iPod zombies, a digital undead army lurching through the streets. We may call it the iPod zombie trance, but it's a device-agnostic state, since this living dead horde also consists of iPhone zombies, BlackBerry zombies, and the generic MP3 zombies and cellphone zombies. The iPod zombie pedestrian isn't alone in needing earbuds and a tiny screen these days. Others in a state of iPod oblivion include iPod zombie joggers, iPod zombie dog walkers,iPod zombie cyclists, and iPod zombie rollerbladers.
iPod pedestrians (or, iPodestrians) people regularly—you might even say compulsively—read and compose e-mail while walking down the street. But that's not all people do while power walking to their next appointments. They also text, read Facebook and Twitter status updates, scan RSS feeds, and more than anything else, they bliss out to their favorite tunes at unhealthily loud volume levels.
Similarly, in your local Starbucks, you've probably seen your share of laptop zombie…
The increasing role played by women throughout the world of labour.
E’ un blend composto da women + economics che indica il crescente ruolo delle donne in ambito economico come forza lavoro che assume un sempre maggior peso nell’economia mondiale.
Inflated, jargon-cluttered prose that fails to communicate clearly.Coined in 1944 by Maury Maverick, a Texas lawyer, in a memorandum expressing disdain for the "gobbledygook language" of his colleagues. The word was inspired, he said, by the turkey, "always gobbledy gobbling and strutting with ludicrous pomposity."See also: MPs told to mind their language
Verb used loosely to mean "reject": she called on them to refudiate the proposal to build a mosque. [Origin--blend of refute and repudiate].
According to the OUP Blog, "the word refudiate instantly evokes the name of Sarah Palin, who tweeted her way into a flurry of media activity when she used the word in certain statements posted on Twitter. . . . [W]e have concluded that neither refute nor repudiate seems consistently precise, and that refudiate more or less stands on its own, suggesting a general sense of 'reject.'"
A new way to use geek as a transitive verb to mean "be geekily enthusiastic about."
geek, verb 1. To love, to enjoy, to celebrate, to have an intense passion for. 2. To express interest in. 3. To possess a large amount of knowledge in. 4. To promote.
Trade magazines are notoriously the most boring of all publications: devoted to the technical minutiae and internal politics of any given business sector, the editorial is of strictly limited interest and, consequently, of strictly limited readability. The one glorious exception is the entertainment industry magazine Variety, which has been offering Hollywood, Broadway, and, latterly, TV world, insights in its own fantastic idiolect. In a self-celebratory mood, Variety has published a guide to its own "slanguage", which lets the outside world in on terms like "shingle", "oater" and "nabe" .
But what's arguably most remarkable about the glossary is how many of the words don't seem strange at all: "biopic", "fave", "flop", "boffo", "dramedy", "sitcom" are part of everyday language, and any reasonably media-literate person would have…
Diplomatic messages sent electronically using a Blackberry or similar device.
"Mr. Erdogan's warm embrace of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Istanbul as "a dear friend" and his opposition to further sanctions against Iran (voted June 9 by the U.N. Security Council) mark Turkey's new "BlackBerry diplomacy," a break with conventional diplomacy - when major shifts take place in real time above the heads of foreign-policy officials and the diplomats with whom they normally deal."
Presenting a more positive view of yourself than in reality, on social networking site FacebookThe neologism "Facebook narcissism" has even emerged to label the phenomenon. Many users present such a lopsided version of themselves that the "beautiful life" presented online bears little resemblance to the real thing.
The modern technological blur we’re all living through produces new ideas and products constantly, and language trots along trying to keep up. In “Virtual Words: Language on the Edge of Science and Technology,” published this month by Oxford University Press, Jonathon Keats looks at the new words churned out on the road to the future and assesses their place in society. Will they succeed like the word "blog"? Or fail like the word "flog" (a fake blog for promotional purposes)? Here, Keats, who writes Wired Magazine’s Jargon Watch column, picks five words that not only have staying power but help us peer toward the horizon.
By Jonathon Keats WashingtonPost We tend to think of prophecy as the stuff of superstition. Yet just as people can influence the future with their predictions, words occasionally anticipate the reality they come to reflect. Here are five that are helping to define our technological society.
That is shorthand for the U.S., Europe, the U.K. and Japan, or, as HSBC currency strategists are calling them, “heavily indebted industrialized countries,” or HIICs. They are displaying the kinds of investment risks traditionally associated with global backwaters. “Developed markets are basically behaving like emerging ones,” says HSBC’s Richard Yetsenga. And emerging markets are quickly becoming more developed. Sensing and perhaps fueling the shift, investors have this year yanked some $36 billion from stock-market funds investing in HIICs, according to research firm EPFR Global, and stuffed $45 billion into emerging-market funds. Who can blame them? The “BRICs” of Brazil, Russia, India and China are “where the population growth …
This quirky, small-format gift book provides an introduction to more than 200 of the latest additions to the ever-expanding English lexicon. Featuring one word per page together with a brief explanation and an example of usage, listings include such gems as 'denture venturer' (the older adventure traveller), 'textual harassment' (persistently insulting someone by text message) and 'blamestorming' (using a meeting to discuss who is responsible when something has gone wrong). This simple concept book provides both a fun gift and an interesting talking point sure to please word enthusiasts everywhere.