12/14/07

w00t! And More New Words!
By: Mark W Adams



You might have heard that "wOOt!" (or w00t!) is Merriam-Webster's 2007 word of the year. Joining the word "blog," coined in 1999 and made WotY in 2004, it's 733t-speak for "yay!" or something like that. If you have a teenager around you'll get the lecture they've been dying to give you as payback if you ask. I prefer to spell it "wØØt!" but the "pi" symbol doesn't show up on everyone's browser.

But There's More!! WØØt!

Now there's Huckenfreude (n) [Blogtopian origin (Yes, yes, Skippy, we know, that's your word)]: Pleasure derived from the outrage of prominent conservative pundits over the rising poll numbers of Mike Huckabee. Particularly sharp when the pundits in question are partisans of Rudy Giuliani, but extends to supporters of Mitt Romney as well.

This is not to be confused with Huckengersonfreude (n) [obscure, thought to be from a lower Potomac Village or neo-Versailles dialect]: - the pleasure derived from the outrage of columnists who liked Huckabee so long as he sounded like George W. Bush on immigration, instead of like his natural constituents.

I'll try and use them appropriately in a sentence:
For many reasons, none of which include the inevitable Huckenfreude I will enjoy watching Dick Morris and Pat Buchanan choke on their own conventional wisdom in a fit of Huckengersonfreude that he with the most cash wins the race, I'm confident that Huckabee will win the GOP nomination. WØØt!

Actually, the Huckster Dude scares the hell outta me. Despite the numbers in the absolutely meaningless polls out right now on how this relatively unknown Governor does dismally against household names like Clinton, Obama or even Edwards, nobody had ever heard of that other Arkansas Governor from a town called Hope before he swept into the New Hampshire primary with the wind at his back. The fact that so many well known neocons are't particularly fond of him is an enormous plus when it comes to the average voter.

I'm claiming WingNuttyStan and PrezNitWit as my own. I really don't care if someone else thought of it too. I'll share. Don't try to steal the lower case "dick" Cheney or Ara will send the Creative Commons Cops after you -- that's his.

There are a lot of folks who use "PrezNitwit" on a regular basis, so all I can claim is that either I thought it up independently or I read it somewhere and it ate into my brain. However, a random Googling (yep, that's a word) shows that I'm the most prevalent abuser of the term "WingNuttyStan," since it appeared first on Oct. 2, 2005 in my Big Kahuna Conspiracy Theory. (Go ahead click it, it's a fun one from back in the day.) Don't be alarmed that E. Pluribus Unum, AsOhioGoes or various John Edward blogs turn up wingnuttystan in a googling. They're all mine, don't worry.

And No, I didn't just misspell "Wingnuttistan," which has many authors, dammit.

Rats. I thought I was on to something. At least I'm consistent in my lack of spelling skillz. Okay, I suck. I have no original words of my own.

I was actually hoping to coin "Blogistan" as an antonym of Skippy's Blogtopia, and I still use it that way. A barren realm of neocon dystopia, quite stark in it's anti-reality bias and different in all ways from the wonderful world of left wing Blogtopia -- an enchanted land where everybody gets along, all the ladies look like Heidi Klum and write like Digby.

Alas, there are three blogs that read my mind. Blogistan, Dispatches From Blogistan, and Radio Free Blogistan but fail to honor my definition. But the real usurper is is Suzanne Stefanac who wrote Dispatches from Blogistan: A travel guide for the modern blogger, which sadly is just a "How To" book on blogging for fun and profit.

Speaking of that silly kangaroo, Skippy found a new word and added a new definition to RJ Escow's "antipartisanship." Skippy says it means, "a cynicism borne of the betrayal of trust by either or both major political parties, resulting in the belief that all politicians and political operatives are unprincipled." and he should know.

Hey There, Skippy knows Skippy, and evidently is not amused. So he came up with a whole bunch of new ones, but really wants the adjective "Wikipperantly" to catch on, a term meaning: of dubious reality, wikipparently. But my favorite on his list is Encrapsulate (v.) To embody the principle of shit. That kinda encrapsulates this whole exercise in late Friday night, meaningless blogging when you refuse to CatBlog.

But it's not just us bloggers who get to play fast and loose with the language. Mitt Romney may have endeared himself to the NRA crowd with his new phrase, "extreme weapons." Teh Awesome! That's damn near a Bushism -- WØØt!

2 Comments:

Ara said...

Great piece!

Somebody forgot to put "teh" on the list!

And "captcha."

Maybe next year we'll get a word for that weird language that captchas are in.

The one for this comment was "tieotckj." Sounds like the name of something that Rosemary might have a recipe for.

IJS.

Hey, another trendy word to add to the list: IJS.

dirtyword.net said...

Get Your 'w00t.' shirts, hats, buttons, mugs, stickers, magnets, mousepads, and more at w00t.dirtyword.net