Buzzwords of 2013

Early selfie

It doesn’t matter when the Beeb’s weatherman, Mr Fish, wears a jacket that strobes like a painting by Bridget Riley. But it does matter when he warns us about something called a ‘freezing fog situation’. There is no such thing as a freezing fog situation. What Mr Fish means is a freezing fog. In the panic of the moment, when on television, I myself have employed the word ‘situation’ when it was not strictly necessary. Even now I find myself thinking of Mr Fish as Mr Fish situation. But Mr Fish situation has all day to rehearse his little bit of dialogue situation. There is no excuse for his situation getting into a saying ‘situation’ situation. (Clive James)

trust (Do you trust the BBC? Do we trust teachers? Can teachers teach if they don’t feel trusted?)

brunt: annoyingly overused week of Jan 1. What is a brunt?

onesie: around 2012 but now everywhere in tones of horror

storyteller: something to do with selling and marketing, rather than Hansel and Gretel

link bait
man up
the Twitter, the Facebook, the Internets, the ebay, the bbc iplayer, the Jesus: seems to be over Jan

learnings: We’ve taken some learnings from our colleagues in Oslo.

social graph (and Tweeters are already promising to teach you how to use your “social graph” to make money – just give them lots of yours) Jan 2013

brave: In the snow, people are using the words “brave” (as a verb), “struggle” and “effort”. Also “wimp” and “we never closed”.

Long, cutesy book titles like: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False

predatory pricing (offering new customers amazing deals)

truthiness
scare quotes (sharp rise from 80s)
pfft! (On Twitter)
asymmetrical warfare
KLAXON (Why when no one has heard a klaxon since 1935?)

heady: to mean almost anything
stew of (emotions etc) appears 80s, peaks 1995, gone again May
gözleme February

panic: to mean “broadcast weather warnings” or even “talk about snow”. “Chaos” means “traffic disruption” as usual. Panic also means “reporting a serious fox attack on a child”.

This is about as great of a eureka moment as you can have as a scientist.
Quite young people talking about hipflasks. ☹

selfie: photo of yourself, taken by yourself
third time’s the charm
People now saying that Twitter parody accounts are lame. (True, apart from @reelmolesworth.)

curate (v)
monster for “turn into a monster figure”
Pecha Kucha: mini-presentation
blue-rinse brigade to mean “women with white hair” (My hair is NOT blue.)

panic: schools closing (it’s snowing again)

high moral ground for moral high ground (If an army takes the high ground, it has an advantage. So, figuratively, if you occupy the “moral high ground”… you get it.)

lean in
stoush (At least it’s better than “spat”. Or is it?)
People “braving” weather again. It’s snowing. On April 4.

Like farming, link bait

Twitter memes: variations on “give a man a fish”, lame film title puns involving cake, bacon etc. Victorian cracker jokes (I went to a restaurant called Moon, but didn’t enjoy it. There was no atmosphere.) Ed Balls.

heavily used to mean “a lot”

the greek community: members of Phi Kappa etc sororities/fraternities. Apparently they’ve been bullying people.

do so: Still with us. Ed Miliband using “do so” without an antecedent. Someone on TV just asked “And why so?”

overthinking, overthought popular week of April 15

mindful: aware
stress: depression, anxiety, nervousness, misery
MAHvlous! (several years)
That creeps me out.

popcorn, scooters and hopscotch (Buzz things.)

infographic: formerly diagram or Powerpoint slide

the wow factor
bikini boot camp
go Amsterdam, go shops, go Nandos

swivelgate: mid-May (Somebody said that some top Tory had said the Tory grassroots were “swivel-eyed loons”.)

bespoke
rebunking (Undebunking. Usually results in redebunking.)
dinner-party racism
extreme couponing
culturally Marxist is taking over from “politically correct”
cray cray, hilair, informay, vacay, amaymay, nabe (neighbourhood), spox (spokesperson)
etc.

woo for homeopathy, acupuncture
stroller: baby buggy/pushchair
Bring your whole self to work. (It means you shouldn’t have to hide the fact that you are gay.)
home made Scotch eggs June 2013

very very There could be several causes for unusual darkness: the very hail storm described in plague 8, a solar eclipse, a sandstorm, volcanic ash, or simply swarms of locusts large enough to block out the sun. Wikipedia

strawboard everywhere in walls, furniture…
fuck-ton (As in “fuck-tons of…”) Gone again, August.
tats for tattoos (around for a while)
open the kimono for reveal all, moment of truth
whip smart
Curse you, [fashionable phenomenon]! Back July 2013.

cronuts
de-extinction (for the mammoth)

fawn: mass outbreak of “fawning” as royal baby is born

house parties: parties (Where else would you hold a party?)

subtweet: tweet with no @ mention that beefs/comments about unspecified person. Portmanteau of "subtext" and "tweet". (@bat020)

badass popular 4 Aug

in persuading for to persuade, etc (In challenging the religious hierarchy, Hutchinson also challenged traditional gender roles. huffpost By challenging etc)

"Smart" is our generation's "modern". (Truett Ogden ‏@Truett)

More fuss about selfies (Good Lord, Carruthers – people are taking photos of themselves! Whatever next? )

sharpie: a kind of marker that young people like to sniff, me lud
fried gold

popup cinema: “This seems to be the summer that Popup Cinema has gone mainstream” wegottickets

FOMO: fear of missing out

Everybody has a solution for Syria, August 30, 13

Lots of people tutting that we shouldn’t mention trolls, it only encourages them.

donut has replaced muppet

The web is now the internet (the distinction between them has been forgotten).
squeaky bum time (whatever THAT means)

attention-seeking very popular, used to mean “women complaining about bad treatment from men” or possibly “women talking”, as usual. It has become What To Say About women columnists, whatever they write. Bandwagon being jumped on by people who never read the columnists in question, but just want to be nasty about women, or anybody at all.

coward now means "attacker" rather than "person who is afraid of something"

Social media has been around for – how long? But people are being particularly venomous about it Sept 2013. (Narcissism – attention – selfies.) And they’re using social media to do it: complaining about Facebook on Twitter, blogging about selfies etc etc

pix of people jumping are popular

hard-working being used as an all purpose hooray word, Sept: hard-working rail passengers, and couples (who’ll be getting a tax break).

tribal: “an effort to appeal to tribal socialism” spokesperson on BBC News, 2013-09-25
shiny for things that aren’t shiny
privilege has become a dirty word

Now wind turbines are attention-seeking. Simon Jenkins doesn't like them because they are waving and saying "look at me"! BBC Breakfast Oct 4 2013

publicity (The McCanns are getting a lot of publicity = the McCann case has been re-opened.)
exposure (re the McCanns, who should return to “obscurity”) Oct 18

dematerialisation for share certificates become digital
blue line, blue line moment (that annoying Twitter “feature”)
potplants (for measures to mask or prettify an unpopular policy)

rort (v) Australian? expenses scandal? Apaz it means to consume a lot of drugs or alcohol quickly. Or “To cheat, rip-off, beat, defraud, hack or scam something”. Urban Dictionary

Nay for no, week of Nov 2 2013. Stopped now 22 Nov.

selfies: Lot of fuss about them last week of Nov 2013.

profauxsal: We’ll run the tube all night! And unearth lost rivers! And drones will deliver books! And there'll be a coast path all round Britain!

offence last week of Nov (Some people are very offended by other people taking offence at things that aren’t offensive, in the writer's judgement. They think the alleged offenders, not the offendees, should decide whether or not the remark was offensive.)

Dec 1: This week’s meme is people who move into an area and then complain about the noise. (Next to a factory – and they force it to close. Repeat with variations.)

forever diamonds
beige for bland
Where did “longform” come from?
chaos: being used for “cancellations” again, Dec 5 storm
wiggle skirts and dresses

Links to past years.