word of the day: femmephobia

I admit it: I’m not very interested in the debates that seem to rage around feminism. There doesn’t seem too much to it to me other than that sexists, misogynists, MCPs and patriarchalists are dicks. Because of this lack of interest it’s not surprising that I haven’t heard the term “femmephobia” before. I’ve just seen it here, and I read elsewhere on Skepchick that it’s “a particular subset of sexism that suggests that femininity and things regarded as feminine are inherently inferior, bad, weak, stupid, non-preferable, valueless, disempowering, etc.” So you’d be very unlikely to see a femmephobic (or his* son*) wearing pink.

Femmephobia is a silly word, but I’m against the femmephobics.

*Thinking about it, I suppose femmephobics can also be women, and femmephobics might not want their daughters wearing pink either. Femmephobia must be different from insisting that both sexes adhere to their repsective stereotypes. What’s the word for that? Is that just sexism?

word of the day: blit

A new synonym for “transfer”?

Jason: “I doubt he bothered to check if the triple negative made any sense before blitting it over to an NRO editor.” http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4363

 

word of the day: polypharmacy

My dad took a lot of pills every day. I don’t take any prescribed medicine at all, but I imagine that as I move from middle age into old age I will be gradually prescribed more and more. This phenomenon is known as “escalating polypharmacy” and this Telegraph article asks whether it does more harm than good.

word of the day: bogosity

Today’s Language Log post about Google’s n-gram viewer posits the term “microlex”, which reminded a commenter of the milliHelen, which reminded the author of the Lenat, which is, of course, the international unit of bogosity.

word of the day: embonpoint

 

In an Agatha Christie story I read: “A yachting costume is not the most kindly of attires for a middle-aged man with a tendecy to embonpoint.” Embonpoint? Isn’t that something to do with needlework? Or ballet?

Who would ever guess that this word means obesity? People should use it more often. For example, on application forms:

“Any health issues?”

“A tendency to embonpoint.”

That’ll fox ’em.

word of the day: rinsing

As is often the case, I’m behind the loop on this one. It appears that one of the, ahem, celebrities on the latest series of Big Brother gets stuff* by asking for it from strangers who fancy her, an activity known as “rinsing“. So there you go. (And here’s my Amazon wishlist. Am I doing this right?)

*What, you may ask, do the strangers get in return? The answer is either (a) nowt or (b) don’t ask.

word of the day: daggering

In a shocking report from the TES

words of the day: mevage, glaikit

Twitter continues to be a good source of new vocab. Rattlecans has just tweeted: RT @RosieMKane: Just saw that wee Hunt at leveson on telly. He’s a bit glaikkit… > aye, glaikkit, that’s exactly whit he is.

Earlier, Tiffany Stevenson ‏(@tiffstevenson) said: Too many men in extreme v necks today. Excess mevage is a bit tacky boys…

 

word(?) of the day: crisitunity

Helen Lewis just tweeted:

Horrific portmanteaux just spoken by @alexhern – “crisitunity”. Joins “grexit”, “chillaxing” and “IPOcalypse” on my personal hate list.

(Of course she means portmanteau.) Of these, I think the only one with a claim to be a word is chillax – it’s as silly as the other three but it’s got some enduring usefulness.

word of the day: spad

The epithet du jour, “spad“, is unfortunately redolent of train crashes…