Word of the Week

Dipping

2008-07-22T10:45:00.000-07:00

dipping noun [U] British

an activity in which a group of people locate a private swimming pool and arrange to swim there without permission when the owner is absent an activity in which a group of people locate a private swimming pool and arrange to swim there without permission when the owner is absent.

dipper noun [C]

dip noun [C]

‘Police said illegal pool parties in Bournemouth and Devon, UK, were arranged using online mapping services and social networks … The trend, known as dipping, has become popular during the UK summer.’ NEWS.com.au 20th June 2008
‘Teenagers are locating houses with swimming pools and arranging illegal parties known as dips. … The Devon and Cornwall area of England has been particularly badly impacted by dippers, with the local police force advising swimming pool owners to be on guard.’ iTwire, Australia 23rd June 2008

Ever fancied a pool party but don’t have a pool? In the summer of 2008, all you need to do is go online and locate your nearest opportunity to do a spot of dipping.The recently-identified craze known as dipping involves using Internet-based satellite images, such as those provided by Google Earth, to locate homes with outdoor swimming pools.Once an appropriate ‘venue’ (cool-looking outdoor pool) is found, participants use social networking sites like Facebook and Bebo to spread the news about an impromptu swim or pool party, sometimes referred to as a dip. Participants, known as dippers, often attend the event wearing fancy dress, and are encouraged to ‘bring a bike’ in order to facilitate a hasty escape.Amazing as it may seem, especially given the UK’s notoriously poor summers and the fact that, in comparison to parts of the US or Australia for example, relatively few homes have private pools, dipping is a British invention. Predictably, the craze has proven particularly popular in ‘warmer’ parts of the UK, such as Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. Police in these areas report incidents of pool owners returning from work to find their pools full of beer cans, or waking up to the sound of young people using their pools. A recent dipping event near Bournemouth boasted 16 attendees between midnight and 3am, though in fact as many as 500 ‘invitations’ had been sent out via Facebook.If you’re lucky enough to own a swimming pool, then the UK police advise you to be particularly vigilant as the dipping craze gains momentum. If you fancy doing a bit of dipping, then bear in mind that, technically, this counts as trespassing, so you would be committing a criminal offence.BackgroundDipping is new in 2008, a specific sense which develops an established use of the verb/noun dip when it means ‘swim’, as in for instance have a quick dip (have a quick swim) or skinny-dipping (swimming whilst naked).The concepts underlying dipping (i.e. using the Internet to identify a location and advertise an impromptu gathering) are similar to those of the flash mob (2003), where a large group of people hear about an event online, gather at a specific place to do a particular thing, and then quickly disperse

WAG

2008-06-19T11:37:00.000-07:00

WAG also Wag noun [C] informal

the wife or girlfriend of a famous professional footballer

‘England’s superstar striker tied the knot at the Wag wedding of the year in a 20-minute civil ceremony in Santa Margherita Ligure on the Italian Riviera.’ The Mirror 13th June 2008

‘WAGs are a big hit in Euro … Continental WAGs (wives and girlfriends) are making up for the absence of English roses.’ Howrah News Service, India 17th June 2008

The Euro 2008 football tournament is in full swing, but for the England team, who didn’t qualify for the championship, the ‘match’ of the year is taking place off the pitch. On 12th June 2008, top England striker Wayne Rooney married childhood sweetheart Coleen McLoughlin in a multi-million pound ceremony described as the WAG wedding of the year.WAG is an acronym of wife and girlfriend. During the last couple of years this rather unfortunate-sounding term has gained currency, seized upon by the tabloids as a deliciously memorable way of referring to the partners of famous footballers. WAG usually has derogatory overtones, used mainly in the context of sarcastic scrutiny of the extravagant lifestyles afforded by amazingly large footballer salaries. Epitomised by celebrity icon Victoria Beckham and caricatured in the UK television drama series Footballers' Wives, WAGs are beautifully made-up women, typically wearing designer sunglasses and carrying Gucci handbags as they smile for the paparazzi. Their stereotypical activities include shopping (preferably at leading designer boutiques), sunbathing, sipping champagne, and partying the night away at post-match celebrations. Though WAG (also often decapitalised to Wag) hit the spotlight with the partners of the England footballers, there is now some evidence to show it being used to refer to the partners of other famous players (with spouses referred to as Euro WAGs), a trend galvanised during recent coverage of Euro 2008. It is also increasingly being used to describe the partners of other kinds of sportsmen (e.g. cricketers - CWAGs), the only criterion being that their menfolk earn a salary of jaw-dropping size.Redressing the gender balance, a less frequently used spin-off term is HAB (also Hab), an acronym of Husband and Boyfriend, which is used to refer to the partners of highly-paid sportswomen, especially tennis players. Another related spin-off likely to bubble up in the UK media during coming weeks is WOW, an acronym of Wives of Wimbledon, which is pronounced /wa/ (like the exclamation "Wow!") and refers to the female partners of top-ranking players taking part in the Wimbledon tennis championships.

Bacn

2008-05-14T10:34:00.000-07:00

bacn noun [U]

impersonal e-mail messages that you have chosen to receive, especially automatic notifications and newsletters

‘It’s not spam, it’s bacn … New friend notifications on Facebook, weekly events newsletters … the list goes on. As web-based services have come to permeate our lives, so too have automated email updates come to permeate our inboxes.’
Financial Times 23rd August 2007

“Customer service announcement”, “Your latest bill has arrived”, “Your thought for the week beginning …” Any of us who regularly use e-mail will be familiar with message headers like these. This is the e-mail that pops into your inbox and makes you think: ‘Yep, must take a look at that some time, but not right now.’ Often we’ll deliberately spirit these messages away into a folder where they become less visible, secure in the knowledge that they’re there to go back to when we’ve got a few minutes to spare. This is e-mail that’s not unwanted, but not high priority - this is bacn.

Pronounced like bacon, the term bacn has begun to be used as an uncountable noun referring to a ‘middle’ category of e-mail: messages which are wanted, but not needed. This is e-mail that you have consciously opted to receive, so it’s not the same as spam (unwanted e-mail). However, bacn is characteristically less important to you than other kinds of message, and provides information that you can usually put off reading, often for some time, without causing any major problems. Typical examples of bacn are bill-payment receipts, newsletters from your favourite shops and websites, Google^® alerts, and friend requests from social networking sites like Facebook^®.

With most Internet-based activities requiring some kind of e-mail reference, whether it’s managing bills and accounts, online shopping, social networking or subscription to any website of personal interest, the potential for bacn to clog up our inboxes is huge. Solutions for managing bacn are becoming increasingly necessary, from good old-fashioned discipline through to sophisticated e-mail filtering. A dedicated website has been set up to raise awareness of the problem and discuss potential solutions.

Background
The term bacn was coined in August 2007, at PodCamp Pittsburgh. (The expression PodCamp is now used in the online community to refer to an informal conference which connects people, both amateur and professional, who are interested in blogging, podcasting, social networking or other kinds of emerging media.)

Bacn was chosen because it extends the rather curious meat metaphor which began with the expression spam. A blend of spiced and ham, spam originally referred to a brand of tinned meat which people were forced to eat during World War II when ‘real’ meat was in short supply. Nowadays, however, spam's primary use is in reference to unsolicited e-mail. From spam came ham, which by analogy refers to legitimate e-mail messages (continuing the idea of ‘real’ meat as opposed to ‘fake’).

Bacn is therefore something which comes somewhere between spam and ham. On the same theme, meatloaf sometimes refers to unsolicited e-mail (jokes, anecdotes etc.) forwarded to a large number of people by an individual, rather than a commercial source. (The analogy here is of meatloaf as something ‘homemade’, rather than manufactured by a company.)

Googleable

2008-04-30T14:49:00.000-07:00

googleable also Googleable adjective

producing a number of search results if entered into the Google^® Internet search engine.

googleability also Googleability noun [U]
a measure of how easy it is to find information about a person using an Internet search engine, especially Google

‘Are you Googleable? … If the world’s favourite search engine can’t find you, neither can your clients.’
RealBusiness 5th September 2007

‘The difference in Googleability between a person with the name “Mary Smith” and a person with my name [Donna Steinbraker] makes me wonder whether Googleability might one day affect how parents name their children. If Mary Smith had been named, instead, Upanishad Smith, she’d be more Googleable.’
International Herald Tribune 4th December 200

John Smith or Zephaniah Calshari? Jane Green or Jacinda Merryweather? How unusual is your name? A decade or so ago, the relevance of this question didn’t go much beyond considering how difficult it would be to find you in the telephone directory, but in the 21st century, its significance takes on a whole new dimension. How might a repository of information as vast as the World Wide Web affect your anonymity? Are you instantly identifiable, or sharing the virtual world with countless namesakes? In other words – how googleable are you?

The adjective googleable describes words which deliver a number of results when entered as search terms in an Internet search engine such as Google. Of course, search terms are often proper nouns, names of both organisations and individuals, so the adjective googleable, and its related noun googleability, are more often associated with people. A person's or organisation’s googleability, or how googleable they are, is therefore a measure of how easily identifiable they are in the virtual universe, based on the number of results their name returns when entered in an Internet search.

Googleability can be a positive or negative trait depending on your point of view. For those individuals who want to preserve their anonymity but happen to have a particularly unusual name, googleability is a nightmare scenario. For people or organisations who want to be recognised across the globe, googleability is very good news, a quality to be sought after.

Recent research suggests that googleability is something that will influence 21st century children from the day they are born, since a growing number of parents are considering it when choosing their child’s name. Parents concerned with keeping their child’s anonymity are increasingly choosing more common names, whilst those who want their child to be instantly recognizable in a Google search are opting for something very unusual.

Background
The adjective googleable and related noun googleability are recent derivatives of the new verb to google. Google entered the Oxford English Dictionary as a verb in 2006, and it's defined in the new edition of the Macmillan English Dictionary as ‘to search for something on the Internet using the Google^® search engine’.

Other common derivatives are the uncountable noun Googling, which refers to the activity of using Google, and the countable noun Googler, describing a person who googles. On the theme of googleability, another term which has recently popped up is ungoogleable, used as both an adjective and a countable noun to describe a person or thing which produces no results when googled.

Google is a registered trademark of Google Inc

Facebook

2008-04-05T21:05:00.000-07:00

facebook also Facebook verb

1 to communicate with someone by using the Facebook® website
2 to search for information about someone by using the Facebook® website

“Noticing her healthy hair in a picture the other day, I Facebooked her a compliment.”
The Pitt News, Pittsburgh University 1st December 2005

“My curiosity about Lloyd became overwhelming, and within five minutes I had facebooked him and found out where he lived on campus.”
Daily Free Press, Boston University 15th November 2005

There’s a new verb emanating from the online universe. Taking inspiration from Google, now not just the name of a search engine but also a genuine ‘doing word’, the social networking site Facebook has given us the new expression ‘to facebook’ - a full-blown transitive verb with inflections facebooks, facebooked, and facebooking.

To facebook someone is to contact them through the social networking site Facebook. It therefore commonly pops up in examples such as “That guy I met last night facebooked me this morning” and “I facebooked her about meeting for lunch”. As the example at the beginning of the article shows, it can also be used ditransitively (with both a direct and an indirect object), so we get examples like “I facebooked him a message about that.”

As well as meaning to simply contact someone via Facebook, facebook the verb can also be used to describe the activity of finding out information about someone by using Facebook, as illustrated in the following citation:

“Isabel Owen '06, for example, learned that her current employer Facebooked her before hiring her.”
Wisconsin Alumni Association Dispatches Summer 2006

It is therefore a kind of synonym for google the verb, though unlike google, which has almost become a generic description for web searching, regardless of the particular search engine used, facebook usually refers specifically to the Facebook website as a mechanism for finding out about someone.

In December 2007, it was reported that facebook the verb and Facebook, the trademarked noun referring to the popular social networking site, had been added to the latest edition of the Collins English Dictionary (see ‘Further Reading’ below).

Background
Facebook is a social networking website which was launched in February 2004 and founded by Mark Zuckerberg, an American IT entrepreneur and Harvard graduate. Facebook looks something like a giant online scrapbook, where friends can exchange messages and photos and opt to join one or more participating networks, such as those based around schools, places of employment or geographical location. Initially, its membership was restricted to Harvard students, but from September 2006 it opened its doors to anyone, and with more than 60 million members, Facebook now represents one of the world’s most visited websites.

The name Facebook comes from the related noun facebook (also sometimes freshman facebook), which refers in American English to a printed booklet of college members that is given to students at the start of the academic year so that they can identify one another.

Other notable additions to the English lexicon prompted by Facebook are new senses for the words poke and pimp. Poke, used on the site as both a transitive verb and a noun (i.e. send someone a poke) is a mechanism for getting someone’s attention, a kind of virtual nudge. ‘Poking’ can sometimes have sexual overtones, with the consequence that it is cropping up more widely as a new innuendo. The new sense of pimp, on the other hand, has no such connotations. To pimp your Facebook profile is simply to make it look more attractive by adding photos, graphics, music, etc.

Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.

open skies

2008-03-26T14:42:00.000-07:00

open skies also open-skies adjective

relating to an agreement in which aircraft can fly between two countries without any restrictions

“From this month the European Union's open skies agreement comes into force, which means any European-based airline will be able to fly from any city within the EU to any city within the United States, and vice versa.”
The Independent 1st March 2008

“The newest open-skies agreement with Australia will provide more initial consumer benefits than the recent deal with Europe.”
Smarter Travel 28th February 2008

Heathrow Airport is the busiest international airport in the world. From March 27th 2008, its capacity is further increased, following the Queen's official opening of Terminal 5, a £4.3 billion state-of-the-art facility representing one of the UK’s biggest-ever building projects. The new terminal is a timely opportunity to exploit a recently-established agreement in relation to air traffic, an agreement described by the compound adjective open skies.

An open skies agreement (also regularly hyphenated as open-skies) is an agreement between two nations which basically permits unrestricted air travel between them. The term open skies, though existing for some time, came into mainstream recognition in March 2007, when a transatlantic open skies agreement was established between the European Union and the United States, permitting any American or European airline to operate services to and from any European or American location.

In force from March 30th 2008, the deal therefore eases restrictions on travel between Europe and the US, potentially offering many new routes and cheaper fares for transatlantic travellers. The agreement also permits US airlines to fly between two EU destinations, and allows EU airlines to travel between the United States and non-EU countries like Switzerland.

In response to the EU-US open skies agreement, British Airways has set up a namesake subsidiary OpenSkies, which will for the first time offer direct services between the US and mainland Europe. Flights from New York to Brussels and Paris are expected to start operating in June 2008.

Background
The expression open skies dates back to the late seventies, when the United States began pursuing air service agreements with other countries. By 1982, it had signed twenty-three such agreements with smaller nations, and in 1992 a significant step was taken when, despite objections from the European Union, the Netherlands signed the first open skies agreement with the US.

Such agreements are often described as bilateral (involving two countries) or multilateral (involving three or more countries). An alternative term embracing the same concepts as open skies is the expression open aviation area.

An unfamiliar term which often crops up in the same context is the word cabotage. Although originally referring to the transportation of goods or people between two places within the same country (the word is based on French caboter, meaning ‘to sail along a coast’), cabotage is now often used to refer to a country’s exclusive right to control the air traffic within its borders.

Further reading
The Transatlantic price war
BBC News 21st February 2008

rabbit hopper

2008-03-19T17:38:00.000-07:00

rabbit hopping also rabbit-hopping noun [U] /rbthp/

a sport in which rabbits jump over a set of obstacles and are judged on their speed and ability

rabbit hopper noun [C]

“In Europe, competitive rabbit-hopping demonstrations have attracted a respectable following …”
The Denver Post 3rd March 2008

“Rabbit hoppers stress that just about any rabbit will do when it comes to selecting a bunny for competitive jumping. The sport, they say, is more about the fun of the experience for the rabbits and the owners than winning a trophy.”
National Geographic News 29th March 2002

Easter time – it annually conjures up images of newly-hatched chicks, spring daffodils, and rabbits hopping across the fields … But for some people, a bunny isn’t just a proverbial source of Easter goodies or a sedentary pet munching carrots in a hutch. No, a rabbit is a sporting companion, trained to excel in its innate capacity to jump – yes, believe it or not, there’s a competitive sport known as rabbit hopping.

Rabbit hopping, also called rabbit jumping and rabbit show jumping, is a novelty sport in which domestic rabbits are trained to leap over obstacles. A rabbit hopping course bears a strong resemblance to a show jumping arena, except the competitors are rabbits rather than horses, guided by their owners (known as rabbit hoppers) as they leap over appropriately ‘rabbit-sized’ fences.

Popularized in Europe but also now hopping up (sorry, couldn’t resist) in the United States, rabbit hopping competitions can attract as many as 200 entrants. As well as completing a straight or curved course, entrants also compete for the highest and longest jumps. The current ‘world record holders’ are Danish rabbits Yabo and Tøsen, respectively clocking a massive 3 metres for the long jump and 99.5 cm for the high jump.

Though rabbits are natural-born hoppers, proponents of the sport claim that it requires a great deal of training and practice. Bunnies in training need to get used to wearing a special harness and to walking on a variety of surfaces.

Any kind of rabbit can take part in the sport, though some breeds make better hoppers than others. Long-haired rabbits for example are less likely to perform well because they quickly ‘overheat’.

Before you take your own dear bunny to the nearest rabbit hopping event, remember that overweight bunnies may have limited hopping ability. If your pet rabbit likes to leap on and off the furniture, you have a good agility candidate. If he prefers to sit on your lap and watch the TV … well, maybe hopping is not his forte!

googlegänger

2008-01-31T08:37:00.000-08:00

googlegänger or googleganger noun [C] /gug()lg(r)/

a person who has the same name as you and is discovered by doing a search on your name using the Google™ Internet search engine

“Ever Googled yourself and found someone who has your name—and a very different life? You've just met your Googlegänger.”
Newsweek 30th September 2007

“But that Eve Fairbanks wasn't her Eve -- it was a Googleganger, a virtual doppelganger linked by a shared name thanks to the all-knowing search engine…”
Daily Herald, Chicago 4th October 2007

A community worker from Cumbria, a Gloucestershire photographer, a partner in a Vancouver physiotherapy practice and a freelance linguist based in York…. What have they, or rather we, got in common? Yep, you guessed it - the answer is of course the name ‘Kerry Maxwell’. These are just some of the individuals that I have the privilege of sharing a name with. These are my googlegängers…

Depending on the idiosyncrasies of your name, you may have several googlegängers or none, though most people are likely to have at least one or two. These are individuals that have the same name as you, who in previous eras you would have known nothing about, but in the 21st century are instantly identifiable, courtesy of Internet searching.

The term googlegänger seems to have caught on because, in today’s virtual world, people are recognized not so much by their achievements, but by how googleable they are, or in other words, how easy it is to find search results for them on the Web. Using Google™ to search for a person’s name has become a common way to check them out, whether it’s a business contact, employee, or a potential date. Natural curiosity also sometimes leads people to indulge in a bit of egosurfing, i.e. entering their own name as a search and seeing what comes up. It is in this context that googlegänger has come into use - the idea of a virtual double whose life is intermingled with yours in the results of an Internet search. Some people have even gone so far as to make contact with their googlegängers, befriending them online or arranging to meet up. Others are competing with their googlegängers to get the most Google™ hits or the highest ranking. Which leads me to mention by the way that, thanks to Word of the Week and its readers, I’m excited to see that I’m the ‘top hit’ for the search term ‘Kerry Maxwell’ – today at least!

Background
The word googlegänger is formed from a blend of the new verb/noun google, now pretty much synonymous with the concept of Internet searching, and the noun doppelgänger. Doppelgänger is a German word which came into English in the mid-19th century. Its literal translation is ‘double-goer’ and it is usually used to describe someone who looks exactly like someone else - a ‘double’. The precise origins of the clever new expression googlegänger are uncertain, though it seems to have been circulating the web for about a year or so, and in the summer of 2007 was acknowledged in a ‘word-making’ workshop led by Erin McKean, chief consulting editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press. At the beginning of 2008, googlegänger was voted ‘most creative’ word of 2007 by members of the American Dialect Society.

Exergaming

2007-12-11T09:33:00.000-08:00

exergaming noun [U] /eksgem/

the activity of playing video games that provide physical exercise

exergame noun [C]

exergamer noun [C]

“A push for new frontiers in the fitness market, an aging gamer population, and increasing rates of obesity among the young are all fueling the trend toward exergaming. ”
PR Web 18th August 2007

“…And the strategy that many developers are pursuing involves the new genre of exergames… hybrids between instructional workout DVDs and immersive game environments.”
Business Week 22nd November 2005

“…prolonged dancing on the dance pad results in blisters and pain in the knee joints due to the repeated stamping movements… To avoid such injuries, Dr Tan advised that exergamers should also include other conventional forms of exercise into their fitness regime, such as running or swimming.”
The Straits Times 13th March 2007

Need to lose some weight? Look no further than the nearest games console. Yes, seriously. There was a time when the world of playstations and video games was strongly associated with the lifestyle of a couch potato, a person condemned to an unhealthy diet of inactivity through mesmerizing screens. But not any more, thanks to the new trend of exergaming…

The principle is simple: combine the idea of physical exercise with the compulsive stimulation of video games, and hey, presto, you can keep fit whilst having fun - or that’s the theory. And it’s proving very compelling in a society which needs to tackle obesity and other health problems associated with 21st-century lifestyle.

The games software underlying the concept, referred to as the exergame, has emerged as big business across the leading manufacturers. In 2005, Sony launched a product called Eyetoy: Kinetic, a workout game designed for its PlayStation 2 console, which incorporates exercise regimes intended to tone the body and promote cardiac health. Utilising the console’s internal clock, Eyetoy: Kinetic is a fitness programme lasting a number of weeks, and even incorporates a fitness instructor who gets angry if a player misses a date!

At the more light-hearted end of the spectrum, there is the Nintendo Wii console and Wii Sports, launched in 2006. The popularity of the Wii hinges on its novel use of the game controller, cleverly referred to as the Wiimote (a play on remote, as in remote control). Rather than just acting as a static game controller, the Wiimote can be held in a range of orientations, and functions as a tennis racket, golf club, bowling ball, baseball bat and boxing glove, among others. A forthcoming exergame product, entitled Wii Fit, will also incorporate a balance board, recording players’ weights and enabling them to practice yoga, do press-ups and even a virtual ski-jump!

Interestingly enough, the popularity of exergaming is not confined to younger generations. An up-and-coming breed of exergamers are the over-60s, who find the less strenuous exercise associated with many of these games more appropriate to their needs.

Enthusiastic exergamers of all ages should however watch out for the newly coined ailment Wii elbow, a soreness and pain in the arm joints caused by excessive Wii game play (based on the expression tennis elbow).

Background
The expression exergaming is, of course, formed from a blend of the words exercise and gaming. Although the term itself is relatively new, the concept has been around for some time. Initial attempts to develop exergaming products date as far back as the early eighties, when for example video game manufacturer Atari developed an exercise bike that could be hooked up to one of its early games consoles.

A generic term in the same area is exertainment, referring to activities or products involving both exercise and entertainment. This follows the model of other new expressions describing dual-purpose entertainment, such as edutainment (entertainment with an educational function), charitainment (entertainment for charity fund-raising ) and infotainment (information/current affairs presented in an entertaining way).

drive-by download

2007-12-04T10:11:00.000-08:00

drive-by download noun [C] /dravba danld/

when programs are installed on an online computer without the user’s knowledge

drive-by downloading noun [U]

“Most users have no idea such a drive-by download has taken place, even as these Trojan horses surreptitiously log their banking passwords or other private information...”
Trading Markets 21st November 2007

“Drive-by downloading has also become a huge issue, as the bad guys are now putting stuff on reputable Web sites… It's not good enough to evade dodgy Web sites anymore, as you can automatically download malware by visiting any number of good Web sites.”
ITWeb 31st October 2007

If you’re thinking of doing the majority of your Christmas shopping from the comfort of your home computer, then beware of one of the latest threats posed by cybercriminals: the drive-by download.

A drive-by download occurs when a user inadvertently allows the transfer of information onto their computer, without being asked, and often in complete ignorance that the download occurred. The type of information transferred is typically what is referred to as spyware, software that secretly gathers information about a person, or malware, malicious software which interferes with normal computer functions and can also send personal data about the user to unauthorized parties.

Drive-by downloads can occur by simply visiting a website or reading an e-mail, but are more often triggered by clicking on a deceptive pop-up window, which may look like some kind of harmless advertisement, or an error report from the user’s own computer. They are often contained in those parts of a website not controlled or maintained by the website’s owner, such as banner advertisements, or other (web) widgets, which are small programs used to display things like ads, calendars or web traffic counters.

With recent research suggesting that as many as 600,000 new bits of malware are likely to be released in a year, the risk of succumbing to drive-by downloading is a major concern for Internet users. A recent survey undertaken by Internet search company Google Inc, revealed that as many as 1 in 10 websites were acting as hosts for malware.

Background
The expression drive-by download has been around since about 2002, though it has gained currency more recently in the context of increasing concern about escalating problems with Internet security and Internet-based identity fraud. An alternative term used in the same context is drive-by install/installation.

The core meaning of the adjective drive-by is ‘carried out from a passing vehicle’, as in a drive-by shooting, also sometimes abbreviated to simply ‘a drive-by’. The expression drive-by download therefore presumably takes inspiration from this idea of springing a criminal act on someone before they have chance to defend themselves. Drive-by downloads are similarly sometimes referred to as drive-bys.

The adjective drive-by also occurs more figuratively to describe something performed very quickly and with a lack of care. In the UK, for instance, a drive-by valuation is an assessment of the value of a house or other building by simply looking quickly at the outside of it (and is in fact often conducted from a passing car).

Starchitect

2007-11-26T15:04:00.000-08:00

starchitect noun [C] /st(r)ktekt/

a very famous architect, especially one who has designed a well-known building in the recent past.

starchitecture noun [U]
a style of building design which has become particularly famous.

starchitectural adjective

starchitecturally adverb

“In these important markets, many hotel projects are large, iconic structures employing some of the world’s most famous starchitects and designer groups…”
Hospitality Net 9th October 2007

“Starchitecture on Campus - Colleges and universities from Boston to Chicago are hooked on celebrity architects whose signature designs can help boost a school's reputation…”
The Boston Globe 22nd February 2004

“Now the Bilbao effect has spread slightly south to Rioja, one of the richest wine-producing areas of Spain. The starchitectural branding is being applied to some of Rioja’s oldest and most respected wineries.”
Belgrade Design Week May 2007

Do you have a favourite building? If you do, and your choice is a product of 21st-century architecture, then the chances are it was designed by a starchitect.

A blend of the words star and architect, starchitect is a recent coinage used to describe a famous architect who has been responsible for the design of an iconic 21st-century building. This is typically some kind of public building which attracts a degree of media interest, and thereby imparts a sort of celebrity status to its designer. Examples of such buildings and their respective starchitects are: the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, designed by Frank Gehry, the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, UK, designed by Daniel Libeskind, and the headquarters of Swiss Re in London (informally known as ‘the Gherkin’), designed by Lord Norman Foster.

A key characteristic of the work of starchitects is what is popularly referred to as ‘the wow factor’ - the creation of an impressive building which incorporates unique features and is highly visible within its location. Current technology and the influence of mass media in the digital age mean that the wider public get to see and appreciate such buildings a long time before they actually, if indeed ever, visit them for themselves. The buildings therefore quickly assume a kind of iconic status and turn their designers into starchitects renowned for a particular ‘signature’ design.

On the model of the words architect and architecture, the noun starchitecture is also sometimes used, along with derived adjective/adverb starchitectural/starchitecturally.

Background
Used since around 2001, the terms starchitect and starchitecture are clever blends of star and architecture/architecture which neatly cash in on the repetition of the vowel // in the two words. The concept of starchitecture is thought to have arisen from what is referred to as the Bilbao Effect in architectural contexts. This expression refers to the aforementioned Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which opened in 1997 and was designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry. Now hailed as a landmark project, the seductive architecture of the museum put the old, industrial city of Bilbao on the international cultural map. Cities on both sides of the Atlantic followed suit, inspired by the transformation of a run-down area into a magnet for tourists. The Bilbao project proved an influential example of how new architecture had the potential to revitalise cities in economic decline.

Starchitect has mildly pejorative overtones, and has also been used in a more tongue-in-cheek fashion to refer to popular celebrities who have become involved in architecture

Wikiality

2007-11-14T19:28:00.001-08:00

wikiality also Wikiality noun [C/U] /

something which is considered to be true because the majority of people agree on it, rather than because of real facts

"Colbert praised Wikipedia for "wikiality," the reality that exists if you make something up and enough people agree with you - it becomes reality."
Newsvine.com 1st August 2006

“The world’s chimpanzee population is falling.”
“Brighton’s most frequently-ordered restaurant dish is fish and chips.”
“The M25 is carrying five times more traffic than anticipated.”

We all hear and read so-called facts like these, and nine times out of ten, unless we’re particularly prone to scepticism, we simply accept them as a reality. We wouldn’t usually stop to question their validity - let’s face it, most of us haven’t got the time! And so it seems that these ‘truths’ sit easily in our minds simply by virtue of being mentioned by enough people. But take a minute to consider this: are they reality or wikiality?

The expression wikiality has recently been coined to describe a reality that is determined by general consensus of opinion, rather than by cold, hard, facts. In other words, if enough people say something is true, then it is true.

Of course the concept underlying wikiality is nothing new. But it has been made all the more significant in an age where written information is so easily accessed and disseminated via the Internet. What’s more, people have the opportunity to modify that information through the medium of the wiki, a web page that can be edited collaboratively. Though websites like Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, are an invaluable resource for everyone, they also run the risk of giving us false information. A by-product of open access means that in principle anyone has the opportunity to make something become a ‘fact’, simply by tapping a keyboard and entering it on the relevant page.

Background
The expression wikiality is a blend of the words wiki and reality. It was coined in July 2006 by US comedian Stephen Colbert, who featured it in his satirical news commentary programme The Colbert Report. Linking with his earlier coinage truthiness (the quality of stating facts that you believe or want to be true), Colbert threw the spotlight on Wikipedia, asserting that “… any user can change any entry, and if enough other users agree with them, it becomes true". The logical consequence is ‘truth by consensus’, or, as he calls it, wikiality. The spoof online encyclopedia wikiality.com is a parody of Wikipedia, describing itself as ‘The Encyclopedia of Truthiness’.

The word wiki, still itself very new, has proved very productive in our increasingly web-centered world. Other recent derivatives include wikification, the process of turning a website into a wiki, which has a related verb wikify, and wikinovel, a collaborative piece of fiction, whose co-writers are described as wikinovelists.

Afterparty

2007-11-08T09:01:00.001-08:00

Afterparty also after-party, after party noun (also verb) [C]

A relaxed social gathering which occurs after a party, concert, or trip to a nightclub.

'Going three for eight wasn't the only thing that Mariah Carey and Kanye West had in common on Grammy night. Both also hosted the most anticipated afterparties . Revelers had to travel to a secret location in Beverly Hills and then board shuttles to get to Mariah's party .'
MTV News, 9th February 2006

'. i can honestly recommend the marriott in brighton. that's where we & our guests stayed (it also has a huge lobby bar that we afterpartied in...).'
personal weblog, 9th May 2005

One of the movie industry's most influential award ceremonies takes place on Sunday 5th March 2006 - the 78th annual Oscars, to be held at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles. In the aftermath of the glitz, glamour and hype, and the inevitable speculation about the winners and the reaction to them, the media will be avidly following the afterparties, the exclusive social gatherings attended by celebrities wanting to 'chill out' after the excitement of the ceremony.

The word afterparty, also regularly occurring as an open compound after party or hyphenated after-party, is now used to describe a social gathering which occurs after a party or other potentially noisy and crowded event such as a trip to a nightclub. It has also morphed into a verb, with some evidence for forms such as afterpartying and afterpartied as illustrated in the second citation above. Afterparties usually involve people sitting down, relaxing, chatting freely and consolidating new friendships that may have begun during the main party. If the afterparty takes place in the early hours of the morning, it may go on to include breakfast.

Though afterparties can be impromptu gatherings in the homes of ordinary people, the use of the word popularised by the media refers to a pre-planned event held at a specific venue, including cocktails, entertainment and an exclusive guest list featuring high-profile celebrities.

Background
The word afterparty first appeared in the early eighties, though has gained currency much more recently through its exposure in web-based journalism. A related term is the noun/adjective chillout (also chill-out), which emerged in the early nineties based on the phrasal verb chill out ('to spend time relaxing'). The word chillout encapsulates the quiet period after a party or other hectic event when slow, soothing music is played in a calming atmosphere. One of its most common uses is in referring to a style of soothing music, e.g. chillout music, or simply chillout. In 2002, the idea of chilling out was taken to the extreme in the new concept of a quiet party, an unconventional social gathering in which loud noise and talking are prohibited, with guests often communicating though hand-written notes.

Seachanger

2007-10-30T10:21:00.001-07:00

seachanger noun [C] Australian

	a person who makes a significant change in lifestyle by moving to the seaside or country
	seachange noun [C] Australian a significant change in lifestyle

'Bumper house prices in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, have financed thousands of seachangers. There are now about 4 million people living in coastal areas such as the Maroochy Shire. Another million are expected in the next 15 years.'
The Sydney Morning Herald, 11th October 2004

'Are you dreaming about escaping the suburban rat race and heading to the coast? This is your opportunity to make a seachange.'
www.communicatcareers.com.au, 2005

People who are fed up with the pressures of city life often dream of making a fresh start in a country or seaside location, where the air is clean and the pace of life more relaxed. Australia has in recent years witnessed a significant trend in realizing this kind of dream, with thousands of professional people leaving cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane for a more idyllic lifestyle in areas such as the Queensland coast. These types are referred to as the seachangers, people who have decided to improve their quality of life by moving to the coast or countryside.

This radical transformation in lifestyle is sometimes also described by the related countable noun seachange, often occurring as make a seachange to refer to the act of relocating. Seachange was highlighted as one of the buzzwords of Australian English in 2004, featuring in academic studies and government reports. So great has been the seachange influx that coastal communities are warning that the lifestyle which attracted people will be destroyed, ruined by overcrowding. Councils around the Australian coast have formed a National Seachange Taskforce to lobby for assistance with planning and the funding of amenities.

The words treechanger and treechange have been coined as alternatives in recent months, in response to the observation that seachange(r) is increasingly being used in the context of locations which aren't necessarily coastal, and is therefore beginning to lose its association with the actual sea.

Background
The word seachanger originates from a popular Australian drama series called SeaChange, which features a lawyer who leaves the pressures of the city to start a new life as a magistrate in the sleepy seaside town of Pearl Bay.

The name for the series was cleverly based on the compound noun sea change , which describes a radical change in the nature of something. Sea change is often used in political contexts, referring to a significant shift in policy or opinion. The expression sea change in fact has its origins with Shakespeare, occurring in a song from The Tempest:

Full fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

Shakespeare meant that the sea (i.e. submersion in water) caused a transformation of the body (of Ferdinand's father). Though the original expression featured a hyphen, most modern dictionaries record sea change as an open compound (i.e. with a space, rather than a hyphen), and increasingly it's occurring as a solid compound (i.e. as one word, with no space), as reflected by Australian usage of seachange and seachanger.

Nanopublishing

2007-10-23T09:30:00.001-07:00

nanopublishing noun [U]

low-cost online publishing which uses techniques based on blogging (writing weblogs) to target a specific audience

nanopublisher noun [C]
nanopublished adjective

'Nanopublishing will not replace magazine publishing or mass media. It is a new opportunity. It won't make money for political punditry or for the diaries of college students. But it will work for gadgets and sex and special interests such as disease - imagine a great weblog for diabetics - because it is so cheap to publish.' The Guardian, 30th January 2003

'Nanopublisher Nick Denton is apparently making cash from his sites .'
livejournal.com, 26th November 2004

A weblog, or blog , is an online personal journal which is frequently updated and usually intended for general public consumption, often incorporating subjects of topical interest. The practice of blogging (writing weblogs), which began to emerge in the late nineties, has steadily gained in popularity during the last two or three years, with issues such as support or opposition to the war with Iraq triggering more widespread use of blogs as a platform for expression of opinions in a variety of political and social contexts (though not without potential risks, as a recent Word of The Week article on the new term dooced illustrates!).

Though weblogs have traditionally been of personal and non-commercial origin, entrepreneurs in the blogging community have more recently begun to realise that they have potential in reaching a very large audience quickly and cheaply. Blogs can be exploited for marketing, advertising and media purposes, targeting audiences with specific opinions or interests. This kind of activity has given rise to a recent neologism in online business: nanopublishing , with the noun nanopublisher coined to refer to bloggers who engage in it. There is also some evidence for a derived adjective nanopublished.

Among the first examples of nanopublishing blogs was Gizmodo, launched in August 2002 by New York based publisher Nick Denton. Gizmodo is aimed at gadget enthusiasts, with almost every gadget reviewed there linked to a purchase page on the Amazon shopping site . With minimal start-up and maintenance costs, but the potential to generate commission through links to Amazon and other retail sites , weblogs such as Gizmodo have inspired other blogging entrepreneurs to invest time and money in nanopublishing.

Background
The word nanopublishing was coined by Jeff Jarvis, creative director of the US company Advance Publications Inc. Jarvis first used the term after being shown Gawker, a New York media gossip weblog launched by Nick Denton in December 2002. The prefix nano- is derived from the Greek word nanos , meaning 'dwarf', and is used figuratively in the word to denote the idea of 'publishing on an extremely small scale'. An alternative term incorporating the same idea is thin media.

The term weblog first came into general recognition in 1997. The original use of its shortened form blog is thought to be attributed to Californian Peter Merholz, who in May 1999 posted the following in his weblog: 'For What It's Worth: I've decided to pronounce the word "weblog" as wee-blog. Or "blog" for short.' Blog was immediately adopted as a noun, and as a verb meaning 'to write weblogs', and gained currency when later in the same year the web publishing tool Blogger was launched by Pyra Labs, a dotcom that was bought by Google in 2003. The term blogger subsequently came into general use as a reference to 'someone who writes weblogs.'

tmesis

2007-10-15T10:01:00.000-07:00

(also timesis) noun (C,U)

Tmesis is a long-established word in English which has remained relatively obscure, though it refers to the well-known creative process of splitting existing words and placing others in between. This is a productive process of word formation, often also described by theoretical linguists as infixation, but used specifically for the purpose of adding emphasis. Conventional definitions of tmesis refer to the division of compound words, like, for instance, the splitting of whatsoever in what place soever or what man soever . However, there is plenty of current evidence for tmesis occurring in not just compound words but also between morphemes (word components) with analysable meaning, as in im-bloody-possible and even purely between syllables as in abso-blooming-lutely. Abso-blooming-lutely was first famously used by the character Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw's classic play Pygmalion (1916) , but the use of tmesis has been revisited in recent years in the language of fictional characters such as David Brent in the BBC comedy series The Office, or Rachel in the UK television drama series Cold Feet, who popularised the use of fan-bloody-tastic . Modern use of tmesis is almost exclusively confined to the infixation of expletives such as blooming, bloody or worse!

Background
The term tmesis is based on the same word in Greek, meaning 'cutting', and developed from the Greek verb temnein, 'to cut'. An often quoted original example of tmesis is the splitting of the word however in Shakespeare's Richard II:
'If on the first, how heinous e'er it be, To win thy after-love I pardon thee.'

Tmesis normally occurs in words that have three or more syllables, and the infixed word generally occurs before the syllable which bears the stress, hence fan-bloody-tastic rather than fantas-bloody-tic.