Merriam-Webster Inc., has announced its latest lineup of brave new words. Each year the 114-year-old company chooses around a hundred new words that will be enshrined in the pages of its dictionaries.
Among this year’s inductees are copernicium: named for the astronomer Copernicus, a short-lived, artificially produced radioactive element that has 112 protons and is the most recent addition to the Periodic Table of Elements; earworm: a melody or lyric that burrows into your brain and refuses to be evicted; flexitarian: one who generally avoids eating meat or fish but will occasionally consume such; and obesogenic: promoting excessive weight gain.
How many of the following brave new words can you define?:
aha moment, brain cramp, bucket list, craft beer, energy drink, e-reader, f-bomb, game changer, gastropub, geocaching, life coach, man cave, sexting, shovel-ready and tipping point
and the new meanings of the older words gassed, toxic and underwater.
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In the recent Olympic Games, Gabby Douglas was destined to win gold medals in team and all-around gymnastics for America. Why? Because an anagram of her last name is USA GOLD.
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This past Saturday into Tuesday, long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad made a gallant effort to swim from Cuba to Key West without the protection of a shark cage. Echoing her last name, a naiad is a mythological water nymph. NAIAD is also an anagram of DIANA.
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Pun Fun: Many of our American presidents have been top dogs — Thomas Jeffurson, Androol Jackson, William Henry and Benjamin Hairyson, Zachary Tailer, Abraham Lickin’, Ulysses Pant, Rufferford Hayes, James Arfield, Chester Arfer, Rover Cleveland, William McKinleash, Fleadore Roosevelt, William Bow-Wow-ard Taft, Calvin Droolidge, Harry True to Man, Bite Eisenhowler, John F. Kenneldy, Richard Nips’em and George H.W. and George W. Bushy-tail.
Our current top dog, Bark Obama, defeated John McCanine in the last election. Now he faces another dogged opponent — Mutt Romney.
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I spent a terrific day working with fourth- and fifth-graders at Adobe Bluffs Elementary School in Rancho Peñasquitos. Kids of that age are bundles of hormones poured into sneakers, but they respond enthusiastically to puns, palindromes and other kinds of language fun. In fact, the children made posters to celebrate my coming, including “Richard Lederer, the Famous Writer” and “Richard Lederer, the Popular Speaker.”
But my favorite placard read “Richard Lederer, the Wanted Comedian.”
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I’m an incorrigible punster, so don’t incorrige me. Recently I took my grandchildren to Safari Park, near Escondido. We arrived at the place where visitors feed the wild giraffes, who peek over a bluff. I turned to the guard and suggested a name for this section of the complex: GIRAFFIC PARK.
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Most folks who have seen “The Help” (2011) agree that the film richly deserved to be nominated for multiple Academy Awards, including Best Picture. But with all the care lavished upon the writing and filming of “The Help,” in slithered this prepostrophe:
Skeeter Phelan, the film’s protagonist and writer of the book “The Help,” is typing up a notice for the Junior League’s newsletter. The camera homes in on the text, which includes: “Come to the Holbrook’s to drop off old coats,” which she changes to “old commodes” in order to befoul Hilly Holbrook’s front yard.
You’d think that Skeeter — or at least the writers of the screenplay — would know that the plural possessive the Holbrook’s should read the Holbrooks’.
Please send your questions and comments about language to richard.lederer@utsandiego.com verbivore.com