Bee's Knees - Rose
(E?)(L?) http://www.helpmefind.com/gardening/l.php?l=2.19789.1Erstellt: 2010-12
1923, a survivor of a fad around this year for slang terms denoting "excellence" and based on animal anatomy. Also existed in the more ribald form bee's nuts. Other versions that lasted through the century are cat's whiskers (1923), cat's pajamas, cat's meow. More obscure examples are canary's tusks, cat's nuts and flea's eyebrows. The fad still had a heartbeat in Britain at the end of the century, as attested by the appearance of dog's bollocks in 1989. Bee's knee was used as far back as 1797 for "something insignificant."
Something that is the "bee's knees" is stylish and the height of excellence. It is sometimes explained as being from an Italian-American way of saying "business". I've also heard it argued that it is properly "Bs and Es", an abbreviation for "be-alls and end-alls".
...
- Blogger
- The place to go to create your own blog; tools are powerful and easy to use, and it's free
- Craigslist
- This wildly popular portal of classified ads serving more than 300 cities in the U.S. and across the globe recently expanded its real estate listings, and helps power HousingMaps a mash-up that locates properties for sale using Google Maps. (Craigslist charges fees to real estate brokers in New York and for job ads in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, but is otherwise free.)
- Drudge Report
- Matt Drudge, newsbreaker, got more than 3.5 billion hits in the past year
- ESPN
- Best all-around sports site, with sports news, sports videos, sports columns and sports data galore. Honorable mention goes to MLB.com, which lets you watch baseball games that aren't broadcast in your local TV market. The service's success inspired CBS Sports to team up with NCAA to offer March Madness on Demand which drew 5 million viewers earlier this year
- Factcheck.org
- Picks apart speeches, press releases, TV ads and other public statements by politicians of all stripes to set the record straight
- Flickr
- This public showroom for personal pics is one of the fastest-growing social networks on the Web, and now it has a blog
- The Internet Movie Database
- Encyclopedia of entertainment that covers some 800,000 films, television shows and video game titles. Users help keep the Internet Movie Database current, submitting 16 million data bits in 2005 alone
- Lifehacker
- Computer-tech tips and tricks to help you save time, and keep you sane; sister-blog Gizmodo gives up all the latest gadget news. Too mainstream for you? Best to head over to our favorite geek-convention,Slashdot.org
- The Museum of Modern Art
- Now available: MoMA Audio, a selection of museum tours as downloadable podcasts. Wear your own earbuds as you walk through the special exhibitions or the permanent collection; separate audio tours are available for kids and for the visually impaired.
- Netflix
- More than 60,000 DVD titles available to rent, from classics to art-house flicks to major studio releases. Digital delivery is scheduled to start early next year, but don't expect those red mailers to be phased out anytime soon
- National Public Radio
- Not to miss: NPR podcasts, NPR music, NPR This I Believe, NPR Stories
- Rotten Tomatoes
- Gathers movie reviews from far and wide, and reports box office and other stats; flicks receive a critical average on the 100-point "tomatometer."
- Shopzilla
- New comparison shopping sites keep popping up (Become.com isn't bad) but nothing beats Shopzilla's search tools and merchant ratings
- Television Without Pity
- Bitingly funny TV show recaps
- The Smoking Gun
- Continues to document interesting news (sample headline: "Six Skulls Found in Strippers Home") and get the occasional big scoop, like outing writer James Frey
Awards
- get information about a Nobel Prize 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- get information about an Academy Award Oscar for best actress 1958
Top Ten Words of 2000Best New Product Names
- 1. Chad Came in late, yet came on strong
- 2. Millennium No staying power; actually Top Word of 1999
- 4. Sydney Olympics The two names were interchangeable
- 5. Dot-com Momentum from '99; crash only emphasized the word
- 6. Elian Elian Gonzalez, the poster child for opposing world-views
- 7. God Presidential candidates Gore and Bush both invoked the name with ever-growing frequency throughout the campaign
- 8. Pelletizing At the crux of the Bridgestone/Firestone tire recall, the process of bonding rubber to steel mesh in the steel-belted radial tire-making process
- 9. Intifada The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians escalated in late September
- 10. Tiger Tiger Woods set the golfing world afire
Best Corporate Name Change
- 1. Celebrex Celecoxib capsules to combat pain from arthritis pain from Searle. (Although formally launched in 1999, gained significant mind share in 2000.) Excellent example of the many 'celery-class' names, such as Celestra, Celestron, Cellera, and the like
- 2. Black Rocket Bundled services from Genuity to help build e-business infrastructures
- 3. The Razor The high tech scooter, brilliantly marketed by Sharper Image
Worst Corporate Name Changes
- BigChalk Spun off from the staid 'brick 'n mortar' Bell & Howell; the name readily evokes the site's educational networking mission
Word that has 'pulled a 180' in meaning
- 1. Accenture From Andersen Consulting, one of the great branded names. $100 million launch scheduled for January 1st, will not be enough
- 2. Verizon From GTE/Bell Atlantic merger, customers tell us they are mystified
Top corporate clichés (phrase)
- Dot-com Dot-com has gone from connoting fabulous wealth to denoting foolish waste of capital.
Top corporate buzzwords (single word or acronym)
- 1. Time to fish or cut bait Traced back to the 1600s; still incomprehensible
- 2. Think outside the box Using this cliché is now an example of 'inside the box' thinking
- 3. Pushing the envelope A corruption of the 'Right Stuff' pilots' term for pushing the edge of the aerodynamic 'envelope' as they passed through Mach 1 to Mach 2 and Mach 3, and beyond
Top Corporate Buzzwords (compound word)
- 1. B2B Business-to-business
- 2. B2C Business-to-consumer
- 3. ASP Application service provider
- 4. SSP Software service provider
- 5. CRM Customer relationship management
Top Color-related Words
- 1. e-commerce Electronic commerce
- 2. Killer App The 'pull' application that will enable you to destroy your competition and gain inordinate market share
- 3. Viral marketing Any marketing that doesn't cost a lot of money (or that you can't quite explain)
Top Internet-related Words
- 1. Periwinkle A shade of purple
- 2. Sage A shade of green
- 3. Cornflower A shade of blue
- 4. Salmon A shade of pink
- 5. Anything 'pearlized' A textured look for any color
Top Advertising Word
- 1. Eyeballs A visitor to a website
- 2. Stickiness The amount of time a visitor stays on a website
- 3. Click-through Clicking on a banner ad on a website
- 4. Click-and-mortar What dot-coms are attempting to become; a hybrid between a dot-com and a 'brick-and-mortar' (viz. profitable) operation
- 5. Lay-offs What happens when you don't succeed in transforming your dot-com into a click-and-mortar operation
- 6. Web speed The speed at which your business can crash
Top Sports Words
Top Political Words
- 1. Sydney Olympics The planet's largest sporting event; we've found no one who claims to have actually watched it all
- 2. Armstrong Lance captivated the public with his amazing come back story in the Tour de France
- 3. Shaq Shaq (and the LA Lakers) win the NBA crown
- 4. A-Rod Since Alex Rodriguez signed his $250 million contract, A-Rod has become a verb; 'To A-Rod' is a good thing
- 5. St. Louis Rams A long shot, marches to a Super Bowl triumph
- 6. Subway Series Would have ranked higher, but was mainly a New York Media phenomenon
Possible Future Evolution of the Word 'chad'
- 1. Chad No explanation necessary
- 2. Dimpled Chad No explanation necessary
- 3. Pregnant Chad No explanation necessary
- 4. Hanging Chad No explanation necessary
- 5. Lockbox No explanation necessary
- 6. Disenfranchisement No explanation necessary
- 7. Florida No explanation necessary
- 8. Undervote No explanation necessary
- 9. Overvote No explanation necessary
- 10. Dubya (also 'W') No explanation necessary
- 1. Chad Used as a verb meaning to break apart or fragment; this would cover mental, physical, and emotional breakdowns; it could be applied to marriages, corporations, and political entities such as the former Soviet empire, in this sense, chadanize, as in Balkanize
- 2. Chadify To break into smaller pieces; also chadiferous, a scattering of many small pieces
- 3. Chaddy, Chaddily Having many small things (lint balls, strings, etc.) hanging from your clothing, as in 'he dresses chaddily'
- 4. Not a chad of truth Replacing the commonplace, 'not a shred of truth,' which in turn replaced the ancient and classical, 'not a shard of truth,' (a shard being a piece of broken pottery)
- 5. Chadcentration A mass (or clump) of chad
- 6. Chadtize To protest an election, or to poke holes in someone's political argument
- 7. Chadulate Chad coalescing; (more broadly, to come together)
- 8. Chad Storm Any riot of the well-to-do (usually Republicans)
- 9. Chadometer A device to measure what percentage of a chad remains attached to the ballot
- 10. Chadgrevation The state of becoming agitated in the extreme when one hears yet another mention of the word chad
Top Ten Words of 2001Special California Bonus Word
- 2. W. (Dubya) Shorthand for George W. Bush. The butt of January's political jokes waxes most presidential in September.
- 3. Jihad This Arabic word actually means "struggle" or "inner struggle" but is more commonly used to mean "holy war".
- 4. God (Also Allah and Yahweh).The name has been in more headlines and on the lips of more politicians than any time in recent memory.
- 5. Anthrax The Greek word for "coal" (for the black scabs it produces) becomes the world's first postal disease and terrorists' biological weapon of choice.
- 6. Euro The introduction of a pan-European monetary system tightens the unity of Europe.
- 8. -stan The Persian word for 'place of' in names like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan. This is the first ever Suffix of the Year.
- 10. Foot-and-Mouth This word received more press that "foot-IN-mouth" disease. Until this year, many thought the word was "hoof-and-mouth" disease.
Top Ten Names of 2001
- Rolling Blackout A gift from Governor Davis to the English language.
Top Ten 9/11-related Words
- 2. George Bush After a bumpy departure from Florida, the President helps unify the USA in ways not seen since World War II.
- 3. Rudolph Giuliani The Man of the Year, whose political career seemed at an end, proved to be a powerful leader under pressure.
- 4. Osama bin Laden The mastermind behind the destruction of the World Trade Center and reputed leader of the al Qaeda terrorist network.
- 5. Tony Blair Our closest ally, the UK Prime Minister becomes the first to support the US in the war on terrorism.
- 7. The Taliban The students of the Islamic religion (mostly from Pakistan) who ran the Afghani government since the Soviet withdrawal.
- 8. The Clintons Hillary's career in the Senate is launched in the twilight of William J.'s presidency.
- 9. Donald Rumsfeld The Secretary of Defense is keeping the President's word that "the people who knocked these building down will hear from us real soon".
- 10. Vladimir Putin The Russian bear has become a teddy bear cuddling up with the USA, its erstwhile enemy.
Top Ten California Youthspeak
- 1. 9/11 or September 11th Another day that will live in infamy.
- 5. Rudolph Giuliani The Man of the Year by any measure. Though his political career seemed at an end, he proved to be a powerful leader under pressure.
- 6. George Bush After a divisive departure from Florida, the President helps unify the USA in ways not seen since World War II.
- 7. Osama bin Laden The mastermind behind the destruction of the World Trade Center and reputed leader of the al Qaeda terrorist network.
- 8. God (Also Allah and Yahweh). The name has been in more headlines and on the lips of more politicians than any time in recent memory.
- 9. Anthrax The Greek word for "coal" (for the black scabs it produces) becomes the world's first postal disease and terrorists' biological weapon of choice.
- 10. The Taliban The students of the Islamic religion (mostly from Pakistan) who ran the Afghani government since the Soviet withdrawal.
Top Phrases of 2001
- 1. Tight Cool
- 2. Hella Extremely (intensive)
- 3. Dope Fine, good, cool
- 4. Phat Hella, cool
- 5. Pimpin Good with women (Also playa)
- 6. Bling bling Platinum
- 7. Wassup (A greeting)
- 8. Fresh Smooth, Looks great
- 9. Flow Lots of money (as in cash flow)
- 10. Bank Has lots of flow
Best New Product Names
- 1. Let's Roll The last words heard from Todd Beamer as he and a small group of passengers on Flight 93 began their heroic counter-assault on the hijackers of their flight.
- 2. Evil-doer An oddly archaic biblical term whose connotations reflect the turn to religion and patriotism in the U.S. in the wake of 9-11.
- 4. Everything has changed A phrase so oft-repeated by so many that its first use has already become obscure.
- 5. Pardon me! These words may come to vex the Clinton legacy as much as the name of Monica Lewinsky.
Worst New Product Name
- 1. IT Code name for the Segway™ Human Transport, the $3,000 motorized scooter. HT, the actual name, is a bit of a disappointment.
- 2. Ilumina Animated Bible and Encyclopedia Suite from Tyndale House. Evokes images of Illuminated manuscripts of yore.
- 3. Game Cube (tie) Nintendo's entry into the video game console marketplace.
- 4. XBOX (tie) Microsoft's entry into the video game console marketplace. .
- 5. Beneful A rather obvious haplological form of 'benefitful,' a misconstruction with an English suffix on a Latin stem. (Thank you, Purina, for sparing us the full form.)
Best Corporate Name Change
- Nasocrom Replaces "Flonase" as the most repulsive reference to nasal activity regardless of whether it reminds you of "nasal cram" or "nasal crumb(s)."
Worst Corporate Name Changes
- Altria From Philip Morris. The name signifies more than 'higher' but also hints of 'altruism," a concept tobacco companies need more than altitude.
Top Corporate Clichés (phrase)
- 1. Enron Sometimes a company doesn't have to change its name to completely redefine itself in the mind of the public.
- 2. Accenture From Anderson Consulting, one of the great branded names of the 20th century.
- 3. AOL TimeWarner This one has grown into a very confused moniker.
Top Color-related Words
- 1. Furlough A kinder, gentler form of layoff.
- 2. TCO Total Cost of Ownership. An old idea making a strong comeback.
- 3. IT Information Technology. The older term for "high tech" rages back in vogue. The European term is "informatics."
- 5. Resonate - An idea "resonates" with customers if they fall for its pitch.
- 7. Transforming technologies Technologies that change the 'paradigm' of a business (see 'Paradigm').
- 8. Paradigm Coined by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions as the conceptual frameworks and/or worldviews of various scientific communities. In business it has been reduced to anything that might provide a competitive edge.
- 9. App Servers Computers dedicated to running specific applications only.
- 10. Effort As in "We are efforting to resolve the glitch." Like "to concept" (We are in the concepting stage), here is another example of how too much verbing can cause trouble.
Top Internet-related Words
- 1. Red Especially in combination with white and blue.
- 2. White Especially in combination with red and blue.
- 3. Blue Especially in combination with white and red.
- 4. Burqua Blue No longer the rage in Kabul.
- 5. Olive Drab The color of service 'fatigues'.
Top Sports Words
- 1. LOL Lots of love? Laughing out loud? Lots of Luck? This chat- and gameroom acronym can substitute for any of the above, so you have to know who you are talking to, UC.
- 2. Code kiddie This new appellation of hackers betrays their fall in the esteem of their fellow man and responsible fellow programmers.
- 3. Steganography Hiding things in plain view. Watermarks on graphics and other hidden identifiers on web pages have brought forth a new science for the protection of intellectual property.
- 5. Thingy As opposed to "thing" this term refers to all those new objects associated with computers and computer screens for which normal man and woman have no words. It isn't new, but its usage has soared as people take the internet plunge.
- 1. No. 3 Dale Earnhardt's familiar No. 3 Chevy after his tragic death at the Daytona 500. (Last year Top Sports Words was Tiger as in Tiger Woods.)
- 2. 73 Barry Bonds breaks the all-time home run mark held by retiring Mark McGuire by hitting his 73rd in a single season.
- 3. Williams Venus, Serena and Dad shake up the tennis world.
- 4. Winter Olympics Everyone hopes they will cool the world down.
- 5. World Cup To the rest of the world, the real Super Bowl of football.
Top Ten Words of 2002Top Ten Personal Names of 2002
- 1. Misunderestimate What President Bush’s opponents have learned not to do, in his own word.
- 2. Survivor This time an uplifting story about Pennsylvania coal miners and not a ‘reality TV’ series. .
- 4. Perp-walk The parading of criminals in handcuffs before the cameras. It made the news only as some of the nation's most distinguished faces began appearing there.
- 5. Bandwidth What people are increasingly out of, a computer term now applied to modern life.
- 6. Sniper As around the Beltway. The US discovered that terrorists do not have a monopoly on terror.
- 7. To nasdaq As in, "His fortune was nasdaqued." The bubble of the mid-to-late ‘90s returns to reality and adds a worthy item to our vocabulary.
- 8. Warlords The freedom fighters of an earlier era today are now a threat to delicate Afghani democracy.
- 9. "Issue": A great new euphemism for "problem", "fault" or any other type of misstep; we no longer repair the fault, we simply "resolve" the issue.
Top Ten California Youthspeak Words
- 1. W (Dubya) George W. Bush remains at the center of the whirlwind.
- 2. Trent Lott The Republican’s November surprise thrust him back into the spotlight and he made the most of it at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party.
- 3. Cardinal Law More properly, Bernard Cardinal Law, who was ousted from the Boston Archdiocese for his mishandling of the sexual abuse scandal.
- 4. Elizabeth Dole After her husband's defeat in his bid for the presidency, Ms. Dole returns to Washington as the Republican Senator from North Carolina.
- 5. Rudolph Giuliani Last year’s consensus Man of the Year now reaping millions as a consultant, speaker and author.
- 6. The Osbournes MTV’s dysfunctional family hit has unleashed Ozzie’s clan to the world-at-large.
- 7. Saddam Hussein The nemesis of former president Bush who won the presidential ‘election’ in Iraq with 100% of the vote and now faces Mr. Bush's son in a showdown.
- 8. Osama bin Laden Dead or alive, still making news.
- 9. Martha Stewart This year has definitely not been ‘a good thing’.
- 10. Al Gore Cleared the way for President Bush to win his next election for President by gracefully bowing out of contention.
Bonus California Youthspeak Phenomenon of Note
- 1. Hottie Object of affection, either personally or in the cultural milieu.
- 2. For shizzle Variation of ‘for sure’, popularized by rapper Snoop Dogg.
- 3. Tight Replacing 'cool'.
- 4. Phat Way cool, as in ‘rolling phat’.
- 5. Hella An intensive: hella tight or hella phat.
- 6. Wassup This greeting refuses to die, entering mainstream circles.
- 7. Flow Dinero, money. Originally from ‘cash flow’. Also, ‘bank’ for lots of flow.
- 8. Poppins Perfect. In the California Youthspeak version of Cockney rhyming slang ‘toppins’ rhymes with Poppins, which connotes Mary Poppins who was ‘perfect in every way’.
- 9. Bling bling The sounds of diamond and gold jewelry clinking together.
- 10. Stog Cigarette, short for ‘stogy’.
Top Phrases of 2002
- 1. Up Talking Ending all sentences with a rising or upward inflection, as if asking a question.
Top 5 Words Miscoined by President Bush (Bushisms)
- 1. Threat Fatigue The dulling of the senses to imminent terrorist threats.
- 2. Weapons of Mass Destruction The key to whether the US will stage an aggressive attack on Iraq.
- 3. Suicide Bomber 2002 was a sad year as record numbers of Palestinian youth decided to trade their lives for Israeli lives.
- 4. Shoe Bomb An idea that might have outperformed Air Jordans landed Richard Reid in jail and initiated the shoe search at US airports.
- 5. Infectious enronitis A disease of accounting practices that spread widely throughout US businesses.
- 6. Homeland Security A new phrase of mysterious origins naming the national response to 9/11.
- 7. Dot communism The conviction that everything on the Web should be free-or, at least, paid for by someone else.
Best New Product Names
- 1. Misunderestimate To seriously underestimate.
- 2. Embetter To make emotionally better (antonym to embitter).
- 3. Resignate To resonate as in, "They said this issue wouldn't resignate with the People.”
- 4. Foreign-handed To understand the complexity of geopolitical realities from the various global perspectives, as in "I have a foreign-handed foreign policy”.
- 5. Analyzation To fully study a subject, as in "This case has had full analyzation and has been looked at a lot”.
Worst New Product Names
- 1. Trikke Scooter. Great name for an unconventional three-wheeled scooter.
- 3. Twist and Pour Paints The paint container that’s designed to let the user ‘twist-and-pour’ the paint. The name says it all.
Best Corporate Name Change
- 1. A5250 Youth batting helmet. A great product with a not-so-great name.
- 2. Jaguar Apple’s new version of the OS X operating system. An internal code-name that somehow slipped Apple’s usually expert marketing maze.
- 3. Touareg Volkswagen's new SUV named in French after the nomadic North African tribe.
Worst Corporate Name Changes
- 1. American Home Products To Wyeth, good move. American Home Products does not exactly connote the company’s new core competencies of synthetic chemistry: molecules, recombinant proteins and vaccines.
- 2. Accenture Last year's worst product name looks better and better the further Andersen sinks.
Top Corporate Words or Phrasees
- 1. Bearing Point (or BreakingPoint?) KPMG’s attempt to distance itself from the rest of the former ‘Big Six’ accounting firms.
- 2. Enron Still doing business as Enron!? The crisis management rulebook calls for a clean break with the past to re-position the company. But then Enron never was one to follow the rules.
Top Internet Words Moving into Widespread Use
- 1. The Schultz Defense "I know nothing . . . nothing!" From the running line of the pudgy German guard in the now defunct TV series "Hogan's Heroes."
- 2. Dot communism The belief that all on-line services should be free.
- 3. Dematerialization (of documents) Correspondence does not need to be shredded, if it is published by the Web and internet.
- 4. Low-hanging Fruit Easy-to-win accounts.
- 5. Rank-and-Yank The technique of ranking employees annually and then cutting the lowest 10% loose.
Top Color-related Words
- 1. Interface To converse as in, “Let’s interface”.
- 2. Multitask To perform several tasks at the same time.
- 3. Reboot To start over or begin a new effort.
- 4. Out of Bandwidth (or RAM) Unable to multitask.
- 5. Crash - As in ‘My hard drive crashed’.
Top Sports-related Words
- 1. Cornflower Shade of blue
- 2. Periwinkle Grey/blue
- 3. Cerulean Blue
- 4. Plum Purple
- 5. Cerise Dark red
Top Five Most Misspelled Words
- 1. BCS College football’s Bowl Championship Series to crown a national championship in lieu of a playoff.
- 2. Grand Slam Tiger Woods did not win all four of golf’s major tourneys in the same year, though he did own all four trophies at the same time; dubbed the ‘Tiger Slam’.
- 1. Grateful You should be grateful to know that keeping "great" out of "grateful" is great.
- 2. Judgement This word is governed by one of the rare rules of English orthography, so why not enjoy it? After [c] and [g], [e] is retained to indicate the letter is "soft," i.e. pronounced like [s] or [j], respectively.
- 3. Its/it's The apostrophe marks a contraction of "it is." Something that belongs to it is "its."
- 4. Founder Flounder is a fish; ‘to founder’ is to run aground.
- 5. Misspell What is more embarrassing than to misspell the name of the problem?
Top Ten Words of 2003Top Ten Personal Names of 2003
- 1. Embedded News correspondents embedded in military units suggested to many that news correspondents were in bed with the military.
- 2. Blog Web logs have come of age and, regrettably, this lexical mutation with them.
- 3. SARS Farm animals strike back at the humans who eat them again with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. The Flu (with a capital "F") is pushing right behind.
- 4. Spam This old word now refers to a plague contending with SARS for destructive potential. Could the Flu (with a capital "F") be any worse?
- 5. Taikonaut The Chinese astronaut distracted our attention from textiles and copyrights to remind us that China is a rising industrial power.
- 6. Bushism This word now has a real possibility for remaining in the language. (Dan Quayle has lost his chance of making solecisms his contribution to political history.)
- 7. Allision The National Transportation and Safety Board in investigating the Staten Island ferry tragedy concluded it wasn't a collision (between two moving objects) but an allision (a crash with an immoveable object).
- 8. Recall As in California Recall that resulted in the election of Ahh-nold as the Governator.
- 9. Middangeard Middle English for Middle Earth in the movies of Tolkien's trilogy, still fascinating millions around the world with its characters and insights into the origins of the English language.
- 10. Celibacy The word which holds the key to ending the seemingly eternal scandal of the US Catholic Church.
Top Ten Youthspeak Words
- 1. Saddam Hussein Just crawled out of the Spider-Hole and back into the spotlight.
- 2. W. (Dubya) Can't talk his way out of the news. (See the Top Bush Mispronunciations below.)
- 3. Rush Limbaugh How many pills actually fit into a cigar box?
- 4. Martha Stewart Not really 'cooking the books' but not quite kosher, either.
- 5. Pvt. Jessica Lynch Her rescue enthralled the nation desperate for good news.
- 6. Howard Dean The doctor from nowhere now has the team with the roadmap from nowhere to the White House-Clinton-Gore.
- 7. Pope John Paul II 25 years in the Papacy have taken their toll but he is still with us.
- 8. Ahh-nold That's California's new Governator after cruising over the Count of Bustamante in the recall election.
- 9. Paris Hilton The heiress, apparently named after one of her grandfather's Your Ad Here!, landed a job on the Fox Network with the Internet distribution of her 'extracurricular activities'.
- 10. Hans Blix Whose "hans" seem to be tied in his search for the elusive WMDs.
Bonus Youthspeak Phenomenon of Note
- 1. What Up? Present incarnation of the ever popular: Wassup?
- 2. Give it up! Replaces the square: please applaud for…
- 3. Shut up! YouthSpeak for 'Really?'
- 4. Stog Cigarette, short for 'stogey'.
- 5. SNAG Sensitive New-Age Guy.
- 6. Hottie Object of affection, either personally or in the cultural milieu.
- 7. Poppins Perfect, as in 'Mary Poppins is perfect in every way.'
- 8. Tricked Out Souped-up.
- 9. Rice Rockets Tricked out Japanese compacts, as opposed to American 'muscle' cars.
- 10. Side Show Temporarily cordoning off a freeway to perform outrageous car stunts in tricked-out rice rockets.
Top Phrases of 2003
- Bling-bling Has now moved on up into standard slang (click here).
5 Top Mispronunciations by President Bush in 2003
- 1. Shock-and-Awe Remember the initial strategy of the Iraqi War? There was probably more of this when we watched Saddam Hussein emerge from his 'spider-hole.'
- 2. Rush to War Something the US was accused of by our allies and the slogan of liberals attacked by Limbaugh.
- 3. Tire Pressure Announced the imminent disintegration of the Space Shuttle.
- 4. Weapons of Mass Destruction (or WMD). The reason given for the Rush to War. Removing a genocidal maniac wasn't reason enough?
- 5. 16 Words "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Always check your sources.
- 6. Guantanamo Bay The US Justice and Defense Departments thought they would "Gitmo" cooperation from suspected terrorists off shore.
- 7. Spider-Hole Looks like this one is going to stick around for a while: Sen. Lieberman is already accusing Howard Dean of 'crawling into a spider-hole of denial'. (Don't step in that.)
- 8. Tipping Point When any topic moves from one level to the next or the state of a politician one word (or drink) away from falling flat on his face.
- 9. Angry Left The early followers of Howard Dean seem to have frightened him to the center.
- 10. Halliburton Energy Services Vice President Cheney's old company was supplying our fighting men and women with fuel at enlightened prices before the dust settled in Iraq (if it has settled yet).
SOURCES
- 1. a-MERR-ca a-MER-i-ca (America)
- 2. NEW-cue-ler NEW-clee-er (nuclear)
- 3. JU-ler-ee JU-wel-ree (jewelry)
- 4. Anzar Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar
- 5. Ne-VAH-duh Ne-VAE-duh) (Nevada)
Best New Product Names
- http://www.generationwoman.com/article.php3?story_id=72
- http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1029512/posts
- http://www.dallasnews.com/texasliving/stories/ 110203dnlivlarocque.5cd19.html
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,505698,00.html
Worst New Product Names
- 1. Way Cool For concerned parents, this car window shade actually begins to turn white when the temp hits 85º F.
- 2. Thermos Fire + Ice Grill 2 Go Transportable gas grill and cooler in one unit.
- 3. Chronospan Storage software that protects all your data all the time.
- 4. iTunes Music Store Apple's Napster-like site for downloadable music.
Top Enron Inspired Words
- 1. Hywire GM's name for its new experimental fuel cell car that suggests (1) a potentially fatal act in a circus, in an (2) an electric vehicle (a spectacular automotive failure). Of course, (3) no one outside GM will ever call it "Hywire" because "Haywire" will always be good for an easy laugh.
- 2. Silk From "soy + milk" Compounded by the company slogan "Silk is soy." No, it isn't; it is a kind of fine thread. You don't want a name that requires explanation.
- 3. Poolife Here is a name in need of a hyphen (it seems to already have a colon). Would you want to put a product with this moniker in water you occasionally gulp?
- 4. Clonaid The name for the cult that tried to clone the first human. They certainly could use some aid. But was this a simple case of misspelling-did they actually mean "Clownaid"?
- 5. Bene- Benedryl (And now I wanna be a saw), Benefiber (now I wanna be a rope), Benefun (?). We can no longer ignore the silly use of bene- which can convey the sense of "good"—but words also have pronunciations.
Top Internet Words Moving into Widespread Use
- 1. Enrosion Shrinking of the value of 401K plans as a result of entrepreneurial piracy.
- 2. Entronpy The sudden dissipation of accumulated assets into nothingness.
- 3. Enro Unit of currency that used to be worth much more than it is now.
- 4. Enronitis It seems to be contagious, too.
- 5. Chronic Enronitis It is spreading and won't go away, either.
Top Sports-related Words
- 1. Ping Send a reminder, as in 'Ping me about that!'
- 2. Multitask To perform several tasks at the same time.
- 3. 10X In high tech jargon, the competitive advantage that separates a company from its competition.
- 4. Off line The replacement for "out of it," as 'Are you listening or are you off line?'
- 5. Bandwidth - Capacity, as 'We'll have to increase our bandwidth to handle the order.'
Top Word Trends in Pop Music Names
- 1. Zim As in "to be zimmed" coined after 70-year old New York Yankees bench coach who lurched at Pedro Martinez in the American League Championship Series.
- 2. BCS College football's Bowl Championship Series has been called the "Bogus Championship Series" for leaving the Nation's No. 1 college Football team (USC) out of the title game.
- 3. Curse of the Bambino For the Boston Red Sox it's 85 years and still counting.
- 1. !!! Bands without pronounceable names, though usually pronounced 'tch, tch, tch'.
- 2. ( ) Albums with symbols as names. This album by Sigur Rós contains a songbook of 16 blank pages.
- 3. The The The definite pronoun is definitely in pop music: Examples in 2003 include: The Distillers, The Thrills' The Strokes, The Postal Service, and The Crystal Method.
- 4. Lots of 'Rs' Examples include Christina Aguilera's "Dirrty" and Nelly's "Hot In Herre."
- 5. Downloaders Downloaders could be anyone. From the 40-year-old classical connoisseur to the 11-year-old checking out Justin Timberlake.
Here are the 100 most beautiful words in English. How do we know we have the most beautiful? They were chosen by Robert Beard, who has been making dictionaries, creating word lists, and writing poetry for 40 years. For five years he wrote the Word of the Day at yourDictionary.com and since 2004 he has written up 1500 words in the series, So, What's the Good Word? here at alphaDictionary. Below is a select list of his favorite words that he used in his poetry — or wishes he had.
Dr. Beard's book is a collection of the loveliest words in the English language, carefully researched and written up in small one-page essays designed to help increase the beauty of our conversations and our understanding of how and why we speak the ways we do. The book is the handbook for lovers for it contains an essay on what makes words beautiful so that the reader may go beyond the book in beautifying his or her speech. It also explains how English is interrelated with other languages in the world and why so many of our most beautiful words are borrowed from them. The book is printed in large easy-to-read type, great for travel since you may start and stop on any page.
...
| Ailurophile | Assemblage | Becoming | Beleaguer | Brood | Bucolic | Bungalow | Chatoyant | Comely | Conflate | Cynosure | Dalliance | Demesne | Demure | Denouement | Desuetude | Desultory | Diaphanous | Dissemble | Dulcet | Ebullience | Effervescent | Efflorescence | Elision | Elixir | Eloquence | Embrocation | Emollient | Ephemeral | Epiphany | Erstwhile | Ethereal | Evanescent | Evocative | Fetching | Felicity | Forbearance | Fugacious | Furtive | Gambol | Glamour | Gossamer | Halcyon | Harbinger | Imbrication | Imbroglio | Imbue | Incipient | Ineffable | Ingénue | Inglenook | Insouciance | Inure | Labyrinthine | Lagniappe | Lagoon | Languor | Lassitude | Leisure | Lilt | Lissome | Lithe | Love | Mellifluous | Moiety | Mondegreen | Murmurous | Nemesis | Offing | Onomatopoeia | | Palimpsest | Panacea | Panoply | Pastiche | Penumbra | Petrichor | Plethora | Propinquity | Pyrrhic | Quintessential | Ratatouille | Ravel | Redolent | Riparian | Ripple | Scintilla | Sempiternal | Seraglio | Serendipity | Summery | Sumptuous | Surreptitious | Susquehanna | Susurrous | Talisman | Tintinnabulation | Umbrella | Untoward | Vestigial | Wafture | Wherewithal | Woebegone
Robert E. Beard (1938- ) is a linguist whose specialty is morphology (the study of words). He was born and raised in Fayetteville, NC, the son of Kathleen and LaVerne Beard. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of North Carolina and received his PhD in Slavic Linguistics at the University of Michigan in 1966. Beard served as head of the Russian and Linguistics Programs at Bucknell University, where he taught for 35 years (1965-2000), holding the Ruth Everett Sziezega Chair in Linguistics for two terms.
...
After retiring from Bucknell, Beard became one of the founders of the popular linguistic website, "yourDictionary.com", writing under the pseudonym "Dr. Language". He now owns and heads The Lexiteria, a language product and services company that operates "alphaDictionary.com". He writes there under the pseudonym "Dr. Goodword".
The 100 Funniest Words in English contains the 100 funniest words in English 50 of which are listed below. There are easily 1000 funny words in English (maybe more depending on how you measure funniness) but we think this book contains the best selection based on his experience as a reader and writer over the past four decades.
Each word's definition, usage problems, and history are written up in the book, and each are accompanied by hilarious examples taken from the lives of such characters as Lucinda Head, Maud Lynn Dresser, Phil Anders, William Arami, and Marian Kine. Try some free pages below, then get the full treatment in the book, now on sale at this website.
...
Here are the words, described as only "Dr. Goodword" can describe them, that you will find in the book. The definitions below are not those in the book but much simpler ones. Click the first five for the first five actual entries in the book. Then get the other 95 (or so) at this site or at one of the bookstores above.
The 100 Funniest Words in English | Abibliophobia | Absquatulate | Allegator | Anencephalous | Argle-bargle | Batrachomyomachy | Billingsgate | Bloviate | Blunderbuss | Borborygm | Boustrophedon | Bowyang | Brouhaha | Bumbershoot | Callipygian | Canoodle | Cantankerous | Catercornered | Cockalorum | Cockamamie | Codswallop | Collop | Collywobbles | Comeuppance | Crapulence | Crudivore | Discombobulate | Donnybrook | Doozy | Dudgeon | Ecdysiast | Eructation | Fard | Fartlek | Fatuous | Filibuster | Firkin | Flibbertigibbet | Flummox | Folderol | Formication | Fuddy-duddy | Furbelow | Furphy | Gaberlunzie | Gardyloo! | Gastromancy | Gazump | Gobbledygook | Gobemouche | Godwottery | Gongoozle | Gonzo | Goombah | Hemidemisemiquaver | Hobbledehoy | Hocus-pocus | Hoosegow | Hootenanny | Jackanapes | Kerfuffle | Klutz | La-di-da | Lagopodous | Lickety-split | Lickspittle | Logorrhea | Lollygag | Malarkey | Maverick | Mollycoddle | Mugwump | Mumpsimus | Namby-pamby | Nincompoop | Oocephalus | Ornery | Pandiculation | Panjandrum | Pettifogger | Pratfall | Quean | Rambunctious | Ranivorous | Rigmarole | Shenanigan | Sialoquent | Skedaddle | Skullduggery | Slangwhanger | Smellfungus | Snickersnee | Snollygoster | Snool | Tatterdemalion | Troglodyte | Turdiform | Unremacadamized | Vomitory | Wabbit | Widdershins | Yahoo | @
Robert E. Beard (1938- ) is a linguist whose specialty is morphology (the study of words). He was born and raised in Fayetteville, NC, the son of Kathleen and LaVerne Beard. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of North Carolina and received his PhD in Slavic Linguistics at the University of Michigan in 1966. Beard served as head of the Russian and Linguistics Programs at Bucknell University, where he taught for 35 years (1965-2000), holding the Ruth Everett Sziezega Chair in Linguistics for two terms.
...
After retiring from Bucknell, Beard became one of the founders of the popular linguistic website, "yourDictionary.com", writing under the pseudonym "Dr. Language". He now owns and heads The Lexiteria, a language product and services company that operates "alphaDictionary.com". He writes there under the pseudonym "Dr. Goodword".