Neologisms in Modern English language

   Mosh /mɔʃ / intransitive verb

     To dance in a violent and reckless manner at a rock concert, often jumping up and down and colliding with other dancers and crashing into the walls or to the floor.

    Moshing is a phenomenon of the rock scene – especially heavy metal and hardcore, and louder indie bands – of the eighties and nineties, in which concert audiences express their involvement with and ap[recitation of the music through energetic physical activity in the mosh pit, the area in front of the stage. Further forms of such activity are stage-diving and slam dancing. Though these activities carry the risk of physical injury, they are an exuberant expression of enthusiasm rather than aggression. Concern has however been expressed about the vulnerability of those attending these concerts, and there has even been a reference to post-moshing syndrome or PMS,which is associated with injuries, ranging from bruises and pulled hair to broken bones, sustained by mosheras.    

    Revisit / ri: 'vizit / verb and noun

Transitive verb: To reconsidering or re-experiencing (something).

Computing:

Benchmark / 'bεntʃmɔ: k / verb and noun

Transitive verb: To measure the performance of ( a computer system) in certain well defined situations, such as intensive calculation, sorting, or text formatting, by running a specially-designed computer program or suite of programs.

     A specialized figurative application of the word. Originally a benchmark was horizontal wedge-shaped incision cut by surveyors, for example in a wall, so that an angled bracket could be inserted to form a bench or support for the surveying equipment at a reproducible height. By the 1800 it had taken on the figurative sense of   ʻa point of reference ; a criterion, a touchstoneʼ f which the computing sense is a specific usage.

    With the rise in number of models of microcomputers from about the end of the seventies onward, manufacturers and computer enthusiasts increasingly found a need for independent measure of the power of competing system. The obvious solution was to run a computer program on each system which carried out some repetitive task and compare the time each took to complete. This process was termed benchmarking in 1976 and the noun and verb first appeared in print in the early eighties. A large number of such benchmarks have appeared, but their results are often distrusted because they are necessarily measures taken in artificial situations which may not correspond to real working conditions.

    Browse / bra℧z/ verb and noun

Transitive or intransitive verb: To read or survey (data files), especially across a  computer network; specifically, to do so on the World Wide Web.

    A further extension of the figurative use of the verb browse, originally meaning ʻthe action of animals feeding on scanty vegetationʼ (the implication being they have to search it out), but then extended to the action of looking through (say) a book.

   The word has had this sense in the computing context since at least the mid eighties; it is common to find buttons labeled browse on visually- oriented computer applications which enable the user to search for relevant files on the local system or across a network. The word took on a new sense and life with the advent of the World Wide Web in the early nineties. This interface to the Internet requires special computer programs to search out, translate, and display the tagged material n the files being downloaded. These programs were quickly dubbed browsers and in computer contexts browsing now Frequently means using such a program to access the Web. The use of browsability, in application to software, has also been recorded.

Download   /da℧n 'lǝ℧d/ transitive or intransitive verb

 To transfer (the contents of electronic data file) from a large system to a smaller or peripheral one.

  A compound of down, in its figurative adverbial sense of ʻmoving from a superior to an inferior position’, and load, meaning ʻto store data in a computer’.

    e-mail / 'i: meil/ noun and verb Also written email   

Transitive verb: To send e-mail to (a person); to send (a message) by e-mail.

The term e-mail has been in use since the first half of the eighties, and was originally applied to the transfer of messages in this way; as the number of e-mailers increased, the term was increasingly applied to the messages themselves.

  Flame /fleim/ verb and noun

Transitive verb: In online jargon, to post an electronic message to someone which is destructively critical, abusive, or intended to provoke dissent or controversy.

  FTP /εti: 'pi:/ noun and verb

Transitive or intransitive verb: To transfer (a file) by FTP

  The initial letters of File Transfer Protocol, protocol being used here in the computing sense of ʻa set of rules that govern the exchange of information between computer devise’.

FTP is one of the most important and oldest techniques of the Internet; the term has become widely known in the nineties as interest in the Internet has increased. It permits an authorized user on one computer system to connect to another, identify files on it, and DOWNLOAD them.

Import  /im 'pɔ: t/ transitive verb

  To transfer (data) into a computer from a distant one, or to introduce (data) into one computer application from another.

This ward came into use in the mid eighties. Like export, it usually now implies the movement of data into an application, most frequently data which is in another format and which has to be translated by the receiving application. So a user may add new records to a database by importing them from a source file which may be text or may be in the format of another database;  a desktop- publishing system may import text and graphic files in a variety of formats and covert them to its internal representation.

  Mouse /ma℧s/ verb

Transitive verb: To carry out (an operation) by using a mouse.

Intransitive verb: To move around a computer screen or carry out an operation by means of a mouse.

  A verb sense which has developed directly from the noun mouse, a term for the standard pointing device employed in graphical applications and operating systems, first applied in the mid sixties.  

 Reboot /ri: 'bu: t/ verb and noune

Transitive verb: To restart (a computer) by reloading its operating system into working memory; to cause (the system or a program) to be reloaded in this way.

Intransitive verb: (Of a computer) to be restarted by reloading its operating system.

A compound of re-, ʻagain’, with an abbreviated form of bootstrap ʻto initiate a fixed sequence of instructions which initiates the loading of further instructions and, ultimately, of the whole system’;this in turn is named after  the process of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps, a phrase which is widely supposed to be based on one of the eighteenth-century Adventures of Baron Munchausen. 

Spam /spem/ noun and verb

Intransitive verb: To post spam.

Spell-check /'spεitεʃk/ verb and noun

Transitive verb: To check the spelling of (a word or a document) using a program which computers the words in a text file with a stored list of a acceptable spellings.

Being able to check the spelling of words was one of the most prized facilities in the word processor programs that began to appear for microcomputers at the end of the seventies. They quickly become standard, despite limited vocabularies, an inability to spot correctly spelled but inappropriate words, and a tendency to suggest unsuitable replacements for unknown ones. A first, they were called spelling checkers, but the noun was soon abbreviated to spell-checker in the US and this form is now frequently used also in Britain.

Business world:

Bundle /'bΛndl/ verb and noun

Transitive verb: To supply (items of software) with computer equipment at an inclusive price; also, supply(a selection of software) as a single item, or to include (additional items of equipment) as part of a computer system, similarly at an inclusive price.

   Competition among suppliers of personal computers grew dramatically during the late eighties and nineties. As an attempt to distinguish their products from the pack, and to add value, manufacturers and retailers began to include operating systems, applications software, games, and reference CD-ROMs as part of the sales package or bundle; they also provided system enhanced with peripherals such as printers, CD-ROM drives, or modems. The adjective is bundled, often in the phrase bundled software, and the verbal noun is bundling.

Cherry-pick /'tʃεri pik/ transitive or intransitive verb

To pick out for oneself (the best and most desirable items); to make such a selection from (a list of possible choices).

Probably a back-formation from cherry picker, a hydraulic crane with a platform at the end, for raising and lowering people working at a height, but also with an idea of someone being raised to a position of advantage for picking the best fruit on a tree.

The term is recorded from the early seventies, but seems to have come into widespread general use in the expansionist eighties, particularly as companies diversified. As the term has become more familiar, there has been a further shift in emphasis: a cherry-piker may now be a person who selects favourable figures and statistics in order to present biased data.

Kick-start /'kiksta: t/ noun and verb

Transitive verb: To give a kick-start to (a process or thing).

A figurative use of kick-start in the sense an act of starting ʻan engine by the downward thrust of a pedal, as in older motorcycles’.

Outsource /a℧t 'sɔ: s/ transitive or intransitive verb

In business jargon: to obtain (goods, especially component parts, or specialist services) by contract from a source outside an organization or area; to contract (work) out.

Health and fitness :

Access /'aksεs/ transitive verb

To get in touch with (one’s deepest inner feelings or subconscious desires);  to experience at a deep level.

In the sense defined here, access is a vogue term in popular psychology, used particularly since the late eighties and originating in American English. The word was first use as a transitive verb by computer scientists in 1962.

Aquacise  /'akwǝsΛiz/ noun and verb

Intransitive verb: To practice aquacise.

Formed by substituting the Latin word aqua ʻwater’ for the first two syllables of exercise.

Dowse /da℧z/ intransitive verb

To make a diagnosis by dowsing, chiefly with a pendulum attached to a radionic device, over a patient’s body. Also as a transitive verb, to diagnose (a patient) by dowsing.

In the field of alternative medicine, diagnosis by radionics, the study and interpretation of radiation believed to be emitted from substances, has been practiced since the fifties. Since the early eighties, interest in the technique has grown, centring on the use of a pendulum to detect variations in a body’s radiation levels as a guide to a person’s state of health.

Flat-line /'flatlΛin/ intransitive verb

  To die. Also, by extension, to become unproductive or ineffectual.

With reference to the flattering, when a patient dies, of the peaks on the line displayed on a heart monitor.

Earliest uses of the verb were recorded in a medical context in the very early eighties. Shortly afterwards, in 1984, it was taken up by the science-fiction writer William Gbson, who used it in his novel Neuromancer. However, it was in 1990, with the release of the film Flatliners, that the verb and its noun derivative flatliner entered the popular language. The film tells the story of a group of medical students who dangerously exploit their ability to control the heart rate by helping each other to flatline in order to experience the first few seconds after the moment of death, before being revived. Use in relation to actual death has not become widespread, but the verb in its extended use is growing in currency.

   There is some evidence of transitive use of the verb in both senses. There is also evidence of the development of an adjective, especially in the phrase go flatline.   

Lifestyle & Leisure

Graze /greiz/ intransitive verb

To flick rapidly between television channels, to zap or channel-surf.

A figurative use of the verb graze ʻto feed’.

In the late seventies, graze began to be used in the US to refer to the practice of eating lots of snacks throughout the day in preference to full meals at regular times; the word was also applied to eating unpurchased food while shopping in a supermarket. In the mid eighties the word was applied to browsing or grazing among television channels. Two factors were particularly significant: the growth of cable television in the US, with the proliferation of channels for grazers to graze among, and the popularity of remote control devices. In the nineties, graze has also come to mean browsing information from CD-ROMs or the Internet.

Power nap / 'pa℧ǝ nap/ noun and verb

Intransitive verb: To take a nap of this kind.

In the mid eighties power naps joined power lunches and power dressing as part of the lifestyle of the busy and successful executive in a high-level job; once more, the implication is that as little time as possible is spent on physical refreshment. Power naps, however, may be seen less cynically as representing a source of natural refreshment preferable to taking stimulants in order to keep going. In current usage, they are regarded as a sensible way to achieve some relaxation, rather than as merely a demonstration of the pressures of ones successful and busy lifestyle.

Veg /vεdž/ intransitive verb

In slang: to vegetate, to pass the time in vacuous inactivity.

Vegging or vegging out is particularly associated with the kind of television viewing in which the watcher slumps in front of the set and pays little or no attention to the programme being shown.

Polities:

Bork /bɔ: k/ transitive verb

To seek to obstruct the selection or appointment of by a campaign of systematic public criticism of the person concerned. The use of this verb, and of the noun Borking for the process involved, is associated primarily with the challenge to the nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas in 1991. No challenge since has generated similar controversy, and it remains to be seen whether the coinage will outlast immediate memories of the hearings involved.

Opt out /ɔpt 'a℧t/ intransitive verb

In the UK, of a school or hospital: withdraw from local authority control.

A specialized development of the general sense of the phrasal verb opt put, ʻto choose not to participateʼ.

The Conservative government, in the late eighties, introduced reforms within the education and health services which encouraged schools and hospitals to opt out of local authority control by applying for direct funding from central government and acquiring self-governing autonomy, with control over their own budgets. In the case of schools, a large proportion of the financial and administrative management was to become the responsibility of the governors and head teacher, a system referred to as local management of schools or LMS; schools that had opted out became known as grant-maintained school. Hospitals were encouraged to become self-governing hospital trusts. The reforms were promoted by the4 government as a means of reducing the inefficiency and expense of these parts of the nanny state, but were seen by some to create the undesirable prospect of a two-tier system, in which successful institutions are awarded greater funding and thus become stronger at the expense of weaker ones.

Sound bite / 'sa℧nd bΛit/ noun and verb

Transitive verb: To reduce to a series of sound bites.

The use of bite here both puts across the idea of a snatch of soundtrack taken from a longer whole and includes undertones of the high-tech approach to units of information.

Popular culture:

Be good news /bi: g℧d 'nju:z/ verbal phrase

To be an asset; to be commendable, admirable.

A transferred usage, recorded since the early eighties, in which a person or thing, rather than information or tidings, represents good news. This development has followed the comparable be bad news, which had become established by the sixties.

Diss /dis/ verb and noun

Transitive or intransitive verb: to put (someone) down, usually verbally; to show disrespect for a person by insulting language or dismissive behavior. Formed by abbreviating disrespect to its first syllable.

High-five /hΛi 'fΛiv/ noun and verb

Transitive or intransitive verb: To slap high- fives (with someone) in celebration of something or as a greeting; to celebrate. A five (that is, a hand-slap; compare British slang bunch of fives for a hand or fist) that is performed high over the head.

Max /maks/ noun and verb

Transitive or intransitive verb: In US slang, to do (something) to the limit; to excel, to perform to maximum ability or capacity, to peak. (Often as a phrasal verb max out.)