The Oxford Dictionary of New Words
.pdfPolitics just aren't that important for 90 per cent of skinheads. And you're more likely to get violence from the Casuals at football matches than any of us.
Independent 23 Jan. 1989, p. 14
casual sex
noun (Health and Fitness) (Lifestyle and Leisure) (People and Society)
Sexual activity between people who are not regular or established sexual partners.
Etymology: Formed by compounding: sex which is casual.
History and Usage: A change in public attitudes towards sexual activity was the essential prerequisite for sexual activity to
be described as casual sex, since the description implies that sex with a diversity of partners is conceivable--a view which,
however much it may have been held by individuals, was not much aired in public before the 'swinging' sixties. During the
seventies significant numbers of people began to question the conventional wisdom that only husband and wife, or those in a 'steady relationship', should have sexual intercourse. However, the idea that sex could become a transaction between any two (or more) otherwise unacquainted people remained controversial, despite the existence of such long-established forms of casual sex as prostitution. Use of the expression steadily increased, possibly indicating more widespread acceptability for the concept, and by the late seventies casual could also be applied
to sexual partners. What brought the phrase to unprecedented prominence during the eighties was the Aids crisis, which made non-judgemental plain speaking about the reality of people's sexual behaviour essential.
The length of the list might suggest that Auden was in the habit of 'cruising'--picking up boys for casual sex.
Humphrey Carpenter W. H. Auden (1981), p. 97
The advice is to either avoid casual sex or to use a condom.
New Musical Express 14 Feb. 1987, p. 4
See also safe sex
CAT° |
acronym (Health and Fitness) (Science and Technology) |
Short for computerized axial tomography, a medical technology which provides a series of cross-sectional pictures of internal organs and builds these up into a detailed picture using an X-ray machine controlled by a computer.
Etymology: An acronym, formed on the initial letters of Computerized Axial Tomography; sometimes expanded as Computer-Aided or Computer-Assisted Tomography.
History and Usage: The technique was developed by EMI in the US in the mid seventies and was at first known as CT scanning (an alternative name which is still widely used, especially in the
US). By producing detailed pictures of the inside of the body (and in particular of brain tissue) it revolutionized diagnostic procedures, often doing away with the need for exploratory surgery. CAT is normally used attributively, like an adjective: the image produced is a CAT scan; the equipment which produces it is a CAT scanner; the process is CAT scanning rather than CAT alone.
Voluntary groups have raised the money...to buy CAT scanners for their local hospitals.
Listener 28 Apr. 1983, p. 2
Very soon after meeting Gabriel, I sent him to get a CT scan of his head and discovered a medium-sized tumor in his brain.
Perri Klass Other Women's Children (1990), p. 222
catý noun and adjective (Environment)
noun: Short for catalytic converter, catalyst, or catalyser, a device which filters pollutants from vehicle exhaust emissions, thereby cutting down air pollution.
adjective: Catalysed; fitted with a catalytic converter (used especially in cat car).
Etymology: Formed by shortening catalytic converter, catalyst, or catalyser to its first syllable.
History and Usage: Catalytic converters were first developed in the fifties, but the abbreviation cat did not start to appear frequently in print until about 1988, when the first models of car fitted with a cat as a standard option became available in
the UK. Although quite separate from the issue of unleaded fuel, the desirability of cat cars has tended to be discussed in connection with the widespread switch to lead-free petrol, since a cat can only do its job--to 'scrub' carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and hydrocarbons from the exhaust--in cars which run on unleaded fuel. At first, new models were produced in both cat and non-cat versions, but cat-only models look increasingly likely in the nineties.
Unusually, Ford have been completely wrong-footed on this one by arch-rival Vauxhall, who are to start supplying cat cars in the UK this autumn.
Performance Car June 1989, p. 20
The new Turbo's exhaust system...features a metallic-element catalytic converter, while even the wastegate tailpipe is equipped with a cat and a muffler.
Autocar & Motor 7 Mar. 1990, p. 13
'Cats' are like honeycombs with many internal surfaces...covered with precious metals which react with harmful exhaust gases.
Independent 3 Aug. 1990, p. 2
3.2 CD
CD |
noun (Science and Technology) |
Short for compact disc, a small disc on which audio recordings or other data are recorded digitally and which can be 'read' optically by the reflection of a laser beam from the surface.
Etymology: The initial letters of Compact Disc.
History and Usage: CD technology was invented by Philips for audio recording towards the end of the seventies as the most promising medium for the accurate new digital recordings. By 1980 Philips had pooled their resources with Sony and it was clear that the CD was to become the successor to the grooved audio disc. During the early eighties the optical disc (another name for the CD) was also vaunted as the medium of the future for other kinds of data, since the storage capacity was vastly greater than on floppy--or even hard--discs; a number of large
reference works and commercial databases became available on CD ROM (compact disc with read-only memory), the form of CD used for data of this kind. The sound and data are recorded as a
spiral pattern of pits and bumps underneath a smooth protective layer; inside the special CD player or CD reader needed to 'read' each of these kinds of disc, a laser beam is focused on this spiral. By 1990 the CD had become the established medium
for high-quality audio recordings and new forms of CD were being tried: the photo-CD, for example, was suggested as a permanent storage medium for family photographs, the digitized images being 'read' by a CD player and viewed on a television screen.
CD video (or CDV) applies the same technology to video. Multimedia CDs, including CDI (Compact Disc Interactive) and DVI (Digital Video Interactive) offer the possibility of combining
text, sound, and images on a single disc. CDTV allows the viewer to interact with recorded television.
Whatever you want--get it on CD Video from your record or Hi Fi dealer.
Sky Magazine Apr. 1990, p. 14
The CDTV system involves a unit the same size as a video recorder which plugs into a standard television set.
Daily Telegraph 13 Aug. 1990, p. 4
CDI...emphasises the fact that it is a world standard.
This is a claim that can only be equalled by records, tapes and audio CDs...To achieve this Philips and Sony developed a new system and a new CD format for text, graphics, stills, and animation.
Information World Review Sept. 1990, p. 20
The Kodak Photo CD system, jointly developed by Kodak and Philips of the Netherlands, digitally stores images from negatives or slides on compact discs. The pictures can then be shown on ordinary television or computer screens with a Photo CD player that also plays audio CDs.
Chicago Tribune 19 Sept. 1990, section C, p. 4
3.3 Ceefax...
Ceefax noun (Lifestyle and Leisure) (Science and Technology)
In the UK, the trade mark of a teletext system (see tele-) operated by the BBC.
Etymology: A respelling of see (as in seeing) combined with fax (see fax° and faxý): seeing facsimile, on which you may see facts.
History and Usage: Ceefax was introduced in the early seventies and is now a standard option on most new television sets in the UK.
Telesoftware is carried by teletext--in other words, it is part of the BBC's Ceefax service.
Listener 16 June 1983, p. 38
See also Oracle
cellular adjective (Science and Technology)
Being part of a mobile radio-telephone system in which the area served is divided into small sections, each with its own
short-range transmitter/receiver; cellular telephone, a hand-held mobile radio telephone for use in this kind of system.
Etymology: This kind of radio-telephone system is termed cellular from the small sections, called cells, into which the operating area is divided. The same frequencies can be used simultaneously in the different cells, giving greater capacity to the system as a whole.
History and Usage: This kind of mobile telephone became available in the late seventies and was considerably more successful than the more limited non-cellular radio telephone. By the mid eighties cellular was often abbreviated to cell-, as in cellphone for cellular telephone and Cellnet, the trade mark of the cellular network operated by British Telecom in the UK (and also of a similar service in the US), sometimes also used to mean a cellphone.
It will soon be possible to use either of the two cellular networks started this year off almost the entire south coast.
The Times 15 Feb. 1985, p. 37
The mobile phone is the perfect symbol, if not of having arrived, then at least of having the car pointed in the right direction. It would no doubt come as a surprise to most cellphone users that their conversations are in the public domain, as it were, available to anyone with a scanning receiver, a little time to kill, and a healthy disregard for personal privacy. Fortunately for cellphone users, it's very difficult for us
eavesdroppers to 'lock in' on one conversation for more than a few minutes.
Guardian 14 July 1989, p. 7
3.4 CFC
CFC abbreviation (Environment)
Short for chlorofluorocarbon, any of a number of chemical
compounds released into the atmosphere through the use of refrigerators, aerosol propellants, etc., and thought to be harmful to the ozone layer.
Etymology: The initial letters of the elements which make up the chemical name chlorofluorocarbon: compounds of chlorine, fluorine, and carbon.
History and Usage: CFCs have been in use as refrigerants, in aerosols, and in the plastics industry for some decades, but came into the public eye through the discovery that they were being very widely dispersed in the atmosphere and that chlorine atoms derived from them were contributing to ozone depletion. The experimental work showing this to be the case was carried out during the seventies; by the early eighties, environmental
groups were trying to publicize the dangers and some governments had taken action to control the use of CFCs, but it was not
until the end of the decade that CFC became an almost universally known abbreviation in industrialized countries and manufacturers started to produce large numbers of products labelled CFC-free. If not followed by a number or in a combination such as CFC gases, the term is nearly always used in the plural, since there is a whole class of compounds of similar structure and having similar effects on the ozone layer,
although some are more harmful than others.
Shoppers are told that meat and eggs are packaged in CFC-free containers.
Daily Telegraph 2 May 1989, p. 17
India alone estimates its bill for replacing CFCs over the next 20 years will be œ350 million. Mrs Thatcher said it was essential that all nations joined the process of ridding the world of CFCs otherwise the health of the people of the world and their way of life would suffer.
Guardian 28 June 1990, p. 3
Du Pont has...promised to suspend production of ozone-destroying CFCs by 2000.
News-Journal (Wilmington) 9 July 1990, section D, p. 1
3.5 chair...
chair noun (People and Society)
A non-sexist way of saying 'chairman' or 'chairwoman'; a chairperson.
Etymology: Formed by dropping the sex-specific part of chairman etc. An impersonal use of Chair (especially in the appeal of
Chair! Chair! and in the phrase to address the chair) had existed for centuries and provided the precedent for this use.
History and Usage: A usage which arose from the feminist movement in the mid seventies. Although disliked by some, it has become well established. It is interesting, though, that it has not produced derivatives: one finds chairpersonship of a committee, but only very rarely chairship.
On the more general aspects of the arriviste's upward trajectory, however, such as the craft of...chairpersonship, he has much less to say.
Nature 9 Dec. 1982, p. 550
She has annoyed the Black Sections by refusing to resign as chair of the party black advisory committee.
Tribune 12 Sept. 1986, p. 7
challenged
(Health and Fitness) (People and Society) see abled
Challenger
(Science and Technology) see shuttle
chaos noun (Science and Technology)
A state of apparent randomness and unpredictability which can be observed in the physical world or in any dynamic system that is highly sensitive to small changes in external conditions; the
area of mathematics and physics in which this is studied (also called chaos theory or chaology).
Etymology: A specialized use of the figurative sense of chaos, 'utter confusion and disorder' (a sense which itself goes back to the seventeenth century). Although actually determined by tiny changes in conditions which have large consequences, the processes which scientists call chaos appear at first sight to
be random, utterly confused, and disordered.
History and Usage: The serious study of chaos began in the late sixties, but it was only in the mid seventies that
mathematicians started to call this state chaos and not until the mid eighties that the study of these phenomena came to be called chaos theory. It is relevant to any system in which a very small change in initial conditions can make a significant
difference to the outcome; a humorous example often quoted is the butterfly effect in weather systems--these systems being so sensitive to initial conditions that it is said that whether or
not a butterfly flaps its wings on one side of the world could determine whether or not a tornado occurs on the other side. By the beginning of the nineties the study of chaotic systems had already proved to offer important insights to all areas of science--and indeed to our understanding of social processes--partly because it views systems as dynamic and developing rather than looking only at a static problem. A person who studies chaos is a chaologist, chaos theorist, or chaoticist.
When the explorers of chaos began to think back on the genealogy of their new science, they found many intellectual trails from the past...A starting point was the Butterfly Effect.
James Gleick Chaos: Making a New Science (1988), p. 8
Chaos theory presents a Universe that is deterministic, obeying fundamental physical laws, but with a predisposition for disorder, complexity and unpredictability.
New Scientist 21 Oct. 1989, p. 24
One of the tasks facing students of complex chaotic systems...is to investigate fully the range of predictability in each case.
The Times 9 Aug. 1990, p. 13
charge-capping (Politics) see cap
charge card
(Business World) see card°
chase the dragon
verbal phrase (Drugs)
In the slang of drug users, to take heroin (or heroin mixed with another smokable drug) by heating it on a piece of folded tin foil and inhaling the fumes.
Etymology: The phrase is reputed to be translated from Chinese and apparently arises from the fact that the fumes move up and down the piece of tin foil with the movements of the molten heroin powder, and these undulating movements resemble the tail of the dragon in Chinese myths.
History and Usage: This method of taking heroin comes from the Far East, as does the imagery of the phrase. It has been
practised in the West since at least the sixties; in the
eighties, with the threat of contracting Aids from used needles,
it became more popular than injecting and the phrase became more widely known.
Probably the stuff was now only twenty per cent pure. Still, good enough for 'chasing the dragon' Hong Kong style with match, silver foil, and paper tube.
Timothy Mo Sour Sweet (1982), p. 50
A hundred men or more lay sprawled 'chasing the dragon'--inhaling heroin through a tube held over heated tinfoil.
The Times 24 May 1989, p. 13