The changing face of words

Just culled this from a collection of TV comic memorabilia, dating back to 1951, which is going under the hammer in the UK - estimates place the collection raising in excess of £1,000.00 - although the comedy factor of some of the thoroughly non-PC pieces is priceless.

The changing face of words

OUP America's 2009 word of the year: 'Unfriend'.

So, without drum-roll, fireworks or further-a-fanfare, here it is! The Oxford University Press America's 2009 Word of the Year: 'unfriend'.

unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

As in, “I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.”

Whilst at first glance a lazy construction, simply just gluing the prefix 'un' onto the noun - when to convey the meaning properly one would write "to remove from one's 'friends' list" -, no doubt it shall escape in the wider lexicon with as greater ease as it has assumed itself into the vernacular of the 'Yoot' and all Web2.0 applications, like Facebook, Twitter et al.

Mind you, no doubt someone in Dr Johnson's time wrote precisely the same sentiment when the word 'deflower' first violated the dictionaries of English. Speaking of which, in his time, perhaps this new word would have then been rendered 'unbefriend'.

OUP America's 2009 word of the year: 'Unfriend'.

New Words & Coined Phrases - both original and borrowed

What follows is a sampling of the, usually irreverent,  inventive contractions, portmanteau words and other terms either pilfered wholesale, or more usually invented by some of the bright young things on my Eunoia Website.  Enjoy! 

decepticaemia - (n) the condition of voluntarily submitting to, and choosing to believe in, that which you know to be object bullshit; but you prefer it to reason or reality as it suits your prejudice. The Fox News Borg (FNB) are particularly prone to adopt this condition. 

déjà view (da-zhä vyü)  - (n)  [prevalent in the US]  a phenomenon which occurs after one watches a television show for the first time, then doesn't watch it again for a while. When they again watch the show at some later date, the TV station just happens to be re-airing the one episode they had already seen. 

flen  - (n)  the inexplicably black viscous substance that forms around the top of ketchup bottles due to people who are too klutzy and kak-handed to pour the ketchup correctly. 

proctoverbosity  - (n) Talking out of one's arse. Abbreviated to p.v. to mean bullshit.e.g. "Professor Hawking's lecture on super-string theory was complete p.v." - PhD dissertation, J. Stewart (1998), Bodleian Library. 

reintarnation - (n) coming back to life as a hillbilly.

arachnidiot  - (ar ak ni' di ot) - (n) A person, who, having wandered into an "invisible" spider web, begins gyrating and flailing about wildly. 

foreploy - (n) Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid. 

prozlytute - (praas/li/tyoot)  (n) One who preaches morals, whilst on their back. 

interregnum - noun (pl. interregnums or interregna) a period when normal government is suspended, especially between successive reigns or regimes.

 — ORIGIN Latin, from inter- ‘between’ + regnum ‘reign’.

interrectum - noun, the sensation the benighted US electorate perceive of "being done without Lube", after 8 years of George W Bush

  — ORIGIN Latin, from inter- ‘between’ + rectum intestinum ‘straight intestine’ (or 'arse cheeks', in the vernacular) 

malenutrition - (n) The temporarily wretched condition into which men allow themselves to sink, through sheer laziness, when they  omit to feed themselves whilst watching their favourite sports in TV -  e.g. during a football match for a Formula-1 race; usually resolved by pleas to the man's respective partner to "please go and make me a sarni love! I'm dying here!

New Words & Coined Phrases - both original and borrowed