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Happy New Year to all. Here is a fascinating article on the word
'exopolitics' as a contender for new word of the year. That's quite a
development and shows how far the exopolitics concept has come into
vernacular usage. I recall when 'exopolitics' first made it to the
Wikipedia Encyclopedia it was dropped due to critics objections, but
now it seems to be catching on. That's a welcome development since the
concept of 'Ufology' is inherently self limiting. How can one truly
know anything about UFOs since by definition they are unidentified? In
my view, the UFO concept was contrived by the Air Force intelligence
community to keep the 'flying saucer' phenomenon under wraps by a
clever word play. Those in the loop could truthfully state that UFOs
don't exist since they had already been identified as interplanetary
vehicles.
The increased recognition of exopolitics in popular usage is a welcome
development since the language we use truly does shape our reality.
Exopolitics directs attention to the political processes surrounding
the extraterrestrial hypothesis which is where our attention needs to
be. One can even cast a vote in an online poll for word of the year. For a
history of the exopolitics concept, see
http://www.exopoliticsinstitute.org/Journal-vol-1-1-Salla.pdf .
Aloha
Michael E. Salla, PhD
www.exopoliticsinstitute.org
***
Source: http://www.capecodonline.com/cctimes/ruethe3.htm
January 3, 2006
RUE the LOST IRP
By EMILY C. DOOLEY
STAFF WRITER
If someone is talking about exopolitics, don't jump the couch. Your
whale tail might show.
Confused?
Modern word lovers are not.
Pick Word / Phrase of the Year
- Exopolitics: art of dealing with space aliens.
- Jump the couch: Tom Cruise inspired when he jumped atop Oprah's sofa
and proclaimed his love for actress Katie Holmes.
- Whale tail: the appearance of your underwear over your waistband.
- Nuclear option: most extreme course of action in the U.S. Senate.
- Rendition: transfer of a person for interrogation by a foreign
power, especially for torture.
- Spim: instant-messaging spam
Vote on your choice for the Word / Phrase of the Year among these choices:
Exopolitics
Jump the couch
Whale tail
Nuclear option
Rendition
Spim
These are just a few of the contenders for the American Dialect
Society's 2005 word or phrase of the year.
A brief primer:
Exopolitics is the art of dealing with space aliens.
Tom Cruise inspired the couch phrase for bizarre behavior when he
jumped atop Oprah's sofa and proclaimed his love for actress Katie Holmes.
And a whale tail, well, that is the appearance of your underwear over
your waistband.
The American Dialect Society will name the word winners at a
conference Friday in Albuquerque.
Honors will also be given to the most creative, unnecessary and
euphemistic words, as well as those that are likely just a fad
(hanging chad) and those that will last (blog).
It's the perfect New Year's event, chock-full of changing times, a
glance into the past and predictions of the future.
''Language changes as things change because it adapts to changing
realities,'' said Dennis Baron, society member and professor of
English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. ''Our emphases change.''
Baron favors the term ''roadside bomb'' for the 2005 word of the year.
Not funny or popular, but nary a day goes by without a report of
carnage created by one of these explosive devices.
''Chick flick'' sticks
These are cutting-edge words, so new that few, if any, have made it
into a modern dictionary.
It takes a while, you see.
''Bikini wax'' and ''brain freeze'' finally hit Merriam-Webster's 11th
Edition Collegiate Dictionary in 2005.
More recently, ''chick flick'' and ''civil union'' made it, too. As
did cybrarian, a person whose job is to find, collect and manage
information available on the World Wide Web.
Sometimes terms take on new meanings, and lose old ones. Some become
stale in less time than it took to gain prominence.
''Something is cool and then a little while later it's hot, and it's
the same thing,'' said Gretchen Buntschuh, former English department
head at Sturgis Charter School in Hyannis.
Others stay long past their time. ''Who knew that after Watergate, the
''-gate'' suffix would spawn so many other gates?'' Baron said.
Even the terms for modern inventions hold past lives. Consider computer.
When it came about in 1646, the word had nothing to do with Apple, IBM
or Dell. It simply defined a person who computes.
Borrowed from the French, the word modified the Latin computare, which
means to count or sum up, according to the Barnhart Concise Dictionary
of Etymology.
But by 1946, computer referred to the almighty machines, according to
the Web site dictionary.com.
Noah wordster
It's not a new thing, this adding of words.
The first American dictionary was compiled by Noah Webster in 1806.
Several publications followed, including the 1828 ''American
Dictionary of the English Language,'' with more than 70,000 entries.
Merriam-Webster's latest dictionary now holds more than 476,000
entries and 700,000 definitions.
Webster's later work was the first to include distinctively American
terms, including as skunk and chowder.
Those words stuck. His spelling suggestions for tongue (tung) and
women (wimmen), did not, according to Merriam-Webster. ''There have
been lots of words that we have lost,'' Baron said.
The Sturgis library in Barnstable has a copy of Worcester's Dictionary
published in 1866, a rival of Webster's. It holds many words long
forgotten, and proof that words morphed through the ages.
For instance, the abbreviation ''AAM'' used to stand for a Dutch
liquid measure. Today, Webster's says it means air-to-air missile.
In 1866 people were concerned about proper speaking, as illustrated by
the word acyrology, a noun for careless or improper diction. Not so in
2001. A Webster's dictionary from that year has no definition for the
term.
The passing of nizy
Some perfectly good words have fallen out of favor.
Take, for instance, abature, the term that defines spires of grass
trodden down by a stag in passing. Perhaps it's just no longer needed
in this modern world, but there might be some cowboys out there
itching for a nifty term for broken grass.
And who couldn't use nizy? It's the old-world term for a dunce or
simpleton.
The same goes for irp, the old term for a fantastic grimace.
Both old and new dictionaries have smirk and smite, but only the 2001
one includes snafu, a term best looked up at home.
Not surprisingly, Worcester's dictionary has web and webby, even web
eye (occluded vision), but no Web page, Web site or World Wide Web.
Vicky Uminowicv, manager of Titcomb's Book Shop in East Sandwich,
prefers old spelling books when looking for keys to the past. In an
1815 spelling book religious words were not uncommon.
Smite and sinner were popular. ''It's a word everybody knows, but it's
not something you learn early on,'' she said of smite.
And sinner: ''How often do you see that in a school spelling book?''
Emily C. Dooley can be reached at edooley@....
(Published: January 3, 2006)
'exopolitics' as a contender for new word of the year. That's quite a
development and shows how far the exopolitics concept has come into
vernacular usage. I recall when 'exopolitics' first made it to the
Wikipedia Encyclopedia it was dropped due to critics objections, but
now it seems to be catching on. That's a welcome development since the
concept of 'Ufology' is inherently self limiting. How can one truly
know anything about UFOs since by definition they are unidentified? In
my view, the UFO concept was contrived by the Air Force intelligence
community to keep the 'flying saucer' phenomenon under wraps by a
clever word play. Those in the loop could truthfully state that UFOs
don't exist since they had already been identified as interplanetary
vehicles.
The increased recognition of exopolitics in popular usage is a welcome
development since the language we use truly does shape our reality.
Exopolitics directs attention to the political processes surrounding
the extraterrestrial hypothesis which is where our attention needs to
be. One can even cast a vote in an online poll for word of the year. For a
history of the exopolitics concept, see
http://www.exopoliticsinstitute.org/Journal-vol-1-1-Salla.pdf .
Aloha
Michael E. Salla, PhD
www.exopoliticsinstitute.org
***
Source: http://www.capecodonline.com/cctimes/ruethe3.htm
January 3, 2006
RUE the LOST IRP
By EMILY C. DOOLEY
STAFF WRITER
If someone is talking about exopolitics, don't jump the couch. Your
whale tail might show.
Confused?
Modern word lovers are not.
Pick Word / Phrase of the Year
- Exopolitics: art of dealing with space aliens.
- Jump the couch: Tom Cruise inspired when he jumped atop Oprah's sofa
and proclaimed his love for actress Katie Holmes.
- Whale tail: the appearance of your underwear over your waistband.
- Nuclear option: most extreme course of action in the U.S. Senate.
- Rendition: transfer of a person for interrogation by a foreign
power, especially for torture.
- Spim: instant-messaging spam
Vote on your choice for the Word / Phrase of the Year among these choices:
Exopolitics
Jump the couch
Whale tail
Nuclear option
Rendition
Spim
These are just a few of the contenders for the American Dialect
Society's 2005 word or phrase of the year.
A brief primer:
Exopolitics is the art of dealing with space aliens.
Tom Cruise inspired the couch phrase for bizarre behavior when he
jumped atop Oprah's sofa and proclaimed his love for actress Katie Holmes.
And a whale tail, well, that is the appearance of your underwear over
your waistband.
The American Dialect Society will name the word winners at a
conference Friday in Albuquerque.
Honors will also be given to the most creative, unnecessary and
euphemistic words, as well as those that are likely just a fad
(hanging chad) and those that will last (blog).
It's the perfect New Year's event, chock-full of changing times, a
glance into the past and predictions of the future.
''Language changes as things change because it adapts to changing
realities,'' said Dennis Baron, society member and professor of
English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. ''Our emphases change.''
Baron favors the term ''roadside bomb'' for the 2005 word of the year.
Not funny or popular, but nary a day goes by without a report of
carnage created by one of these explosive devices.
''Chick flick'' sticks
These are cutting-edge words, so new that few, if any, have made it
into a modern dictionary.
It takes a while, you see.
''Bikini wax'' and ''brain freeze'' finally hit Merriam-Webster's 11th
Edition Collegiate Dictionary in 2005.
More recently, ''chick flick'' and ''civil union'' made it, too. As
did cybrarian, a person whose job is to find, collect and manage
information available on the World Wide Web.
Sometimes terms take on new meanings, and lose old ones. Some become
stale in less time than it took to gain prominence.
''Something is cool and then a little while later it's hot, and it's
the same thing,'' said Gretchen Buntschuh, former English department
head at Sturgis Charter School in Hyannis.
Others stay long past their time. ''Who knew that after Watergate, the
''-gate'' suffix would spawn so many other gates?'' Baron said.
Even the terms for modern inventions hold past lives. Consider computer.
When it came about in 1646, the word had nothing to do with Apple, IBM
or Dell. It simply defined a person who computes.
Borrowed from the French, the word modified the Latin computare, which
means to count or sum up, according to the Barnhart Concise Dictionary
of Etymology.
But by 1946, computer referred to the almighty machines, according to
the Web site dictionary.com.
Noah wordster
It's not a new thing, this adding of words.
The first American dictionary was compiled by Noah Webster in 1806.
Several publications followed, including the 1828 ''American
Dictionary of the English Language,'' with more than 70,000 entries.
Merriam-Webster's latest dictionary now holds more than 476,000
entries and 700,000 definitions.
Webster's later work was the first to include distinctively American
terms, including as skunk and chowder.
Those words stuck. His spelling suggestions for tongue (tung) and
women (wimmen), did not, according to Merriam-Webster. ''There have
been lots of words that we have lost,'' Baron said.
The Sturgis library in Barnstable has a copy of Worcester's Dictionary
published in 1866, a rival of Webster's. It holds many words long
forgotten, and proof that words morphed through the ages.
For instance, the abbreviation ''AAM'' used to stand for a Dutch
liquid measure. Today, Webster's says it means air-to-air missile.
In 1866 people were concerned about proper speaking, as illustrated by
the word acyrology, a noun for careless or improper diction. Not so in
2001. A Webster's dictionary from that year has no definition for the
term.
The passing of nizy
Some perfectly good words have fallen out of favor.
Take, for instance, abature, the term that defines spires of grass
trodden down by a stag in passing. Perhaps it's just no longer needed
in this modern world, but there might be some cowboys out there
itching for a nifty term for broken grass.
And who couldn't use nizy? It's the old-world term for a dunce or
simpleton.
The same goes for irp, the old term for a fantastic grimace.
Both old and new dictionaries have smirk and smite, but only the 2001
one includes snafu, a term best looked up at home.
Not surprisingly, Worcester's dictionary has web and webby, even web
eye (occluded vision), but no Web page, Web site or World Wide Web.
Vicky Uminowicv, manager of Titcomb's Book Shop in East Sandwich,
prefers old spelling books when looking for keys to the past. In an
1815 spelling book religious words were not uncommon.
Smite and sinner were popular. ''It's a word everybody knows, but it's
not something you learn early on,'' she said of smite.
And sinner: ''How often do you see that in a school spelling book?''
Emily C. Dooley can be reached at edooley@....
(Published: January 3, 2006)
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