Patents on the soles of your shoes...: woty 2021

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Sunday, January 23, 2022

Terminology – The American Dialect Society competing 2021 WOTTIES (2)

The American Dialect Society (ADS) competing Words of the Year (WOTTIES) are no less interesting than the winners. Below, the list of the competing WOTTIES, in each of the 2021 Word of the Year categories. (1)

The Word of the Year 2021 (extracted from the ADS Press Release)

antiwork: position supporting the refusal to work, pushing back against labor exploitation.
Big Lie: propagandistic distortion of truth, as in Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was “stolen”.
Great Resignation: pandemic-era phenomenon in which workers are leaving their jobs in large numbers.
long Covid: lingering symptoms and health problems experienced by people after they have recovered from Covid.
Omicron: name assigned by the World Health Organization for a highly contagious “variant of concern” of the coronavirus.
variant: new form of a virus, such as coronavirus, resulting from mutations.
vax/vaxx: shortened form of vaccine, vaccination, or vaccinate, often used as combining form (as in anti-vaxxer, Hot Vax Summer, double/triple-vaxxed, vaxxed and relaxed).

Most likely to succeed Word of the Year 2021

endemic: describing a disease that is always present in a community or population, as some predict will be the case for Covid-19.
Great Resignation: pandemic-era phenomenon in which workers are leaving their jobs in large numbers.
mid: of average or poor quality, or simply decent, in the amorphous Generation Z slang.
NFT: abbreviation for non-fungible token, a digital asset using blockchain technology to make a unique token, with its own identification that cannot be replicated.
sigma male: term used in the masculinist “manosphere” for a male who is more introverted than an “alpha male” but is still considered successful.
shrinkflation: reduction of the size or quantity of a product while the price remains the same or even rises.

Most useful Word of the Year 2021

bussin’: extremely good, such as food that is indescribably tasty.
tone indicator: code such as “/srs” or "/lol" that indicates the tone (serious, ironic, humorous) of online discourse.
vibe: mood or emotion, such as the positive feelings evoked by a piece of music; to exult in one’s good feelings.

Political Word of the Year 2021

Big Lie: propagandistic distortion of truth, as in Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was “stolen”.
CRT/critical race theory: framework for analyzing how racism is embedded in law and policies, exploited as a scare tactic by politicians favoring “anti-CRT” legislation.
mandate: official or authoritative command, as in politically contentious “mask mandates” and “vaccine mandates”.

Digital Word of the Year 2021

bones day/no bones day: prediction of whether a day will be good or bad (based on Jonathan Graziano’s TikTok videos of his dog Noodle getting up in the morning). See Youtube video below.
girlboss: a confident, capable woman pursuing business ambitions; also used in a derogatory fashion for a woman cynically combining feminism with careerism.
horny jail: imagined place a person is sent to as punishment for being excessively sexual on social media.
parasocial: describing a relationship that a person imagines with someone whom they do not actually know, such as a celebrity on an online platform.
the ___ urge to: ironic framing device to describe stereotypical tendencies and traits, as in “the feminine urge to…”

Pandemic-related Word of the Year 2021

breakthrough: describing an infection, as from coronavirus, after a person has been vaccinated.
Delta/Omicron: Greek-letter names assigned by the World Health Organization for coronavirus “variants of concern”.
flurona: sickness from a combination of the influenza virus and the coronavirus.
long Covid: lingering symptoms and health problems experienced by people after they have recovered from Covid.
variant: new form of a virus, such as coronavirus, resulting from mutations.
vax/vaxx: shortened form of vaccine, vaccination, or vaccinate, often used as combining form (as in anti-vaxxer, Hot Vax Summer, double/triple-vaxxed, vaxxed and relaxed).

Financial/economic Word of the Year 2021

Great Resignation: pandemic-era phenomenon in which workers are leaving their jobs in large numbers.
NFT: abbreviation for non-fungible token, a digital asset using blockchain technology to make a unique token, with its own identification that cannot be replicated.
SPAC: abbreviation for “special purpose acquisition company”, an investment vehicle that allows a company to go public without going through the traditional IPO process.
stimmy: shortened form of stimulus, used in reference to government stimulus checks.
stonk: deliberate misspelling of stock, used by online day traders for their investments, esp. for “meme stocks” like Gamestop (aka Gamestonk).

Informal Word of the Year 2021

cheugy: term used by members of Generation Z to poke fun at the off-trend lifestyles and fashions of millennials.
down bad: used to describe intense (typically sexual) desperation.
flop era: time in which a person, such as a pop star, enters an unsuccessful period.

Most creative word of the year 2021

chin diaper: face mask worn below the chin instead of properly covering the nose and mouth.
copium: the rationalizations, justifications, and denial one uses to deal with a severe letdown or personal failure (a blend of cope and opium).
-core: productive suffix for aesthetic trends, such as gorpcore (functional outdoorsy gear), emancicore (non-restrictive clothing emphasizing freedom), and goblincore (chaotic aesthetic inspired by goblin folklore).

Euphemism of the year 2021

election integrity: euphemism used for voter suppression.
glizzy: slang term for a hot dog (also used to describe fellatio, as in glizzy gobbling).
TFG: abbreviation for “the former guy,” an expression used by President Biden to refer to his predecessor Trump without saying his name.

___________

Note

(1) Members of the ADS voted for the winners , in each category, on the occasion of the Society’s 133rd Annual Meeting (online), on January 6-7, 2022. The winning 2021 Words of the Year, selected by the members of the American Dialect Society, are listed in the previous post.

References

American Dialect Society https://www.americandialect.org/

Word of the Year – American Dialect Society.

https://www.americandialect.org/2021-word-of-the-year-is-insurrection

Word of the Year – American Dialect Society. - Press Release.
https://www.americandialect.org/wp-content/uploads/2021-Word-of-the-Year-PRESS-RELEASE.pdf

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

Terminology – The American Dialect Society 2021 WOTTIES (1)

Each year, since 1990, members of the distinguished, 133-year old, American Dialect Society (ADS), vote for the Words of the Year (WOTTIES) in several categories, plus for one Word of the Year (WOTY), winner of them all. The vote occurs during the Annual Meeting of the ADS, held online for the second year, on January 6th and 7th, in 2022.

Below, the list the Words of the Year, in the 2021 categories, and the WOTY winner of them all. The 2021 WOTY categories included: most likely to succeed, most useful, political word of the year, digital word of the year, pandemic-related word of the year, financial/economic words of the year, informal word of the year, most creative word of the year, and euphemism of the year.

The Word of the Year 2021
insurrection: violent attempt to take control of a government, applied to the Capitol attack of Jan. 6, 2021.

Most likely to succeed Word of the Year 2021
antiwork: position supporting the refusal to work, pushing back against labor exploitation.

Most useful Word of the Year 2021
hard pants: pants that lack an elastic waistband or stretchy fabric, unlike the “soft pants” favored by those working from home during the pandemic.

Political Word of the Year 2021
insurrection: violent attempt to take control of a government, applied to the Capitol attack of Jan. 6, 2021.

Digital Word of the Year 2021
#FreeBritney: hashtag for those supporting the release of Britney Spears from the conservatorship set up by her father 13 years ago.

Pandemic-related Word of the Year 2021
boosted: having received a booster shot, as for Covid-19 (also boostered/boosterized).

Financial/economic Word of the Year 2021
supply chain: interconnected global system of supplying goods and services to consumers, put in jeopardy by the pandemic.

Informal Word of the Year 2021
yassify: to apply image filters to a person’s photo to transform it into a cartoonishly beautiful image; more generally, to make beautiful or glamorous.

Most creative word of the year 2021
Fauci ouchie: rhyming phrase for a Covid-19 vaccine, in honor of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Chief Adviser to the President on matters of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Euphemism of the year 2021

unalive: term used as a substitute for “suicide” or “kill” to avoid social media filters.

Jan 6th 2021 - Capitol Hill, Washington, DC.

References
American Dialect Society

https://www.americandialect.org/

Word of the Year – American Dialect Society.
https://www.americandialect.org/2021-word-of-the-year-is-insurrection
Word of the Year – American Dialect Society - Press Release.
https://www.americandialect.org/wp-content/uploads/2021-Word-of-the-Year-PRESS-RELEASE.pdf

Saturday, December 4, 2021

Terminology - Collins Dictionary WOTY 2021 runners up

The Collins Dictionary list of terms competing for Word of the Year is no less interesting than the winning term. Collins also offers fabulous gif and jpeg bonuses, illustrating both the champion term and, and all of the contenders. Below, a list of them all.

climate anxiety

double vaxxed

metaverse

pingdemic

cheugy

neopronoun

crypto

hybrid working

regencycore

References

Collins Dictionary

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/

The Collins Word of the Year is...

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty

Terminology - WOTTIES 2021 - NFT (non-fungible token) Collins' Word of the Year 2021

Huh? According to Collins Dictionary, the rise of the term NFT, meaning “non-fungible token” was meteoric. Specifically, the term NFT was up 11,000% in the monitored 4.5 billion-word Collins corpus (Flood, 2021). So, what is an NFT? The Collins Dictionary defines NFT as:

1. Abreviation for non-fungible token: a unique digital certificate, registered in a blockchain, that is used to record ownership of an asset such as an artwork or a collectible.
2. Noun: an asset whose ownership is recorded by means of a non-fungible token (e.g., the artist sold the work as an NFT).

Thus, an NFT is a form of cryptocurrency, a unique registered unit of data, serving both to authenticate ownership of a particular asset or collectible and, as a corollary, to identify an associated unique piece of art or collectible, whether original or copy. The NFT asset might be a video, a photo, a song, a domain name, a game character, a virtual accessory or, actually, anything else.

Because the certificate is “non-fungible”, meaning that the unit of data cannot be replaced or interchanged with an identical part or parts, the associated collectible or artwork also becomes unique. According to Collins, the interesting aspect of the term NFT is its use in the art world, bringing together art, technology, and commerce, to resolve issues of authenticity and reproduction, while breaking out of the dominant crowd of new COVID-related terminology (Shariatmadari, 2021).

Presentation of the Collins Word of the Year (WOTY) is also special, because of the animated Collins GIFs that are always created to illustrate the WOTY, (and its competitors). Below, the Collins GIF for NFT, the Collins Dictionary WOTY 2021. The GIF shows an auction scene for the sale of NFT art. Notice that the bidders are also holding up bitcoin, ethereum, and zcoin cryptocurrency symbols, in the bidding process for NFT art.

Reference

Collins Dictionary https://www.collinsdictionary.com/
Staff (Nov. 24, 2021). The Collins Word of the Year is…. Collins Dictionary.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/woty
Flood, A. (Nov. 24, 2021) NFT beats cheugy to be Collins Word of the Year. The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/24/nft-is-collins-dictionary-word-of-the-year
Shariatmadari, D. (Nov. 24, 2021). Get your crypto at the ready: NFTs are big in 2021. Collins Dictionary Language Lovers Blog.
https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/language-lovers/get-your-crypto-at-the-ready-nfts-are-big-in-2021/

Sunday, November 28, 2021

Terminology - WOTTIES 2021 - 'Perseverance' Cambridge Dictionary WOTY 2021

The Cambridge Dictionary Word of theYear (WOTY) is “perseverance” (without a capital “P”) although related to Perseverance (with a capital “P”), the robotic geologist-astrophysicists rover that landed on planet Mars, on February 18, 2021. Indeed, the selection was based on word search counts, which increased to 243,000 at the Cambridge Dictionary website, in 2021. A significant increase in visibility of the word, including a spike of 30,487 searches between Feb. 19th and 25th, 2021, corresponding to the extraordinary footage (below) of the Perseverance rover entry, descent and landing sequence (EDL), broadcasted from planet Mars, 300 million miles away, and edited for viewing during that timeframe.

Thus, whereas Perseverance the rover was named to capture triumph on the shoulders of the many who dared to stumble in the odyssey of Mars exploration, the term perseverance also undoubtedly took on heightened significance in 2021. A year where the will of the people also triumphed in the face of pandemic adversity, despite the more than 5 million lives lost to the SARS2- CoV19 (WHO Dashboards).

Crowned Word of the Year 2021, perseverance thus celebrates the human spirit under very different circumstances. The YouTube video included below captures the triumph of perseverance in space exploration with video footage of mesmerizing clarity, witnessing Perseverance’s EDL. In other words, entry into the Martian atmosphere at 12,500 mph, with a registered heat peak, measured at 2370 degrees Fahrenheit (1300 degrees Celsius) caused by massive speed deceleration to 1000 mph, using Martian atmosphere. The footage also shows the perfect orchestration of parachute deployment, separation of the heat shield and aeroshell protection, firing of the descent stage retro-rockets, and separation from the descent stage to touchdown.

Otherwise, on planet Earth, perseverance was certainly put to test everywhere.