Our Brave New Word (To Fight Over?)

From The Lede:

Oxford’s Word of the Year, and Runners-Up
By Mike Nizza

The 2007 Word of the Year is (drum-roll please) locavore . . .coined only two years ago in San Francisco.
Falling just short of the top prize was the crucial word in a catch-phrase for the ages, born at an appearance by Senator John Kerry at the University of Florida in September. In mid-scuffle with security guards, Andrew Meyer blurted out a verb formed from the brand name for an electric stun gun, and the dictionary authorities approve:

tase (or taze): to stun with a Taser

[Snook having UF connections, was on the cutting, um tasing, edge of this one!]

There are several more listed on Oxford’s blog. And if your appetite for new words and word uses is still unsated, the Dictionary Evangelist is kind enough to name some runners-up to the runners-up.

For more about the real meaning of the newest star in Oxford’s galaxy of words, check out Snook’s blog links under “School is to Food.”

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One Bumper Sticker for NotJC, Another for HSB Awards

Driving home I saw something I could only understand when I got close enough to read the sponsor’s name in small print underneath:

MY KID CAN OLLIE OVER YOUR HONOR STUDENT!

The sponsor? MoJo’s Skate Shop.

So. Meaning through context, discovered by searching until you figure it all out, instead of getting mad because you don’t understand and hoping a big dollop of taking offense will cover up your own shortcomings. (I still haven’t looked up “ollie” to be sure though — I am enjoying the ambiguity!)

“Skate” could mean sliding by and getting away with something, but that’s not likely here, is it? Shop must be a noun here, not a verb — though they wouldn’t be printing bumper stickers if they didn’t want you to come “s—” in their “s—” I guess. Ollie has a very fun sound even in complete ignorance of any meaning or context.   (Maybe because it rhymes with jolly?)  I assume ollie to be a “sporting” verb of some kind, but NOT in the context I happen to know from reading novels like Gone With the Wind, that “sporting house” was once used (and clearly understood yet pointedly not talked about) in America —

It made me long for a similarly delicious, ambiguous, context-dependent bumper sticker we could plaster on our highly evolved, secular, non-Homeschool Blog Awards-eligible blogs, something to put their context in context as we see it, maybe:

MY BLOG THINKS YOUR BLOG IS EMBARRASSING BOTH OF US. . .

Bonus example — this is a “skateboard truck” but not a vehicle that transports skateboards for sale at Mojo’s.