by
hugovk
on
I was a 10x engineer for 7 months and then I was a 0x engineer for a year and a half. You burn the candle at both ends. You end up with alcoholism and depression. You’re talking about a very small subset of people. And they might end up in divorce and financial ruin. When people think you’re a 10x engineer, they think you have skills that you don’t. You invariably let people down. — Anonymous
10x'd, v. Verb form of 10x from 10x engineer.
Interconnected, 7 October 2015:
Jack and I developed our workshop patterns in 2007, and they were 10x'd by Matt Jones when he joined in 2009.
a11y, n. accessibility
James Callan, 3 June 2015:
#A11y experts: Is there a way to identify in Google Analytics people who use assistive technology to browse your site?
accuracy, n.
The Guardian, 4 December 2015:
There is confusion over the way the military uses terminology. “Precision means you can hit the object you wanted to hit and nothing else. Accuracy means that the object is indeed what you thought it was,” Joshi said.
“You can have a very precise strike on a suspected truck carrying militants, but it would be inaccurate if it turned out to be carrying civilians. Missiles can be precise, but only intelligence and surveillance can bring accuracy. This distinction is being lost.”
AdBlockalypse, n.
Tully Hansen, 18 September 2015:
That said, I’m betting @mkramer has a good take on the whole AdBlockalypse.
adult fans of Lego, n.
The Guardian, 11 December 2015:
In the queue for the Brick exhibition, a discombobulatingly large room full of Lego through the ages, are Louis Wilby, 30, and Kerry-Anne Webb, 32. If you heard the phrase “adult fans of Lego” (AFOL), this is the couple you’d picture. “I don’t really get involved,” Webb starts. “I don’t let her,” Wilby interjects. “But I like watching him build. He’s so happy when he does it.”
AECD, n.
The Guardian, 26 November 2015:
Audi, which is based in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, has said it failed to notify authorities in the US of three so-called auxiliary emissions control devices (AECD) in luxury models, one of which is classified there as a banned “defeat device”.
Abbreviation of "as fuck".
@OgChrisCat__, January 2015:
Tbh I hate the word "angry". Like it sounds dumb af. Why can't people use mad or pissed off.
AFOL, n.
The Guardian, 11 December 2015:
In the queue for the Brick exhibition, a discombobulatingly large room full of Lego through the ages, are Louis Wilby, 30, and Kerry-Anne Webb, 32. If you heard the phrase “adult fans of Lego” (AFOL), this is the couple you’d picture. “I don’t really get involved,” Webb starts. “I don’t let her,” Wilby interjects. “But I like watching him build. He’s so happy when he does it.”
Amabot, n.
New York Times, 16 August 2015:
Company veterans often say the genius of Amazon is the way it drives them to drive themselves. “If you’re a good Amazonian, you become an Amabot,” said one employee, using a term that means you have become at one with the system.
ambient computing, n.
Slashdot, 25 December 2015:
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, is one of the biggest investors in technology. In an interview with The Telegraph, he spoke about how he envisions the future of computing. It's essentially an extension on the idea of the "Internet of Things." He thinks mobile phones will begin to be replaced in just 10 years. "The idea that we have a single piece of glowing display is too limiting. By then, every table, every wall, every surface will have a screen or can project." Within 20 years, he expects most new physical objects to have some sort of chip implanted within them. "The end state is fairly obvious — every light, every doorknob will be connected to the internet." The term for this is "ambient computing." There will obviously be a transition period — perhaps the so-called internet of things is just an early phase of that transition. But with powerful chips and sensors becoming incredibly cheap, Andreessen's scenario seems possible. I guess it's time to get cracking on those security and privacy concerns.
Amhole, n.
New York Times, 16 August 2015:
Recruiters, though, also say that other businesses are sometimes cautious about bringing in Amazon workers, because they have been trained to be so combative. The derisive local nickname for Amazon employees is “Amholes” — pugnacious and work-obsessed.
Personal Weblog of Joe Clark, Toronto, January 2015:
I re-read Matthew Debord’s piece in the L.A. Times about the Aspergerian male compulsion to efficiently load the autoclave, or, as non-male non-Aspergerians call it, the dishwasher.
auxiliary emissions control device, n.
The Guardian, 15 October 2015:
Volkswagen confirmed to the Associated Press on Tuesday that the “auxiliary emissions control device” at issue operates differently from the “defeat” software included in the company’s 2009 to 2015 models and revealed last month.
backscroll, n. When revisiting a Slack chat group, the backscroll contains the old messages you've not read since your last visit.
A Slack user, 13 November 2015:
O people in backscroll discoursing about IPA and accents and dialects and such, some of you might like to see this: http://accent.gmu.edu/browse_language.php?function=find&language=english
badaption, n. portmanteau, from bad adaption
The Guardian, 30 November 2015:
Badaptations: a brief history of controversial book-to-screen transitions
bantwagon, n.
The Guardian, 24 September 2015:
But wait, ladies! There is one female DJ: Hattie Pearson, who is let on air at 1am, presumably giving her time to do Moyles’s ironing beforehand. Actually, that’s unfair. To say that Radio X excludes women is to say that having a womb prevents you from listening to Foo Fighters, Courteeners or Muse. Radio X’s problem isn’t that it’s a sexist shed of a station, it’s that riding the humourless bantwagon is just such a mind-numbingly boring experience.
bespoke bot, n.
Agent, Droid, Infobot: the texty Twitter robots Tully Hansen has known and loved, 6 October 2015:
We might instead term these accounts bespoke bots; quite often such bots are coded, created and credited to an individual creator, and frequently may be distinguished (contra spam bots) by their novelty – in subject matter, behaviour or technique. After Tolstoy: 'Spammy bots are all alike; every unspammy bot is unspammy in its own way.' These bespoke Twitter bots may trace a lineage to earlier works of computational media such as Joseph Weizenbaum's 1960s software psychotherapist ELIZA and her descendants, designed for humans to engage with their software through (typed) conversation. These bots enact personality, often attempting or playing at 'passing' for human.
Bitterite, n.
The Guardian, 13 December 2015:
“As the leader, he has earned the right democratically to lead the party,” said the former Labour deputy prime minister on the Murnaghan show on Sky News. “But there are some people in the party, who I call the Bitterites, who want to continue the war that they lost.”
black box society, n.
The Guardian, 6 December 2015:
So far, so understandable. But there is a direction of travel here – one that is taking us towards what an American legal scholar, Frank Pasquale, has christened the “black box society”. You might think that the subtitle – “the secret algorithms that control money and information” – says it all, except that it’s not just about money and information but increasingly about most aspects of contemporary life, at least in industrialised countries. For example, we know that Facebook algorithms can influence the moods and the voting behaviour of the service’s users. And we also know that Google’s search algorithms can effectively render people invisible. In some US cities, algorithms determine whether you are likely to be stopped and searched in the street. For the most part, it’s an algorithm that decides whether a bank will seriously consider your application for a mortgage or a loan. And the chances are that it’s a machine-learning or network-analysis algorithm that flags internet or smartphone users as being worthy of further examination. Uber drivers may think that they are working for themselves, but in reality they are managed by an algorithm. And so on.
blended family, n.
The Guardian, 27 December 2015:
There are therapists aplenty kept in business by the trials and tribulations of blended families. I’m surprised there aren’t more interior advisory services for “blended homes”, since levels of angst are often raised equally high by the torturous process of marrying our belongings.
blended home, n.
The Guardian, 27 December 2015:
There are therapists aplenty kept in business by the trials and tribulations of blended families. I’m surprised there aren’t more interior advisory services for “blended homes”, since levels of angst are often raised equally high by the torturous process of marrying our belongings.
Bobhead, n.
Vulture, 6 November 2015:
But something happens when we get to what became the Blonde on Blonde sessions, first in New York and then, much more fruitfully, in Nashville, the first of several albums Dylan recorded there. Suddenly, the arrangements are beginning to shift shape nearly every time — the kind of thing that Bobheads have been extolling since the bootlegs started coming. Perusing Paul Williams’s Bob Dylan: Performing Artist Volume One, a close 1991 reading not just of Dylan’s albums but available live performances and bootlegs, part of me was allured and part deeply skeptical: Does anyone deserve this kind of scrutiny? A surprising number of Blonde on Blonde outtakes do — three songs in particular.
bot o'clock, n.
Katie Rose Pipkin, 7 December 2015:
As a side effect, I would catch off times on twitter, where everyone but the bots were asleep. These timelines of automation had a striking effect. I was particularly fond of the bot chorus around the turn of the hour- bot o'clock, as some call it.
British exit from the EU.
The Guardian, October 2014:
““Brexit” is shorthand for British exit from the European Union – a possibility that is looking more realistic by the day. Ukip, after all, are in the midst of a seemingly endless political summer, while senior Conservative politicians such as Boris Johnson talk optimistically about life outside the clutches of Brussels. Should they win next year’s election, the Tories are pledged to follow a renegotiation of Britain’s membership with an in/out referendum that will supposedly materialise by the end of 2017. Meanwhile, a debate rages between two sides that do not just seem to be from opposed political traditions, but different planets.
brown bag release, noun
Alex Clark, GitHub, 7 June 2015:
If an issue does occur, we release a new point release and repeat the process. I'd like to avoid creating and uploading binaries for "brown bag" releases, if possible.
charge rage, n.
San Jose Mercury News, 22 January 2014:
PALO ALTO, Calif.—An increasing number of electric-vehicle driving employees at Silicon Valley companies are finding it hard to access car-charging stations at work, creating incidents of "charge rage" among drivers...Some Valley companies have already taken steps toward alleviating charge rage in the workplace.
cheatware, n.
The Register, 10 October 2015:
Top VW exec blames car pollution cheatware scandal on 'a couple of software engineers'
chemsex, n.
The Guardian, 22 November 2015:
Chemsex is identified in the film as the habit of engaging in weekend-long parties fuelled by sexually disinhibiting drugs, such as crystal meth, GHB, GBL and mephedrone. These parties involve multiple people and are mostly facilitated online. The testimonies in the film from people involved in the subculture directly link chemsex to alarming rates of HIV infection. In London four new positive diagnoses are currently made daily. There is candid talk on film about “pozzing up”, the practise of knowingly becoming infected with the virus. Meth, meph and G create a potent cocktail enabling extremes of behaviour, which carries significant risks for the sexual and mental health of habitual users.
chief content officer, n.
The Guardian, 13 Octber 2015:
The chief content officer of the magazine, Cory Jones, said the magazine would be more accessible and more intimate, admitting: “Twelve-year-old me is very disappointed in current me. But it’s the right thing to do.”
chumbox, n.
The Awl, 4 June 2015:
This is a chumbox. It is a variation on the banner ad which takes the form of a grid of advertisements that sits at the bottom of a web page underneath the main content. It can be found on the sites of many leading publishers, including nymag.com, dailymail.co.uk, usatoday.com, and theawl.com (where it was “an experiment that has since ended.”)
chumlink, n.
The Awl, 4 June 2015:
Clicking on a chumlink—even one on the site of a relatively high-class chummer, like nymag.com—is a guaranteed way to find more, weirder, grosser chum. The boxes are daisy-chained together in an increasingly cynical, gross funnel; quickly, the open ocean becomes a sewer of chum.
chumvendor, n.
The Awl, 4 June 2015:
The chumboxes were placed there by one of several chumvendors—Taboola, Outbrain, RevContent, Adblade, and my favorite, Content.ad—who design them to seamlessly slip into a particular design convention established early within the publishing web, a grid of links to appealing, perhaps-related content at the bottom of the content you intentionally came to consume.
The electronic system was created in 1983 but paper citations, or “cits,” were also generated until 2009.
clean diesel, n.
Wired, 22 September 2015:
The big “advance” from VW was the “clean diesel” technology that supposedly made the whole urea thing unnecessary on its smaller cars, like the Beetle, Jetta, and Audi A3—the very models being recalled because they don’t meet emissions standards under real-world driving conditions.
Clos topology, n.
UKNOF32 - Google datacentre networking - Phil Sykes, 22 September 2015:
Clos topologies: Accommodate low radix switch chips to scale nearly arbitrary by adding stages
cockocracies, n.
The Guardian, 9 October 2015:
Watching the Fifa cockocracy fall to pieces is a beautiful game in itself...
Luckily, no real ladies are involved in any of this – Fifa has long served as one of Earth’s leading cockocracies. Blatter hasn’t yet tried to argue that the US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, should wear tighter shorts while indicting him, but the ratio of male to female parts in this drama is 50:1. Or 1:3000, if you count the prostitutes.
cockocracy, n.
The Guardian, 9 October 2015:
Watching the Fifa cockocracy fall to pieces is a beautiful game in itself...
Luckily, no real ladies are involved in any of this – Fifa has long served as one of Earth’s leading cockocracies. Blatter hasn’t yet tried to argue that the US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, should wear tighter shorts while indicting him, but the ratio of male to female parts in this drama is 50:1. Or 1:3000, if you count the prostitutes.
commoditised news, n.
The Guardian, 31 May 2015:
It is not just the number of individual pieces but possibly the nature of the content that may hold the key to the rise. The Guardian since its inception has always sought to break stories but the retreat of what is now termed, in another ugly phrase, “commoditised news”, ie those stories that can be got everywhere, has led to an even greater emphasis on investigations and breaking news.
Corbynista, n.
The Guardian, 18 September 2015:
Mitford’s infinitely more humourless heirs – rather oddly, given what I imagine they’d think of her – can be found in the angrier fringes of the various new politics firms: the Kippers, the cybernats, the Corbynistas. They may be divided in their beliefs, but they are united by a mania for pigeonholing. We now have New, and non-New. All public statements, all things in the world, and most especially all people, must be deemed either for them or against them, and worshipped or demonised accordingly. There is no appeals procedure.
Corbynmania, n.
The Guardian, 5 October 2015:
Addressing a rally in Manchester alongside Corbyn to coincide with the Conservative party conference, Terry Pullinger, deputy general secretary of Communication Workers’ Union (CWU), said Corbynmania “almost makes you want to celebrate the fact Labour lost the election”.
Corbynomics, n.
The Guardian, 22 September 2015:
Yet the main thing people level at Corbynomics – that it relies wholly on tax, and is therefore nothing more than a throwback to the 70s language of squeezing the rich till their pips squeak – doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory act of reading. A much more important element is people’s quantitative easing, which is based on the idea, put simply: it’s time to give up on financial assets; it’s time to invest in stuff. The government would print money – for social housing, for rural broadband, for green infrastructure – and invest it.
Corbynomics, n.
Felix Cohen, 14 September 2015:
You might not believe in Corbynomics but he's already turned £20 into this for me.
Coybytrons, n.
Robert Webb, 19 November 2015:
There's probably more to it than that & maybe I'll try to write about it next time I feel going 10 rounds with the Corbytrons (3/4)
credit-card touring, n.
The Bike Show, 7 October 2015:
So if you're looking for a bike that'll do a lot of different things, whether it's commuting, road riding at the weekend, a little bit of credit-card touring, or very lightweight bikepacking-type adventures, this is the bike that fits the bill in a way, not necessarily this particular bike but this kind of bike.
Frances Ryan in the Guardian, January 2015:
We wouldn’t accept actors blacking up, so why applaud ‘cripping up’?
...
But is this as harmless as mainstream audiences seem to see it? While “blacking up” is rightly now greeted with outrage, “cripping up” is still greeted with awards. Is there actually much difference between the two?
crowdsmash, v.
Managed Print Services Association @Your_MPSA, 1 September 2011:
HP TouchPad at COMEX 2011 draws huge (angry) crowd by VR-Zone.com http://vr-zone.com/articles/hp-touchpad-at-comex-2011-draws-huge-angry-crowd/13460.html … Me: crowdsmashing in singapore for TouchPad huh?
crowdsmashing, v.
Paul Ford, New York Magazine, 21 December 2012:
Due to popular hatred, the University of California has withdrawn its new logo. This is no cause for tears; the proposed image, a stylized C emblazoned upon a U, looked like a plus-size strapless dress smeared with unicorn poop. The outrage, however, is noteworthy for its place within a bigger phenomenon. If crowdsourcing builds things, here we see the emergence of crowdsmashing: the Gap Logo Debacle of 2010, the London 2012 Olympics Hot Pink Logo Fussquake, the Syfy Brand Identity Conundrum. Something about logos and rebranding can just piss a mob right off.
cutthroat, n., a cutthroat compound
Brianne Hughes, 6th May 2015:
Difficulties in Identifying English Cutthroat Compounds
Cutthroats are agentive and instrumental exocentric verb-noun V+N compounds that name people and objects by describing their function (i.e., a cutthroat is a person who cuts throats). They are composed of a transitive verb and its direct object. Cutthroats are freely productive in Romance languages, which have a V.O. (verb-object) structure and are left-headed. English, which is V.O. and right-headed, has slight native productivity (Clark et al, 1986) that has been amplified and augmented by French borrowings (e.g., coupe-gorge and wardecorps). English has been slowly producing new cutthroats since the 1200s up through 2015, mainly in the form of nonce personal insults. Most cutthroats are obsolete slang, but about 40, including pickpocket, pinchpenny, rotgut and spitfire, are commonly known in Modern English.
cutthroat compound, n.
Brianne Hughes, 6th May 2015:
Difficulties in Identifying English Cutthroat Compounds
Cutthroats are agentive and instrumental exocentric verb-noun V+N compounds that name people and objects by describing their function (i.e., a cutthroat is a person who cuts throats). They are composed of a transitive verb and its direct object. Cutthroats are freely productive in Romance languages, which have a V.O. (verb-object) structure and are left-headed. English, which is V.O. and right-headed, has slight native productivity (Clark et al, 1986) that has been amplified and augmented by French borrowings (e.g., coupe-gorge and wardecorps). English has been slowly producing new cutthroats since the 1200s up through 2015, mainly in the form of nonce personal insults. Most cutthroats are obsolete slang, but about 40, including pickpocket, pinchpenny, rotgut and spitfire, are commonly known in Modern English.
cw, n. Used to warn about the contents of a link
(cw violence)
cybernat, n.
The Guardian, 18 September 2015:
Mitford’s infinitely more humourless heirs – rather oddly, given what I imagine they’d think of her – can be found in the angrier fringes of the various new politics firms: the Kippers, the cybernats, the Corbynistas. They may be divided in their beliefs, but they are united by a mania for pigeonholing. We now have New, and non-New. All public statements, all things in the world, and most especially all people, must be deemed either for them or against them, and worshipped or demonised accordingly. There is no appeals procedure.
cybertwee, n.
Broadly, 6 September 2015:
If cyberpunk had a cute kid sister that was secretly better at coding, cybertwee would be it.
deconflict, v.
The Guardian, 1 October 2015:
A day after the Pentagon announced that Carter was establishing a communications channel with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoygu, to “deconflict” any overlapping airstrikes, Russian officials told US diplomats in Baghdad that the Americans should avoid Syrian airspace during a Russian operation of uncertain duration. US officials rejected the demand.
deconfliction, n.
The Guardian, 29 September 2015:
It raises questions about whether the Russians will use their air presence to attack the few anti-Assad forces whom the US is training to battle Isis – a program that has come under review after it has failed to produce the ground army the US administration promised last year would roll back Isis gains – much as the new “deconfliction” channel raises the prospect of Russian attempts to stop US flights on behalf of Assad’s enemies.
defeat device, n.
The Guardian, 18 September 2015:
The Environment Protection Agency (EPA) on Friday accused VW of installing illegal “defeat device” software that dramatically reduces nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions – but only when the cars are undergoing strict emission tests.
defeat software, n.
The Guardian, 15 October 2015:
Volkswagen confirmed to the Associated Press on Tuesday that the “auxiliary emissions control device” at issue operates differently from the “defeat” software included in the company’s 2009 to 2015 models and revealed last month.
democratorship, n.
The Guardian, 12 December 2015:
Tens of thousands of people marched through Warsaw on Saturday to protest against what they called the “democratorship” of the month-old conservative government, as Poland remained locked in a constitutional crisis. Waving Polish and European Union flags, the protesters chanted: “We want the constitution, not a revolution”, demanding that the government respect the rule of law.
digital babysitter, n.
The Guardian, 19 November 2015:
The phrase “digital babysitter” crops up regularly in comments about children and YouTube. It’s often framed as a criticism of parents: leaving their children in the corner of a room with an iPad doing the parenting.
digital detoxing, v.
The Guardian, 15 November 2015:
But what about the consumer? Eleanor Aldridge, a senior editor at Rough Guides, the travel guides publisher, questions whether we are ready for this type of technology, especially because “digital detoxing” – holidaying without smartphones or connections to the internet – is very popular.
digital literature, n.
The Guardian, 13 October 2015:
But more aggravating even than this are the forums, summits, breakout sessions and seminars on “digital literature” run by exceedingly well-meaning arts people who can talk for hours about what the future might be for storytelling in this new technological age – whether we might produce hyperlinked or interactive or multi-stranded novels and poems – without apparently noticing that video games exist. And they don’t just exist! They’re the most lucrative, fastest-growing medium of our age. Your experimental technological literature is already here; it’s the noise you’re trying to get your children to turn down while you pen your thoughts about the future of location-based storytelling.
Do-ocracy: If you want something done, do it, but remember to be excellent to each other when doing so.
Do-ocracy: If you want something done, do it, but remember to be excellent to each other when doing so. An important part of being excellent is documenting your change. Write a note on Noisebridge's ChangeLog, or leave a note on what you do-ocratically did.
Local zero day vulnerabilities have been disclosed in Corel applications, potentially affecting more than 100 million users.
The holes were dropped by Marcos Accossatto of Core Security after the doodleware company did not respond to his private disclosure.
dormcore, n.
The Guardian, 21 December 2015:
The television-watching look seems to me the most important overlooked sartorial issue of this time of year. We are at saturation point with novelty jumpers; we have, surely, reached peak office-party-jumpsuit. Close readers of our coverage will have noticed that we on the Guardian fashion desk have lately made the bold move, essential for the blossoming of any nascent trend, of championing a silly name for it. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you dormcore.
Dormcore is the love child of normcore and Grace Coddington in pyjamas. It is staying-in clothes as statement fashion; not-trying-too-hard as a badge of honour. It is partywear for the post-FOMO generation who make social arrangments knowing, even as they tap out the “can’t wait” text, that they will cancel the night before and stay in. After all, staying in no longer takes you off radar: you need a good look for that sofa selfie, right?
dot-thing, or dot-thing gTLD. One of the new generic top-level domains, such as .coffee, .club, and also ones including non-Latin script such as Arabic or Chinese.
Used by The Register, October 2014:
If you want to get higher up Google's search rankings, it turns out that using a new dot-thing domain – such as .guru or .ninja – may give you the edge.
Two recent studies into the impact of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) have claimed that, far from Google's official position, using the right domain ending can bump you up an extra place or two in the rankings.
Get coding or you'll bounce email from new dot-thing domains
Expansion in DNS means you may struggle to handle email from Chinese or Arabic domains
dotcom dinosaur, n.
The Guardian, 18 October 2015:
Now what I find really strange, baffling, and I have to say depressing, is that that brave new world of the 50s and 60s, where women were an equal part of this exciting technology revolution, has changed and become something quite different. Even me, someone described the other day as a “dotcom dinosaur”, even I thought – aged 25 in 1997 – when we started Lastminute.com, that this was going to be an incredible revolution, that part of the power and the excitement of the internet was that it was going to be a whole load of new voices, a whole lot of different people, a democratising force, something that could perhaps put equality of all kinds at the heart of its new and rapid industrial rise.
drip marketing, n.
Bryan Boyer, 21 November 2015:
One thing we did not do was inundate people’s inboxes. Maybe we should have. A dear friend of mine who runs a successful company in Seattle said we were crazy not to use drip marketing. Instead we stuck to a once-a-month newsletter schedule. We didn’t want to be a business that spams people. For what it’s worth, we found much more advice about marketing for contemporary online business than we did for contemporary brick and mortar business. They’re related but ultimately different.
dumb weapons, n.
The Guardian, 4 December 2015:
n a blog post, Cole said: “While airstrikes using precision-guided sometimes called ‘smart’ munitions are undoubtedly much more accurate than ‘dumb’ or unguided weapons, the idea that such weapons hit their target accurately every time unless there is a human-induced error is merely the stuff of Hollywood.”
DYK, n. did you know
Wordnik, 3 September 2015:
DYK 'zombie' is still available to adopt? Shuffle/run (depending on what type of zombie you are) & adopt it today! https://www.wordnik.com/words/zombie
earable, n.
readwrite, May 2014:
Earable computers, or earables, will look like existing audio accessories—earbuds, headphones, and the like. The inexorable trend towards miniaturization and wireless connectivity will mean that these devices will soon untether themselves from smartphones and connect us to news, entertainment, and people on their own.
earable, n.
Stowe Boyd, Gigaom, September 2014:
And last week, Motorola offered another take on wearables: Motorola Hint is an earable. Hint is a bluetooth earbud that can cooperate with smart phones through voice commands, or perhaps more grandly, a means to remain connected to the world without manually fiddling with devices, but simply using your voice.
ECU, n.
The Guardian, 4 October 2015:
So how did Volkswagen pull it off? Simple: it inserted what programmers would call a “neat hack” into the engine-control unit (ECU) of its cars. The ECU is a purpose-designed computer that controls the engine. (All cars have them nowadays: analogue motoring is so yesterday, don’t you know.) Since 2009, VW’s ECUs have been running software that monitors movements of the steering wheel and pedals.
efauxji, n.
The Atlantic, 11 November 2015:
Finland's emoji, then, are not real emoji. They are something far more nefarious: Efauxji. They are mere images masquerading as glyphs, pretenders to the emoji throne. ... Let us foreclose the word "emoji" off to companies seeking to make emoji more commercialier than they already are. Let us call these efauxji by their real name: fake AIM icons.
electronic writer, n.
The problem is that the artist/writers who can be said to
be “electronic writers” are coming at it from different angles.
Some have emerged from what is often called the “art world,” even
though the most salient example of this, the artist group Young-Hae
Chang Heavy Industries, turned to Flash (their preferred programming environment) and the internet merely as a way to get their writing out. YHCHI first started posting their works to the web in the early ’00s, when the 56k modem was the norm, and the speediness with which their lightly animated texts zinged over the web — in contrast to the often image-heavy work of other net artists — along with the humor of their work (“Cunnilingus in North Korea” is the title of one of their more notorious pieces), the caffeinated jazz soundtracks they used, and the general good writing of their work soon brought them gallery and museum commissions.
embeddable, n.
Andy Goodman, Fjord, 2013:
Embeddables will have significant consequences for the delivery of digital services as monolithic screen-focused devices start to be enhanced with distributed computation. A more ambient kind of experience in which sensors capture information about us and feed that information into systems quietly working away in the background will emerge. Use in initial domains such as healthcare and fitness will extend further to information, communications, entertainment, socialising, learning, work, self-actuation. Virtually any human activity we can think of is going to be modified and amplified with an invisible mesh of data and processing that we will drift through obliviously.
embeddable, n.
Federal Communications Commission:
Embeddables are miniature devices that are actually inserted under the skin or deeper into the body. A heart pacemaker is one kind of embeddable device. In the future, embeddables may use nanotechnology and be so tiny that doctors would simply “inject” them into our bodies. Some promising applications in this area could help diabetes patients monitor their blood sugar levels reliably and automatically, without the need to prick their fingers or otherwise draw blood.
- the new gnome-terminal seems to default into a new "Emo mode" (aka "Dark Theme"). I don't know who thought it was a good idea to make a terminal application have its own depressed theme different from all other applications, but I'm guessing they spend their days cutting themselves and listening to death metal, and thinking they are "cool".
empty-chair, v.
The Guardian, 6 March 2015:
BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky welcome prime minister’s ‘final offer’ but move could result in PM being ‘empty chaired’
empty-chair, v.
BBC - The Editors, 30 March 2007:
His film had been an exhortation to programmes like Newsnight aggressively to empty-chair politicians who refuse to debate.
engine-control unit, n.
The Guardian, 4 October 2015:
So how did Volkswagen pull it off? Simple: it inserted what programmers would call a “neat hack” into the engine-control unit (ECU) of its cars. The ECU is a purpose-designed computer that controls the engine. (All cars have them nowadays: analogue motoring is so yesterday, don’t you know.) Since 2009, VW’s ECUs have been running software that monitors movements of the steering wheel and pedals.
EV, n. electric vehicle
San Jose Mercury News, 22 January 2014:
Silicon Valley sees shortage of EV charge stations...The company is drafting guidelines for EV-driving employees.
ChargePoint, which operates a large EV-charging network, says companies should provide one charging port for every two of their employees' electric vehicles...
So, the company set up an EV user distribution list and a shared calendar for booking time at the charging stations.
eventer, n. A gatecrasher, a smellfeast, a lickdish
The Guardian, 24th May 2015:
Eventbrite is your bible. This site is an indispensable tool for the modern eventer. Set the price filter to "Free".
eventing, v.
The Guardian, 24th May 2015:
Rigby’s hobby is attending events where there is free food and booze. Later tonight he’ll drop in at a nearby mixer for networkers, and then, if he fancies it, a talk at the University of the Arts London. He calls what he does “ligging” – which means gatecrashing with intent to snack. “The French would call me a pique-assiette,” Rigby says as we approach the bar. It translates roughly as “one who picks from others’ plates”. Others on the scene prefer “eventing”. Rigby estimates there are 50 regular liggers in London, mostly middle-aged single men. He’s on nodding terms with about six of them.
eyeable, n.
Stowe Boyd, Gigaom, September 2014:
But smart watches won’t be the only companion devices. Yes, Google has moved firmly into the glass form factor — eyeables — which has drawn a great deal of backlash for personal use. But there are great use cases in business for that approach (see What can we expect from Google Glass in the enterprise), so it will catch on in medicine, construction, security, military, and many other sectors. In a few years, it will seem commonplace for your dentist to peer into your mouth wearing something like Glass.
fanservice, n.
Wikipedia, 4 July 2015:
The show is done in a simplistic art style, and its sexual content is played for laughs rather than for fanservice.
Fear of Going Out, n.
Vanity Fair's Fashion Department, @VFstyle, 18 April 2011:
@detailsfashion there are also those among us who suffer from FOGO-fear of GOING out, usually after a bout of FOMO led to regrettable events
Fear of Going Out, n.
Alexis Swerdloff, New York Magazine:
I believe that I have developed the opposite of FOMO, in fact: I have a case of FOGO, or Fear of Going Out. Okay, well not literally a fear of going out. I still love a party. Always have and always will. But I have an active non-desire to attend the mass-Instagrammed events that clog up all my social-media feeds on several-week-long intervals throughout the year. And I am not the only one. Last year, around this time of year, Lena Dunham tweeted: "Whatever the opposite of FOMO is, that's what I have about Coachella." Someone I know recently tweeted: "Not going to SXSW is the new getting off Facebook."
FOGO, n.
Vanity Fair's Fashion Department, @VFstyle, 18 April 2011:
@detailsfashion there are also those among us who suffer from FOGO-fear of GOING out, usually after a bout of FOMO led to regrettable events
FOGO, n.
Alexis Swerdloff, New York Magazine:
I believe that I have developed the opposite of FOMO, in fact: I have a case of FOGO, or Fear of Going Out. Okay, well not literally a fear of going out. I still love a party. Always have and always will. But I have an active non-desire to attend the mass-Instagrammed events that clog up all my social-media feeds on several-week-long intervals throughout the year. And I am not the only one. Last year, around this time of year, Lena Dunham tweeted: "Whatever the opposite of FOMO is, that's what I have about Coachella." Someone I know recently tweeted: "Not going to SXSW is the new getting off Facebook."
fortress Europe, n.
The Guardian, 4 September 2015:
For years our politicians have piggy-backed upon Christian morality for electoral advantage. We should “feel proud that this is a Christian country”, said Cameron earlier this year (pre-election, of course), in what some might uncharitably see as a call to maintain a Muslim-free view from his Cotswold village. But there is no respectable Christian argument for fortress Europe, surrounded by a new iron curtain of razor wire to keep poor, dark-skinned people out. Indeed, the moral framework that our prime minister so frequently references – and to which he claims some sort of vague allegiance – is crystal clear about the absolute priority of our obligation to refugees. For the moral imagination of the Hebrew scriptures was determined by a battered refugee people, fleeing political oppression in north Africa, and seeking a new life for themselves safe from violence and poverty. Time and again, the books of the Hebrew scriptures remind its readers not to forget that they too were once in this situation and their ethics must be structured around practical help driven by fellow-feeling.
free-range definition, n.
Wordnik, 15 September 2015:
Sometimes we call these self-defining, explanatory sentences "free-range definitions", or "FRDs" (pronounced "freds").
fun police, v.
Geoff Lemon Sport, 12 November 2015:
Massive response to this. People are sick of being ripped off and Fun Policed at live sport. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-12/for-the-crowds-to-come-back-the-cricket-must-be-cheaper/6935088
Drone operators refer to children as “fun-size terrorists” and liken killing them to “cutting the grass before it grows too long,” said one of the operators, Michael Haas, a former senior airman in the Air Force.
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/19/former-drone-operators-say-they-were-horrified-by-cruelty-of-assassination-program/
fusion paranoia, n.
Vice, 11 October 2015:
Behrens sees America's preppers as a new twist on apocalyptic fears of the 1950s brought on by the threat of nuclear war. He believes that American policies and economic trends, along with the proliferation of social media—where the like-minded can easily network—are stoking new end-times obsession. What he describes resonates with a term coined in the 90s by journalist Michael Kelly that is coming back into vogue: "fusion paranoia," where conspiratorial worldviews get cobbled together from a mishmash of sources from across the political spectrum. Prepping can also be linked to the rise of libertarian strains of thought in American life that hold that the government is unable to properly address social and ills, or that any attempt on its part to do so would qualify as tyranny. It's a philosophy that at its most stark replaces love thy neighbor with a mystical faith in self-interest. Hiding in a bunker as the rest of humanity falls apart because they failed to prepare as you did is, in some ways, the ultimate libertarian fantasy.
futurecast, noun
Paul Lamere, 27 January 2015:
The weather guy on our local TV must cringe every time he has to say 'futurecast'. For consistency they should call the news 'Pastcast'
geohash, n. pl. geohashes
Mapzen:
We live in two worlds at once. There’s a human world where we call places by their addresses and names. Then there’s another world for computers in which every place is represented through geographic coordinate systems like latitudes & longitudes or geohashes. Dozens of times every day we cross that boundary between the world of names and the world of coordinates and it’s all facilitated by a process called geocoding. In the coordinate world, it’s easy to do things like find things nearby, measure distances and correlate data, but to get there takes a leap through a boundary—and every time that boundary is crossed there’s a little toll paid. Do it enough and it adds up. But it also comes with all manner of restrictions of how you can see the world.
Graccident, n.
The Guardian, 22 June 2015:
Greek crisis summit: eurozone leaders urged to avoid 'Graccident'
grayzone, n.
Iyad El-Baghdadi, 14 November 2015:
ISIS's goal from their own publication. A black & white world. What they call "grayzone" is our coexistence zone.
Eliminating the grayzone - the zone of coexistence - and rendering a world as black & white as their own flag. That's what ISIS wants.
Greek exit from the EU or euro.
The Guardian, January 2015:
“Grexit is unthinkable,” said a second senior Brussels policymaker involved in the negotiations. “It would be extremely bad. Europe is about irreversibility. If you start doubting that, you start pricing in the risk of fragmentation and soon you have no monetary union. The only chance of Grexit is if Greece defaults on its payments. Morally, that would be saying they want to leave.” A default would trigger a run on the banks, capital flight and capital controls.
grey zone, n.
The Guardian, 20 November 2015:
The grey zone is where I want to live. Islamic State hates it, that place between black and white, where nothing is ever either/or and everything is a bit of both. Those who have studied the organisation tell us “the grey zone” – Isis’s phrase – is high on the would-be warriors’ to-eradicate list, along with all those other aspects of our world that so terrify them: women, statues of the past, the pleasures of the present.
health halo, n.
The Washington Post, 23 August 2015:
Call something “salad,” and it immediately acquires what Pierre Chandon calls a “health halo.” Chandon, professor of marketing at INSEAD, an international business school in Fontainebleau, France, says that once people have the idea it’s good for them, they stop paying attention “to its actual nutritional content or, even worse, to its portion size.”
hearable, n. usually plural
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, January 2015:
Wearables, hearables, nearables and payables will be some of the buzzwords of 2015 as the mobile revolution takes the next great leap. Mobile and social trends will continue to drive technical, product and content innovation with subscription and rental models increasingly driving digital revenues.
Wearables, hearables and nearables won't dethrone smartphones
...
Hearables – smart ear devices featuring 3D audio notification – may prove a more accurate, less obtrusive sub sector of health and fitness wearables. Proximity to blood vessels within the ear mean that products such as Valencell’s heart rate earphones allow users to precisely and continuously measure weak blood flow signals during extreme physical activity. This provides a highly accurate picture of heart rate, respiration rate, and other blood flow parameters, while allowing them to still listen to music while they train.
Hillenials, n.
Paul Ford, 6 October 2015:
Has anyone called young prospective Hillary voters “Hillennials” yet?
Spotted at the #Hillennials house party #Hinthewild #Hillary2016 @HillaryforIA
hog-whimpering, adj. hog-whimpering drunk
The Guardian, 25 September 2015:
Rupert Soames, for example. He was my most joyous interviewee and a splendidly unguarded one (see panel), so much so that a merchant bank ended its interest in hiring him soon after the piece appeared. It was Soames who introduced me to the phrase “hog-whimpering” and Soames who, in a few simple sentences, delivered a beautifully compressed history of the recent changes in Oxford values. (He was, after all, Churchill’s grandson.) “You see,” he said, “students went through the 60s thinking the world was organised in a bad way and that they could do something about it. Absolutely wrongly, as it turned out. Now people take themselves less seriously, which is very, very attractive. Oxford’s a charmed existence before you go out into the world and take a job of high responsibility. Also, it’s a wonderful place to meet a wife. There are so many lovely and clever girls about.”
hog-whimpering drunk, adj.
The Guardian, 25 September 2015:
Reflecting some of this history, the Oxford student dining club that bore Gaveston’s name had honorary positions that included Catamite and Master of Debauchery. Membership of the society was limited to 13. In 1981, none of my informants mentioned this week’s fantastical disclosures about dead pigs’ heads and an initiation ritual that required a new member, David Cameron, to stick his penis into one. Nevertheless, porkers were a part of the Oxford student conversation 35 years ago. A favourite phrase was “hog-whimpering”, as in “hog-whimpering drunk”.
hypegasm, n.
The Register, 30 November 2015:
Estonian vendor sparks Li-Fi hypegasm with gigabit demo http://reg.cx/2j2F
I can't, phrase Shortening of 'I can't even'
pirta ☆NEBULA FART☆, 29 December 2015:
THEY'RE HOLDING HANDS I CAN'T
ICE holes, n.
The New York Times, 11 October 2015:
The rudeness is not just among drivers of electric cars. By many accounts, owners of gas-powered cars often take up desirable parking and charging spots that companies and cities reserve for electric cars. This habit has inspired the spread of a nickname: ICE Holes. (ICE stands for internal combustion engine.)
ik, n. I know
Be(hemo)th, 3 October 2015:
my hair is fabber
way fabber 😎
and yes ik fabber isn't a word shh
ingestible, n.
Federal Communications Commission:
Ingestibles are broadband-enabled digital tools that we actually eat. For example, there are smart pills that use wireless technology to help monitor internal reactions to medications. Or imagine a smart pill that tracks blood levels of medications in a patient's body throughout the day to help physicians find optimum dosage levels, avoid overmedicating, and truly individualize treatment. Also, miniature pill-shaped video cameras may one day soon replace colonoscopies or endoscopies. Patients would simply swallow a “pill,” which would collect and transmit images as it makes its way through the digestive system.
instabuy, n. An instant purchase of an application upgrade
Tully Hansen, 2 October 2015:
PSA: @Tweetbot 4 for iOS is out. #instabuy https://appsto.re/au/p-TS8.i
Internet of Wrongs, n.
The Register, 2 December 2015:
Lord (@stevelord) says the tool will feature in his presentation at the Kiwicon conference in Wellington, New Zealand, next week. The Wi-Fi-blocking gadget is among a bunch of gizmos he's crafted and dubbed the Internet of Wrongs; they are designed "solely to antagonise people."
Internet-famous, adj.
Neil Freeman, 14 September 2015:
The crowd around the entrance to the new 34th-Hudson Yards includes an Internet-famous dog cutting a ribbon with novelty scissors.
jandals, n.
TKDancer:
First.. There wete Jorts... Then.. Came the Joots.... Now.. Brace yourselves for... Jandals
kidtech, n.
The Guardian, 5 March 2015:
Here are a handful of “kidtech” kits to get the family learning about coding, robots and electronics at home.
kilobot, n.
The Guardian, 13 December 2015:
As I explore the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, I realise that each glass-partitioned wall surrounds another ethical dilemma. The drones, so helpful when monitoring climate change. Tiny swarming “kilobots”, inspired by ants, modelling future ideas for cancer treatment. The too-realistic human head, with its soft skin and unfinished skull. Here there is a feeling of scholarly possibility, fuelled by earringed men, large coffee cups. In one cubicle, knee-height Nao robots feature in an experiment in which Professor Alan Winfield,part of a British Standards Institute working group on robot ethics, asks: “Can we teach a robot to be good? But when the research goes public and outgrows this hangar-sized lab, each robot will inevitably be reshaped depending on who acquires it.
kiloslab, n. A kilogram block of cheese
Egan Richardson, 14 September 2015:
First kiloslab of cheese I've seen here that trumpets non-Finnishness. #monikultuurisuus
ladbantz, n. lad banter
The Guardian, 8 September 2015:
As a dated brand with declining figures, Xfm was long overdue a top-to-bottom rethink. Radio X is still a few weeks off launch and we’re yet to establish the full extent of its on-air ladbantz. But while it might make good commercial sense, the station’s blokes-only policy is already a guaranteed turnoff for many.
legacy media, n. books and films (as opposed to apps)
The Guardian, 27 June 2015:
he problem with Apple’s attitude to games isn’t just that it treats them differently to books and music, though. After all, there are undeniable differences between them: no book can hack your device, no song can download pirated content, and no movie can abuse in-app payments. All of those factors necessitate some sort of review process above and beyond what legacy media needs.
Li-Fi, n.
The Register, 30 November 2015:
We've talked about Li-Fi – using modulated LEDs as data channels – before at The Register, but last week's announcements warrant revisiting the idea.
linear TV, n.
Away With Words - Word of the Week: Linear TV, 1 June 2015:
Linear TV: A television service that requires the viewer to watch a scheduled TV program at the particular time it’s offered, and on the particular channel it's presented on. Synonyms include time-and-channel based TV, appointment-based TV, and traditional television. (Source: ITV Dictionary.) Non-linear TV comprises on-demand formats as well as programs that don’t emanate from a network channel, also known as web TV and digital media.
To show off about being at an event by livelogging/livetweeting.
@iamdanw:
I can livebrag it
liveliness checks, n.
TechCrunch, 11 October 2015:
The system simultaneously performs “liveliness checks” that prevent the spoofing of a photo or video animation of a face. Within milliseconds, results are returned with a significant degree of accuracy and confidence.
liveread, n. A reading.
The Guardian, 20 April 2014:
Director's new script, revealed during a liveread featuring Bruce Dern, Kurt Russell and Samuel L Jackson, harks back to his early work, says John Patterson
lookupable, n.
Wordnik, 15 September 2015:
At Wordnik we believe that every word of English deserves to be lookupable!
managed out
New York Times, 16 August 2015:
In 2012, Chris Brucia, who was working on a new fashion sale site, received a punishing performance review from his boss, a half-hour lecture on every goal he had not fulfilled and every skill he had not yet mastered. Mr. Brucia silently absorbed the criticism, fearing he was about to be managed out, wondering how he would tell his wife.
menu, v. to put on a menu
Food Management, 17 September 2015:
Beefsteak menus bowl-based meals emphasizing grains and vegetables.
merchant silicon, n.
UKNOF32 - Google datacentre networking - Phil Sykes, 22 September 2015:
Merchant silicon: General purpose, commodity priced, off the shelf switching components
microhood, n.
The Bold Italic, 22 July 2011:
Most consider our Tenderloin neighborhood to be a vast black hole of no-go in downtown San Francisco.
Truth be told, there are certainly a couple of blocks full of downright nasty that neither you nor I should make a habit of frequenting. But beyond those unfortunate social potholes, the Tenderloin is a rich neighborhood with a great wealth of small areas each with their own character.
Since The Bold Italic popularized the term “microhood,” it's only fitting to break down the Tenderloin by the sum of its parts. So, presented here is the “Tenderloin Microhoods Map.” While some of it is just for fun, a whole lot of it is most definitely true. Read up and come on down and grab a drink in The Gimlet! There’s sure to be some tasty dining in Delicious Fields afterward.
misogynoir, n.
Model View Culture, 23 July 2015:
Moreover, it states that “being unable to understand why someone holds a viewpoint doesn’t mean that they’re wrong.” Except it sometimes does mean they are wrong when that viewpoint is “women shouldn’t code” or that a black woman contributor shouldn’t be offended by misogynoir in the project’s Slack channel.
NB, adj. non-binary
Nora
Reed, 21 December 2015:
yay! there are a lot of other bot-makers that are women
and NB in the #botALLY crowd as well
nbd, phrase no big deal
Matthew Ogle, 23 October 2015:
Oh nbd just celebrating the end of my birthday w/ a card from PLUTO (thx @kraykray)
nearable, n. usually plural
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, January 2015:
Wearables, hearables, nearables and payables will be some of the buzzwords of 2015 as the mobile revolution takes the next great leap. Mobile and social trends will continue to drive technical, product and content innovation with subscription and rental models increasingly driving digital revenues.
A proposed development of the internet of things, when smartdevices are no longer needed in smartphones or wearables, but become an integral part of our surroundings.
Demos Helsinki, January 2015:
Get Naked with Nearables
...
When most objects and services have a name and a means to communicate with them, we will not need smart phones or wearables anymore. The information and communication technology becomes an integral part of our surroundings. It becomes Nearable Technology.
It probably goes without saying that this is not a commonly used term just yet. While typing this, my autocorrect changes, quite fittingly, the word “nearable” to the word “bearable”. This is pretty much the point: calm technology is embedded in our lives so that it improves our wellbeing and capabilities without stressing us or constantly demanding our attention (Although using the Internet does not stress us – using Facebook does).
After the widespread introduction of Nearables our world will become a different place.
A proposed development of the internet of things, when smartdevices are no longer needed in smartphones or wearables, but become an integral part of our surroundings.
Demos Helsinki, January 2015:
Get Naked with Nearables
...
When most objects and services have a name and a means to communicate with them, we will not need smart phones or wearables anymore. The information and communication technology becomes an integral part of our surroundings. It becomes Nearable Technology.
It probably goes without saying that this is not a commonly used term just yet. While typing this, my autocorrect changes, quite fittingly, the word “nearable” to the word “bearable”. This is pretty much the point: calm technology is embedded in our lives so that it improves our wellbeing and capabilities without stressing us or constantly demanding our attention (Although using the Internet does not stress us – using Facebook does).
After the widespread introduction of Nearables our world will become a different place.
nerd sniping, v.
Alby, 26 September 2015:
Nerd sniping of the highest order. Know what I'm doing tomorrow now.
Netflix and chill, phrase
The Guardian, 29 September 2015:
In 2014, when the euphemistic nature of the phrase was being established, gender lines began to form. Guys tweeted pictures of smug faces alongside captions such as, “When she says Netflix and chill”, while girls tweeted pictures of shocked, dismayed faces with captions such as, “When you find out what Netflix and chill means”.
new media writing, n.
I’ve been working for the past several years to find a way
to discuss what has come to be known as “electronic literature” — it’s a creaky phrase that doesn’t survive parsing, hence the wavering
between this term, “new media writing,” “digital literature,”
etc. — in a way that is neither naively celebratory, presuming that
computers will change writing the way DNA testing has changed crime television, nor overly technical, branching off into deep theoretical territory that seems, long before hindsight, to have nothing to do with literature or digital technology, not to mention graphic design, information architecture, film/photography, and video games, all of which at times seem to be relevant discourses.
no platform, v.
The Guardian, 9 October 2015:
Another emailed me recently explaining how she had been at the meeting at a London university that decided to “no platform” me from a debate on whether or not prostitution is harmful to women.
no platforming, v.
The Guardian, 26 December 2015:
This generation of students has grown up fully in that space, and sometimes it seems to me that they want to make their universities as unchallenging as they can make their Twitter feeds, muting, blocking and reporting anyone who doesn’t accept their gospel in the real world as completely as they are able to in the social media world. No-platforming is blocking, IRL.
The only problem was that Van der Goot – who is non-binary and goes by “they” – hadn’t written the tweet.
< b>non-linear TV</b>, <i>n.</i>
Away With Words - Word of the Week: Linear TV, 1 June 2015:
Linear TV: A television service that requires the viewer to watch a scheduled TV program at the particular time it’s offered, and on the particular channel it's presented on. Synonyms include time-and-channel based TV, appointment-based TV, and traditional television. (Source: ITV Dictionary.) Non-linear TV comprises on-demand formats as well as programs that don’t emanate from a network channel, also known as web TV and digital media.
But according to authors, the guidelines are well-known and widely used by educational publishers, encompassing a range of “taboo” subjects in addition to pork, with publishers keen to avoid offending potential markets for their books abroad. There is even an acronym, PARSNIP, to remind authors of topics to be avoided: politics, alcohol, religion, sex, narcotics, isms (communism for example) and pork.
pay with your face, n.
TechCrunch, 11 October 2015:
The generation that brought the obsession of snapping facial photos, uploading to social media channels and terming it “selfies” has unknowingly launched a new platform of cyber security for the world, a kind of biometric termed, “pay with your face.” This is a fitting legacy for millennials, who impart knowledge one click at a time.
payable, n. usually plural
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, January 2015:
Wearables, hearables, nearables and payables will be some of the buzzwords of 2015 as the mobile revolution takes the next great leap. Mobile and social trends will continue to drive technical, product and content innovation with subscription and rental models increasingly driving digital revenues.
performance-shamed, v.
The Guardian, 20 December 2015:
The next video stars a sloth called Delilah, who wears a blue bow perched atop her brow to signify her assigned gender. She is being performance-shamed in class for failing to complete an exam.
plonkable, adj.
The Guardian, 24 August 2015:
His team’s aim is to produce CSP technology that will be cheap and quick to install. “We are developing plonkable heliostats. Plonkable means that from factory to installation you can just drop them down on to the ground and they work.” So no costly cement, no highly-trained workforce, no wires, just two workers to lay out the steel frames on the ground and a streetlight-style central tower.
plug-in hybrid, n.
The New York Times, 11 October 2015:
The competition has led people to judge one another’s cars and which ones deserve charging priority. Owners of all-electric cars see themselves as most entitled to the chargers, since they have no Plan B. One rung down are “plug-in hybrids,” which use electricity but also can use gas, followed by hybrids, and then two groups for which the owners of pure electric cars reserve particular disdain: gas cars and, perhaps surprisingly, Teslas. (The 00,000 Teslas, as much as three times the cost of other plug-ins, have a range of several hundred miles and so, theoretically, do not need the charge spots.)
poc, n. person of colour, as opposed to a white person.
pocket litter, n.
The Guardian, 24th May 2015:
Rigby has a BBC lanyard that he picked up in a BBC gift store, which he wears slung around his neck with the empty ID holder tucked discreetly in his inside jacket pocket. He also collects lapel pins – from the Equity actor’s union, the National Union of Journalists and so on. The espionage community, he points out, calls all this “pocket litter”.
pod, n.
Steve Raikow, 29 November 2015:
New tech jargon spotted in the wild: Pod, noun, a podcast episode. Ex: "Today's pod is brought to you by squarespace." #jargonwatch #ugh
pozzing up, n.
The Guardian, 22 November 2015:
Chemsex is identified in the film as the habit of engaging in weekend-long parties fuelled by sexually disinhibiting drugs, such as crystal meth, GHB, GBL and mephedrone. These parties involve multiple people and are mostly facilitated online. The testimonies in the film from people involved in the subculture directly link chemsex to alarming rates of HIV infection. In London four new positive diagnoses are currently made daily. There is candid talk on film about “pozzing up”, the practise of knowingly becoming infected with the virus. Meth, meph and G create a potent cocktail enabling extremes of behaviour, which carries significant risks for the sexual and mental health of habitual users.
precision, n.
The Guardian, 4 December 2015:
There is confusion over the way the military uses terminology. “Precision means you can hit the object you wanted to hit and nothing else. Accuracy means that the object is indeed what you thought it was,” Joshi said.
“You can have a very precise strike on a suspected truck carrying militants, but it would be inaccurate if it turned out to be carrying civilians. Missiles can be precise, but only intelligence and surveillance can bring accuracy. This distinction is being lost.”
prepper, n.
Vice, 11 October 2015:
Those who make it their business to equip themselves for a civilization-ending mega-disaster—a.k.a. preppers—are sometimes stereotyped as wild-eyed tinfoil hat wearers who live outside of society, but Vicino caters to survivalists whose fears are backed up by money. The San Diego businessman is gunning to be the vanguard of a multibillion-dollar industry. If we're to follow the entrepreneur's logic, the rich don't live on the same scale as ordinary people in today's society—why should that change after the end of the world?
radiobait, n.
scarfmemory, 29 November 2015:
i guess it's that this was radiobait, by making shorter and more conventional songs they get more radio play so people have heard them more so they like them more just from recognition.
range anxiety, n.
The New York Times, 10 October 2015:
Most people charge at home (using an electrical outlet) but also want to use public chargers, in part because the cars have a limited range — typically 80 miles. On top of this “range anxiety,” as it is called, drivers like the idea of getting a free or low-cost charge at a public station.
rideable, n. Smart-tech on bicycles, usually plural
9TO5Google, July 2014:
After wearables, Samsung explores rideables in technology tests on Trek bicycles
rideable, n. Usually plural
The Verge, November 2014:
I first heard the term a few weeks ago during an email exchange with Ben Forman, one of the creators of the ZBoard — and it's perfect. A rideable is something you ride on. It has an electric motor that's powerful enough to use as a commuting device, and it’s small enough to take into the subway or office with you.
ring-top, adj.
Yle, 10 November 2015:
As startups gather in Helsinki for the annual Slush event, one of the fastest growing areas on the scene is the health and wellness sector. Within that growing category, digital health and wellbeing wearables are shifting from wrist-top to ring-top, with two Finnish companies poised to make their mark.
On October 1st, Apple filed for a smart ring patent. The tech giant is the latest to move into ring-top digital devices, which have recently been launched by start-ups from Japan to the US and the Nordics.
Software used on an extraterrestrial automated motor vehicle.
The Register, January 2015:
All being well, the Mars roverware 5.0 will be a big step forward
runway, n.
Bryan Boyer, 21 November 2015:
The funds we raised were nearly a 1:1 match with our expenses up to the point of opening doors, which means that we were left with almost nothing in terms of runway. In the first month, with very few members, we were already making additional loans to the business to keep it afloat. In the beginning this was a calculated decision based on the belief that our original modeling of the business was still plausible. Within three months of being open we realized that the growth rate was going to be much slower than we projected based on the SF experience, and at that time we ramped up our events program with corporate partners, using our event production fees to cover the gaps in membership income.
safe space, n.
The Guardian, 26 December 2015:
I’ve thought about some of these dilemmas a lot this year, because of all the banging on about “safe spaces” at university. The fact of Christmas tension illustrates than even the bosom of the family home is not a guaranteed “safe space”. Our family Christmases were “safe” neither for me nor for my parents, because we had competing ideas about the world.
And I’m very glad that university didn’t provide me with a “safe space”, one where I might have felt entitled to learn nothing about how so many of the assumptions my upbringing had fostered were wrong. Do I regret lecturing my parents about sexism, racism and homophobia? No. I only regret that I did it so gracelessly, so badly, so self-righteously.
Schrödinger's code, n.
Reginald Braithwaite, 7 October 2015:
Schrödinger’s Code:
Code that has been written, but not tested, and is in a state of neither working nor failing until it is observed.
SDN, n.
Wired, 17 June 2015:
People call this software-defined networking, or SDN, and it provides a more nimble way of building, expanding, and reshaping computer networks.
An attempt to avoid the word selfie, especially as used by an official body who can't quite bring themselves to use such a "common" word.
The Register, February 2015:
The USA's National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB's) investigation into a 2014 light plane crash has come to the conclusion that the pilot may well have been distracted by selfie-taking passengers.
...
The flight took place at night, one factor in the disorientation. But NTSB investigators also found a GoPro camera among the wreckage and were able to retrieve files from its memory card. Those files did not depict the fatal flight, but did show flights from the day of the accident and the previous day in which “... the pilot and various passengers were taking self-photographs with their cell phones and, during the night flight, using the camera’s flash function during the takeoff roll, initial climb, and flight in the traffic pattern.”
selfie soldier, n.
Mashable, 8 September 2015:
Now, Russia's so-called "selfie soldiers" are uploading photos of themselves in war-torn Syria, where they are supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's ailing regime.
selfie soldiers, n.
Mashable, 8 September 2015:
Now, Russia's so-called "selfie soldiers" are uploading photos of themselves in war-torn Syria, where they are supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's ailing regime.
Adjective, originally from the Sforzian Background, such as the 'Mission Accomplished' sign behind George Bush on the USS Abraham Lincoln.
greg.org, October 2003:
Since before Elizabeth Bumiller came up with the term for the Times, I was a fan of Sforzian Backgrounds, the news-manipulating slogans created by Scott Sforza, a key member of the White House's advance scenery and production team, for just about every public appearance of George W. Bush.
Paris Marching In Place: The Sforzian Montage
...
A montage to make us believe they are. Instead of simply crafting a single, standalone image, make a photo-op that blends seamlessly into the broader visual narrative of the event. I believe this colonization of a montage represents an advance in Sforzian technique which warrants more investigation. Stay tuned.
For example, the 'Mission Accomplished' sign behind George Bush on the USS Abraham Lincoln.
greg.org, October 2003:
Since before Elizabeth Bumiller came up with the term for the Times, I was a fan of Sforzian Backgrounds, the news-manipulating slogans created by Scott Sforza, a key member of the White House's advance scenery and production team, for just about every public appearance of George W. Bush.
shade ball, n.
The Guardian, 11 August 2015:
Shade balls fill reservoir to conserve water in drought-hit LA
shitstormery, n.
The Guardian, 16 October 2015:
Like so many foreign policy realists, I am still hoping to wake up and discover that the past decade and a half of Middle East shitstormery was all just Carrie Mathison’s bad dream – some kind of psychiatric episode brought on by a dispensing error with her meds.
The Guardian, January 2015:
The top end of laptops is a world of brushed aluminium and fancy features. The bottom end is a world of crappy plastic and shovelware, with computers shipped full of borderline spyware in order to pad out the minuscule margins earned by their manufacturers.
SHTF, n.
Vice, 11 October 2015:
"The times speak for themselves and growing increasingly more dangerous," says another. "Where else can we go when the inevitable SHTF?" (SHTF means "shit hits the fan," prepper slang for a doomsday scenario.)
Shx, n. Shakespeare
Eric Johnson, 15 October 2015:
Coming soon: the largest collection of primary sources documenting Shx's life and work. http://www.shakespearedocumented.org/
signed-out, adj.
The Guardian, 19 November 2015:
YouTube – and Google – tracking the online behaviour of children is a can of worms, to say the least. That’s why YouTube is so keen on stressing that YouTube Kids is a “signed-out” experience: children don’t sign in with their own or a parent’s Google/YouTube account, and it does not collect any personal data.
skater-hater, n.
The Guardian, 7 October 2015:
A battle of wills is being played out on Bristol’s ledges and benches. Skatestoppers – or “skater-haters”, as they are sometimes called – are metallic knobs attached to a city’s street furniture to prevent skateboarders from using them for tricks. Originating in America, they began appearing in Bristol more than 10 years ago. A leading manufacturer markets them as devices that prevent urban spaces from becoming “a practice ground for disruptive and destructive activity”.
skatestopper, n.
The Guardian, 7 October 2015:
A battle of wills is being played out on Bristol’s ledges and benches. Skatestoppers – or “skater-haters”, as they are sometimes called – are metallic knobs attached to a city’s street furniture to prevent skateboarders from using them for tricks. Originating in America, they began appearing in Bristol more than 10 years ago. A leading manufacturer markets them as devices that prevent urban spaces from becoming “a practice ground for disruptive and destructive activity”.
smart luggage, n.
The Guardian, 15 November 2015:
Your suitcase is the latest product to be given a technology makeover, with in-built GPS tracking and messaging. That means bags will be able to pair with your phone and send you a text about where they are, when they have been taken off a plane or if someone opens them without your consent.
But is “smart luggage” fulfilling a user demand?
smart munitions, n.
The Guardian, 4 December 2015:
In a blog post, Cole said: “While airstrikes using precision-guided sometimes called ‘smart’ munitions are undoubtedly much more accurate than ‘dumb’ or unguided weapons, the idea that such weapons hit their target accurately every time unless there is a human-induced error is merely the stuff of Hollywood.”
smart ring, n.
Yle, 10 November 2015:
On October 1st, Apple filed for a smart ring patent. The tech giant is the latest to move into ring-top digital devices, which have recently been launched by start-ups from Japan to the US and the Nordics.
smart sex toy, n.
The Guardian, 13 December 2015:
Teledildonic. The word rolls around the mouth like a Werther’s Original. While there are a variety of romantic tech-sex developments appearing weekly – from the ocean of Oculus Rift possibilities to an invisible boyfriend who lives on your phone, each new development rich as a Miranda July story but as doom-laden as one of Margaret Atwood’s – it’s teledildonics that are exciting not just the porn industry, but scientists too. Long hyped as the new wave in erotic technology, these are smart sex toys connected to the internet. And while they started life as vibrators that could be operated remotely, today the term has expanded to loosely include the new generation of robotic sex dolls.
Forget smartwatches - smartclothes are the future, analysts say
The popularity of fitness-tracking wristbands will wane in the next 12 months, according to market analysts, as consumers opt instead for more versatile smartwatches and new smartclothing.
smartstrap, n.
readwrite, April 2015:
Smartstraps are basically hardware extensions to the smartwatch that can augment its capabilities or provide brand-new ones. The concept is pretty simple—think of a watchband equipped with, say, GPS sensors, Wi-Fi radios, extra batteries or other sensors. These smartstraps can plug into the magnetic charging port on the back of the Pebble Time, which doubles as a data connection.
sociobot, n.
The Guardian, 13 December 2015:
Robots are evolving fast. They were invented in Bristol in 1949 by William Grey Walter, who was investigating how the brain works. It is fitting then, that down a wooded slope on the University of the West of England campus, the Bristol Robotics Laboratory is today considered a world leader in its field. The lab covers an area of 3,500m2, its vast yellow-lit space divided into glass sections littered with hard drives and disembodied prosthetic limbs. In the centre is a house. This is their “assisted living” smart home, where researchers are testing systems that could help people with dementia and limited mobility. By the sofa is a “sociobot” that can respond to facial expressions. The most human-looking of the systems, over by the dining table, is a robot called Molly. She has a tablet in place of a chest, for displaying photographs, and “She’ll say, for instance,” my guide explains: “‘Do you remember Paris?’” In that echoing space I found myself suddenly breathless.
software-defined networking, n.
Wired, 17 June 2015:
People call this software-defined networking, or SDN, and it provides a more nimble way of building, expanding, and reshaping computer networks.
spinning rust, n. A computer hard disk, specifically one using magnetic storage, as opposed to a solid-state drive (SSD).
erics, 16 March 2015:
Apparently it wrote those 11gigs _after_ I moved 10 gigs of email archives to spinning rust this morning.
standup, n.
The Guardian, 12 October 2015:
In the explosive business of controlled demolition, a building that doesn’t go down in the way it was supposed to is known as a “standup”. And on Sunday, Glasgow got a double act as mortifying as the Krankies when thousands gathered to watch as the six remaining tower blocks of the historic Red Road flats were razed to the ground. As the dust settled and the two-year clear-up was pondered, it became clear. Two were still partially standing.
David Shariatmadari in the Guardian:
Straightwashing at the movies: the Pride DVD shows gay people still make the film industry nervous
substore, n.
Wikipedia, 30 December 2015:
On 1 November 2015, a Bleep.com substore gave the public the ability to purchase and download the album. On 8 December 2015, the AE_STORE_ page for the album was updated to include 5 more tracks.
Given that both the equivocal, indirect tweet (“I see it’s jerk day at The Atlantic”) and the direct kind (“Ian Bogost is a jerk”) are both apophatic in their own way, we need a way to distinguish them. If the first is a subtweet, a speech act that subordinates itself to the original, then perhaps the latter is best named a “supertweet.”
The subtweet is apophatic in the beat-around-the-bush manner. It’s a private whisper shrouded in “I didn’t say anything” innocence. But the supertweet is direct in its apophasis, like the politician’s insult. The subtweet doesn’t want you to know what it’s talking about unless you do already; the supertweet wants its meaning to be clear to everyone, but to feign concealment from its target.
At their best, supertweets like Banks’s work like trump cards or mic drops. They prevent the indicted individual from being able to reply without compromising themselves, and in so doing they carve out new room for the supertweeter in a landscape purportedly overgrown with the supertweetee’s largess. Just like the political opponent can’t reply to the accusation, “I do not know if my opponent in this race is a crook” without repeating (and thereby affirming or at least directing attention to the fact that he or she might be a crook), so the supertweetee cannot address the accusation or indictment without proving that the power differential proposed really does exist, and that he or she is unwilling or unable to allow other voices to weigh in on the matter without attempting to re-take control of the conversation.
At their best, supertweets like Banks’s work like trump cards or mic drops. They prevent the indicted individual from being able to reply without compromising themselves, and in so doing they carve out new room for the supertweeter in a landscape purportedly overgrown with the supertweetee’s largess. Just like the political opponent can’t reply to the accusation, “I do not know if my opponent in this race is a crook” without repeating (and thereby affirming or at least directing attention to the fact that he or she might be a crook), so the supertweetee cannot address the accusation or indictment without proving that the power differential proposed really does exist, and that he or she is unwilling or unable to allow other voices to weigh in on the matter without attempting to re-take control of the conversation.
supervoid, n.
The Guardian, 20 April 2015:
Astronomers have discovered what they say is the largest known structure in the universe: an incredibly big hole.
The “supervoid”, as it is known, is a spherical blob 1.8 billion light years across that is distinguished by its unusual emptiness.
swerf, n.
The Guardian, 9 October 2015:
At a talk I did earlier this year on feminism, several students turned up to hear me, with one telling me a heartbreaking story about being cast out by her feminist group because she was a “terf” (trans exclusionary radical feminist) and a “swerf” (sex worker exclusionary radical feminist). Her crime had been to circulate an article I had written about the disgracefully low conviction rate for rape in the UK.
teachnology, n.
Matt Gordon, 28 October 2015:
I get the "webinar" hate, but its terribleness as a portmanteau word pales in comparison to "teachnology"
tech-sex, n.
The Guardian, 13 December 2015:
Teledildonic. The word rolls around the mouth like a Werther’s Original. While there are a variety of romantic tech-sex developments appearing weekly – from the ocean of Oculus Rift possibilities to an invisible boyfriend who lives on your phone, each new development rich as a Miranda July story but as doom-laden as one of Margaret Atwood’s – it’s teledildonics that are exciting not just the porn industry, but scientists too. Long hyped as the new wave in erotic technology, these are smart sex toys connected to the internet. And while they started life as vibrators that could be operated remotely, today the term has expanded to loosely include the new generation of robotic sex dolls.
teledildonic, n.
The Guardian, 13 December 2015:
Teledildonic. The word rolls around the mouth like a Werther’s Original. While there are a variety of romantic tech-sex developments appearing weekly – from the ocean of Oculus Rift possibilities to an invisible boyfriend who lives on your phone, each new development rich as a Miranda July story but as doom-laden as one of Margaret Atwood’s – it’s teledildonics that are exciting not just the porn industry, but scientists too. Long hyped as the new wave in erotic technology, these are smart sex toys connected to the internet. And while they started life as vibrators that could be operated remotely, today the term has expanded to loosely include the new generation of robotic sex dolls.
teledildonics, n.
The Guardian, 13 December 2015:
Teledildonic. The word rolls around the mouth like a Werther’s Original. While there are a variety of romantic tech-sex developments appearing weekly – from the ocean of Oculus Rift possibilities to an invisible boyfriend who lives on your phone, each new development rich as a Miranda July story but as doom-laden as one of Margaret Atwood’s – it’s teledildonics that are exciting not just the porn industry, but scientists too. Long hyped as the new wave in erotic technology, these are smart sex toys connected to the internet. And while they started life as vibrators that could be operated remotely, today the term has expanded to loosely include the new generation of robotic sex dolls.
terf, n.
The Guardian, 9 October 2015:
At a talk I did earlier this year on feminism, several students turned up to hear me, with one telling me a heartbreaking story about being cast out by her feminist group because she was a “terf” (trans exclusionary radical feminist) and a “swerf” (sex worker exclusionary radical feminist). Her crime had been to circulate an article I had written about the disgracefully low conviction rate for rape in the UK.
terrorist sympathiser, n.
Laura Kuenssberg, 1 December 2015:
PM urged his MPs not to "walk through the lobbies with Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers"
Cameron accuses Corbyn of being 'terrorist sympathiser' http://gu.com/p/4eyb9/stw - and Dave's Saudi allies are what?
terrorist sympathizer, n.
Steven Poole, 1 December 2015:
"Terrorist sympathizer": one who makes frightening unsolicited expressions of emotional solidarity to strangers.
Tesla Graveyard, n.
Elon Musk interviewed in Handelsblatt, 25 September 2015:
Apple just hired some of Tesla’s most important engineers. Do you have to worry about a new competitor?
Important engineers? They have hired people we’ve fired. We always jokingly call Apple the “Tesla Graveyard.” If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding.
there-able, n.
naveen, April 2014:
There-ables infer identity based on how you interact with them. There-ables know it’s us because, well, they are smarter: Nest knows our heat signature. Withings knows our body composition. There-ables have fewer power restrictions; they’re often just plugged right into the power grid and, therefore, don’t need to have batteries charged everyday.
thisclose, n. Very close.
The Atlantic, March 2015:
They chase him, shoot him, and both get thisclose to being fatally stabbed/hatcheted.
TIFU, Today, I fucked up
reddit, 31 August 2015:
TIFU by letting my brother take advantage of my yugioh card addiction
TILY, things I learned yesterday
Erin McKean, 28 August 2015:
TILY: (from @trielly): AV crews call the handheld "next slide" clicker "the pickle"
to create time and distance, v.
San Francisco Police Department, 03 December 2015:
As the situation was developing, a supervisor from Bayview Station gave instructions via police radio that, if possible, officers should attempt to create time and distance from the suspect. As the suspect had already demonstrated that he was a danger to others by having stabbed an earlier victim, the officers could not allow him room to harm anyone else.
tpoc, n. trans person of colour
transcribathon, n.
The Recipes Project, 2 October 2015:
A seventeenth-century recipe book. Twelve hours. 208 pages. And transcribers from around the world.
Our goal? Using the Folger Shakespeare Library’s online transcription platform, we’ll collaboratively produce a searchable transcription of Rebeckah Winche’s recipe book in twelve hours.
On 7 October, please join the Early Modern Recipe Online Collective (EMROC) for our first annual Transcribathon.
transphobe, n.
The Guardian, 9 October 2015:
When several of the female students said they wanted to hear the debate, the white, male leader of that society started shouting that they were all “transphobes” and “whorephobes” for supporting me, so everyone shut up. I don’t blame them. I have had 11 years of this hostility because of one article I wrote, and they do not want the same treatment.
Twixtmas, n.
The Guardian, 27 December 2015:
Maybe that's why we need these empty days. Days that don't even have a name. (I am deliberately avoiding the fact that someone recently coined the term "Twixtmas"). Unspoken for, they allow us to refill our lives with the important things. Talking, walking, thinking. Perhaps to challenge ourselves. On Christmas Eve I woke before dawn to swim in the sea. The waves were lashing the sea wall, great white luminous fingers reaching up to the sky. I was the only one on the beach - save for a woman runner who dashed past in a blur of neon Lycra, shouting her approval of my naked madness: "Fantastic!"
variable data printing, n.
Creative Review, 18 December 2015:
Designers Nick Relph and Matt Cooper used variable data printing and an extensive library of visuals to create a unque cover for each copy of Hot Chip’s sixth album, Why Make Sense? The pair devised a simple design before creating hundreds of pattern variations and 501 colour swatches, resulting in hundreds of thousands of possible combinations.
Variable data printing allowed elements of the design to be adapted with each pass of the printer, enabling customisation on a mass scale. “Nick was interested in the idea that some of the variations would be quite subtle,” says Cooper. “We’ve got hundreds and hundreds of different colours, so some of the variations are very close in colour and tone, a little like the small variations you get in traditional print methods at the beginning and end of a print run, or flecks of dirt, or other vagaries of the print process,” he adds. “The graphic’s vertical lines are static, but the angled lines’ orientations alter. Sometimes, lines are almost vertical, while others cross the design at nearly 90 degrees.”
vulvanomics, n.
The Guardian, 26 October 2015:
The conference kicks off again at 9am on Sunday. I start with Vulvanomics, a session on what exactly we should call our ... bits. We all groan as the speaker, Professor Emma Rees, reveals that the Oxford English Dictionary defines the clitoris as a kind of inferior penis.
wackaging, n.
The Guardian, 14 July 2015:
It’s not just that the Google doodle, the corporate-branding equivalent of dress-down Friday, has that naff novelty air about it: all those cute animated Thanksgiving turkeys, faux silent films and puzzle-piece Nietzsches. Or even that, presumably driven in part by Google employees’ hobby horses (“How about Giambattista Tiepolo’s 318th birthday?”), they feel like textbook “wackaging”; the ingratiating, infantilising tone that has been smeared all over marketing for the past decade.
WAF, n.
The Guardian, 29 November 2015:
In a proper hi-fi dealer, Richer Sounds included, you can buy a good system of parts from various manufacturers for as little as £1,000. The bits won’t match, though – heaven forbid they should look nice. None of it will have what hi-fi men call WAF – Wife Acceptance Factor.
...
And finally: never be put off by hi-fi nuts who sneer at beautiful hi-fi by Bang & Olufsen. Design- focused and high street it may be, but it still sounds great. As well as having lashings of WAF.
wbu, What 'bout you?
@MustardCreams, 27 August 2015:
Ehhhhh "i watch alotta documentaries about serial killers wbu"
wedge salad, n.
The Washington Post, 4 August 2015:
Here’s a wedge salad plan of attack. Stab the fork at the bull’s-eye and extract the dense, yellow-white, bigger-than-bite-size chunk of iceberg lettuce in the center. If that piece isn’t covered with a swath of dressing, a modicum of blue cheese and a crumble of bacon, maneuver your knife to make that happen. If you can manage to get diced tomato into the equation, so much the better. Move your head closer to the plate, bring the fork to your mouth and stuff it in. Revel in the satisfaction of the cool crunch mixed with tang, creaminess, fat and smoke. Repeat with the rest of the salad.
white space, n.
The Guardian, 13 September 2015:
“It was about one customer feeling like she belonged in that space – it’s kind of like that term they use: ‘white space’,” Johnson, an author, told the Guardian at her home in Antioch, about two hours’ drive from Napa. “And then wine train staff bought into that and used their power to take away our ability to enjoy ourselves and have a good time. I do think it was based on the colour of our skin because everything was great before we arrived at the station. There was a phone, we were invisible … but then we show up – 11 black ladies, one white lady – it was like, ‘Oh’.”
whorephobe, n.
The Guardian, 9 October 2015:
When several of the female students said they wanted to hear the debate, the white, male leader of that society started shouting that they were all “transphobes” and “whorephobes” for supporting me, so everyone shut up. I don’t blame them. I have had 11 years of this hostility because of one article I wrote, and they do not want the same treatment.
Wife Acceptance Factor, n.
The Guardian, 29 November 2015:
In a proper hi-fi dealer, Richer Sounds included, you can buy a good system of parts from various manufacturers for as little as £1,000. The bits won’t match, though – heaven forbid they should look nice. None of it will have what hi-fi men call WAF – Wife Acceptance Factor.
woc, n. woman of colour, as opposed to a white woman
womb bearer, n.
The Guardian, 9 October 2015:
Another student told me she was banned from her feminist society because the flyers she distributed outlining the threat to women’s reproductive rights referred to “women” rather than ‘“womb bearers”, which was deemed transphobic.
wrist-top, adj.
Yle, 10 November 2015:
As startups gather in Helsinki for the annual Slush event, one of the fastest growing areas on the scene is the health and wellness sector. Within that growing category, digital health and wellbeing wearables are shifting from wrist-top to ring-top, with two Finnish companies poised to make their mark.
Zero Width Joiner, n.
Emojipedia, 11 December 2015:
ZWJ Sequences. Zero Width Joiner sequences are a strange beast. They basically come into the world when a vendor decides to introduce one, and with no formal approval required, what we have seen in 2015 has been: * Apple releases an iOS update with new ZWJ emojis
Zero Width Joiner, n.
Emojipedia, 11 December 2015:
ZWJ Sequences. Zero Width Joiner sequences are a strange beast. They basically come into the world when a vendor decides to introduce one, and with no formal approval required, what we have seen in 2015 has been: * Apple releases an iOS update with new ZWJ emojis
Zero Width Joiner, n.
Emojipedia, 11 December 2015:
ZWJ Sequences. Zero Width Joiner sequences are a strange beast. They basically come into the world when a vendor decides to introduce one, and with no formal approval required, what we have seen in 2015 has been: * Apple releases an iOS update with new ZWJ emojis