h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've never heard of a 'happy slap' before. I really should try to keep up.

'Bum rap' is a Damon Runyon expression, at least over here. Jimmy Cagney and Edward G Robinson characters would say, 'It's a bum rap.'

Would't a bum rap be a rap version of Astaire and Garland singing "We're a couple of swells?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrzo5SPaOvg

If Damon Runyon were alive today, he'd probably agree.

Or anything by Will I Am feat. Le Pétomane.

How did we get to a parody of Britney Spears breaking wind?

Time to score up

Solutions, references and dates:

1h. beautician / Los Angeles Times

1924   Los Angeles Times 31 July i. 2/8   ‘Beautician’ is a word so new it will not be found in the dictionary. But it will be there soon if delegates attending the annual convention of American cosmeticians have their way. They declared today the new word is less scientific than ‘cosmetician’ and therefore more palatable to the average tongue.

2e. Blu-Tack / Irish Times

1972 Irish Times 4 Dec. 6/6 Quilts—Switzers. Blu-Tack—Easons. Tables—Roches Stores.

3b. bum rap / Chicago Tribune

1913 Chicago Tribune 5 June 5/4 They'll frame a ‘bum rap’ on me before I've been out of stir a week.

4n. car-jacking / Times of India

1970 Times of India 16 Sept. 1/6 The Turkish Embassy in Amman has been the victim of two ‘car-jackings’... The official limousine of the Turkish ambassador..and the private car of the Embassy First Secretary were..commande[e]red.

5a. comet / Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

1154 Anglo-Saxon Chron. (Laud) anno 1066 Sume men cwedon þat hit cometa se steorra wære, þone sume men hatað þone fæxedon steorran.

6o. crowdsourcing / Wired

2006 J. Howe in Wired June 179/1 The rise of crowdsourcing... Smart companies in industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals and television discover ways to tap the latent talent of the crowd... It's not outsourcing; it's crowdsourcing.

7f. debug / Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society

1945 Jrnl. Royal Aeronaut. Soc. 49 183/2 It ranged from the pre-design development of essential components, through the stage of type test and flight test and ‘debugging’ right through to later development of the engine.

8d. fraudster / Financial Times

1975 Financial Times 22 Dec. 2/4 The conviction of seven persons..and jail sentences on three of the leading fraudsters, disclosed a serious..gap in the criminal law.

9l. happy-clappy / Sydney Morning Herald

1988 Sydney Morning Herald 14 Apr. (Northern Herald section) 30/1 His pentecostal services are full of dancing and up-beat singing, with music from an electric rock band—which is why Pentecostals are nicknamed ‘happy clappies’.

10m. happy slap / Times Educational Supplement

2005 Times Educ. Suppl. 21 Jan. 3, The standard format is a slap round the head. The perpetrator gets another pupil to video it. If the happy slap is a planned event, there is likely to be a huge crowd emerging from the woodwork, out of classrooms from along the corridor.

11i. kilometre / Naval Chronicle

1810 Naval Chron. 24 301 Killometer, 1000 M.

12j. safari / Journal of the Royal Geographical Society

1859 R. F. Burton Lake Regions Central Equatorial Afr. xv. 410 in Jrnl. Royal Geogr. Soc. 29 These Safari are neither starved like the trading parties of Wanyamwezi nor pampered like those directed by the Arabs.

13k. sext / Sun (UK)

2001 Sun 22 Nov. 37/2 (heading) Embarrassed by a ‘sext’ message.

14c. slimmer / Country Life

1974 Country Life 12 Dec. 1845/1 The horrors of a slimmer can be as awful as those of an alcoholic, at least until his stomach shrinks.

15. wannabe / j) New York Magazine

1976 New York 26 July 43/3 At 38 she had 21 years of racket life behind her. Whereas Joe, that year, was still a Jimmy Cagney wannabe.

***

I scored it as 3 points if you matched the word to the source, and 3 points if you were closest to the decade (or 5 points bang on),

BB (42)
Dmitri (40)
TC (28)
paulh (18)

42!

<BB<

Surprised how early 'debug' is. Even more surprised to see that glitches in mechanical apparatus were called bugs even before the famous moth was found in a software relay.

That was a really cool quiz, Icy.

Thanks, Dmitri


'Bug' in that sense is attributed to Thomas Edison in 1889:

1889 Pall Mall Gaz. 11 Mar. 1/1 Mr. Edison, I was informed, had been up the two previous nights discovering ‘a bug’ in his phonograph—an expression for solving a difficulty, and implying that some imaginary insect has secreted itself inside and is causing all the trouble.

This is quoted in Wiki from a letter from Edison in 1878: "...then difficulties arise — this thing gives out and [it is] then that "Bugs" — as such little faults and difficulties are called — show themselves and months of intense watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success or failure is certainly reached."

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

Fascinating that the 'bug' concept goes back that far. Just goes to show you: great engineering minds, or 'nerds', as we call them, think alike.

Someone should publish Edison's letters, then tell the OED.

As a word nerd, I was hoping to score some points on decades. I'm fairly happy.

isti mirant stella.

isti mirant stella.
These men wonder at the star, in honor of halley's Comet in l066