Tài liệu The Oxford Dictionary of New Words: A popular guide to words in the news doc

The Oxford Dictionary of New Words:

A popular guide to words in the news

PREFACE Preface

This is the first dictionary entirely devoted to new words and meanings to

have been published by the Oxford University Press. It follows in the

tradition of the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary in attempting

to record the history of some recent additions to the language, but,

unlike the Supplement, it is necessarily very selective in the words,

phrases, and meanings whose stories it sets out to tell and it stands as

an independent work, unrelated (except in the resources it draws upon) to

the Oxford English Dictionary.

The aim of the Oxford Dictionary of New Words is to provide an informative

and readable guide to about two thousand high-profile words and phrases

which have been in the news during the past decade; rather than simply

defining these words (as dictionaries of new words have tended to do in

the past), it also explains their derivation and the events which brought

them to prominence, illustrated by examples of their use in journalism and

fiction. In order to do this, it draws on the published and unpublished

resources of the Oxford English Dictionary, the research that is routinely

carried out in preparing new entries for that work, and the word-files and

databases of the Oxford Dictionary Department.

What is a new word? This, of course, is a question which can never be

answered satisfactorily, any more than one can answer the question "How

long is a piece of string?" It is a commonplace to point out that the

language is a constantly changing resource, growing in some areas and

shrinking in others from day to day. The best one can hope to do in a book

of this kind is to take a snapshot of the words and senses which seem to

characterize our age and which a reader in fifty or a hundred years' time

might be unable to understand fully (even if these words were entered in

standard dictionaries) without a more expansive explanation of their

social, political, or cultural context. For the purposes of this

dictionary, a new word is any word, phrase, or meaning that came into

popular use in English or enjoyed a vogue during the eighties and early

nineties. It is a book which therefore necessarily deals with passing

fashions: most, although probably not all, of the words and senses defined

here will eventually find their way into the complete history of the

language provided by the Oxford English Dictionary, but many will not be

entered in smaller dictionaries for some time to come, if at all.

It tends to be the case that "new" words turn out to be older than people

expect them to be. This book is not limited to words and senses which

entered the language for the first time during the eighties, nor even the

seventies and eighties, because such a policy would mean excluding most of

the words which ordinary speakers of English think of as new; instead, the

deciding factor has been whether or not the general public was made aware

of the word or sense during the eighties and early nineties. A few words

included here actually entered the language as technical terms as long ago

as the nineteenth century (for example, acid rain was first written about

in the 1850s and the greenhouse effect was investigated in the late

nineteenth century, although it may not have acquired this name until the

1920s); many computing terms date from the late 1950s or early 1960s in

technical usage. It was only (in the first case) the surge of interest in

environmental issues and the sudden fashion for "green" concerns and (in

the second) the boom in home and personal computing touching the lives of

large numbers of people that brought these words into everyday vocabulary

during the eighties.

There is, of course, a main core of words defined here which did only

appear for the first time in the eighties. There are even a few which

arose in the nineties, for which there is as yet insufficient evidence to

say whether they are likely to survive. Some new-words dictionaries in the

past have limited themselves to words and senses which have not yet been

entered in general dictionaries. The words treated in the Oxford

Dictionary of New Words do not all fall into this category, for the

reasons outlined above. Approximately one-quarter of the main headwords

here were included in the new words and senses added to the Oxford English

Dictionary for its second edition in 1989; a small number of others were

entered for the first time in the Concise Oxford Dictionary's eighth

edition in 1990.

The articles in this book relate to a wide range of different subject

fields and spheres of interest, from environmentalism to rock music,

politics to youth culture, technology to children's toys. Just as the

subject coverage is inclusive, treating weighty and superficial topics as

even-handedly as possible, so the coverage of different registers, or

levels of use, of the language is intended to give equal weight to the

formal, the informal, and examples of slang and colloquialism. This

results in a higher proportion of informal and slang usage than would be

found in a general dictionary, reflecting amongst other things the way in

which awareness of register seems to be disappearing as writers

increasingly use slang expressions in print without inverted commas or any

other indication of their register. The only registers deliberately

excluded are the highly literary or technical in cases where the

vocabulary concerned had not gained any real popular exposure. Finally, a

deliberate attempt was made to represent English as a world language, with

new words and senses from US English accounting for a significant

proportion of the entries, along with more occasional contributions from

Australia, Canada, and other English-speaking countries. It is hoped that

the resulting book will prove entertaining reading for English speakers of

all ages and from all countries.

PREFACE.1 Acknowledgements

I am grateful to John Simpson and Edmund Weiner, Co-Editors of the Oxford

English Dictionary, for their help and advice throughout the writing of

this book, and in particular for their constructive comments on the first

draft of the text; to OED New Words editors Edith Bonner, Peter Gilliver,

Danuta Padley, Bernadette Paton, Judith Pearsall, Michael Proffitt, and

Anthony Waddell, on whose draft entries for the OED I based much of what I

have written here; to Peter Gilliver, Simon Hunt, Veronica Hurst, and

Judith Pearsall for help with corrections and additions to the text; to

Melinda Babcock, Nancy Balz, Julie Bowdler, George Chowdharay-Best,

Melissa Conway, Margaret Davies, Margery Fee, Ken Feinstein, Daphne

Gilbert-Carter, Dorothy Hanks, Sally Hinkle, Sarah Hutchinson, Rita

Keckeissen, Adriana Orr, and Jeffery Triggs for quotation and library

research; and, last but not least, to Trish Stableford for giving up

evenings and weekends to do the proofreading.

HOWTO How to Use this Dictionary

This topic, with some modification, has been reproduced from the printed

hard-copy version of this dictionary. Some display devices limit the

effects of the highlighting techniques used in this book. You can see

what your display device provides by looking at the following examples:

This is an example of large bold type

This is an example of italic type

This is an example of bold type

The entries in this dictionary are of two types: full entries and

cross-reference entries.

HOWTO.1 Full entries

Full entries normally contain five sections:

1. Headword section

The first paragraph of the entry, or headword section, gives

° the main headword in large bold type

Where there are two different headwords which are spelt in the

same way, or two distinct new meanings of the same word, these are

distinguished by superior numbers after the headword.

° the part of speech, or grammatical category, of the word in italic

type

In this book, all the names of the parts of speech are written out

in full. The ones used in the book are adjective, adverb,

interjection, noun, pronoun, and verb There are also entries in

this book for the word-forming elements (combining form, prefix,

and suffix) and for abbreviations, which have abbreviation in the

part-of-speech slot if they are pronounced letter by letter in

speech (as is the case, for example, with BSE or PWA), but acronym

if they are normally pronounced as words in their own right (Aids,

NIMBY, PIN, etc.).

When a new word or sense is used in more than one part of speech,

the parts of speech are listed in the headword section of the

entry and a separate definition section is given for each part of

speech.

° other spellings of the headword (if any) follow the part of speech

in bold type

° the subject area(s) to which the word relates are shown at the end

of the headword section in parentheses (see "Subject Areas" in

topic HOWTO.5).

The subject areas are only intended to give a general guide to the

field of use of a particular word or sense. In addition to the

subject area, the defining section of the entry often begins with

further explanation of the headword's application.

2. Definition section

The definition section explains the meaning of the word and sometimes

contains information about its register (the level or type of language

in which it is used) or its more specific application in a particular

field; it may also include phrases and derived forms of the headword

(in bold type) or references to other entries. References to other

entries have been converted to hypertext links.

3. Etymology

The third section of the entry begins a new paragraph and starts with

the heading Etymology: This explains the origin and formation of the

headword. Some words or phrases in this section may be in italic type,

showing that they are the forms under discussion. Cross-references to

other headwords in this book have been converted to hypertext links.

4. History and Usage

The fourth section also begins a new paragraph and starts with the

heading History and Usage. Here you will find a description of the

circumstances under which the headword entered the language and came

into popular use. In many cases this section also contains information

about compounds and derived forms of the headword (as well as some

other related terms), all listed in bold type, together with their

definitions and histories. As elsewhere in the entry, cross-references

to other headwords have been converted to hypertext links.

5. Illustrative quotations

This final section of the entry begins a new paragraph and is indented

approximately 5 character spaces from the left margin of the previous

text line. These illustrative quotations are arranged in a single

chronological sequence, even when they contain examples of a number of

different forms. The illustrative quotations in this book do not

include the earliest printed example in the Oxford Dictionaries

word-file (as would be the case, for example, in the Oxford English

Dictionary); instead, information about the date of the earliest

quotations is given in the history and usage section of the entry and

the illustrative quotations aim to give a representative sample of

recent quotations from a range of sources. The sources quoted in this

book represent English as a world language, including quotations from

the UK, the US, Australia, Canada, India, South Africa, and other

English-speaking countries. They are taken for the most part from

works of fiction, newspapers, and popular magazines (avoiding wherever

possible the more technical or academic sources in favour of the more

popular and accessible). There are nearly two thousand quotations

altogether, taken from five hundred different sources.

HOWTO.2 Cross-reference entries

Because this book is designed to provide more information than the

standard dictionary and to give an expansive account of the recent history

of certain words and concepts, there is some grouping together of related

pieces of information in a single article. This means that, in addition to

the full entry, there is a need for cross-reference entries leading the

reader from the normal alphabetical place of a word or phrase to the full

entry in which it is discussed. Cross-reference entries are single-line

entries containing only the headword (with a superior number if identical

to some other headword), a subject area or areas to give some topical

orientation, the word "see," and the headword under which the information

can be found. For example:

ESA see environmentally

A cross-reference entry is given only if there is a significant distance

between the alphabetical places of the cross-referenced headword and the

full entry in which it is mentioned. Thus the compounds and derived forms

of a full headword are not given their own cross-reference entries because

these would immediately follow the full entry; the same is true of the

words which start with one of the common initial elements (such as eco- or

Euro-) which have their own full entries listing many different formations

in which they are used. On the other hand, the forms grouped together by

their final element (for example, words ending in -friendly or -gate) are

all entered as cross-reference entries in their normal alphabetical

places.

HOWTO.3 Alphabetical order

The full and cross-reference entries in this book are arranged in a single

alphabetical sequence in letter-by-letter alphabetical order (that is,

ignoring spaces, hyphens, and other punctuation which occurs within them).

The following headwords, taken from the letter E, illustrate the point:

E°

Eý

e°

earcon

eco

eco-

ecobabble

ecological

ecu

E-free

EFTPOS

enterprise culture

enterprise zone

E number

HOWTO.4 Pronunciation Symbols

Pronunciation symbols which follow the headword in printed copy have been

excluded from this soft-copy edition. In-line pronunciation symbols have

been replaced with /--/.

HOWTO.5 Subject Areas

The subject areas in parentheses at the end of the headword section of

each entry indicate the broad subject field to which the headword relates.

The subject areas used are:

Drugs words to do with drug use and abuse

Environment words to do with conservation, the environment, and green

politics

Business World words to do with work, commerce, finance, and marketing

Health and Fitness

words to do with conventional and complementary medicine,

personal fitness, exercise, and diet

Lifestyle and Leisure

words to do with homes and interiors, fashion, the media,

entertainment, food and drink, and leisure activities in

general

Music words to do with music of all kinds (combined with Youth

Culture in entries concerned with pop and rock music)

Politics words to do with political events and issues at home and

abroad

People and Society

words to do with social groupings and words for people with

particular characteristics; social issues, education, and

welfare

Science and Technology

words to do with any branch of science in the public eye;

technical jargon that has entered the popular vocabulary

War and Weaponry

words to do with the arms race or armed conflicts that have

been in the news

Youth Culture words which have entered the general vocabulary through

their use among young people

CONTENTS Table of Contents

Title Page TITLE

Edition Notice EDITION

Notices NOTICES

Preface PREFACE

Acknowledgements PREFACE.1

How to Use this Dictionary HOWTO

Full entries HOWTO.1

Cross-reference entries HOWTO.2

Alphabetical order HOWTO.3

Pronunciation Symbols HOWTO.4

Subject Areas HOWTO.5

Table of Contents CONTENTS

A 1.0

AAA 1.1

abled... 1.2

ace... 1.3

Adam... 1.4

aerobics 1.5

affinity card... 1.6

ageism 1.7

AI... 1.8

Alar... 1.9

angel dust... 1.10

Aqua Libra... 1.11

arb... 1.12

asset 1.13

ATB... 1.14

audio-animatronics... 1.15

aware... 1.16

Azeri... 1.17

B 2.0

babble... 2.1

beat box... 2.2

bhangra 2.3

bicycle moto-cross... 2.4

black economy... 2.5

BMX. 2.6

boardsailing... 2.7

brat pack... 2.8

BSE... 2.9

B two (B2) bomber 2.10

bubblehead... 2.11

bypass 2.12

C 3.0

cable television... 3.1

CD 3.2

Ceefax... 3.3

CFC 3.4

chair... 3.5

citizen-friendly 3.6

claimant... 3.7

cocooning... 3.8

crack... 3.9

CT 3.10

cursor... 3.11

cyberpunk... 3.12

D 4.0

dairy-free... 4.1

... 4.2

ddI... 4.3

deafened... 4.4

diddy goth... 4.5

doc, docu-... 4.6

dramadoc... 4.7

DTP 4.8

dude... 4.9

DVI 4.10

dweeb 4.11

dynamize 4.12

E 5.0

E°... 5.1

earcon... 5.2

eco... 5.3

E-free... 5.4

EFTPOS... 5.5

EGA card 5.6

electro... 5.7

email... 5.8

enterprise culture... 5.9

EPOS 5.10

ERM 5.11

ESA 5.12

etext... 5.13

Euro... 5.14

Eve 5.15

exchange rate mechanism... 5.16

F 6.0

F 6.1

faction... 6.2

FF 6.3

FF 6.4

fibre... 6.5

flak... 6.6

fontware... 6.7

F-plan 6.8

free... 6.9

fudge and mudge... 6.10

G 7.0

gag me with a spoon... 7.1

gel... 7.2

ghetto blaster 7.3

GIFT... 7.4

G-Jo 7.5

glam... 7.6

go... 7.7

graphic novel... 7.8

guestage... 7.9

H 8.0

hack... 8.1

headbanger... 8.2

hidden agenda... 8.3

HM 8.4

hog... 8.5

... 8.6

HRT 8.7

HTLV, human immunodeficiency virus, human T-cell lymphocyte virus 8.8

human shield... 8.9

hype... 8.10

I 9.0

ice... 9.1

IKBS 9.2

immune... 9.3

incendiary device... 9.4

indie... 9.5

Iran-contra... 9.6

Italian house... 9.7

IVF 9.8

J 10.0

jack... 10.1

jack... 10.2

job-sharing... 10.3

jukebox... 10.4

K 11.0

K 11.1

karaoke 11.2

keyboard... 11.3

kidflation... 11.4

krytron 11.5

L 12.0

lab... 12.1

LBO... 12.2

leaderene... 12.3

lifestyle... 12.4

LMS 12.5

lock... 12.6

LRINF 12.7

luggable... 12.8

Lyme disease... 12.9

M 13.0

McGuffin... 13.1

mad cow disease... 13.2

MBO 13.3

MDMA 13.4

ME... 13.5

microwave... 13.6

moi... 13.7

MRI... 13.8

muesli belt... 13.9

myalgic encephalomyelitis... 13.10

N 14.0

nab... 14.1

neato... 14.2

nibble... 14.3

NMR... 14.4

no-alcohol beer... 14.5

non-ism... 14.6

nuclear device... 14.7

nyaff... 14.8

O 15.0

offender's tag... 15.1

oilflation... 15.2

oink... 15.3

on-and-on rap... 15.4

optical disc... 15.5

Oracle... 15.6

OTE... 15.7

out... 15.8

ozone... 15.9

P 16.0

package... 16.1

PC... 16.2

peace camp... 16.3

p-funk... 16.4

phencyclidine... 16.5

piece... 16.6

PLA, PLWA... 16.7

pneumocystis carinii pneumonia... 16.8

poaching... 16.9

pre-Aids... 16.10

psychobabble... 16.11

puff-ball... 16.12

PWA... 16.13

Q 17.0

qinghaosu... 17.1

quaffable... 17.2

R 18.0

racquet abuse... 18.1

reader-friendly... 18.2

rhythmic gymnastics 18.3

right-to-life... 18.4

rock... 18.5

RPG 18.6

Rubik... 18.7

S 19.0

sab... 19.1

SBS 19.2

scratch... 19.3

SDI 19.4

SEAQ... 19.5

shareware... 19.6

sick building... 19.7

ska house... 19.8

ska house... 19.9

smart... 19.10

snuff 19.11

soca... 19.12

space shuttle, Space Transportation System... 19.13

SRINF 19.14

Stalkergate... 19.15

sugar-free... 19.16

sweep... 19.17

T 20.0

tablet... 20.1

TBS 20.2

techno... 20.3

Thatcher... 20.4

tight building syndrome... 20.5

TOE... 20.6

train surfing... 20.7

tubular... 20.8

tweak... 20.9

U 21.0

UDMH... 21.1

unban... 21.2

use-by date... 21.3

V 22.0

vaccine... 22.1

VCR 22.2

vegeburger... 22.3

video nasty... 22.4

Vodafone... 22.5

W 23.0

wack... 23.1

well safe... 23.2

wheat-free... 23.3

wicked... 23.4

wok... 23.5

wrinklie 23.6

WYSIWYG 23.7

X 24.0

XTC 24.1

Y 25.0

yah... 25.1

yo 25.2

yuppie... 25.3

Z 26.0

zap 26.1

zero 26.2

Zidovudine... 26.3

zouave... 26.4

Zuppie 26.5

zygote intra-fallopian transfer 26.6

1.0 A

1.1 AAA

AAA (War and Weaponry) see triple A

1.2 abled...

abled adjective (People and Society)

Able-bodied, not disabled. Also (especially with a preceding

adverb): having a particular range of physical abilities;

differently abled, otherly abled, uniquely abled: euphemistic