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By JEFFERSON WEAVER
I have a certain love for the English language, especially the Southern variant. I have also been accused on occasion of intentionally using big words that other folks don’t know, either out of pretension or a desire to foment obfuscation.
It could be just because I like making people pick up a dictionary.
Problem is, some of the terms I love are not included in the standard dictionaries. I think they should be.
Every few years, the folks who write Webster’s and the Oxford University dictionaries add a few words to their collections.
I figured if a bunch of Yankees or a handful of stuffy British professors could add words, then by cracky, I can, too. Here are a few of the terms I think have been neglected. Some of them I’ve heard, some of them I made up, and some were the result of some bad election-year barbecue.
• Oprahlization – the practice of being forgiven for any heinous crime by appearing on a nationally syndicated television show and confessing.
• Phillified – Appearing on the same type of program but not obtaining forgiveness.
?• Pollannaic ?– A state of naiveté so profound that one wonders how the person in question survives.
• Foxed – Ambushed by a conservative news reader.
• AB’d, CB’d, NuB’d, Can’D – Ambushed by a liberal news reader.
• Augusting – A derivative of August, my second-least-favorite month of the year. To be august is to be grumpy, ill-tempered, and barely maintaining a short fuse. It is also correct to use the term “get your august on.”
• Porked – When an electorate’s support for an incumbent is directly proportional to the amount of other people’s tax dollars said candidate brings home, the voters have been porked.
• Fiddled – Technically an extant term, the past tense of playing a country violin, fiddled can also be used to define what happens when elected officials feather their own nests on the backs of the people who voted them into office. For example, the commissioners tried to fiddle the taxpayers into paying for the board members’ health benefits.
• Patrioidiot – Any person who accuses people who disagrees with him or her of being unpatriotic.
• Terroristar – Any celebrity who decides their stardom qualified them to be a social commentator, military strategist or political activist. Just because you’re famous doesn’t mean you’re very smart.
• Chickenlittling – Like the character in the fable, a chickenlittler is so frightened of his own shadow that he can’t accomplish anything.
• Hogorwell – Not an obscure Viking hero. A hogorwell is any terroristar who behaves like the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. They have decided that rules about gun ownership, drunk driving, drug use, adoption, political contributions, common decency and old-fashioned American values don’t apply to celebrities.
I have to credit Sen. Jesse Helms with this term, since he was the first one I ever heard refer to Hollywood political hacks as pigs “straight out of Animal Farm.” If you miss the reference, I suggest you go to the library, check out Animal Farm and read the book. Regardless of what some enlightened folks think, some animals are not more equal than others.
•Britneychristy – Any young woman who uses her marginal singing talent and the ability to dress scandalously to market herself as a sex goddess, while reassuring parents that she reflects good values. See also pop-tart.
• Idoled – The sanctification of anyone who wins a talent competition, eats a lot of disgusting things, or capitalizes on their weight problem on national television. To those who have been idoled, here’s a wake-up call: some of us really, truly, honestly don’t care.
• Legislativitis – A condition by which elected officials pass more laws that inconvenience law-abiding citizens – laws that the criminals will break anyway – rather than actually dealing with a problem.
• Welfaring – Letting the government to take care of you when you should take care of yourself.
• FEMA’d – What happens to people when the government doesn’t take care of those who refuse to take care of themselves.
• Sillithesaurus Maximus– Not an extinct reptile, but the imaginary book a columnist consults when he decides to make up a bunch of new words.
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