 2010.

TURN OF PHRASE

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Even if the new deal does not cut back on Egypts

share of the Nile, water poverty is a daunting
reality as the population grows by an estimated 1.5
million people annually.
Manila Bulletin, 31 May 2010.
WATER WAR
This is a term devised
by environmentalists
for a type of conflict
(most probably a form
of guerrilla warfare)
which has not yet
occurred, but which
they predict will
happen sometime
shortly after the
millennium through an acute shortage of water for
drinking and irrigation. About 40 per cent of the
worlds populations are already affected to some
degree, but population growth, climate change and

TURN OF PHRASE

1071

rises in living standards will worsen the situation:

the UN Environment Agency warns that almost 3
billion people will be severely short of water
within 50 years. Experts point to the disaster of the
Aral Sea, which has already lost three-quarters of
its water through diversion for irrigation of the
rivers feeding it. Possible flash points have been
predicted in the Middle East, parts of Africa and in
many of the worlds major river basins, including
the Danube. The term has been used for some
years, happily only in a figurative sense, to
describe disputes in the southern and southwestern United States over rights to water
extraction from rivers and aquifers.
AVE AND PAY

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1072

In recent years, many of

us in the UK and other countries have had to learn
about chip and pin as a security method when we
pay for things using a credit card. Wave and pay is
the next new idea in the field, which is described
formally as a contactless payment card.
The card works by a radio-frequency detection
method that requires the card only to be placed
close to the merchants terminal for the details of
the transaction to be transferred and logged. The
main value of the system is that its fast, so small
transactions at newsagents, fast-food outlets,
coffee shops and pubs, car parks, ticket machines
and the like can be carried out without causing
queues to lengthen unnecessarily.

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The concept is already being used in the US and

other countries. In the UK, a scheme has been
recently announced to begin next summer. It will
run in association with Transport for London and
the new cards will double as the Oyster cards that
for some years commuters in London have used in
a similar way to pay bus and tube fares.
Card issuers, including Chase and KeyCorp., have
been building U.S. consumers familiarity with the
habit of wave and pay technology by issuing a
total of about 10 million contactless credit and
debit cards.
Banking Strategies, Nov 2006
Visa signed a deal with Barclaycard to offer a new
generation of wave and pay plastic cards for
small change purchases such as the morning paper,
a bus fare, a loaf of bread or a pint of beer.
Daily Mail, 14 Dec. 2006
WEB 2.0

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1074

Web 2.0 is a classic

case of a new term
being bandied about
by commentators and
publicists without
anybody having a
very clear idea what
theyre talking about.
Almost every new application or idea for anything
to do with online commerce or user interaction
with the Web is being described as part of this
wonderful new concept, but its hard to tie down
what it means.
The term was coined by Tim OReilly and Dale
Dougherty in 2004 during a conference discussion
about the future of the Web. Their view was that
the companies that had survived and prospered
after the dot.com bubble had burst in 2000 had
certain qualities in common. All had a strong
connection to and involvement with their user
base or customers (think of Amazon.coms reader

TURN OF PHRASE

1075

reviews, for example) or they were collaborative,

like Wikipedia or Flickr, or they relied on people
telling each other about good ideas in a process
called viral marketing. Tim OReilly summed their
ideas up in an article in September 2005 as
Network effects from user contributions are the
key to market dominance in the Web 2.0 era. Or,
putting it more simply, Users add value.
But others argue that the term means something
different. As theBirmingham Post put it in
December 2005, Typically, a Web 2.0 service is
one that uses the very latest technologies to
provide a website that works more like an
application on your desktop. And others suggest it
can include the idea of taking various sources of
Web information and mixing them to make a new
interactive service, for which the term mashup has
been borrowed from the underground music
scene. People have included within the Web
2.0concept such technologies as social networking,

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1076

wikis, social bookmarks, blogging and RSS

newsfeeds.
Since then the 2.0 element has been borrowed and
applied to a wide range of technological
innovations, mostly Web-related. In June
2007, Computer Weekly remarked that We have
had Marketing 2.0, PR 2.0, Democracy 2.0, Identity
2.0, Jobs 2.0 and even Lunch 2.0. Ive also
seen travel 2.0 and several examples of television
2.0. Ive also seen it several times as a verb, 2.0-ify.
Perhaps one day everybody will come to a
consensus about whatWeb 2.0 and 2.0 actually
mean.
All that guesswork underlines another
fundamental shift in the web: the move away from
static web pages to a more interactive, real-time
environment. Its the next generation. Its the Web
2.0. And its already underway.
Entrepreneur, 1 Jan. 2006

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Furthermore, some believe that the future of the

Internet is a trend dubbed Web 2.0 (though some
skeptics call that moniker an empty phrase, born of
marketers and smacking of empty sloganism).
Community-based sites like Wikipedia are a big
part of the supposed Web 2.0 movement, and
companies like Yahoo! are moving to capitalize on
what they apparently believe will be a big part of
the Webs future.
The Motley Fool, 20 Dec. 2005
WEB RING/wb r
/wb r/
One of the main
problems arising from
the huge growth in the
World Wide Web is
how to find what youre looking for. At one time,
search engines were looked to as a good solution to
the problem, indexing large numbers of Web pages

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and allowing searches for key phrases. But now the

volume of material out there has grown so great, a
Web search can turn up thousands of possible
sites, leaving searchers with an almost impossible
problem. TheWeb ring has been invented in the
past year or so as a solution. Using browser
software, sites with a common theme link
themselves together in an endless chain, so that
someone stumbling on one site can follow the links
to others that will also be of interest. This
technique is also valuable in increasing traffic to all
the sites in the ring in a co-operative environment.
Though so recently invented, dozens of Web rings
already exist, on subjects ranging from knitting
patterns through Siberian huskies to The Simpsons.
WEBUCATION

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1079

Obviously enough, this is education provided over

the World Wide Web, a concept also sometimes
called e-education. Most of the new terms
beginning with Web- have been short-lived, but
this one shows signs of surviving. It refers to
various ways of using the Internet to contribute to
learning at a distance, in particular for bringing
education to groups not previously well served.
But it also includes school management systems,
educational software, and ways to wire the
classroom. Many companies in the educational
field and many prestigious educational institutions
are investigating the options for webucation. The
idea is seen to have great potential, but theres also
a lot of work to be done making it a practical (and
paying) proposition.

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1080

Webucation will be big, but will it be profitable?

After all, the public has grown accustomed to
getting information for free on the Web it has on
network TV.
Forbes Magazine, May 2000
Webucation is the great new market of the
internet age and companies from the giants of
the media sector to dotcom start-ups are
clamouring to be in the right place at the right
time.
Financial Times, Sep. 2000
CONOMY

Several decades ago, William Tenn wrote a sciencefiction story in which alien creatures, interstellar
traders, claimed on their business cards to be
dealers in intangibles. Professor Danny Quah of

TURN OF PHRASE

1081

the London School of Economics argues that doing

that is now the only option open to developed
societies that want to continue to increase their
standard of living. He has given it the
name weightless economy, in reference to economic
activity whose value does not lie in a physical endproduct. Examples are intellectual property such
as ideas and designs, computer software,
entertainment products, telecommunications, and
better ways to transmit information, all of which
he calls dematerialised products or, putting it
another way, intangibles. Success in such
a weightless economy comes from being able to
organise and manipulate information in ways that
generate extra value and is closely linked to
success in applying information technology. One
implication is that it is only those people with the
right skills and aptitudes that can make the
transition to this happy state, which will leave a lot
of people outside in the cold.
WET DAY CENTRE

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1082

You may tell from the spelling that this is, at least
in this form, a British term. It refers to a day centre
which allows its users to drink alcohol on the
premises (hence wet).
Such centres have been set up to reach and advise
people who habitually drink alcohol in public
places. Street drinkers, as they are known in socialwork jargon, are mainly men in their 30s and 40s,
addicted to alcohol, often homeless and with
mental health problems, who are frequently
rejected by mainstream health or social services
because they are aggressive and disruptive and
unwilling to stop drinking.
The idea of wet day centres (also called wet
centres) is to provide a safe place as an alternative
to spending the day on the street, where drinkers
run the risk of arrest. Centres provide easy access

TURN OF PHRASE

1083

to support and advice aimed at solving all their

problems, not only to reducing their reliance on
alcohol, which is usually a symptom of deeper
troubles.
Though the idea of wet day centres has been
around since the 1970s, there are as yet only half a
dozen or so of them in the UK. Its not clear how
old the term is, but it became more widely known
as the result of a survey on practical help for street
drinkers commissioned by the Kings Fund and the
Governments Homelessless Directorate and
published in December 2003.
The building is one of a handful of wet day centres
in Britain, open to help homeless and vulnerable
people by providing an area where chronic
drinkers can consume alcohol.
The Guardian, 4 Feb. 2004
The goal of the new wet center is to get chronic
drinkers off the streets and away from harm, and

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1084

to reduce the enormous public resources they use

up in jail and emergency rooms, said Bill Hobson,
executive director of the Downtown Emergency
Service Center.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 26 Mar. 2003
WIKITORIAL

WIKITORIAL
This word hit public attention when the Los
Angeles Times wrote on 13 June: Watch next week
for the introduction of wikitorials an online

TURN OF PHRASE

1085

feature that will empower you to rewrite Los

Angeles Times editorials. The experiment was
based on the same software that is behind the
Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia created by its
readers in a process called open editing. At its best
this produces excellent results, but all too often
shows its contributors biases and limited
knowledge. These and similar terms are based on
the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning quick. The LA
Times experiment based around an editorial
about the Iraq war proved disastrous.
Responses to it degenerated from sensible
revisions into a sort of electronic mob rampage
containing pornography and racial abuse and had
to be pulled within 48 hours. Despite this, the
paper plans to try again, with better controls, and
it is likely that the word has a future.
The Wikitorial is one of several changes to the
papers editorial page being made under the
leadership of Kinsley, the political commentator
and columnist who founded the online magazine

TURN OF PHRASE

1086

Slate in 1996 and took over the Times opinion

pages a year ago.
AP Worldstream, 20 June 2005
The LA Timess approach to its wikitorial was
timid and patronising at the same time, and that
was the problem. The tiger will be stroked, but
when it smells weakness it bites.
The Observer, 26 June 2005

WORD

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1087

WORDW

Word of Finger
OF FINGER
Its a punning revision of word of
mouth for the digital age and refers
to e-mail, texts and other forms of
communication that require typing,
even though much of it is
undertaken on mobile devices using just the

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1088

thumbs. By its nature it is both recent and to be

found mainly online. Heres a rare example in
print:
If you were a first-time visitor from Mars and you
happened to drop into a marketing meeting
somewhere in the United States, you might assume
that marketing people do nothing but talk about
TGIF. Thats Twitter, Google, the internet and
Facebook. Theres no question these four
revolutionary developments have forever changed
the marketing function. Word-of-mouth has now
become word of finger.
Advertising Age, 9 Nov. 2009. For most people,
however, TGIF still means Thank God Its Friday.
It has probably been reinvented many times. This
is the oldest Ive been able to find, albeit with a
rather different meaning:
The pathetic story is told of a deaf and dumb boy,
that he was one day reciting to his teacher - by

TURN OF PHRASE

1089

word of finger - the narrative about George

Washington and the cherry-tree.
Andover Review, Jan. 1892.
Heres another recent example that suggests that
its becoming a buzzword in the business
community:
Banks would be naive to believe that consumers do
not listen to recommendations made online. Word
of finger has replaced word of mouth, so product
recommendations and brand advocates are far
more accessible.
Datamonitor, 1 Mar. 2010.

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1090

XDR-TB
XDR-TB stands for Extensively
Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
(though some reports have
extreme drug-resistant), a
term that was coined in a
report by the US Centers for
Disease Control and the World Health Organization
that was published on World TB Day in March
2006. It refers to an intensification of a severe

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medical problem that has been growing for two

decades the evolution of strains of TB resistant
to the drugs available.
The term for an earlier stage of the evolution of
drug resistance wasMDR-TB, Multiple Drug
Resistant Tuberculosis. The difference between
this and the new form is that sufferers from XDRTB are resistant not only to the usual front-line
drugs for the disease but also to three or more of
the six second-level ones, making it extremely
difficult to treat. It has been reported from various
countries, but the main focus of concern is South
Africa.
There is hope that some new drugs in the pipeline
may be effective against it.
The combination of Aids and XDR-TB found in a
quarter of patients in Natal carries a mortality rate
of 100 per cent.
Daily Telegraph, 7 Sep. 2006

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Dr. Mario C. Raviglione, who directs the World

Health Organizations tuberculosis program, said
in an interview that nobody at the moment can be
considered an expert about the XDR-TB problem.
But he said that the XDR-TB situation is extremely
scary.
New York Times, 5 Sep 2006
XENOTRANSPLANATION
/zn()trnsplnten/
The shortage of
suitable organs for
transplants is now
severe, to the extent
that the invention in
the late sixties by the
science-fiction writer
Larry Niven
of organlegging murdering people to resell their
body parts no longer seems so fanciful. One

TURN OF PHRASE

1093

solution that is being considered is the use of

organs from other species, and it was reported at
the end of 1996 that doctors in India had
successfully transplanted the heart of a pig into a
person. Two reports on the technique the same
year (one in the US, one in Britain) agreed that
though such transplants were acceptable on ethical
grounds, there was legitimate concern over the
risk that infectious diseases might be introduced
with the transplanted organs (see xenozoonosis).
Pathogens such as retroviruses that might be
benign or even undetectable in the host animal
could become virulent when moved to the new
environment of the human body. The
termxenotransplantation is a compound
of transplantation with the Greek prefix xeno-,
foreigner; stranger, which also turns up
inxenophobia and in some specialised medical
terms like xenobiotic. An instance of the technique
is a xenotransplant, a word which doubles as the

TURN OF PHRASE

1094

verb; a person undertaking the process is rarely

called a xenotransplanter.

XENOZOONOSIS
/zn()znss/
Its long been known that many communicable
diseases such as diphtheria, influenza, rabies,
anthrax, chickenpox and mumps were originally
diseases of animals, which spread to humans once
we began to domesticate them. The general name
for such a disease is zoonosis (with
plural zoonoses), which derives from the Greek
words zoion, animal, and nosos, disease. As a
result of current research into ways to transplant
animal organs into humans, the risk of previously
unknown diseases transferring with the grafts is
greatly exercising medical minds, leading to calls
for such techniques to be banned or at least closely
monitored until the risk to heath is better known.
A disease which might be transferred in this way is

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1095

a xenozoonosis, using the Greek xenos, stranger, in

the same specialised sense as it is beginning to be
used in words such
asxenotransplantation and xenograft, which
means something (transplanted) from a different
species. The adjective isxenozoonotic.

1096

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YA /ji/ o

r /je/
/ji/ or /je/This word is only now beginning
to appear in general publications, though it has
been around in its specialist area for some years.

TURN OF PHRASE

1097

It refers to a type of manga or anime, so originally

Japanese, that focuses on male-to-male sexual
relationships. Though it is therefore popular
among gays, it has proved to be still more popular
among women. So it has that in common with the
originally SF genre of slash fiction, in which
male stars of popular TV shows and films are
portrayed as engaging in gay relationships, a genre
also popular with and mostly written by women.
(Slash because the original pair were Spock/Kirk
from Star Trek, so written.)
Yaoi is said to be a Japanese acronym formed from
the phrase yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi, which
has been translated into English as no climax, no
resolution, no meaning and no peak, no point, no
problem, though a recent article suggests it
actually means no story, just the good bits, that is,
mostly descriptions of the sex with the minimum of
storyline. The pronunciation often confuses people.
In Japanese, Im told, it ought to be three syllables
(roughly as yah-oh-ee), though its frequently

TURN OF PHRASE

1098

heard as two, as often happens in rapid speech. In

English it seems to be said mainly as YOW-ee
(roughly the noise you make when your home
team scores, or you do) but also as YAY-oi, the
former being nearer the Japanese pronunciation.
From a linguistic point of view its interesting that,
though the term and the genre are classically
Japanese, the term itself isnt so much used there.
The preferred local name for it is BL, short for boy
love.
If Jack London and A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rices
erotic avatar) had been commissioned to write a
novel that would appeal simultaneously to lovers
of yaoi (X-rated manga featuring gay men and
favored by female readers) and to furries (fans in
fur suits who enjoy pretending to be
anthropomorphic animals), the result might very
well have resembled A Companion to Wolves.
Washington Post, 27 Jan. 2008

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One of the earliest examples of yaoi Shakespeare

is Yasuko Aoikes manga for girls, titled Ibu no
musuko tachi (Sons of Eve, Tokyo, 1978), in which
Shakespeare, Lear, Hamlet and Romeo appear as
male gay characters.
Peter Holland, Shakespeare Survey 60, 2007
YUHANGYUAN
YUHANGYUAN

When China successfully launched its first manned

space flight in October 2003, there were some

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1100

differences of opinion in English-language reports

about what to call the pilot, Colonel Yang Liwei.
Ever since the start of space travel weve had two
words for a space traveller, cosmonaut from the old
USSR and the more common US term astronaut. A
third began to appear about 1999 in reference to
the Chinese space programme: taikonaut, a crossbred offspring of the Chinese term tai kong, space,
with the -naut ending of the other terms (which
derives from Greek nautes, a
sailor). Taikonaut seems to have been invented by
amateur space enthusiasts and taken up by
journalists.
However, the usual Chinese term is yuhangyuan,
which has been used for many years to refer to
participants in the American and Russian space
programmes. This has been borrowed by Englishlanguage newspapers in the last couple of months
or so in reports of the Chinese project. Its a
transliteration of Chinese words that literally mean

TURN OF PHRASE

1101

universe travel worker, an individual paid to go

into space. Knowing that somehow takes the
mystery out of it.
Since astronaut is available, why English-language
writers are bothering with the Chinese word isnt
clear (especially when theChina Daily and
the South China Morning Post both use astronautin
their English-language reports). Perhaps its just
the restless journalistic quest for novelty. If
so, yuhangyuan is likely soon to vanish from
English again.
[Many thanks to Martin Turner in Hong Kong for
his help.]
As the countdown clock ticks away, best-guesses
have set the Chinese launching of their first
taikonaut, or yuhangyuan, into orbit on or around
Oct. 15, 2003.
International Herald Tribune, 10 Oct. 2003

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After the launch from the Jiuquan site in Gansu

province, the Shenzhou is expected to make more
than a dozen orbits of Earth, providing time for a
possible spacewalk by the yuhangyuan who by
then will not be feeling the weight of their 10kg
spacesuits.
The Guardian, 6 Oct. 2003

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ZZO

1103

HSISOOCHOSIS

Youre likely to find this word used by animal

rights activists in reference to what they see as the

TURN OF PHRASE

1104

degrading effect of zoos on the animals they

contain. Many animals, especially the large
carnivores, become deeply depressed, even
psychotic, as the result of captivity. Symptoms
of zoochosis include nervous pacing, head rocking,
and self-mutilation. The problem is perhaps most
acute with polar bears, which have proved
especially difficult to keep sane, and which often
show disturbed behaviour such as swimming for
hours in small circles. (The Central Park Zoo in
New York had to call in an animal psychologist to
find ways to give its polar bear, Gus, a more varied
and challenging environment.) The word, a blend
of zoo andpsychosis, seems to date from the early
1990s, but is still fairly specialist and hasnt so
far as I know yet made it to any dictionary.
In the zoological gardens outside Ho Chi Minh City,
dazed elephants swing their trunks from side to
side, their feet tethered by chains and their
repetitive motions betraying signs of a dementia
known as zoochosis.

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Time International, Oct. 1998

Also known as zoochosis, the problem is
characterised by swaying the head and pacing up
and down in their enclosure incessantly in a
trance-like state, indicating they may be suffering
from boredom.
Independent on Sunday, Nov. 1999

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ZORBING /zbp/
Imagine yourself suspended inside a ten-foot clear
plastic sphere by nylon ropes, then rolled to the
top of a slope and pushed off. No brakes, no
steering, just you and gravity. By all accounts, its
like being a stray sock in a spin dryer, and its
obligatory to scream a lot. There are reports that
some find hillsides too tame, and have tried rolling
off cliffs and waterfalls. The balls bounce OK; so
usually do those inside. Some have tried walking
on water by taking the spheres on to lakes.

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This adventure activity was invented by Dwayne

van der Sluis and Andrew Akers in New Zealand in
1995 as something exciting for tourists to do once
they became jaded with bungee jumping. They
created the term Zorb for the ball, presumably a
variation on orb, which they trademarked and
which they used for the name of their company.
Confirming my suspicion that there is no activity so
crazy that it will not be taken up by somebody
somewhere, Zorbing has large numbers of
enthusiastic participants, not only in New Zealand
but also in the US, Europe and elsewhere.
The term, and zorbing for the activity, began to
appear in print in 1996. Since Zorb is a proprietary
name in New Zealand and the US, the
term sphereing has been used as an alternative,
though zorbingis showing some signs of becoming
generic. Variations are becoming known, such
as hydro-zorbing, in which you are drenched in
soapy water on the way down (the nearest thing in
existence to a human washing machine),

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and harness zorbing, in which two people are

strapped together. On flat land, a number of
participants can play bumper-zorbs. A participant is
often called aZorbonaut.
Zorbing has a way of making people smile, whether
youre a bystander or literally in the middle of the
action. Its a pretty simple concept: Squeeze into
the hollow center of a huge, translucent sphere
the Zorb and roll down a hill, bouncing up, down
and all around.
Chicago Sun-Times, 20 Jul. 2008
For most of us, adventure racing is a pastime that
will remain firmly in the spectator sport category,
alongside zorbing and base jumping.
The Scotsman, 20 May 2006