New Term: "Benghazied"

"Benghazied" should mean:

what happens when government official caught out in a lie or misrepresentation and has to bear the responsibility for the action

As derived from here:

"Systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place," the panel said...it also said poor performance by senior managers should be grounds for disciplinary recommendations in the future...The board determined that there had been no immediate, specific tactical warning of a potential attack on the 11th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. However, the report said there had been several worrisome incidents in the run-up to the attack that should have set off warning bells.It did confirm, though, that contrary to initial accounts, there was no protest outside the consulate. It said responsibility for the incident rested entirely with the terrorists who attacked the mission.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, administration officials linked the attack to the spreading protests that had begun in Cairo earlier that day over an American-made, anti-Islamic film. Those comments came after evidence already pointed to a distinct militant attack.
United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on numerous TV talk shows the Sunday after the attack and used the administration talking points linking it to the film. An ensuing brouhaha in the heat of the presidential campaign eventually led her to withdraw her name from consideration to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state in President Barack Obama's second term.
While criticizing State Department management in Washington along with the local militia force and contract guards that the mission depended on for protection, the report said U.S. personnel on the ground in Benghazi "performed with courage and readiness to risk their lives to protect their colleagues in a near-impossible situation."

Susan Rice was benghazied.

Hillary Clinton may be benghazied.

My previous contribution to the English language.


^

The Difference Between Celebretarian and Cerebralian Intervention

Celebretarian Intervention is basically celebrity activism, the new

trending topic of the moment. Activists tend to grumble at celebrity do-gooders, but cable networks and politicians tend to focus on the world's undercovered hotspots more easily when there's a famous face to go along with a worthy cause.

Of course, what exactly is a "worthy cause" is an issue.  That may be relevant to "radical chic".

Cerebralian intervention is, as you could expect, an intellectual exercise and may, or may not be effective. It depends to whom you express your opinion and in what circumstances.

Think about it.

^

New Term: 'Vomit Article'

Found here:

“article vomit” - That term – coined by Chris Knight, chief executive of SparkNet Corp., which owns Ezinearticles.com — refers to the lower-quality articles that are prevalent on the Internet

^

Correct Language Terms: Judea and Samaria

From The Forward's "On Language" column penned by Philologos: This Side of the River Jordan

It’s obviously a losing battle, but I can’t help carrying on with the fight. Every time I see an item in the newspaper, like Jackson Diehl’s September 13 [2010] column on the current Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in The Washington Post, or Roger Cohen’s column on the same subject in the September 14 New York Times, I want to scream.

Here’s Mr. Diehl:

“Start with [Benjamin] Netanyahu… [his] rhetoric has been rapidly shifting: He’s begun calling [Palestinian President] Abbas ‘a partner for peace’ and using the term ‘West Bank’ rather than the Israeli nationalist term, ‘Judea and Samaria.’”

And here’s Mr. Cohen:

“The old Likudnik’s [Netanyahu’s] biblical reference lingers — Judea and Samaria for the West Bank — but he’s embraced two states because he’s grasped the alternative: more Arabs than Jews in a single state.”

How long will the canard continue to be repeated by supposedly educated journalists that “Judea” and “Samaria” are territorially expansionist terms, resurrected from the time of the Bible by right-wing Jewish settlers and their supporters, for a geographical area whose rightful name is “the West Bank”? When will this idiocy finally stop?

One would like to ask the Diehls, the Cohens and all the others a simple question: In the long centuries after the final redaction of the Hebrew Bible, which took place sometime in the second or first century BCE, what, in their humble opinion, was the hill country south and north of Jerusalem called?

It certainly wasn’t “the West Bank,” a term that is barely 60 years old. A translation of the Arabic ad-difa’a al-gharbiya, “the West Bank” was a coinage introduced in the early 1950s to denote the area of Palestine west of the Jordan River that was annexed by Transjordan — its name now changed to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan — following its conquest by King Abdullah’s Arab Legion in the 1948–49 Arab-Israeli war. You won’t find it in a single book, atlas or newspaper article before that.

What will you find? Well, let’s begin with the British period that immediately preceded Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. Having wrested Palestine from the Turks in World War I, and been given a mandate over it by the League of Nations in 1922, Great Britain divided the country that year into administrative districts. There were four of these: a “Southern District,” composed of the Hebron, Beersheba and Gaza sub-districts; a “Jerusalem-Jaffa District,” which included sub-districts for Bethlehem, Jericho and Ramallah; a “Northern District,” whose sub-districts were Acre, Haifa, Nazareth and Safed, and a “Samaria District,” made up of the Baisan (Bet-She’an), Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarm sub-districts. That’s right: The British, whom even Messrs. Cohen and Diehl would not confuse with “Israeli nationalists,” officially called the hill country north of Jerusalem, as far as the Valley of Jezreel, Samaria.

...long before the British Mandate, Judea was the standard English word for the hills around Bethlehem and Hebron, just as Samaria was for the hills farther north. Commercial European tourism to Palestine started in the mid-19th century, and from then on, England witnessed a spate of travel books reporting on visits there. All these books use similar terminology. Thus, to take an example that I happen to have on a bookshelf, the Rev. Samuel Manning’s “Those Holy Fields: Palestine Illustrated by Pen and Pencil,” published in London in 1874, has three sections: one on “Southern Palestine, or Judea,” with itineraries from “Jaffa to Hebron,” “Bethlehem to the Dead Sea,” and “Jericho and the Jordan to Jerusalem”; one on “Northern Palestine, or Galilee,” and one on “Central Palestine, or Samaria,” with itineraries from “Jerusalem to Shiloh” and “Nablus to the Plain of Esdraelon.” Manning, needless to say, was a Protestant minister, not a Jewish settler.

One could go back further, to 18th-century maps, and to the 14th-century “Travels of Sir John Mandeville” (which tells us that “Jerusalem is in the land of Judea, and it is clept Judea,” and that “Sichem” — Shechem or Nablus — is “in the province of Samaritans”), and to the fourth-century Church Father Eusebius of Caesaria’s Historica Ecclesiastica. Surely, however, there is no need. Judea and Samaria, although they derive from the Hebrew biblical terms Yehuda and Shomron, have been part of the geographical vocabulary of Christian Europe since the time of Jesus. “The West Bank” has not been.

To refuse to refer to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria is, whether deliberately or not, to declare that Jews and Christians have no historical connection to these areas. To malign others for calling them that is even worse.

He does miss this, from the UN 1947 Partition recommendation, whereby the Arab State boundaries are marked out in II A so:

The boundary of the hill country of Samaria and Judea starts on the Jordan River at the Wadi Malih south-east of Beisan...

And this:

...the first edition of Encyclopedia Britannica (1771) which defines “Palestine” as follows (quoted verbatim except old characters): Palestine, a part of Asiatic Turky (sic), situated between 36 and 38 degrees of east longitude, and between 31 and 34 degrees of north latitude; it is bounded by Mount Libanus, which divides it from Syria, on the north; by Mount Hermon, which separates it from Arabia Deserta, on the east; by the mountains of Seir and the Deserts of Arabia Petraea, on the south; and by the Mediterranean sea, on the west. It was called Palestine, from the Philistines who inhabited the sea coasts. It was also called Judea, from Judah; and the Holy Land, from our Savior’s residence and sufferings in it; and it is called Canaan, and the Promised Land, in the scriptures.

and finally, this:

It is now common for journalists to refer to the terms Judea and Samaria as the "biblical names" of this territory. The implication is that the neutral, geographical, non-politicized terminology is "West Bank" and the other terms are used only to propound a biblical case for Jewish rights in Palestine. From ancient times through the Palestine Mandate period until 1949, however, the names Judea and Samaria were the only names in use. Arab, British, and American scholars, journalists and government officials all called the region Judea and Samaria. See, e.g., Philip K. Hitti, History of Syria: Including Lebanon and Palestine (1951) p.38; Ronald Storrs, The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs (1937) p.301; John Bagot Glubb, Syria Lebanon Gordan (1967) p. 12; James G. MacDonald, My Mission in Israel (1951) p.40. Samaria was one of the six administrative districts of the British Mandatory government. The United Nations Special Committee for Palestine, in its famous Partition Plan for Western Palestine, which the UN General Assembly approved in November 1947, referred to the region as "the hill country of Samaria and Judea." "West Bank" came into use only after Transjordanian forces seized the territory in the 1948-49 war they launched against the newly declared State of Israel and after King Abdullah decided to annex it.

Use language correctly.

P.S.

Check this map from 1687 which uses Judea and Samaria. This map of 1826 and a map from 1895

Also this:

They (Judea and Samaria) are the definitive and proper political and geographic names for the region and have been in general use since Clearchus, a disciple of Aristotle. These two areas have no other names. These names were used during the League of Nations Mandate period. They appear in British government documents, United Nations documents including the UN Partition Plan of 1947. They appear in U.S. State Department documents, including a July 18, 1948 map. Even as late as 1961, the Encyclopedia Britannica refers to “Judaea” and “Samaria” in an article on “Palestine” (Vol. 17, p. 118).

...Mislabeling was their technique of disinformation and de-legitimization. The “West Bank” was the name concocted by King Abdullah I of Trans-Jordan and his British advisors, allowing the king to annex land outside of his artificially “created” kingdom. He then changed the name of his kingdom twice, first to “The Hashemite Kingdom of the Jordan” but that was quickly rejected since it gave the appearance of a kingdom only along the banks of the Jordan River. The name then was changed again to the “Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.” The term “West Bank” eradicates all Jewish historical connection to the area. It is a sad commentary that many in the West, including the political left, many of Israel’s supporters, some Israelis themselves, as well as the naive and self-delusional who think the name does not matter, have acquiesced to this unilateral change of names and use it in common parlance...

Besides the political origins of the phrase, one must wonder from a geographical perspective how wide a river bank can be? A river bank may be a few feet or so, but not some 30 miles deep from the river! Just because a new name is invented, does not mean the world should adopt it in common usage. Does an aggressor get rewarded with the additional bonus of a geographic name change designed to eradicate the historic name of a region? In March 1939, Germany renamed the present-day Czech Republic, “Böhmen und Mähren” after seizing that land by aggressive act. During World War II, Germany invaded, occupied and annexed part of Russia calling it “Ostland.” Do we use those terms today? Do we call Mexico the “South Bank” because it borders on the Rio Grande? Should we rename Serbia, the “West Bank” (of Europe) because it lies to the west of the Danube River and re-designate Poland the “East Bank” due to its location east of the Oder-Neisse Rivers?

And this as well.

^

Semantic Survey Watch: "Settlement Units"

Found:

Occupied Jerusalem, Feb. 20 (Petra)--The Israeli housing ministry plans to construct 3300 new settlement units in Jerusalem and the West Bank, a settlement expert said.

Expert in settlement affairs in occupied Jerusalem Qais Nasser told Petra's correspondent in Ramallah that the new units will be constructed in the settlements of Har Homa, Homat Shamuel and Ramat Shlomo.

Those units will multiply though.

^

SarcMark? What Putzes!

From here, I got to here and learned about this:


What?

Well, read on:

Its Time Has Come - SarcMark ® The official, easy-to-use punctuation mark to emphasize a sarcastic phrase, sentence or message. Once downloaded to your computer or cell phone, it’s a quick key-stroke or two to insert the ® where you want, when you want, in your communications with the world. Never again be misunderstood! Never again waste a good sarcastic line on someone who doesn’t get it!
Sarcasm - Punctuate It - SarcMark ®

Stand Up For Sarcasm - It needs a punctuation mark. Let your voice and written word be heard across the country, the continent, and the world.

So I look and all I see is the Hebrew letter 'pey'



well, a 'pey' with a stress mark (called dagesh in Hebrew) indicating a 'hard' P rather than a soft F sound.

And the 'pey' is the first letter of the denigratory "putz".

Ooops.

Or was I just being sarcastic?

Constipagen

Constipagen =

An irreverent term for the interminable negotiations.

Now, what would we Israelis call it?

Peace-making process?

I'm a Co-Vocabularist

Read the last lines of Paul Schott's post:

November 27, 2009, 7:02 am

Palinized

A term used to describe the vilification of female Republicans (as well as other associations with Sarah Palin).

Discussing sexism in the media, Julia Baird observed in Newsweek:

Now an ugly new term has entered the lexicon: being Palinized, usually intended to mean being viciously attacked for being female and Republican. GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann wrote in a letter to supporters that she did not want to be “Palinized” with personal attacks or “liberals’ scorn.” Former beauty queen Carrie Prejean claims she has been “Palinized” by the “liberal media” for her anti-gay-marriage views. And now Palin thinks she has been Palinized by NEWSWEEK, for last week’s cover image of her looking fit and posing in running shorts, even though she has been photographed and filmed more than once in aerobic gear (most recently on Oprah just a few days ago).

Palinization has been used in a variety of ways since Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential nomination:

· In September 2008, spectacle wearers hoping to emulate the “soccer mom” look reportedly asked opticians to “Palinize” them.

· At a Democratic fund-raising concert in October 2008, Bruce Springsteen joked that the audience ought not to expect the highest quality performance: “Palinize your expectations,” he quipped.

· Some observers discussed the Palinization of the McCain campaign – noting his concessions to the Christian Right.

· In December 2008, commentators suggested that Caroline Kennedy’s senatorial campaign managers had Palinized her, observing that her media appearances – like Sarah Palin’s – were carefully stage-managed.

· Other usages can be found in the Urban Dictionary.

(The co-vocabularist Yisrael Medad recently emailed Schott’s Vocab another Palin-related term, used in The Washington Post: Palinista – a Palin supporter.)

'Going Down The Tubes' Means What In England?

I thought up that title from this:-

With his greeting of 'Evenin' all', Dixon of Dock Green embodied the values of the solid, commonsense copper. But his reassuring salutation, which began each episode of the classic police TV drama from 1955 to 1976, is one which today's real-life officers should be wary of using.

According to one force's official guidelines, it could confuse people from different cultural backgrounds.

Warwickshire Police's handbook Policing Our Communities, issued to every member of its staff, gives advice on communicating with people from different ethnic groups in a section entitled Communication, Some Dos & Don’ts. It states: 'Don't assume those words for the time of day, such as afternoon or evening, have the same meaning.'

A force spokesman explained: 'Terms such as afternoon and evening are somewhat subjective in meaning and can vary according to a person's culture or nationality. In many cultures the term evening is linked to time of day when people have their main meal of the day.

'In some countries, including the UK, the evening meal time is traditionally thought of as being around 5-7pm but this might be different, say, for a family from America who might have their main meal earlier and thus for them evening may be an earlier time.'

Oh well, there goes the Empire.



P.S. the "tubes" mean the subway lines.

New Word: Goldstoned

goldstoned
 
–adjective Slang.

1. attacked for acting in a presumed criminal manner, in particular of abusing human rights and of performing war crimes, - in a manner and fashion which is unfair, based on questionable testimony, framed in radical and progressive political ideology and predicated on a perverse interpretation of law, all the while divorced from reality, principles of self-defense and the requirement of a state to protect its civilian population from terror.

2. deriv. dazed from such an attack, for example: "I am goldstoned from the things you say about me".

Origin:

2009 following the excoriation of Israel and its Operation Cast Lead in Gaza by Justice Richard Goldstone in his UN Human Rights Commission directed Fact-finding Mission.



--------------
For reference:

- The Goldstone report reflects the massive influence of NGOs, with more
than 500 direct citations from highly politicized groups that lack
credibility, many of which are funded by European governments.
- The reliance on statements, publications, and submissions from these
NGOs is inconsistent with the claim to have conducted a “fact finding
mission.” By adopting the flawed methodologies and false claims from the
NGOs, Goldstone renders his entire report and its conclusions invalid.
- NGOs and Goldstone maintain a symbiotic relationship: The NGO network
actively promoted the Goldstone inquiry, supported claims of a “balanced”
mandate, and attacked Israel for not cooperating.
- In turn, Goldstone bolstered NGO credibility by relying on their
publications, ignoring biases and false claims, praising their “high
professional standard,” and defending them against “repression” from the
Israeli government.

Highlights of the detailed reports include:

- Details on European government funded NGOs that shaped a major portion
of the claims and allegations targeting Israeli in the Goldstone.
- Goldstone and other members of the commission have close links to HRW,
Amnesty International, PCHR, and other politicized NGOs. Staff researcher
Sareta Ashraph has been involved with pro-Palestinian NGOs and “lawfare”
campaigns.
- The report adopts NGO misinterpretations of international law,
including the claims that Gaza remains occupied and that Israel does not
have a right to self-defense.
- NGO statements that did not fit Palestinian narrative were distorted or
ignored, in order to maximize the condemnations of Israel.

Flibbertigibbet?

And on the day I learn that Bill Safire died.

"Flibbertigibbet"?

Here:

Lord Mandelson accused "extreme right-wing" figures on the Internet for spreading rumours about Mr Brown's health, adding it was "absolutely ridiculous" to suggest the PM had a problem with pill use, and blamed politically motivated bloggers for raising the possibility.

"We have seen out there on the Internet, the blogosphere, all these extreme right-wing people trying to put these smears and rumours about, all completely groundless," he said.

...He suggested that the PM's often tired appearance might be an advantage compared to Conservative leader David Cameron, who he dismissed as a "flibbertigibbet" on Sunday night.

Goodness, even Shakespeare used it:

Flibbertigibbet is a Middle English word referring to a flighty or whimsical person, usually a young female. In modern use, it is used as a slang term, especially in Yorkshire, for a gossipy or overly talkative person. Its origin is in a meaningless representation of chattering.

This word also has a historical use as a name for a fiend, devil or sprite. In Shakespeare's King Lear...

But what exactly were those pills to do?

"Price Tag Policy" Makes It Linguistically Big

In the NYTimes:

Price Tag Policy

Attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank protesting against the actions of the Israeli army.

Reporting from Jerusalem for The Times of London, Sheera Frenkel wrote:

Israeli settlers on horseback set fire to fields of olive trees and stoned Palestinian cars in the West Bank yesterday, apparently in response to the Israeli army’s removal of an illegal outpost in the area.

At least 1,500 Palestinian-owned trees were destroyed and two Palestinians were injured in the attack, near the city of Nablus, by about 30 settlers, security officials said. Farmers fought fires late into the afternoon, as fears grew that the flames would spread across the dry summer fields.

Anshel Pfeffer and Jack Khoury noted in Haaretz that “olives are an important cash crop for Palestinians, who have complained of frequent attacks on their groves by settlers.” According to Frenkel:

It was the most recent example of the “price tag” policy, in which settlers seek revenge by attacking Palestinians for every outpost that is demolished. “The goal is to create a price for each evacuation, causing Israeli authorities to think twice about carrying them out,” the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din said.

A settler activist, Itamar Ben-Gvir, put it more directly: “We will not be suckers for the Israeli Government. We will not sit idly by and allow them to remove our homes,” he said.

The Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has pledged to remove some, though not all, of the illegal outposts; but Frenkel noted that “settler leaders have sworn to rebuild two for every one that is taken down”:

The settlements, built on land earmarked for a future Palestinian state, have emerged as a key sticking point in efforts between Israel and the international community to forge a peace deal. While the US and Britain have pushed Israel to agree to a complete settlement freeze and the dismantling of dozens of outposts, the Jewish state has sought a compromise that would mean only a partial freeze, and the completion of 2,500 homes already in the late stages of construction.

Elyakim Ha'Etzni, writing in the Hebrew in Besheva, severely criticizes this "Price Tag' policy and until I have a translation, here's his words:

"תג מחיר"? גול עצמי!

בתגובה על הריסת צריפים ופחונים בכמה מאחזים, דקירות-סיכה של ברק, חסרות פשר כפי שהן נבזיות ומרגיזות, הגיבו צעירים יהודים ביידוי אבנים ובשריפת שדות של ערבים, ולהתפרעות הזאת הם קוראים "תג מחיר".

במטותא מכם, חברים, ממי אתם גובים את המחיר הזה? האם לא רצוי לחשוב לפני שפועלים, לכוון היטב בטרם יורים?

אז הנה:

1. "תג מחיר" אמור להיות עונש. אבל את מי מענישים כשפוגעים בערבים בתגובה על רשעות שר הביטחון? האם גירוי הערבים להתקומם מרתיע את ברק? האם לא להיפך, דווקא נוח לו שהערבים ייראו כקורבן והמתנחלים כתוקפן?

הלא כללי המשחק השתנו. כיום, ברק ועימו הממסד השמאלני במשרד הביטחון ובמינהל האזרחי משתפים פעולה עם הרש"פ נגד המתנחלים, ושני הצדדים מעוניינים שמן הפגיעות הבלתי מוצדקות בערבים – הערבים יצאו טוב, והמתנחלים – רע!

2. זה כמה שנים שהשמאל סובל מ"בצורת" בהשחתת עצי זית של ערבים על ידי מתנחלים, שכל כך הצליחה להשחיר את פניהם ולרצוח את אופיים: פורעים, חוליגנים, פוגרומיסטים – כבר אמרנו? עד כדי כך, שהיה צורך להביא משור ולביים כריתות עצים. כעת באו פעילי "תג המחיר" ומספקים את הביקוש של אויביהם.

כי זאת לדעת: אפילו דיקטטורים, כשהם רוצים לפגוע במישהו, מפעילים נגדו תחילה מסע תעמולתי כדי להכשיר את הלבבות. ואיך עושים את זה? מייחסים לקורבן המיועד את הפשעים שזוממים לבצע נגדו. רוצים לגזול את רכושו? מציגים אותו כגנב וכרמאי. רוצים להרגו? מאשימים אותו ברציחת ילדים לאפיית מצות. כך עשו ליהודים, וכך עשה ויעשה למתנחלים שלטון שזומם להחריב את בתיהם, לשבור את עצמותיהם ולהפכם לפליטים. הצגת מתנחלים את עצמם כשורפי שדות וכתוקפי שכנים ערבים באבנים על לא עוול בכפם, מעשה שכל אדם הגון יתקומם נגדו, משרתת היטב את מתכנני קץ ההתנחלות. היכן כאן התבונה?

3. ויש גם הצד הערבי. הם אינם חובבי ציון, ונכון שהיו מעדיפים לראות אותנו מתאדים. אבל ראוי לזכור תמיד, שיכול היה להיות, חלילה, הרבה יותר גרוע. לשם כך לא צריך להפעיל את הדמיון, די בזיכרון. אנחנו נהנים עכשיו משקט יחסי, לאחר הדברת האינתיפאדה השנייה ולפני ש"תהליך השלום" המתחדש יביא עלינו חלילה את המלחמה הפלשתינית השלישית.

במקום לנצל את השקט הזה כדי להתחזק, להביא עוד מתנחלים ולבנות ולהתרחב על אף הגזירות – האם חסר לנו לפתוח לעצמנו עכשיו חזית שנייה עם הערבים?

4. ומי ייקח אחריות למותו, חלילה, או לפציעתו של אדם שייפגע ממעשי נקם של ערבים שיהודים פגעו בהם ללא כל פרובוקציה מצידם?

5. בוודאי שמתם לב שלשמאל מפריע השקט השורר בין מתנחלים לשכניהם הערבים, מפני שהוא סותר את משנתם, שיהודים וערבים אינם יכולים לחיות בשכנות, ולכן היהודים צריכים ללכת. ומה אתם עושים? מספקים להם ראיות, שאכן השכנות היהודית פוגענית ותוקפנית, ועל כן – ימיה ספורים!

6. אין ספק, שבקונסוליה האמריקנית אוספים בשקיקה את תצלומי שדות הערבים שהוצתו על ידי יהודים. לא מן הנמנע שגם מלשינים משלום עכשיו ממציאים להם את החומר. אך מי ייצר את "הראיות המרשיעות"? אנחנו בעצמנו!

אפשר לסכם: ההתנכלויות של ברק (באחריות ראש הממשלה) אכן ראויות לגביית מחיר, אך למען השם - לא המחיר הזה, ולא מן הערבים!

Shwarma Made It Into Webster's

Frenemy, locavore among new words in Webster's

...Or perhaps you plan to signal a flash mob for a quick bite of shawarma.

If you're not entirely certain what all that means, turn to the latest edition of the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, which has added about 100 new words that largely reflect changing trends in American society.

John Morse, president and publisher of the Springfield-based dictionary publisher, said many of this year's new words are tied to changes in technology, increasing environmental awareness and aging baby boomers' concerns about their health and have become part of the general lexicon.

...There are words such as locavore (one who eats foods grown locally), frenemy (someone who acts like a friend but is really an enemy), waterboarding (an interrogation technique use to induce the sensation of drowning), vlogs (a blog that contains video material) and webisode (a TV show that can be viewed at a Web site).

...Many words have cross-cultural roots, including shawarma (a sandwich especially of sliced lamb or chicken, vegetables, and often tahini wrapped in pita bread)...Once words like these become so common that they regularly pop up in conversations and published articles, Morse said they pass muster for being included in the dictionary.

...Researchers often keep track of words over many years. One to watch: prepone.

The word is commonly used in India among English-speaking Indians and refers to the act of arranging for an event to take place earlier than originally planned -- the opposite of postpone. "Prepone didn't make it this time," Morse said. "But we know about it."

Did we "steal" that term, too, like we did "felafel"?

"Jews" Begins with "J" But So Does "Japanese"

Bagels are considered a "Jewish" food.

Bagelheads, though, are people who inject saline into their foreheads to create bagel-shaped lumps.

But does this linguistic note have anything to do with Jews?

So far, no no

Bizarremag reported recently on an extreme body-modification fad sweeping
the Japanese club scene, wherein people inject their foreheads with saline
solution – causing bagel-shaped swellings:

They look like alien abductees, fresh from invasive research by their
interplanetary masters. But these are Japanese club kids, otherwise known as
bagelheads, deliberately disfiguring themselves by experimenting with saline
inflations.

These self-inflicted saline swellings last approximately 24 hours, and
can be molded into shapes and colored with food dyes.

but...?

No More "Militant"; It's "Terrorfighter"

I have been waging a campaign against the use of the term "militant" by the media (see numerous entries here at this blog).

I think I have found an alternative, based on this section of memoir I found here:

Dave’s graduation from the Basic School at Quantico (which the grandmother referred to silently as Guantánamo) took place this spring...In a filled auditorium, a colonel welcomed them. He referred to himself as a teacher and the trainees as students. Quantico was a “campus.” The course was divided into segments: leadership; academics; military skills. The men were being trained not to be soldiers or marines but “warfighters.”

So, does "terrorfighter" work?

Odd Choice of Description

Ynet's headline:

Palestinians injured by veiled settlers

Are men "veiled" or only women?




The adjective should have been "masked" I think.


P.S.

I do not support random indiscriminate violence nor do I support attacks on civilians or others unrelated to any instance of previous violence. I do believe in self-defense. Just in case you had doubts.

New Word: Naksa

Ever heard of naksa (which I found in this Reuters story)?

For Hanan, sitting in the sparsely furnished house where she was born five days before the war, each birthday is overshadowed by mourning the "naksa," or setback, of 1967, which followed the "nakba," disaster, of 1948 when her family fled its farm in what is now Israel as the Jewish state fought its way into being.

"I've never taken any pleasure in my birthday," she says, clad in black, as she tends to her invalid mother and seven children in the Qalandiya refugee camp outside Ramallah.

Making the point, she displays her identity card showing her "official birthday" as June 5, 1967 -- the day of the naksa, a day that ever since, she says, has been marked far more by protest and demonstrations than by any personal celebration.

Notice, first it appears in quotation marks but the second time, it already becomes a proper English word.

Funny, though. In Hebrew slang, the word "nachs" (pronounced as if with a guttural 'x') - נעכס - means "crummy", "lousy" or "bummer".

=============

A friend commented to me:

I think it's from the Italian-Afro-American slang: "I no aksa questions" – or in short: "naksa". The statement is a clear statement that the person accepts reality and has given up on asking any questions.