Word of the Week
Created | Updated Jun 25, 2003
In the dim dark recesses of h2g2 history
before we moved lock, stock and barrel to our new BBC
home there used to be a front page feature The h2g2 Word of the Day. It was
a way to highlight some of the lesser occurring or
largely obscurer words in the English language. Sadly
this feature was discontinued.
Until now...
Word of the Week
Aha! Just when I though no one was reading this
column correctly and suggesting new words I have been
proved wrong. My thanks go to Táralómë MacHead for restoring
my faith in the boondoggleness of this column. For
indeed that is a word from the stem of this weeks
word.
Boondoggle
n. 1. An unnecessary or wasteful project or activity.
2. a. A braided leather cord worn as a decoration
especially by Boy Scouts.
b. A cord of braided leather, fabric, or plastic
strips made by a child as a project to keep busy.
For the word itself credit is due to Robert H. Link
an American scoutmaster who coined the phrase. Must
have got his scout pack to make a chord of leather
braid and then come up with the name I reckon.
The word currently has its own unedited Entry on the Guide
thanks to Ajax; also zero claims in his name to be an
MBA, Master of Boondoggle Arts, and jute_kilo lists it in an Entry about her favourite
expressions. Arthur Dent in
his Update on the Royal Mile
Edinburgh mentions the new Scottish
Parliament building being the boondoggle at the foot
of that famous thoroughfare.
As all regular readers of this column will know
finding the unusual word of the week in one Entry on
the Guide in unusual so this weeks veritable abundance
warms the cockles of my heart. However it has not been
too widely used in conversations. It has been used in
an h2g2 version of Call My Bluff. The last
American election was described by one American
researcher as a boondoggle. zero, on receiving the
above mentioned MBA, describes how some people find the
whole of h2g2 to be a boondoggle, but states that
boondoggling is definitely an Art not a Science. Also
the fact that a $2 billion American Air Force plane
which cannot be left out in the rain was also
described as a serious incompetence in accounting as a
financial heamorrhage of a Army with a taste for
boondoggles; and a decision by the authorities of
Austin Texas to put trash bins in Congress Avenue
which was condemned, protested about and rejected
because the boondoggle was going to cost $50 per bin.
So when visiting Austin be careful what you do with
your litter; bins may be hard to find.
From the Archive
This week saw the release of the new Harry Potter
book so this week's word will no doubt sum up how many
people felt just after midnight on the 21st.
However it is not clear who suggested this word as
trawling through the archives produced a blank on my
perusal, it could have been so many of the emotional
carbon based lifeforms out there, or maybe even a
paranoid android for all I know.
Catharsis
n. The release of pent up
emotions.
Evidently we are a very emotional lot as this word
occurs so often on the Guide even in two Edited
Entries Flamenco and Great Horror Movies showing how
versatile the word is in its use. However it is used
so often on h2g2 that I'm not going to go through all
the occurrences, you can browse them at your leisure
but putting it into the search box yourself.
How can you
contribute?
- Go and check out words in the archive to
avoid duplication. - Check out the discussion threads and nominate a
word that you feel was
overlooked before discontinuation. - Suggest a new word or your forgotten word in the
Word of the Week Archive
conversation.
