Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

We Need Some New Words For Things

By Bob Wire, 10-26-10

	This dictionary is, like, ginormous.

A quick look at today’s BBC website exposed me to two words I’d never seen before. “Freesheet” and “broadbloid” were used to describe types of newspapers. I don’t know if it’s a British thing, like boiled lunchmeat, or if it’s a snarky modern trend, typified by Stephen Colbert and his coining of words like “truthiness” and “wikiality,” but the need for more words is evident.

Thanks to the Web, invented words now enter the lexicon with lightning speed. I consider these words part of a new argot called Internetymology. See how easy it is? I just made that up!

The internet itself has fostered the creation of many goofy new terms that didn’t previously exist because there was no need. NewWest.net, my online handler, has flirted with its share of invented terms, like “blogvertorial” and “grok.” These and other online attempts at defining a specific cyberdoohicky come and go like gas pains after a sack of Chalupas. Someday, long after words like “ginormous” and “protestival” have found permanent spots in the dictionary, historians and wordsmiths will look back at the early 21st century as the Wild West settler days of Internetymology.

You know those little filters that you have to put on every phone line in your house to keep phone calls from killing your DSL connection (even though they sometimes still do, thanks Qwest)? I call ‘em broadbandaids. And how about fake-named online commenters who hang around and argue with two or three others long after the thread has been abandoned and everyone else has moved on with their lives? Henceforth they will be known as anonyzombies.

And it’s not just the internet that spawns the need for made up terms. If you pay attention, you’ll begin to notice all kinds of human behavior that we all recognize but none of us knows what to call. That move where you go to take a sip from your bottle of beer, and as soon as you pick it up and realize that it’s already empty? But you take a fake sip from it anyway because you don’t want to look like an idiot or an absent-minded alcoholic? That’s called being swignorant.

And how about that guy who comes into the sports bar and insists that the largest TV has to show a basketball game? What an NBA-hole. Another type of misbehavior you’ll witness at the bar is when a woman feigns interest in a guy just to get him to buy her a drink, or even a meal. That’s called chickcanery. I see it all the time.

As long as we’re on the subject of dishonesty, let’s take a look at politics. Now there’s an arena that’s full of opportunity for new word coinage. Someone working behind the scenes, twisting arms and haranguing elected officials in order to influence a policy decision is being Rahmbastic. All the phony issues perpetuated by Tea Partiers and racist soreheads concerning the President’s origin of birth or his religious affiliation? Obama drama. Speaking of the Tea Party, it’s full of people who espouse their admiration for Ayn Rand and her love of capitalism. But when they discover that this Tea Party hero also called for an oligarchic government, which runs counter to the democracy-themed Constitution they claim to love, they backpedal furiously. That’s when they become Ad-Libertarians.

In the world of music, where I frequently hang out, there is an endless need for new, descriptive terms. When you go see a live band, for instance, and the guitar player noodles around between songs, repeatedly teasing the crowd with the first few notes of “Sweet Home Alabama,” that’s called foreskynyrd. Totally annoying. That guy is guitarded. But not as bad as the drunken moron who keeps yelling for “Freebird.” He’s what’s known as an “asshole.”

And there must be a term for those teenagers you seen in the mall, who try to rap but are really bad at it? Unhip-hoppers? I don’t know. I would like to see a trend, though, where kids start pulling their jeans up enough to cover their underpants. We’ll call it the Boxer Rebellion. I do love to watch people bopping along wearing earbuds, twitching and jumping to music only they can hear. They look like they’re having an MP3zure.

Lots of maladies and disorders are running around nameless. When your dog is neutered, for example, but he continues to lick his scrotum because he’s forgotten that his nuts were confiscated, he’s suffering from Ballsheimer’s. We need a term for the disease carried by drivers who don’t know how a four-way stop works. Dumbassperger Syndrome comes to mind. Honestly, lady, do you think you have the left-of-way here?

The sky’s the limit, people. There are empty language slots all around us that need to be filled. These wordholes are everywhere, and I invite you to add your new terms, phrases and neologisms to the list. Who knows? Your contribution might wind up in the next edition of the Mirriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary, one of the world’s finest doorstops.

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