Portmanteaus, Neologisms, and Sniglets Archive
eschered /ˈɛsh’ər/, v. intr., to move or disappear in a surreal way, as might be seen in the works of Dutch artist M.C. Escher (e.g., Relativity).
Used in the novel American Gods by Neil Gaiman; since since in modest usage on the web.
od hac
0 Comments Published by Eric May 31st, 2007 in Portmanteaus, Neologisms, and Sniglets, SoftwareOriginally a spoonerism I inadvertently used in a business meeting. Someone proposed a kludgy solution to a problem, and I meant to say that we should use a better, more general approach rather than an ad hoc fix.
od hac /ˈoʊˈdi hæk/, adjective, improvised for one specific purpose, in a kludgy manner (as an undesirable hack)
Note [...]
BBC World Service aired a news item concerning the Pope’s visit to Brazil, and mentioned that he rode in the “popemobile,” though the word is not used in the written news story on their web site. Wikipedia confirms that it is a portmanteau, though it is said to be an informal name.
Nerdgasm
0 Comments Published by Eric April 27th, 2007 in Gadgets, Portmanteaus, Neologisms, and Snigletsnerdgasm /nûrd-gasm/, noun, a feeling of euphoria brought on by exposure to a new piece of tech gear or software.
Seen in Boing Boing post by Cory Doctorow, referring to student reactions to the Neuros OSD set-top box:
I’ve had a couple of these circulating in my class at USC this semester and some of the students [...]
New PCs come preloaded with lots of “craplets”
0 Comments Published by Eric April 26th, 2007 in Blog/website/news comments, Portmanteaus, Neologisms, and Sniglets, SoftwareI mostly use Linux, but on rare ocassions I do have to use Windows. When I bought a new laptop last year, I was annoyed at how much worthless junk (e.g., limited trial versions of software I don’t want) came preinstalled. Apparently I’m not the only person annoyed by how much hassle it [...]
Portmanteau of the Day
3 Comments Published by Eric October 8th, 2006 in Portmanteaus, Neologisms, and Snigletsgrotendous /gr-tnds/, adjective, grotesque, horrendous. Used for extreme emphasis. Adverb: grotendously.
Cory Doctorow brought the adverb form to my attention with a posting on Boing Boing:
What’s weird to me is how the collective output of all that great work by great people produces such lousy outcomes — DRM-crippled OSes like Vista, stupid products like [...]
