Here are some of the interesting and funny words I’ve run across recently. Most are from Buzzwhack and urbandictionary.com:
- Academic junk food: College courses with no value other than being an easy way to get an A.
- Anticipointment: The feeling you get when a product or event doesn’t live up to its own hype.
- Ghost work: The workload absorbed by the surviving staff after a layoff, generally with little notice or proper training.
- Golfmail: The result of forwarding your office phone, email etc. to your cellphone, allowing you to play 18 holes while maintaining the illusion that you’re at your desk.
- Premature officiation: When the hockey referee loses sight of the puck momentarily and mistakenly blows the whistle to stop play.
- Rebound job: A job you take, often due to the loss of your old job, knowing it isn’t long-term.
- Reinventing the flat tire: To make the same mistake already made before, despite extended debate and a formal vote.
- Scooby snacks: Token compensation, usually non-monetary, given as an award. From the cartoon Scooby-Doo.
- Urban Amish: A city dweller with no cellphone, no laptop, no iPod, no BlackBerry…
What fun words have you seen lately?
In my day, we called those easy ones “bird courses.” And I identify with “urban Amish” by that definition, even though I live in the country with horses across the road, coyotes crossing my back yard, skunks under my garden shed…still, no handheld devices of any kind. I don’t even yet have high-speed Internet. As for other fun words, I think of a certain “Big Daddy Festival” that didn’t quite live up to its hype, earning the name…”Big Duddy Festival!” Ah, the power of a vowel!
I had heard the term “bird courses” too. Where does it come from, I wonder?