This weekend, co-vocabularists are invited to design greeting card slogans fit for the times in which we live.

These slogans may describe modern events …

I hear you had a stay in rehab – I say yeah, yeah, yeah!

Jesse and Nora,
Sitting in a tree,
T.E.X.T.I.N.G.

… or a more honest approach to relationships:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
You’re a frenemy to me,
As I am to you.

Your failure made my success all the sweeter.

Suggestions are welcome for every kind of card – birthdays and funerals, relocation and retirement, mother’s day and Valentine’s day, graduation and get well soon.

As usual, the winning entries will be embossed onto the highest quality pasteboard and hand-delivered to every co-vocabularist.

Portmanteau in South Korea for those who are baby-faced and glamorous. (“Ba-Gl” is pronounced “bagel.”)

In The Straits Times, Kim Ji Hyun declared that South Korean actress Han Ji Min is “a member of the ‘Bagel Girls‘”:

It is not the name of the latest girl pop group, but refers to a small circle of actresses like her who are blessed with the face of a baby, but the body of a glamorous woman.

South Korean netizens coined the term ‘ba-gl‘ – shortened from baby-faced and glamorous – last year to epitomise their ideal of perfect beauty.

Such is the South Korean obsession that looking merely beautiful is pretty passe. A woman must also look young or much younger than her age these days.

According to Hyun, the obsession with looking young has contributed to a change in demand for cosmetic surgery:

“In the 1990s, it used to be about altering a particular feature, such as the nose or the mouth or, most commonly, the eyes,” said Dr Yoon Gyu Shik, head of EVERM Dental Clinic. “But now, it is more about how your face looks in general, and how young.”

Cosmetic jaw surgery is one of the procedures surgeons say can help decrease a person’s age. For example, by pushing back the upper and lower jaws, a surgeon can make his patient’s face appear shorter and smaller – and therefore younger.

Today’s word, in association with the splendid Oxford English Dictionary, is

prudhomme (n.)

(1) A man of valour and discretion; a knight or freeholder who is summoned to sit on a jury or to serve in the king’s council. Now rare.
(2) In France: a member of a tribunal, esp. one appointed to decide labour disputes.

Used in a sentence in 1883 by W.J, Loftie:

“The ‘prudhommes’ were arrayed at every election, at every hustings, against the lesser folk.”

Click on the word for further information, and here for the Daily Lexeme archive.

An occasional assemblage of notable vocabulary and linguistic debate from around the Web.

The Los Angeles Times

In a splendid article on Mexico’s rich array of slang words, Ken Ellingwood wrote: “The lingo of Mexicans is also increasingly influenced by the Internet and social networking sites, bringing even more English terms to a country where stylish clothes are advertised as ‘muy fashion’ and people bid farewell with a clipped ‘Bye!’

“To go on Facebook, for example, is ‘facebuquear.’ Twitter devotees keep us posted by ‘tuiteando,’ or tweeting. Someone in need of a new look might be told to ‘fotoshopeate,’ or ‘Photoshop yourself.’”

The Guardian

Live blogging on the Egypt protests, The Guardian revealed – “A new term (new to me at least) seems to have been coined to describe the women martyrs of the Egyptian protests:

“‘drsonnet: #jan25 #tahrir many chants by women & girls praise wartyrs of #revolution.’”

The Wall Street Journal

In an opinion piece for the WSJ, Douglas Murray questioned the idea of multiculturalism and spotlighted the term Leitkultur: “The first step forward is that from school-age upward our societies must reassert a shared national narrative – including a common national culture. Some years ago the German Muslim writer Bassam Tibi coined the term ‘Leitkultur’ – core culture – to describe this. It is the most decent and properly liberal antidote to multiculturalism. It concedes that in societies that have had high immigration there are all sorts of different cultures – which will only work together if they are united by a common theme.”

A Daily Portmanteau

Technogorrhea | “The pathologically incoherent, repetitious, and incessant/compulsive talkativeness, with wearisome volubility of many in the technology field who should probably get back to work.”

National Post

Author Hal Niedzviecki, discussed his documentary “Peep Culture” and expained: “‘Peep Culture’ is the phrase I coined to explain the culture of voyeurism and entertainment. We are learning to entertain ourselves by watching each other go about our everyday lives – our friends, our neighbours and random strangers around the world. We have this whole other kind of popular culture, which is everything from viral videos to blogs about your sex life to tweets about what you ate for dinner.”

OxfordWords Blog

Compiling “an unscientific list of the top twenty greatest fashion words,” Grace Labatt gave “honorary mention” to “–eggings as a suffix, which has opened the doors for the creative wearing of tight pants around the world. Jeggings is a new addition to the dictionary; meggings may be next, if Conan O’Brien has anything to with it.”

A Documented Instance of Public Eating on the part of a slim-line starlet.

Observing in The Times that interviews with sylphlike female starlets often include mention of the hearty meal they are enjoying, Jeff Gordinier wrote:

Such passages are widespread enough in the pages of American periodicals that at least one longtime film publicist, Jeremy Walker, has coined a term of art for them: the documented instance of public eating, or DIPE. Consider, for example, Cate Blanchett impulse-ordering a side of Parmesan-fried zucchini at a restaurant in London and impishly telling a writer from Vogue that she doesn’t intend to share: “I think we’d each better get our own, or things could get ugly.”

Even when an actress doesn’t overtly chow down, it is not unusual for her to gush about her fondness for doing so. “I actually really love to lie in bed, watch TV, be a total sloth, and eat my favorite food: Kraft macaroni and cheese,” Drew Barrymore told Harper’s Bazaar in the October 2010 issue. “Last night I was watching ‘The Next Food Network Star,’ eating mac and cheese, and feeling grand.” Cameron Diaz, it seems, cannot resist a burger and fries. Gearing up to play Etta James in “Cadillac Records,” Beyoncé Knowles relied on butter pecan ice cream. “I just learned what guanciale is, when I was in New Orleans,” Christina Hendricks mused in Esquire in 2009. “It’s the pig jowl. I went to this butcher there, and I came home with lots of sausages: a big andouille and a blood sausage.”

Today’s word, in association with the respected Oxford English Dictionary, is

jazerant (Also: jesserant) n.

‘A light coat of armour composed of splints or small plates of metal rivetted to each other or to a lining of some stout material’ (Fairholt).

Used in a sentence in 1834 by J.R. Planché:

“The jazerant or jazerine jacket was frequently worn in lieu of the breast and back plates. This defence was composed of small overlapping plates of iron covered with velvet, the gilt studs that secured them forming the exterior ornament.”

Click on the word for further information, and here for the Daily Lexeme archive.

The loss of knowledge caused by the ageing and retirement of those with (engineering) expertise.

Commenting on the ARC World Industry Forum on Automation World, Jim Chrzan revealed he had learned two new terms, “hot loading” (where software updates are downloaded on to a parallel system to avoid technical glitches) and “grey bearding”:

Grey bearding, involves the much talked about aging of the engineering population. The dilemma is, how do you capture all this knowledge before the experience walks out the door?

It’s one thing for a team of “grey beard” engineers to work through a problem that results in a process change, but the concept of why that change occurred, and the e-mail discussions showing the genesis of that change, are buried or lost.

So a new engineer will inherit the change, never knowing the logic and rationale behind the design modifications.

Giving in to the beauty of the Bosphorus.

Reviewing BBC Radio 4’s Bosphorus for the Guardian, Elisabeth Mahoney delighted in presenter Edward Stourton’s discovery of the term Bosphorising:

He ends one day watching the sunset with someone lucky enough to have stupendous views of the busy Bosphorus from his balcony. They drink raki and muse on how sitting there is “like having a front-row seat at a drama”. The moment was, says Stourton, “a really intoxicating piece of Bosphorising.”

Stourton was introduced to the term by John Freely, who taught physics at the University of the Bosphorus: “What we’re doing is Bosphorising. … You’re giving way to the beauty of the place and your will and your ambition, which is formed in the West, suddenly dissolves.” Freely joked, “That’s why there are very few books written about this place because once people get here they just relax and don’t do anything.”

Today’s word, in association with the comprehensive Oxford English Dictionary, is

ˈbisulc (adj. & n.)

adj. Cleft in two; spec. having a cloven hoof.
n. A cloven-hoofed animal.

Used in a sentence in 1650 by J. Bulwer:

“The tongue of man is not double, or trisulke or bisulke.”

Click on the word for further information, and here for the Daily Lexeme archive.

Acronym for a new group of emerging economies: Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey.

Observing in The Guardian that “acronyms have long been a favourite of policy wonks and policymakers,” Simon Roughneen wrote:

Jim O’Neill, the Goldman Sachs economist who came up with the now-mainstream “BRIC” catch-all for four quite different economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China – has done it again.

“MIST” – or Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey – is O’Neill’s latest rhetorical agglomeration, pulling four more far-flung countries together and talking-up the next tier of large “emerging economies”.

Pundits might have a field day with this, with MIST obviously more vapid and perhaps lacking the solidity of its BRIC antecedent. Still, all four have in common a number of factors: a large population and market, a big economy at about 1% of global GDP each, and all are members of the G20.

Today’s word, in association with the remarkable Oxford English Dictionary, is

quidnunc (n.)

A person who constantly asks: ‘What now?’; an inquisitive or nosy person; a gossip.

Used in a sentence in 1945 by R. Hargreaves:

“The quidnuncs of the Horse Guards had done little more to the military machine than tinker with non-essential details of … uniforms.”

Click on the word for further information, and here for the Daily Lexeme archive.

A florid singing style where an elaborate range of notes is used to voice a single syllable.

Commenting on the Huffington Post on Christina Aguilera’s controversial Super Bowl performance, John Eskow argued that the “horrific part” of her rendition “was not her mangling of the words, but her mangling of the tune itself.”

Complaining that “this is the same grotesque style – 17 different notes for every vocal syllable – that has so dominated the pop and R&B charts for years,” Eskow wrote:

It’s called melisma – the bending of syllables for bluesy or soulful effect – and what’s creepy about the way it’s used now is that it perverts America’s true genius for song, as evinced by its creators in the world of gospel and R&B, like Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin.

The great Jerry Wexler – who produced both Ray and Aretha – coined a great term for it: “oversouling.” He described it as “the gratuitous and confected melisma” that hollows out a song and drains it of meaning. Wexler, who knew more about soul than any producer before or since, said:

“Time and again I have found that flagrantly artificial attempts at melisma are either a substitute for real fire and passion or a cover-up for not knowing the melody … Please, learn the song first, and then sing it from the heart.”

This weekend, co-vocabularists have generously shared conversation stoppers.

The usual prizes will be sent to all those who participated; the following are especially deserving of praise:

These oysters don’t taste right. Try one. KAP

You remind me of my ex. But she’s dead now.
EMarie

Helen was one of 7 children in a family of modest means. Burt was courting her and was at last invited to family dinner. The group was gathered round the dinner table and things were going well, except Burt noticed the dog eying him intently. Not begging or doing anything, just eying him. Finally Burt asked whether there was something wrong with the dog .No, answered Helen. So why is he looking at me like that, asked Burt. Younger sib, possibly John, says, It’s because you are eating off his dish.

Burt married her anyway. Helen died at 96 and will be buried this weekend. This story will be part of her eulogy. P.Ellen K

Here, let me get my phone and show you our vacation snaps! uptowngal

There are some mornings where its just not worth the effort to gnaw through the leather restraints. Garth

In my spare time, I do pro bono work for a national association of groups working for the repeal of laws against the sport of dog fighting. Janice Byer

Anyway, that’s why I don’t go rafting in Georgia anymore… Adam Snyder

True Story: A friend who works in biotechnology was chatting with a nice woman at a party. When he mentioned what he did for a living she smiled at him and remarked,

“Don’t you think it’s ironic that you are trying to find a cure for cancer when we all know it’s companies like yours that cause it in the first place?”

(Insert sound of crickets chirping here.) Semperjaye

With thanks to Citizen Arcane for the headline.

This competition can now be found in the C-column, vowing to become a better conversationalist.

Today’s word, in association with the brilliant Oxford English Dictionary, is

bumbaste (v.)

(1) To beat on the posteriors; hence, to flog, beat soundly, thrash.
(2) ? To finish off, ‘dispose of’ (a can of liquor).

Used in a sentence in 1682 by T. Rationalis:

“I am resolved to bumbast him as soon as you are gone.”

Click on the word for further information, and here for the Daily Lexeme archive.

This weekend, co-vocabularists are invited to share conversation stoppers – comments guaranteed to end all social intercourse.

For example:

Can I show you my rash?

I’m not being racist, but…

Please don’t go down into the cellar, it’s my private place.

Bonus points will be awarded for anecdotal offerings and the usual high quality pith.