OBSERVE THIS
06 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in Wordplay Tags: ctwfrank, culture, education, future, humanity, humor, philosophy, psychology, society, writing
On August 25, 2011, fifteen neologisms graduated and became bona-fide credentialed words and as such earned their place in the dictionary. These lucky graduates follow in the footsteps of other famous neologisms=turned-real-words like the verb; google, officially defined as “to look up or search on the internet with the google search engine”. That’s no joke, it really is an official word in the dictionary, if you don’t believe me, just google it and you’ll see.
Following is a list of the lucky graduates; you can click on the word to actually see it in the dictionary.
- Americana: genre of American music with roots in early folk and country music.
- Boomerang child: young adult who returns to live at her family home, especially for financial reasons.
- bromance: a close nonsexual friendship between men.
- continuous positive airway pressure: abbreviated CPAP; a technique for relieving breathing problems (as those associated with sleep apnea or congestive heart failure) by pumping a steady flow of air through the nose to prevent the narrowing or collapse of air passages or to help the lungs to expand.
- cougar: slang term for a middle-aged woman seeking a romantic relationship with a younger man.
- crowdsourcing: the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, especially from the online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.
- duathlon: a three-part long-distance race typically having a running phase, a bicycling phase and a final running phase.
- fist bump : a gesture in which two people bump their fists together, as in greeting or celebration.
- helicopter parent: a parent who is overly involved in the life of his or her child.
- m-commerce: business transactions conducted by using a mobile electronic device, such as a cellphone.
- parkour: the sport of traversing environmental obstacles by running, climbing or leaping rapidly and efficiently.
- robocall: a telephone call from an automated source that delivers a pre-recorded message to a large number of people.
- social media: forms of electronic communication, such as websites for social networking and microblogging, through which users create online communities to share information, ideas
- tweet: a post made on the Twitter online message service.
- walk-off: ending a baseball game immediately by causing the winning run to score for the home team in the bottom of the last inning, i.e., a walk-off homer. Also, won by the home team in the bottom of the last inning, i.e., a walk-off win.
Source: Merriam-Webster Inc.
It is truly remarkable that we now have such an efficient mechanism with which to expand our spoken languages so they reflect our growing sophistication, intellect and complexity as the rulers of Planet Earth. It is surprising, however, that although the task of adding new words to the dictionary is given priority and effort, there is nothing or no one monitoring the intentional manipulation or alteration of the definition(s) of words after they earn dictionary status; something I like to call wordplay. It is a common and easily observable phenomenon that is occurring at an exponentially increasing rate. Here’s a perfect example, just look at what we’ve done to this word:
ob·serve
[uhb-zurv]
(original and actual definition):
verb
- To perceive and remember one’s surroundings by paying attention.
(wordplayed circa 1960’s):
verb
- to see, watch, perceive, or notice:
- to regard with attention, especially so as to see or learn something
- to watch, view, or note for a scientific, official, or other special purpose
- to state by way of comment; remark to keep or maintain in one’s action, conduct, etc.
(The way every single person on the planet understands it today in 2011):
verb
- To focus one’s attention completely on the actions and words of one person, or on rare occasion; a group of people, with the specific, premeditated, biased and malicious intent of witnessing and recording any actions or words:
- that would gain the observer some benefit or favor (primarily money or envy) from other people who may have an interest in knowing what was observed.
- that would allow the observer the use of the interpreted significance of the observation as a weapon to be used for the purpose of damaging or hurting the person(s) being observed, in any and every way possible.
- that may provide any form of enjoyment or satisfaction for the exclusive benefit of the observer’s ego, judgment, guilt, desire (sexual or otherwise) or ill will.
- provide the observer with a convenient starting point from which they would stop observing and begin to think for, make decisions for, and assume the actions (usually bad) of the person being observed then judge and punish them for those actions as if they had already happened and as if they were real.
- The name given to qualify the time that passes while a person fixates their attention on another in anticipation of a criticism- or gossip-worthy “screw up”.
- What you gotta do back because everyone’s doing it to you.
- The inoffensive sounding name given to the intentional tracking and meticulous documentation of every word, action and movement made by a person, regardless of any qualification or judgment, for the specific purpose of providing a broad assortment of data to be used against that person coercively at any time deemed convenient and for whatever reason is deemed convenient.
- What you do to people who “act strangely”, just in case they are secretly violent or dangerous, or at the very least capable of doing something worthy of being “good gossip”.
- What a person, usually a male, usually claims they are doing when caught ogling another person or a particular area of another person’s body.
- Officially replaced the word “spy” as of the end of the cold war in order to give credibility to the notion that spying is no longer needed or committed.
Say it ain’t so: you can’t. It is true.
We can do better.
#ctwfrank
