
"omnishambles"
Let it die - I much prefer clusterfuck.
It's official: "Selfie" is Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year 2013, proving the "runaway winner" of the crown following its elevation back in August to Oxford Dictionaries Online. Defined as "a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website", …
Mahatma Coat, to build upon Chris’ point, I’ll quote from a book on Dutch grammar regarding diminutives:
Diminutives often indicate smallness, but they may also express a variety of attitudes toward an object or person: familiarity, affection, tenderness, irony, or even disdain. Often they lend an untranslatable connotation to a word, something that only the native speaker can perceive.
In my view, this explains the Australian usage better than abbreviations would.
and a word can be two words... according to Radio 4 this morning. Interview on Today:
Radio 4: Can you suggest any suitable words
wonk: Bedroom tax
Radio 4: er... that has political connotations
wonk: yes bedroom tax blah want to talk about poll tax too... yeah poll tax right?
Radio 4: what about "seriesbinging"?
wonk: yes that is when a person watches a whole series eg. Breaking Bad, blah blah either digitally or from a DVD... blah...
and DVD stands for...
The evolution of the English language really is slowing down.
Also, we've been doing that to words in the NE of Scotland since long before Australia was invaded and gentrified, or so the wifie in the shoppie said. But then I suppose more people have watched Neighbours than Roughnecks. "What the..." Yes, exactly.
You've got a point!
Kids use funny phrases and words when they're young but generally they stop as they grow up, just as I did, just as my parents and grand parents before them did. The only modern change is that some people seem to have decided that what the kids say is 'cool' and that the rest of us should speak like them or be out of date.
OED seems to have bought into this. A shame really as I don't think it's healthy for the kids or for the adults to get things arse about face like this.Still some words do stick and I think "selfie" may be one of them.
Oxford Dictionary's desperation for mainstream acceptance into pop culture
Wow that's a bit mean. OED has been accepting "pop culture" words for centuries - how else did a "lavatory" and "bathroom" become places to defecate. Just because this is the first you've heard of it doesn't give you the right to label them as "desperate".
Sorry mate, I use relo for a relocation record (when dredging object files for linker or compiler bugs). For my cuzzies and sis and the like I say "rellie," as does everyone else around here. But you're right that the arvo comes by every day.
Hmm, quick rummage and a bit of google-fu shows that Lester Haines was the Register hack who once thought we call a tarpaulin a "tarpo".
I suggest The Register give him six months' transportation to Australia. He can spend a nice traditional chrissie on the beach with some sheilas and go back and tell the poms what's what. And miss a horrible UK winter.
my kids think "selfies" are NEW.
Oh no they're not.
I can remember an advert on TV featuring David Bailey taking a picture of himself, probably using an Olympus Trip 35mm camera way back in something like the early 1980s.
I thought this was cool as a teenager in the early 80s (coz I thought it was new back then ) and would regularly take my own picture with my Canon Sureshot.
I guess even I was wrong back then, about it being new, because I'm sure people must have taken self portraits before even I was born. Flash bang wallop what a picture ;)
As I posted elsewhere:
"Whatever. Oxford is wrong. We were using the word "selfie" for self portraits taken with Polaroid's "Land" cameras, especially the SX-70, in the early 1970s. (San Francisco Bay Area.) I suspect searching the Usenet archives could turn up many cites for this term being in use on TehIntraWebTubes in the very early 1980s, but I can't be arsed to look. A late 1970s or earl 1980s CompuServe or TheSource photography forum archive would probably also turn up cites, if such an archive exists.
"Kids these days think they invented everything ..."