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

Emo? What's that? To me it looks like Elmo with the L left out.

emo........ goths who a rebeling because the older generation are still goths

Fussed

A word that I first heard four months ago, people would say 'I am not fussed instead I am not bothered one way or the other. I keep on wondering who starts these for new words and phrases.

I think will start a new one:
On-buzz words - people forever spouting out sales jargon and mission statments but without any real belief of what they are saying.

Wikipedia defines emo as:

"Emo (pronounced /ˈiːmoʊ/) is a style of rock music typically characterized by melodic musicianship and expressive, often confessional lyrics. It originated in the mid-1980s hardcore punk movement of Washington, D.C., where it was known as "emotional hardcore" or "emocore" and pioneered by bands such as Rites of Spring and Embrace."

Confesisonal? I confess that I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to punk music.

Two expressions that I learned from Malcom and the Middle/Simpsons - wuss (a coward) and fessing up (owing up or confessing).

Humungus...................

Meaning very large..




GT

Kat "not fussed" is a northern expression as in ain't bothered either way

Northern expressions can be very practical and direct.

saves a married man a lot of grief, when wife choosing clothes etc

Blue sky thinking - is a new management cliche used in business now.

Mindset - A word that I first started hearing in the past five years, this one of the new buzz words.

"Blue sky thinking" is probably very different in meaning from the older expression "blue sky laws," which referred to laws that were so meaningless or ineffective that they weren't worth a patch of blue sky.

Are we looking for newly coined words here, or for new usages of old ones? Twitter, for instance, is an old word which has been invested with a new meaning - arguably not much different from the original one.

Yuppy and dinky were coined in the 80s, weren't they? They both appear in my 89 edition of Chambers, as does yumpie, which was an earlier form of yuppie and is probably no longer used. Another word, coined about the same time, that doesn't seem to have found its way into mainstream dictionaries, is lombard (loads of money but a right dick). I'm surprised this hasn't found favour in the last year or two.

A few decades ago I thought I had coined a new word, viz. 'sprauncy' - a fusion of sprightly, jaunty and bouncy, but I see this is also in my 89 Chambers, meaning smart or dapper - although it is a "recent British slangonym for trendy, flashy, showy, well presented" according to definition-of.com. I'm guessing that slangonym is a fairly new word, it certainly is to me.

>>Are we looking for newly coined words here, or for new usages of old ones?<<

Both I guess. It's hard to come up with truly new words.

Not really difficult to come up with new words......

The tireless committee at the O.E.D. have to deal with numerous requests for inclusion each year....



GT

Blamestorming - Sitting in a group and discussing with others why their project was failed or a deadline was missed and then discussing who was responsible.

An 'old' word, therefore 'new' to today's kids is 'Spuggie'

That is the word used when I was a kid 50+ years ago for chewing gum...






GT

"Spuggie" is new to me, even though I was chewing gum when it was in its first period of usage. I guess this gives me a second chance to use it? (Not that I have many teeth left )