Language – new words and new meanings

123 – I agree 

I remember .123 was the file extension for the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet.

I also remember that Section 123 was an important part of the United States Atomic Energy Act of 1954. It allowed cooperation with many countries, including Russia, India, China, etc. European countries were included under an agreement with Euratom, which included automatic nuclear fuel re-processing rights.

143 – I love you (counting the letters 1-4-3)
1433 – I love you too (letters 1-4-3-3)

420 – general term for anything to do with cannabis culture, and I suppose comes from the California Senate Bill 420 (the Medical Marijuana Program Act)

Frankly I remember it more as 4-2-0, a classification of steam locomotives. Also occasionally on holiday my wife and I would try to sail a 420 (dinghy), and usually fail miserably.

5150 – California police code for ‘escaped lunatic’ (see Lanterman-Petris-Short Act)

If you ever hear this code, run, they might be after you.

82 – I hate you

You can no longer reply “likewise” which now means “I agree”, so try “up yours”, which can be quite effective.

99 – parents no longer around

When I saw this I had to hunt around to find something I vaguely remembered, the 99, a type of ice cream served with a chocolate flake.

A3 – Anytime, Anywhere, Anyplace, which can mean to meet to have sex, buy drugs, or even fight

Until I found this definition I just thought it meant A3 sized paper.

Accountability Sink – a set of rules that mean no individual can be blamed for a decision

It has to prevent the feedback of the person affected by the decision from affecting the operation of the system.

Ad clutter – the constant bombardment with ads across every media

Addleware – variety of goods in supermarkets that confuse and muddle older customers.

Nice to see an out-of-date word being repurposed, i.e. addled meant confused.

Ad load – the amount of time people watch TV ads

Agnotology – is the study of cultural induced ignorance or doubt, particular created by the publication of inaccurate and misleading ‘scientific data‘ (which we now know is called pink-slime)

Algebra – “a cruel pointless subject still taught in schools“

Alternative Facts – the defence of a false statement by saying it was “alternative facts”

The American way – the wrong way, but faster.

Of course the American Way references the principle of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is often quoted that Winston Churchill once observed that Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else, but there is no proof he actually said this.

Antidextrous – not good with either hand

Area 51% – the area of the US that votes Republican

Astroturfing – is the practice of hiding or masking the (financial) sponsors of a message to make it appear as if it originated from grassroots activism (i.e. spontaneous and often local)

Autopilot – “what most people do at work“

Awfuliser – someone who always predicts the worst outcome

Backseat cook – telling someone how to cook something

Bangalored – relocated to India

Barnacle – a clinging or dependent person

Barn-find – antique (more than a hundred years old)

Becky – a stereotype for a white woman, especially one who is unaware or takes advantage of her social privilege

Bedlam – meaning uproar and confusion. It derives from the Bethlem Royal Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Bromley, London

This word will certain return given the state of world politics today.

Bedwetting – exhibition of emotional overreaction

Beef-witted (beef-brained, thick-headed) – stupid, dull, idiot

This was used by Shakespeare, but it has that modernist connotation, so I guarantee it will be back.

Big Lie – a propaganda technique where the lie is so ‘colossal’ that no one would believe that someone could be that stupid, so maybe it’s true

Bilinguals – people who are experts in government issues and data science

Bizza – a big pizza

Blackguard – a scoundrel

Both blackguard and scoundrel will soon reappear because given the state of world politics, we can’t have enough words to describe dangerous idiots. 

Blank-collar workers – are the new post-class class. Neither middle class nor working class, and certainly not rich, blank-collar workers are aware of their status as simply one unit among seven billion other units. Blank-collar workers rely on a grab bag of skills to pay the rent. 

BLUF – Bottom Line Up Front – means putting the key conclusions at the beginning

Boomer holes – a house with holes for cable TV and landlines previously owned by a baby-boomer

Booth babe – a promotional model, an attractive woman hired to draw attendees of commercial exhibitions into promotional booths

Bounty bar – a white-acting black person

Bozo explosion – what happens when an incompetent executive hires incompetent managers, who hire incompetent workers

Brigading – the practice of organising or participating in a coordinated campaign of online harassment against a targeted individual or group, especially on social media

Brute Fact – is a fact that cannot be explained. You can explain one fact by reference to other facts, which can themselves be referenced to other facts, but in the end the ‘last’ fact cannot be explained and is a brute fact. Often the explanation of this fact is not a true explanation, but simply a description. The principle of sufficient reason may be understood to say that there are no brute facts.

budhttmwfi – but you don’t have to take my word for it

Bumper – now used to indicate something exception or significant (e.g. bumper crop), but it once meant a generous glass of wine or beer

Cakeism – the false belief that one can enjoy the benefits of two choices that are in fact mutually exclusive, or have it both ways

Canadian Goodbye – politely leaving a party while fairly sober (in opposition to an Irish Goodbye)

Capacious – spacious or roomy

CareerTok – the hashtag #careertok has nearly two billion views (2024) and is a growing career and job-related community that shares tips and advice (its LinkedIn for Gen-Z TikTokers)

Catfishing – a deceptive activity often using a fake identity (sockpuppet) to abuse or fraud a victim, e.g. romance scams, trolling, etc.

ChadGPT – a Chad who’s always using ChatGPT to think for him and always swears it was his idea

A Chad is a pejorative American term for young, upper-class, urban males. It’s not the same as Chav, which is a British term meaning an anti-social lower-class youth dressed in sportswear.

Chicanery – a form of deception involving trickery or subterfuge

A useful word to describe what we see everyday on the front pages of our national press.

Chilling effect – discouraging someone from exercising their legitimate rights by a threat of legal sanctions

Not quite the same thing as “chill out”.

Chrononhotonthologos – an ineffective authoritarian blusterer (comes from Chrononhotonthologos a satirical play by the English poet and songwriter Henry Carey from 1734).

Churnalism – a news article that is published as journalism, but is essentially a press release without much added

Clean-skin – without a criminal record (also lily-white)

Click-to-Call (Click-to-Talk) – when a customer clicks on an object and it completes a call to a person in real-time

Cloud kitchen (dark kitchen) – an online restaurant with a kitchen but no premises where you can eat

Cobrowsing – two people accessing and navigating the same webpage at the same time

Cognitive inertia – a particular way some people refuse to accept change

Come-alongs – handcuffs

Conehead – scientist, brainy person

Consensus reality – an agreed reality based upon a consensus view

Conversion – is when a Website visitor completes a desired goal (e.g. purchase, fills out a form, provides an email address), and the percentage that converts is called a conversion rate (see conversion marketing and conversion rate optimisation)

Cord-cutting – cancelling a cable or satellite TV subscriptions

“-core” aesthetics – a TikTok suffix (at times a kind of meme), and refers to the “central, internal, and most consistent part of a person’s personality”. People are creating compilations with their core. by collecting different aesthetic videos. And “corecore” makes fun of “-core” and the overexposure to contentification of our lives. The original, millennial root word is normcore, or wearing unpretentious, average-looking cloths.

Corpocracy – government by corporations

Corporate Death Burger – McDonalds

Coxcomb – a vain and conceited man

Crusty-minded – old, gruff, surly of attitude (sounds like me)

Culture jamming – a form of guerrilla communication, an anti-consumerist social movement designed to disrupt or subvert mainstream media

Dad Cam – old record-to-tape formats, e.g. VHS

Data Activism – using technology and data to create political change

Datafication – rendering everyday life into new data formats

Deadass – genuinely, sincerely, or truly

Deck – hit someone on the face

Deckchairing – comes from “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”, and means someone who is hopelessly still attempting to achieve a goal that is already lost

Deja-poo – inescapable feeling that this has happened to you before

Denarration – the process whereby one’s life stops feeling like a story

Deselfing – willingly diluting one’s sense of self and ego by plastering the Internet with as much information as possible

Dictionary – a paperweight, an archaic way to look up words before Wikipedia and spellchecking

Digital Serfdom – consumers giving up their personal and private information in order to be able to use a particular product or service

Dime – attractive person (meaning a 10 on a scale of 1-10)

dinkwad – Double Income No Kids With A Dog

Discommode – to cause inconvenience or disturb things

DNF – Did Not Find (or Did Not Finish)

Dot gone – unsuccessful Internet company

Donorcycle – a motorbike ridden by an idiot 

Doublethink – indoctrination, where someone is expected to accept as true that which is clearly false

Doomscrolling – consuming an endless procession of negative online news (opposite gleefreshing)

DL – as in “on the down low” or keep a low key (e.g. secret). And if you don’t want someone to listen in, you can tell them go “sip tea” (mind their own business).

Doxing – publicly providing personally identifiable information about an individual or organisation, usually via the Internet and without their consent

It’s interesting that doxy once meant a lover or mistress.

Drip – used to describe an outfit that is extremely fashionable and stylish. It’s often used on social media when people feel they are ‘dripping’ in designer items.

I remember drip having a totally different meaning in the past.

Dronies – those who snap images using drones

Dropshipping – selling products they’ve never handled, from countries they’ve never visited, to consumers they’ve never met

Dunning-Kruger Effect – cognitive bias in which incompetent people assess themselves as competent, including people who make poor decisions but can’t recognise their mistakes

Dust bunny – is a loose, tangled ball of dust, lint, hair, etc., often found under a low piece of furniture

I was disappointed, because I thought this might be someone from Playboy able to also keep a house clean and tidy. 

Dustsucker – a vacuum cleaner

DYKWIA – Do You Know Who I Am!

Ecoanxiety – caused by a dread of environmental perils, such as climate change, …

Echo chamber – the application of beliefs by repetition inside a close system, insulated from rebuttal

Escrache – demonstration in which a group of activists goes to the home, workplace or public places where someone they want to denounce is recognised

Euromutt – someone who has a wide mix of European ancestry

Expire – once meant to die

In the future the press are going to need a lot of synonyms, so readers can see immediately tell the difference between natural or accidentally death, and someone being killed by a mad 14 year old with a AK-47.

Extra – over the top or a “drama queen”

F2F – Face to Face

Fam – family, often teen slang is just shortened words, or the melding of two words (e.g. bruh to mean brother and bro)

Familymoon – a honeymoon where the bride and groom also bring their children form previous marriages

Fandangle – something useless or purely ornamental. Describes politicians “to a T”. 

Faraday’s Candle – electric light (also ghost-fire, Edison-ware, glarenight)

Farlooker – telescope

I suppose “nearlooker” means microscope. I remember when good looking girls were just “lookers”.

Federise – completely dominate another player in any sport or game (from Roger Federer)

Feng shit – opposite of feng shui

Fetch – as in “that was pretty fetch”, and means nice, fresh, desirable, or cool. It is most likely a shortened version of the word “fetching”, an old term meaning attractive.

Filter Bubble – a state of intellectual isolation

Flake – someone who generally makes plans with you, promises to do things with or for you, but never delivers

Flux – once meant diarrhoea

Is defined at Type 5 and Type 7 on the Bristol Stool Scale, which is shame for Bristol, an otherwise pleasant city to visit.

Folkdom – a Republic

Folksmight – democracy

Foot fault – a minor criminal violation

Forever chemicals – long-lasting chemicals, including PFAS and hydrofluorocarbons, used in the manufacture of common household items such as refrigerators, nonstick cookware, and flame-resistant furniture. Chemicals that remain in the environment because they break down very slowly, and subsequently accumulate within animals and people.

Friendshoring – the act of manufacturing and sourcing from countries that are geopolitics allies which makes it a synonym for trade bloc

Frogskin – a dollar bill, derived from the earlier word “greenback”

The frozen middle – the most conservative layer in a organisation

Funnels – a marketing funnel helps/simplifies the set of steps a customer has to go through (to a ‘conversion’)

Furkid/Furbaby – a pet treated as a child, but better than treating children like pets

Gainstand – to speak or stand against something

Gaslighting – manipulating someone into questioning their own perception of reality

Gleefreshing – opposite doomscrolling

To ghost someone – cut off communication with someone you’re no longer interested in

Why not use the old word “glaciate” which meant to freeze over? 

GOAT – Greatest Of All Time, might come from “G.O.A.T.”, used to mean ”greatest of all time” when Lonnie Ali, Muhammad Ali’s wife, incorporated Greatest of All Time, Inc. in September 1992.

But its been suggested that the word “goat” has been used in American sports since the early 1900s, first as a derisive term for a player responsible for a team’s loss, and later, often in capital letters, as an acronym for “greatest of all time”. Other sources suggest 1949, and the expression “What a goat!”, meaning he’s a coward.

Gob –  this is supposed to be a quaint English term of endearment that is often used to express one’s deep affection and commitment to their significant other

Personally this is nothing like the meaning I knew when I was a kid.

GOMB – Get Off My Back

Grey Data – data accumulated by an institution for operational purposes that does not fall under any traditional data protection policies

Gray thunder – senior citizens who, because of their numerical strength, wield considerable political (voting) power

Gringoland – USA

Groupthink – a group of people, desiring harmony, become irrational and dysfunctional, and make bad decisions

Gucci – cool, stylish (very 21st century, could change)

Haircut – a forced reduction in the value of an asset

Hanlon’s Razor – commonly summarised as “Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice”

Possibly a corruption of the author Robert Heinlein. There are many variations, but the general idea is always the same. Also known in British English as the “Cock-Up Theory”.

Hate-watching – watching TV programs that you hate

HML – Hit My Line, meaning “call or text me”

HMWI – High Net Worth Individual

Hold my beer – said before an unthinking person does something dangerous or stupid

Honey Pot – someone who uses sex to trap and blackmail a target

Can also mean a software trick to entice hackers to go to specific places in a data system where they can cause no damage and can be studies and followed.

Honey Trapping – involving the use of romantic or sexual relationships for interpersonal, political (including state espionage), or monetary purposes

House hippo – a rotund house pet

Hundo P – one hundred percent, for sure, certain

HYDT – How You Do That

Hyperreality – an inability to distinguish reality from a simulation

IANAL – I Am Not A Lawyer

Idiolect – a person’s individual speech pattern

Idiot box – television

IDK – I Don’t Know

IDKWTD – I Don’t Know What To Do

IMO – In My Opinion (IMHO – In My Humble Opinion)

Informational Autocrats – rulers who control and manipulate information in order to maintain power

Information laundering – resembles money laundering and is the transforming of news, false or otherwise, from unverified sources into ostensibly legitimate mainstream information.

Intelligent design – a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God

I remember in school this expression being used to describe a condom.

Interpersonal circumplex – a model for conceptualising, organising, and assessing interpersonal behaviour, traits, and motives

INYN – I Know You Know

IRL – In Real Life

Jackass of all trades – bad at everything

Jesus year – a persons 33rd year of life

Someone once said to me that living beyond 33, was like taking the escalators. I remember replying “I’ll take the stairs”.

Judge-mandering – is a cousin of electoral gerrymandering, and refers to partisan lawyers pinpointing an ideologically sympathetic judge to hear their case, who then blocks a policy for the entire country

Kakistocracy – a government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens (sounds familiar). Does this make Trump a kakistocrat?

Karen – a mocking slang term for an entitled, obnoxious, middle-aged white woman

Kiwi Farms – a web forum that facilitates the discussion and harassment of online figures and communities

Latte liberals – (also called limousine liberals) is a US political terms used to illustrate hypocritical behaviour by political liberals of upper class or upper middle class status

Laughtersmith – comedian

I quite like this one, and a “idiotsmith” might be someone who continues to hit on your to buy something that you don’t want, don’t need, and will never buy. 

Lavender ceiling – an upper limit to professional advancement imposed upon LGBTQ+ people that is not readily perceived or openly acknowledged

Leaf Blower – a person who’s sole purpose is to make their mess the problem of other people

Lexifascist – someone who corrects others’ language with an uppity attitude

Lifelore – biology (liferoom – cell)

Lily White – someone who rejects any culture other than a white middle American one, e.g. lily white housing accepts no minorities

Lily White – conventional, uninteresting, unadventurous, as in a food which is prepared perfectly but with no element of imagination and creativity, etc.

Lily Whites – ass-cheeks, as in “you can kiss my lily whites“

Lily-whites – meant IRA terrorists who had no previous convictions, and who were very hard to trace and catch

Linear TV – industry jargon for traditional TV

Love Bombing – to influence a person by demonstrations of attention and affection

Marinate – to sit around and do nothing

Meatsmith – butcher

Wonderful expression because you can come up with a multitude of ……smith’s, e.g. papersmith for a bureaucrat, plantsmith for a gardener, and even idiotsmith for psychiatrist, … And we already saw laughtersmith for a comedian.

Meme hack – changing a meme to express a different point of view, often opposite to the original

Methinks – an old word that could replace “I think” in modern jargon

Micro-influencer – a sub-set of influencer marketing, i.e. people who have between 1,000 and 100,000 followers and are considered expert and trusted in a narrow field or niche

Middle-class, liberal, intellectual robots – you know who they are

Mierdas Touch – a bit like the Midas Touch, but this is “the ability to turn everything one touches into …“.

Mincing oath – a euphemistic expression formed by misspelling, mispronouncing, or replacing a part of a profane, blasphemous, or taboo term to reduce its objectionable characteristics, e.g. “gosh” (for God), “crumbs” (Christ), “for crying out loud” (for Christ’s sake), “darn” or “dang” (damn), “doggone” or “gosh darn” (goddamn), “[cor] blimey” ([God] blind me), “shucks” (shit), “heck” (hell), “gee”, “jeez”, “jeepers” (Jesus Christ), “feck-off”, “fudge”, “frick”, “fork”, “flip” or “eff-off” (you know what that means)

Monophobia – fear of feeling like an individual

MOS – Mom looking Over Shoulder (can be DOS or POS)

Nearlyweds – people who lives together in a life partnership, sometimes engaged but with no planned wedding date, or sometimes with no intention of ever marrying

Nestling – someone who still lives with their parents

NGL – Not Gonna Lie, or another way of saying “to tell you the truth” (which might not mean that)

Neuronaut (psychonaut) – someone who studies the brain and its workings, especially with regard to the effects of psychedelic drugs

Nowcasting – a method of describing the present or the near future by analyzing datasets that are not traditionally included in the analysis (e.g. web searches, reviews, social media data, etc.)

Obscurantism – deliberately presenting information in an imprecise or abstruse manner, making it difficult to understand (great if you are writing a PhD thesis)

Office-park dad – a married, suburban father who works in a white-collar job

He is today’s blue-collar worker, who is a baby-boomer who earns $60,000 a year and struggles in the new economy.

On-brand – something that correlates with your identity or public image

Onesomehood – solitude

Originalism – a method of constitutional and statutory interpretation, where the assertion is that legal text should be interpreted based on the original understanding at the time of adoption, and may also incorporate original intent

Pain Point – recurring problems that customers experience frequently, sometimes stopping them from completing a transaction

PDF – Please Don’t Forget

Peopleosaurs – people dressed up as dinosaurs

Perfumed prince – bureaucrat or careerist

Pig butchering – a scam, arises from an analogy comparing the initial phase of gaining the victims trust to the fattening of pigs before slaughtering them

PIMO – Physically In, Mentally Out

Pizza Production Engineer – someone who puts toppings on pre-formed pizza bases

Plusing – continually improving something

Popty Ping – a microwave owen

Porch pirate – a thief who steals packages delivered to front doorsteps or porches

Pork pie – lie (Cockney)

Post-truth politics – appeal to emotion, disconnected from fact

Prescriptibitch – someone who is evil about correcting grammatical mistakes

Pretendonitis – a made up injury to get out of doing something

Programmatic advertising – ads that are bought and sold by software, without human intervention

Psy-phi (psychological philosophy) – often associated with the eight-circuit model of consciousness of Timothy Leary. 

Pull a César – to receive an invitation, wait, and then reply you already had plans 

Queerbaiting – a marketing technique involving intentional homoeroticism or suggestions of LGBTQ+ themes intended to draw in an LGBTQ+ audience, without explicit inclusion of openly LGBTQ+ relationships, characters, or people

Oddly I can remember this expression have a totally different meaning in the past.

Quockerwodger – once meant marionette, but could now describe politicians that are manipulated by big business

Rage farming – the tactic of intentionally provoking political opponents, typically by posting inflammatory content on social media, in order to elicit angry responses and thus high engagement or widespread exposure for the original poster

Rainshade – umbrella

Raw dogging – a new breed of frequent flyer that actively chooses to abstain from any kind of interaction on flights, i.e. no headphones, reading, etc. but looking out of the window is allowed. This expression also has a sexual connotation (look it up if you don’t know it).

Reality tunnel – subconscious set of mental filters formed from beliefs and experiences, where every individual interprets the same world differently, a bit like the “truth is in the eye of the beholder”.

Resolutionary – someone starts a New Year Resolution, then quits after three months

Retargeting – targeted advertising based upon a consumers previous internet activity, e.g. webpage they have previously viewed

RN – Right Now

Rusted-on – loyal, true, steadfast

Sadfishing – a behavioural trend where people make exaggerated claims about their emotional problems to generate sympathy

Salty – mad, annoyed

Sea-dust – salt

See Food Diet – you see the food, and then eat it

Seldseen – rare, uncommon, unfamiliar

Selfstanding – independent

Seppo – comes from the rhyming slang Septic Tank meaning Yank

Shift F7 – derives from the shortcut for the thesaurus in a Microsoft Word document, so ‘Shift F7’ replaces the word you could not remember or find, e.g. “its just so … shift F7“

SMH – Shaking My Head

Shapeware – underwear designed to alter (smooth, control, lift, compress) a persons body shape (for the better)

Shrinkflation – a decrease over time in quantity or in package size compared to the quantity previously sold at the same price point, resulting in a higher cost per unit for the consumer.

Go sip tea – tell someone to go away and mind their own business

Skiptrace – locating a person’s whereabouts

Sky Daddy – God

Slam-clicker – someone who just stays in their hotel room and never goes out

Sledging – the act of one sports player insulting another during a game, in order to make them angry

Smilence – when you know the answer, but smile and keep quite

Smize – smiling with your eyes

Smupidity – the mental state wherein we acknowledge that we’ve never been smarter as individuals and yet somehow we’ve never felt stupider

Social commerce – is a mix of user-generated advertorial content on e-commerce sites, and includes collaborative e-commerce so that shoppers can get advice from trusted individuals, find goods and services and then purchase them

Social hacking – manipulating social behaviour through orchestrated action

Social physics – the quantitative study of human society and social statistics

Sockpuppet – a false online identity used for deceptive purposes (also strawman and meatpuppet)

Sologamy – the practice or state of marriage to one’s self

Special-forces tourism – is a novel form of tourism characterised by time constraints, multiple scenic spots, and affordability, mainly appealing to college students or recent graduates (check out Pangdonglai)

Spelling – a lost art

Spiral of silence – a social group excludes people for their opinions, an isolation that stops people from expressing their opinions

Splinternet – the internet balkanisation based upon politics, religion, etc.

Squad – circle of close friends

Stan – a super or extreme fan of something or someone (could be a stalker)

Stovepiping – transmit raw information to a higher level inside an organisation through an isolated and narrow channel

Straight fire – anything hot or trendy (“fire” has been used for sometime to mean amazing or cool)

Subvertising – a portmanteau of subvert and advertising, is the practice of making spoofs or parodies of corporate and political advertisements

Sugarpic – a nude, partially nude or suggestive picture

Sunny-brained – optimistic (rainy-brained – pessimistic)

swiftboating – a pejorative American neologism used to describe an unfair or untrue political attack

SWMBO – She Who Must Be Obeyed

Tamagotchi effect – when a person develops a strong emotional attachment towards a machine or a robot

Techlash – a strong and widespread negative reaction to the growing power and influence of large technology companies, particularly those based in Silicon Valley

Technochauvinism – the belief that technology is always the solution

TBH – Too Be Honest

Third rail – any issue so controversial that it is untouchable for any politician or public official who dares to broach the subject

Thirstposting – people who post just to get the ‘likes’

Thore – think more, e.g. “I need to thore before I answer“

Thought-drop – idea

Throw shade – to cast aspersions on someone

Tinkerbell effect – describing things that are thought to exist only because people believe in them. The Reverse Tinkerbell effect stipulates that the more you believe in something the more likely it is to vanish.

TMI – Too Much Information

Tofu dreg –  slang for something made or built by Chinese that is cheap, shoddy, unsafe, or otherwise inadequate

Toilet Mummy – someone is so concerned about toilet seat germs, they cover the seat with half a roll of toilet paper, leaving it to appear like it has been mummified

Totes – very, extreme, definitely

Trektide – vacation

Truth by consensus – something is considered true simply because people generally agree on it

Truthiness – a seemingly truthful assertion not supported by evidence or facts

Turdmonger – a vile individual, barbarian, philistine, low-life (below politician and estate agent, which is difficult to imagine)

“Turn on, tune in, drop out” – a counterculture-era phrase

UCLA – University for Caucasians Lost among Asians

Ultracrepidarian – someone who is in the habit of giving advice on matters he himself knows nothing about

A word destined for greatness, given the quality of politicians we manage to elect. But I wonder what the word is for voters who end always picking the “most” worst, when aiming to elect the “least” worst?

I must stretch a point here. There is something called a Condorcet method, which is an election method that elects the candidate who wins a majority of the vote in every head-to-head election against each of the other candidates, whenever there is such a candidate. This is the “beat-all” winner. The Condorcet paradox is where every candidate has an opponent that defeats them in a two-candidate contest. However, a smallest group of candidates that beat all candidates not in the group, known as the Smith set, always exists. And being a “Smith”, nothing surprises me. The Smith set is guaranteed to have the Condorcet winner in it should one exist. Many Condorcet methods elect a candidate who is in the Smith set absent a Condorcet winner, and is thus said to be “Smith-efficient”. Always good to know I’m on the right side of history.

Velcro kitty – A annoying neurotic housepet that craves affection

Villionaire – a billionaire of dubious character and morals (aren’t they all)

Voodoo poll – untrustworthy results

Voxpop – an interview with a person who is not an expert, and who is not directly involved with the issue at hand

Wain – four wheel road vehicle (car), able to carry a small number of people. Why not bring back horseless carriage?

Weble – alternative for web-log (blog)

WFH – Working From Home

WhatsApper – is a user of the WhatsApp instant messaging service

This sounds obvious, but the reason it’s mentioned here is that it is also a WhatsApp bulk messaging robot that enables personalised messaging so that each recipient feels as if the message was sent to them alone.

Wikiality – a portmanteau of the words Wiki and reality, meaning truth by consensus, rather than fact

Wirate – getting angry with a slow Internet connection

Witship – science, which relates back to an archaic definition of wit as “to know” or “to come to know (to learn)”. I guess asking intelligent questions is now “wotship”!

WOAT – Worst Of All Time

Woke – socially, politically and culturally aware, relating to a liberal progressive orthodoxy, especially promoting inclusive policies or ideologies that welcome or embrace ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities

Wordstock – vocabulary

Wortcraft – horticulture (wortsmith – horticulturalist)

WRU – Where aRe You?

WSID – What Should I Do?

WTH – What The Hell

WUD – What are yoU Doing?

You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You – a short film, and the story of my life

Zerg – to bully someone

Zinger – a witty or pointed remark or retort