Worst Movie Word Ever

I haven't seen it for years, but thinking about it still gags me to this day.

In "Revenge of the Sith," children in jedi training are called "younglings." When something bad happens to them, other characters exclaim in horror: Not the younglings! Not the younglings!!

How embarrassing for everyone involved ...

Ah, I Always Wanted a Term for That

In his New York Times column today, Paul Krugman uses the term "rent-seeking":

... the rapid growth in finance since 1980 has largely been a matter of rent-seeking, rather than true productivity.

It was a new one on me, so I looked it up.

Wikipedia says that, basically, rent-seeking means making money by exploiting economic factors instead of by producing something that creates real wealth.

Nice to know I'm not the only who's noticed how often this seems to happen.

Words I'm Not Looking Up (First and perhaps last in a series on words that exist despite the handicap of not existing)

turducken

Some years ago, I ordered some chicory coffee and some beignet mix from a company called Cajun Creations, at which time I subscribed to their e-mail list.

Since then, every year around Thanksgiving, I get e-mails about deals on turduckens. I knew they were some kind of multibird bird, but never bothered to read more until today, when I finally read enough to learn the definition of turducken. From the Cajun Creations e-mail:

Turducken is the true taste of Louisiana. We take a turkey, duck, and a chicken, and de-bone all three (except for the legs and wings of the turkey). We put the chicken inside the turkey and then the duck inside the chicken.

It's going to take a long time to sort out my feelings about all this.

Incentivize This

I try not to get irked by words like "incentivize." I understand why other people do, but I figure there's no use in letting acceptable usages get under my skin. Best to save my energy for stuff like "enthused" in quotation attributions. ("'It's a great deal,' Thompson enthused.")

But over the weekend, I heard an "incentivized" I just cannot let stand. I was in the kitchen, where I could hear the TV playing in the living room. There was some documentary-type show on about the making of Cirque du Soleil's "Love," the Beatles-inspired acrobatic stage show playing at the Mirage in Vegas. One of the people involved in the production was saying how expensive it is to put on "Love." He added that this huge investment "incentivized me" to turn a profit.

See what I mean?

Words I'm Making Up (First in an occasional cleverly named series on words that are not but should be)

curcludgeon

It's when you get bludgeoned by a curmudgeon. I'm sure any grammarphile with grammarphobe tendencies will agree we could use such a word.

I realize curbludgeon would be a more natural formation, but 1. it's too similar to bludgeon and 2. it's just not as much fun. So don't curcludgeon me about that.

Weird and Random Monday Ramblings

* Further evidence AP and Chicago are conspiring to make my head blow up:

AP Style for capitalizing titles of works: "How to Turn Your Trash Into Cash"

Chicago Style for capitalizing titles of works: "How to Turn Your Trash into Cash"

AP says to lowercase conjunctions, articles, and prepositions of three or fewer letters. Chicago isn't down with quotas -- so no three-letter maximum for them.

* Lately I've been very distracted by cleaning the house and rigging our kitty cams. (A neighbor said recently that there have been a few break-ins in the area. So we rejiggered our cameras and fixed a connection issue with our remote survelliance to assure that no Thai-restaurant-menu deliverer will go undetected.)

Actually, a funny story about that. A few months ago our camera saw/recorded a man who was delivering fliers and who, once he put the flier on our front door, plunked down in the chair on our porch. He sat there for about three minutes then got up and left. It's a very weird feeling to see a stranger lounging on your front doorstep. Weirder yet, if I remember right I was home watching it take place live.

Ah, technology.

* In the past, I have mentioned that I hate the word "horrific." Well, this just in: I still hate the word "horrific." It still sounds to me like a self-consciously weak word destined to forever reach for greater and greater shock value. I predict it will one day evolve into "horrificorrible" and "horrificawfulageous."

Wonderings and Googlings (Wherein I wonder about words, then I Google them)

"I friended him." = 940 hits
"I befriended him." = 628 hits

A story this morning on NPR about Facebook got me wondering whether "friend" as a transitive verb was poised to replace the word that has long done its job: "befriend."

Looks like it is.

A Very, Very Special Furniture Store (An inspiring tale for word whores)

Every town has retail stores. Many have manufacturers. Some even have retail stores where you can buy directly from manufacturers. They’re called outlet stores. But one town is so special, so above all others, that it couldn’t stand to have its combination manufacturer-retailers clumped in with all those other lesser “outlets.”

That’s why, here in L.A., we have a “manutailer.”

H.D. Buttercup, a Los Angeles furniture emporium where buyers purchase directly from manufacturers, proudly embraces the “manutailer” label. So proudly, in fact, that when the store owners rolled out their "manutailer" campaign they scored some big-time free publicity — an all-about-them story in the Los Angeles Times.

Because, if you think about it, what better way to convince the press that you’re doing something new and newsworthy than by doing something old and attaching a funny- and new-sounding word to it?

For example, cosmetics company Bobbi Brown has a groundbreaking signature product called “tinted moisturizer.” It takes about $50 and one week to realize that “tinted moisturizer” is just an inverted way of saying “oily foundation.”

It just goes to show you there’s a land of opportunity out there for clever wordsmiths who don’t get nauseous no matter how much they spin. And don’t worry that the new words you pioneer are completely empty. Three years later, when your word is all but forgotten and you’ve made a fool out of anyone who suggested it was a harbinger of the future, you’ll be long gone.

Barf-inducing Language Trend du Jour

Enjoy a mani and a pedi.

... meaning "manicure and pedicure."

Yacktacular.

P.S. I copy edit stuff like this. Please don't think I would read material of this nature unless I was being paid to.