词汇大师(Wordmaster)--'Word of 2003'

Broadcast on COAST TO COAST: January 15, 2004

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- winning words for 2003 as voted by a small group of linguists¹ and other scholarly observers of the language.

RS: More than seventy members of the American Dialect Society voted in Boston on the words that -- and we quote here -- "most colored the nation's lexicon², or otherwise dominated the national discourse³." The chairman of the new words committee, Wayne Glowka, says the word which most signifies 2003 is ... metrosexual.

GLOWKA: "Metrosexual is not exactly a new word. I believe it's been around since about 1996. There was some discussion about what it actually meant. But I think we're safe in saying it's a heterosexual male who is fashion conscious. He may look fastidiously homosexual to someone else, but he's heterosexual."

RS: "So use it in a sentence for us."

GLOWKA: "Oh, I don't know, 'that man with the nice nails certainly looks metrosexual.'"

AA: "Is it considered -- "

GLOWKA: "I have actually never heard it in use. Someone sent me the word as a nomination⁴ several months and I went looking for it on Lexis-Nexus and found there was a book that talked about 'the metrosexuals' and there were articles about metrosexuals -- actually, just focused on what the word meant. But nothing sort of where you could see people naturally using it and you could hear it in the context where it's normally used. It's kind of a strange term to me, I guess."

RS: "And it's on the top of a list of many other terms that you considered, phrases or words that you considered for 2003. And many of these words, they're predominantly war-related or health-related."

GLOWKA: "Right."

AA: "It beat out 'pre-emptive self-defense.'"

GLOWKA: "Yeah, actually, what happened was there was an initial list of 'pre-emptive self-defense,' 'embed,' 'zhuzh' or however you say it, 'governator,' 'weapons of mass deception⁵' and 'weapons of whatever.' And there was a first vote, and it looked like there was going to be a runoff between pre-emptive self-defense and metrosexual. And then a man from China stood up and he was kind of offended that 'SARS' -- which had already won Most Likely to Succeed -- was a much more important word than metrosexual. So there was another vote and, then a final vote with a runoff between metrosexual and SARS."

AA: "And it looks like metrosexual received 35 votes and SARS received 31 votes in the final round."

GLOWKA: "By that time some people had quit voting."

RS: "[Laughter] Very unscientific."

GLOWKA: "Absolutely! But very democratic."

AA: "And one thing, we should explain 'governator,' just in case someone out there who has been living under a rock doesn't know what that -- "

GLOWKA: "Doesn't have a t-shirt yet with 'governator' on it. Well that refers to, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger who was, what, the Terminator in several movies and now is the governor of California. So we have a blend here, along with 'gropenator' and 'gropenfuhrer.'"

AA: "Which come from the accusations⁶ that ... "

GLOWKA: "That he was a groper."

AA: "Now turning to the Most Useful category here, tell us about the winner."

GLOWKA: "Well, the winner is 'flexitarian.' This is a vegetarian⁷ who occasionally eats meat. So on Thanksgiving a flexitarian may eat some turkey, but basically is a vegetarian otherwise."

RS: "You have many categories here -- Most Creative, Most Unnecessary, Most Euphemistic -- what do these words, in total, tell us about who we are as Americans, what our society has been like over the last year?"

GLOWKA: "Well, even though this may look like a bad time to some people, the language is still a place where a sense of humor and novelty goes on. And sometimes the novelty ends up being kind of ugly or frightening, but sometimes it's kind of funny. In fact, I really love doing this and I really love editing this column for American Speech called 'Among the New Words' because I get to look at new words and many of them are just funny. I mean, governator to me is hilarious⁸."

AA: Wayne Glowka is an English professor at Georgia College and State University. And he edits a column in American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society.

RS: You can find all the nominees⁹ and winners at the American Dialect Society Web site, americandialect.org. We'll post a link at voanews.com/wordmaster.

AA: And don't forget our e-mail address. It's [email protected]. Now, a quick word about "zhuzh," one of the losers for the Word of 2003. We learned that it's a verb spelled Z-H-U-Z-H or T-J-U-Z-S. It refers to the way fashion-conscious people primp their clothes to look just right. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

1 linguists   

n.通晓数国语言的人( linguist的名词复数 )；语言学家

参考例句：

• The linguists went to study tribal languages in the field. 语言学家们去实地研究部落语言了。 来自辞典例句
• The linguists' main interest has been to analyze and describe languages. 语言学家的主要兴趣一直在于分析并描述语言。 来自辞典例句

2 lexicon   

n.字典，专门词汇

参考例句：

• Chocolate equals sin in most people's lexicon.巧克力在大多数人的字典里等同于罪恶。
• Silent earthquakes are only just beginning to enter the public lexicon.无声地震才刚开始要成为众所周知的语汇。

3 discourse   

n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述

参考例句：

• We'll discourse on the subject tonight.我们今晚要谈论这个问题。
• He fell into discourse with the customers who were drinking at the counter.他和站在柜台旁的酒客谈了起来。

4 nomination   

n.提名，任命，提名权

参考例句：

• John is favourite to get the nomination for club president.约翰最有希望被提名为俱乐部主席。
• Few people pronounced for his nomination.很少人表示赞成他的提名。

5 deception   

n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计

参考例句：

• He admitted conspiring to obtain property by deception.他承认曾与人合谋骗取财产。
• He was jailed for two years for fraud and deception.他因为诈骗和欺诈入狱服刑两年。

6 accusations   

n.指责( accusation的名词复数 )；指控；控告；（被告发、控告的）罪名

参考例句：

• There were accusations of plagiarism. 曾有过关于剽窃的指控。
• He remained unruffled by their accusations. 对于他们的指控他处之泰然。

7 vegetarian   

n.素食者；adj.素食的

参考例句：

• She got used gradually to the vegetarian diet.她逐渐习惯吃素食。
• I didn't realize you were a vegetarian.我不知道你是个素食者。

8 hilarious   

adj.充满笑声的，欢闹的；[反]depressed

参考例句：

• The party got quite hilarious after they brought more wine.在他们又拿来更多的酒之后，派对变得更加热闹起来。
• We stop laughing because the show was so hilarious.我们笑个不停，因为那个节目太搞笑了。

9 nominees   

n.被提名者，被任命者( nominee的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• She's one of the nominees. 她是被提名者之一。 来自超越目标英语 第2册
• A startling number of his nominees for senior positions have imploded. 他所提名的高级官员被否决的数目令人震惊。 来自互联网