New Words - New Meanings


last update: 19 February 2022


'New Words - New Definitions', is about the way ordinary words are given different, special meanings. All this section does is register new words or expressions that have come across my screen… and are new to me. And we also have existing words, but with new definitions.

New words can actually mean old words, brought back from the past and given a new lease of life. For example, The Anglish Moot offers a number of old words that would sit nicely in todays vocabulary, e.g. "cloud kitchen" meaning an online restaurant with a kitchen but no premises where you can eat.

Hope it's not all gibberish.

I've included some SMS-shorthand, and some modern-day urban cant and slang. You can check out Wikipedia dictionaries on urban expressions and slang.

143 - I love you (counting the letters 1-4-3)
1433 - I love you too (letters 1-4-3-3)

5150 - California police code for 'escaped lunatic' (see Lanterman-Petris-Short Act)

Ad clutter - the constant bombardment with ads across every media

Addleware - variety of goods in supermarkets that confuse and muddle older customers

Ad load - the amount of time people watch TV ads

Agnotology - is the study of cultural induced ignorance or doubt, particular created by the publication of inaccurate art misleading 'scientific data'.

Algebra - "a cruel pointless subject still taught in schools"

Alternative Facts - the defence of a false statement by saying it was "alternative facts"

Antidextrous - not good with either hand

Area 51% - the area of the US that votes Republican

Astroturfing - is the practice of hiding or masking the (financial) sponsors of a message to make it appear as if it originated from grassroots activism (i.e. spontaneous and often local).

Autopilot - "what most people do at work"

Awfuliser - someone who always predicts the worst outcome

Bangalored - relocated to India

Barn-find - antique (more than a hundred years old)

Big Lie - a propaganda technique where the lie is so 'colossal' that no one would believe that someone could be that stupid, so maybe it's true

Bizza - a big pizza

BLUF - Bottom Line Up Front - means putting the key conclusions at the beginning

Boomer holes - a house with holes for cable TV and landlines previously owned by a baby-boomer

Bounty bar - a white-acting black person

Bozo explosion - what happens when an incompetent executive hires incompetent managers, who hire incompetent workers

Brute Fact - is a fact that cannot be explained. You can explain one fact by reference to other facts, which can themselves be referenced to other facts, but in the end the 'last' fact cannot be explained and is a brute fact. Often the explanation of a fact is not a true explanation, but simply a description. The principle of sufficient reason may be understood to say that there are no brute facts.

budhttmwfi - but you don't have to take my word for it

Capacious - spacious or roomy

Catfishing - a deceptive activity often using a fake identity (sockpuppet) to abuse or fraud a victim, e.g. romance scams, trolling, etc.

Chilling effect - discouraging someone from exercising their legitimate rights by a threat of legal sanctions

Clean-skin - without a criminal record (also lily-white)

Click-to-Call (Click-to-Talk) - when a customer clicks on an object and it completes a call to a person in real-time

Cloud kitchen (dark kitchen) - an online restaurant with a kitchen but no premises where you can eat

Cobrowsing - two people accessing and navigating the same webpage at the same time

Cognitive inertia - a particular way some people refuse to accept change

Come-alongs - handcuffs

Conehead - scientist, brainy person

Consensus reality - an agreed reality based upon a consensus view

Conversion - is when a visitor completes a desired goal (e.g. purchase, fills out a form, provides an email address), and the percentage that converts is called a conversion rate (see conversion marketing and conversion rate optimisation)

Cord-cutting - cancelling a cable or satellite TV subscriptions

Corpocracy - government by corporations

Corporate Death Burger - McDonalds

Crusty-minded - old, gruff, surly of attitude

Culture jamming - a form of guerrilla communication, an anti-consumerist social movement designed to disrupt or subvert mainstream media

Deckchairing - comes from "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" and means someone who is hopelessly still attempting to achieve a goal that is already lost

Deja-poo - inescapable feeling that this has happened to you before

Dictionary - a paperweight, an archaic way to look up words before Wikipedia and spellchecking

Discommode - to cause inconvenience or disturb things

DNF - Did Not Find (or Did Not Finish)

Dot gone - unsuccessful Internet company

Doublethink - indoctrination where someone is expect to accept as true that which is clearly false

Doomscrolling - consuming an endless procession of negative online news (opposite gleefreshing)

Doxing -

Dronies - those who snap images using drones

Dropshipping - selling products they've never handled, from countries they've never visited, to consumers they've never met

Dunning-Kruger Effect - cognitive bias in which incompetent people assess themselves as competent, people making poor decisions but they can't recognise their mistakes

Dustsucker - a vacuum cleaner

DYKWIA - Do You Know Who I Am!

Ecoanxiety is caused by a dread of environmental perils, such as climate change, …

Echo chamber - the application of beliefs by repetition inside a close system, insulated from rebuttal

Escrache

Familymoon - a honeymoon where the bridge and groom also bring their children form previous marriages

Faraday's Candle - electric light (also ghost-fire, Edison-ware, glarenight)

Farlooker - telescope

Filter Bubble - a state of intellectual isolation


Folkdom - a Republic

Folksmight - democracy

Foot fault - a minor criminal violation

The frozen middle - the most conservative layer in a organisation

Funnels - a marketing funnel helps/simplifies the set of steps a customer has to go through (to a 'conversion')

Furkid/Furbaby - a pet treated as a child

Gainstand - to speak or stand against something

Gaslighting

Gleefreshing - (opposite doomscrolling)

Gray thunder - senior citizens who, because of their numerical strength, wield considerable political (voting) power
Gringoland - USA

Groupthink - a group of people, desiring harmony, become irrational and dysfunctional, and make bad decisions

Haircut - a reduction in the value of an asset

Hate-watching - watching TV programs that you hate

HMWI - High Net Worth Individual

Honey Pot -

Honey Trapping -

House hippo - a rotund house pet

HYDT - How You Do That

Hyperreality - an inability to distinguish reality from a simulation

IANAL - I Am Not A Lawyer

Idiolect - a person's individual speech pattern

Idiot box - Television

IDK - I Don't Know

IMO - In My Opinion (IMHO - In My Humble Opinion)

Intelligent design - a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God

INYN - I Know You Know

IRL - In Real Life

Jackass of all trades - bad at everything

Jesus year - a persons 33rd year of life

Kiwi Farms -

Laughtersmith - comedian

Lexifascist - someone who corrects others' language with an uppity attitude

Lifelore - biology (liferoom - cell)

Lily White - someone who rejects any culture other than a white middle American one, e.g. lily white housing accepts no minorities

Lily White - conventional, uninteresting, unadventurous, as in a food which is prepared perfectly but with no element of imagination and creativity, etc.

Lily Whites - ass-cheeks, as in "you can kiss my lily whites"

Lily-whites - meant IRA terrorists who had no previous convictions, and who were very hard to trace and catch

Linear TV - industry jargon for traditional TV

Love Bombing -

Marinate - to sit around and do nothing

Meatsmith - butcher

Meme hack - changing a meme to express and different point of view, often opposite to the original

Micro-influencer - a sub-set of influencer marketing, i.e. people who have between 1,000 and 100,000 followers and are considered expert and trusted in a narrow field or niche

Mierdas Touch - a bit like the Midas Touch, but this is "the ability to turn everything one touches into …."

Mincing oath - a euphemistic expression formed by misspelling, mispronouncing, or replacing a part of a profane, blasphemous, or taboo term to reduce its objectionable characteristics, e.g. "gosh" (for God), "crumbs" (Christ), "for crying out loud" (for Christ's sake), "darn" or "dang" (damn), "doggone" or "gosh darn" (goddamn), "[cor] blimey" ([God] blind me), "shucks" (shit), "heck" (hell), "gee", "jeez", "jeepers" (Jesus Christ), "feck-off", "fudge", "frick", "fork", "flip" or "eff-off" (you know what this means)

Nestling - someone who still lives with their parents

Obscurantism - deliberately presenting information in an imprecise or abstruse manner, making it difficult to understand

Office-park dad - A married, suburban father who works in a white-collar job. He is today's blue-collar worker, who is a baby-boomer who earns $60,000 a year and struggles in the new economy.

On-brand - something that correlates with your identity or public image

Onesomehood - solitude

Pain Point - recurring problems that customers experience frequently, sometimes stopping them from completing a transaction

PDF - Please Don't Forget

Perfumed prince - bureaucrat or careerist

Pizza Production Engineer - someone who puts toppings on pre-formed pizza bases

Plusing - continually improving something

Pork pie - lie (Cockney)

Post-truth politics - appeal to emotion, disconnected from fact

Prescriptibitch - someone who is evil about correcting grammatical mistakes

Programmatic advertising - ads that are bought and sold by software, without human intervention

Rainshade - umbrella

Reality tunnel - mental filters along the lines of "Truth is in the eye of the beholder"

Resolutionary - someone starts a New Year Resolution, then quits after three months

Retargeting - targeted advertising based upon a consumers previous internet activity, e.g. webpage they have previously viewed

Rusted-on - loyal, true, steadfast

Sea-dust - salt

See Food Diet - you see the food, and then eat it

Seldseen - rare, uncommon, unfamiliar

Selfstanding - independent

Shift F7 - derives from the shortcut for the thesaurus in a Microsoft Word document, so 'Shift F7' replaces the word you could not remember or find, e.g. "its just so … shift F7"

Shapeware - underwear designed to alter (smooth, control, lift, compress) a persons body shape (for the better)

Skiptrace -

Slam-clicker - someone who just stays in their hotel room and never goes out

Sledging -

Smize - spilling with your eyes

Social hacking - manipulating social behaviour through orchestrated action


Sockpuppet - see also strawman and meatpuppet

Spelling - a lost art

Spiral of silence - a social group excludes people for their opinions, and the feat of isolation stops people from expressing their opinions

Splinternet - the internet balkanisation based upon politics, religion, etc.


Stan - a super or extreme fan of something or someone

Stovepiping - transmit raw information to a higher level inside an organisation through an isolated and narrow channel

Subvertising - a portmanteau of subvert and advertising, is the practice of making spoofs or parodies of corporate and political advertisements

Sunny-brained - optimistic (rainy-brained - pessimistic)

swiftboating - a pejorative American neologism used to describe an unfair or untrue political

SWMBO - She Who Must Be Obeyed

Third rail - any issue so controversial that it is untouchable for any politician or public official who dares to broach the subject

Thirstposting - people who post just to get the 'likes'

Thore - Think more, e.g. "I need to thore before I answer"

Thought-drop - idea

Tinkerbell effect - describing things that are thought to exist only because people believe in them. The Reverse Tinkerbell effect stipulates that the more you believe in something the more likely it is to vanish.

TMI - Too Much Information

Trektide - vacation

Truth by consensus - something is considered true simply because people generally agree on it

Truthiness - a seemingly truthful assertion not supported by evidence or facts

Turdmonger - a vile individual, barbarian, philistine, low-life

UCLA - University for Caucasians Lost among Asians

Voodoo poll - untrustworthy results

Wain - four wheel road vehicle (car), able to carry a small number of people

Weble - alternative for web-log (blog)

WFH - Working From Home

Wikiality - a portmanteau of the words Wiki and reality, meaning truth by consensus, rather than fact

Wirate - getting angry with a slow Internet connection

Wit - to know (witship - science)

WOAT - Worst Of All Time

Wordstock - vocabulary

Wortcraft - horticulture (wortsmith - horticulturalist)

Zinger - a witty or pointed remark or retort