wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

whole movements to abolish the word retard or its shortened version 'tard? That's a word that's worked its way up from kid speak to adult speak, been around for years. guess those movements must be like the war on drugs.

SAVE THE STORY

The word of the year,

If I may be declarative,

Deserves its own plot--

The brain-killing "narrative."

The combination of the two words celebrity and debutante into celebutante have now been combined with retard into celebutarde, being used to describe a society woman who has achieved celebrity through existing as idiotically as possible in her self-created limelight. This is interesting because there have been entire movements to abolish the use of the word "retard"- but apparently it is socially acceptable again, as long as it is combined with another "pseudoword".

Auntler?

W00t - also Woot. I've been told it's a combination of "Wow" and "Loot" Like "Oh boy!"
There is also a website call www.woot.com which has "Woot-offs" that sell wholesale stuff in a rapid kind of auction.

I'm having the worst time with the word "Ninja" - which is used in MMORPG's which means to sneak into an opponents base and steal something without the opponent knowing.. How would that used as an verb? or is it just "Ninja"?

I am very curious to know if the guest has heard the word "concerning" to mean "troubling" or "disturbing," rather than "about" or "with regard to." I've heard--and read--that "this is a very concerning matter" and "a very concerning trend" this year many times.

Weren't "Troubling" and "Disturbing" sufficient?

Vanity sizing: Oprah wears size 2.

zOMG ?

During the past year there has been a dramatic increase in the use of "fraught", much of which I believe is incorrect. Doesn't it just mean "full of"?

lolcat, from wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolcat

Its a shame that this is the my first posting ... oh well ... Omar Bin Laden, who is 26 years old and is one of Osama Bin Laden's 12 children, married a 52 year old British woman, his third wife.

I heard a rumor that the word "entheogen" made the OED this year. Anyone know if this is the case?

No matter what, I beg you, please do not let the term "GINORMOUS" (the combo of "gigantic" and "enormous") become a real word. I hear so many people say it and it drives me nuts.

please be careful with "milf"; as i understand it, it's an acronym for "mothers i'd like to f***," and is quite common as such in the world of porn.

Ashton Kutcher is the young male celeb with older female.

You're clearly not young enough, then. :)

This is validation of the '80s born generation.

God, who cares. Let's get to the Des Moines debates already...

That word has been around forever, eh he he.

No seriously, woot has been around so long they've made a one-item-per-day store out of it.

boring. talk of the nation did this already.

John Simpson is indeed Chief Editor of the OED; Jesse Sheidlower's title is Editor-at-large, as stated above. He is responsible for revision of North American entries in the OED. As his colleague, I can assure you that this is in fact a great deal of work.

Katherine Martin
Senior Editor, OED

wOOt? If ever an entry deserved the label "nonce word" this would have to be it. Good grief.

TMI Michael Scott
(Hey! TMI!)

Sheidlower isn't editor in chief of anything. The editor in chief of OED is John Simpson. Sheidlower's merely a figurhead editor who does little work.

Yesterday I was looking up a word at urbandictionary.com. The first would that came up on the homepage was "w00t". I'd seen it before, but didn't think it warranted its own entry in ANY dictionary.

Pwn, Pwned, Pwner - "all your base are belong to us"

LOL Catz - "I can haz Kibblz now plez?"

Durn kids! grumble grumble