September 5, 2006

Okay, I didn’t win the mental_floss “create a new word” contest this week, but I’m used to it. I have been attempting to coin new terminology for as long as I’ve had any kind of a forum on the Internet, and my vernacular creativity has always been soundly and definitively ignored.

There’s one word I?ve been trying to promote for years:
?UGOTO? (pronounced you-go-too), which is an acronym for Uncanny Grasp Of The Obvious, a phrase turned long ago by Howard Cosell as a put-down to a shallow commentator (10 points if you know who he said it to)?
?Did he say things are troubled in the Middle East? That’s totally UGOTO.?

And I am still promoting the use of the term “Weblishing” for what I do when I sell an article to MSNBC.com or another website, instead of getting it in print.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been published, but I frequently get weblished”.

Earlier this century, when the web first experienced the phenomenon of small sites getting overloaded by links from big, popuar sites, a lot of people called it “the SlashDot Effect” (in honor of the first site to cause this problem with some fequency). Because the malicious practice of attacking a site with mass requests was call Denial Of Service, or DOS for short, I suggested calling renaming “the SlashDot Effect” a “SlashDOS” (pronouced slash-dose).
“The Dancing Gerbils site got totally SlashDOSed after it showed up on Fark, Digg and BoingBoing.”
Did anybody else ever pick up on this and make it a meme? Nope. And now that SlashDot has become terribly passé… (You didn’t know it was passé? Oh yes, I may be totally unable to start a trend, but I certainly know how to follow them)

Speaking of going against the current of trendiness, you know how some people or things are declared to be “hot” by the media but you personally think they’re not-so-hot? I have a word for that: ?Velvacho?. Referring specifically to nachos made with Velveeta, it signifies what/whoever is kinda cheesy, kinda greasy, but not very spicy.
“All those blonde bimbo singers are nothing but Velvacho.”

For the contest, I brainstormed up the following drizzles:
?Wal-come? is the kind of meaningless communication you get from a WalMart greeter.
?The first half-hour of the meeting was nothing but Wal-come??

?Headonate? is to have something repeated so often and so incessantly it gives you a headache (like the ?HeadOn? commercial.)
?Those White House statements that keep invoking ?9/11? are really starting to get headonating.”

?Pundontry? (pronounced pun-doan-tree) is advice that is questionable just because of its source, from the practice of TV news pundits from one party suggesting what the other party should do.
?Your ex-girlfriend said you didn?t have to give your new girlfriend flowers? That?s a load of pundontry!?

Ripped from the recent headlines: ?Johnkarrfare? is getting transportation to a desired destination by getting arrested.
?Yeah, he lives a block from the police station so when he gets really drunk, he just uses Johnkarrfare.?

The frequent use of the term ?buzzword? prompted me to come up with: ?Bushword?, a stupid-sounding usually incorrectly used word or phrase used chiefly to remind people that you may be an idiot, but you?re still the boss.
“Everyone at the staff meeting cringed as the pointy-haired-boss rattled off a string of Bushwords.”

Here is one I’ve been kind of guilty of myself: ?NotMySpace?. to attempt to increase one’s hipness quotient by refusing to participate in popular web trends.
?I don’t chat or IM. If you want to reach me, use my personal email address. I’m totally NotMySpace.?

And relevantly to me, ?Doublog?: to recycle something you?ve written elsewhere to your blog.
?Even if I don’t win the contest, I can always doublog it at wendellwit.com.?

Inventing new words is not just for Rich Hall anymore. I’ve been tempted for a long time to make a glossary page – a Wendell-to-English dictionary – I can refer to when I use one of my doomed-to-be-obscure terms, but that would just give me an excuse to use more of them. And you, my seven readers, certainly don’t want that. Do you?

While writing the last post and linking to mental_floss more than once, I decided to abbreviate the title, came up with m_f and giggled. So that was why they use the lowercase and the changing font and that underscore between the words – to discourage shortening it to MF, also known as George Carlin’s Sixth Word You Can’t Say on TV, recently made ubiquitous by that Plane-Full-Of-Snakes movie. Now, on a pure Freedom of Speech basis, I oppose the forced use of euphemisms, although I have thoroughly enjoyed the creative use of euphemism and practice it myself.

You bet I ing do.

So, when I duh-scovered the MF connection, I quickly realized that I could use the title of that excellent publication as a euphemism for motherer. Examples?

“I want these mental_flossing snakes off this mental_flossing plane!”

“Samuel L. Jackson is the baddest mental_flosser in the movies!”

It’s particularly good since it can adapt to either the -ing or -er ending and still fit the meter of the original profanity. This makes it a perfect MF euphemism, as opposed to some others I have tried to work with in the past.

MetaFilter

Multi-Function

Melon FarmerMassey Ferguson

Mezzo Forte

Milton Friedman

Monkey Funky

Monday Friday

Moldy Fungus

Mutual Fund

Marshall Field

Mark Felt

(and some with the right sound and meter but wrong initials)
Motor Scooter

Mamma Jamma

Barry Farber

I have even tried to promote using Samuel L. Jackson’s name as a MF euphemism, but it requires shortening it to SamLJackson to get the meter right: “I want these SamLJackson snakes off this SamLJackson plane!”

But now, it’s obvious… I’m gonna be the biggest, baddest mental_flosser on the mental_flossing Internet!