The Oxford Dictionary of New Words

cheque card

(Business World) see card°

child abuse

noun (People and Society)

Maltreatment of a child, especially by physical violence or sexual interference.

Etymology: Formed by compounding. The specialized sense of abuse here had already been in use for some time before the (sexual) abuse of children came to public attention during the eighties, and is common in other combinations: see abuse.

History and Usage: Child abuse was first used as a term in the early seventies, but mostly to refer to crimes of physical violence ('baby battering') or neglect. During the eighties (and particularly as a result of the public enquiry into the large numbers of children diagnosed as sexually abused in Cleveland, NE England, in 1987) it became clear that the sexual abuse of children, often by a parent or other family member, was much more widespread than had previously been thought, and a great deal was both written and spoken on the subject. Since then, the term child abuse has been used especially to refer to sexual interference with a child, and seems to have taken over from the older term child molesting. In 1990 the subject gained widespread publicity once again in the UK as police investigated the suspected abuse of children by adults involved in satanic rituals (known as ritual abuse or satanic abuse as well as child abuse).

Child abuse occurs in all walks of life...Doctors and lawyers, too, batter their kids.

New York Times 6 Jan. 1974, p. 54

Grave disquiet was expressed...about the conclusions drawn from diagnostic sessions held at the Great Ormond Street Hospital child abuse clinic in those cases where there was doubt whether a child had been sexually abused.

The Times 16 July 1986, p. 36

Childline (People and Society) see -line

China syndrome

noun (Science and Technology)

A hypothetical sequence of events following the meltdown of a nuclear reactor, in which so much heat is generated that the core melts through its containment structure and deep down into the earth.

Etymology: Formed by compounding: the idea is that the syndrome ultimately results in the meltdown's reaching China (from the

US) by melting through the core of the earth.

History and Usage: The China syndrome was always a fictional concept. It began as a piece of the folklore of nuclear physics but was widely popularized by the film The China Syndrome (produced in the US in 1979), which dealt with a fictional case of the official cover-up of an operational flaw in a nuclear reactor. Partly as a result of this film and partly because of

the near meltdown which occurred at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union in 1986, the idea of the China syndrome came to symbolize people's fears about the increasing use of nuclear power, even though the actual sequence of events in the fictional China syndrome was obviously far-fetched. The phrase had become sufficiently well known by the late eighties to be applied punningly by journalists in a number of other contexts, notably

in relation to mass pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing in 1989 and their subsequent violent suppression by the Chinese government.

Mr. Velikhov's announcement gave no clear indication just how close the Chernobyl disaster came to creating the so-called 'China Syndrome'.

The Times 12 May 1986, p. 1

For at least a decade, government and business leaders around the world have based their Asian thinking on the belief that China was an economically developing, politically stable giant. Now all that has been stood on

program--reviewing records of claimants and actually cutting off benefits from persons deemed able to work--stems from a 1980 law.

Christian Science Monitor 27 Mar. 1984, p. 17

A new and unneccessary hurdle for the thousands of claimants who have been unfairly thrown off the disability rolls.

New York Times 26 Mar. 1986, section A, p. 22

See also unwaged

To immobilize (an illegally parked car) by attaching a wheel clamp to it. Also, to subject (a person) to the experience of having his or her car clamped.

Etymology: A specialized use of the verb, which has existed in the general sense 'to make fast with a clamp' since the seventeenth century.

History and Usage: For history and usage, see wheel clamp.

In the first eight weeks 4,358 vehicles were clamped with the Denver shoe.

Daily Telegraph 14 July 1983, p. 19

We've been clamped!! One just can't avoid every potential hazard!!

Holiday Which? Mar. 1990, p. 73

classist adjective and noun (People and Society)

adjective: Discriminating against a person or group of people because of their social class; class-prejudiced.

noun: A person who holds class prejudices or advocates class discrimination.

Etymology: Formed by adding the suffix -ist (as in racist and sexist) to class; the corresponding -ism (classism) is a much older word, going back to the middle of the nineteenth century.

History and Usage: This word belongs to the debate about social attitudes and motivations which resulted from the feminist movement of the second half of the seventies.

The user called another participant in the conversation 'a classist' for arguing that (particular) middle class values and behaviors were superior.

American Speech Summer 1988, p. 183

Clause 28 noun (Politics) (People and Society)

In the UK, a clause of the Local Government Bill (and later Act) banning local authorities from 'promoting homosexuality', and thereby imposing restrictions on certain books and educational material, works of art, etc.; hence also used allusively for the

loss of artistic freedom and mood of homophobia seen by many as the sub-text of this legislation. Sometimes referred to simply

as the Clause.

Etymology: Formed by compounding: the clause numbered 28 in the original Local Authority Bill. Although the Bill became an Act

in mid 1988, and the clause therefore became a section, the term Section 28 did not gain much currency outside government or legal circles.

History and Usage: Clause 28 was discussed in Parliament for the first time at the end of 1987 and was welcomed by a large number of Conservative MPs as an expression of their party's commitment to 'traditional family values' and its pledge to tackle the problem of the 'permissive society' which had resulted from increased sexual freedom in the seventies and early eighties. From the opposite side of the political spectrum, though, the emergence of measures like Clause 28 in the late eighties was interpreted as being symptomatic of a growing institutionalized homophobia in the post-Aids era. It

was largely the opponents of Clause 28 who continued to use the term--after the Bill became an Act in mid 1988--to allude to

personal computers on price.

Marketing 11 Sept. 1986, p. 5

The company is a major porter to Far Eastern clone makers, who are developing copies of Sun Microsystems' SPARC-based workstations.

UnixWorld Jan. 1991, p. 68

3.8 cocooning...

cocooning noun (Lifestyle and Leisure)

In the US, the practice of nurturing one's family life by spending leisure time in the home with one's family; the valuing

of family life and privacy above social contact and advancement. Also as a verb cocoon and an agent noun cocooner.

Etymology: This specialized sense derives from the idea of a cocoon as a protective layer or shell: Americans are seen as deliberately retreating from the stressful conditions of life outside the home into the cosy private world of the family. Towards the end of the seventies in his book Manwatching, the anthropologist Desmond Morris had observed a similar protective device among people who live or work in crowded places where privacy is difficult to achieve:

Flatmates, students sharing a study, sailors in the cramped quarters of a ship, and office staff in crowded workplaces, all have to face this problem. They solve it by 'cocooning'. They use a variety of devices to shut themselves off from the others present.

Cocooning can be seen as one step on from the nesting which is characteristic of new parents.

History and Usage: The word was apparently coined by Faith Popcorn--a New York trend analyst--in 1986, after analysis of socio-economic trends had shown that people in the US were going out and travelling less, ordering more takeout food to eat at

home, doing more of their shopping from catalogues rather than

in person, and showing more interest in traditional pastimes (such as craft work) which could be done at home. Within a few years this had had a significant commercial effect in the US--but it remains to be seen whether the trend will be limited to affluent Americans. Cocooning is seen by some as an up-market way of saying 'being a couch potato'.

We are benefitting from 'cocooning'. Everyone wants to spend more time at home with family. Crafts like cross-stitching and fabrics for children and home decorating have experienced tremendous growth.

Fortune 30 July 1990, p. 132

You could be...what Americans call a 'cocooner'--a rich yuppie who escapes the violence of society by shutting himself up with his designer wife and baby behind a screen of security alarms.

Sunday Express 16 Sept. 1990, p. 25

cohabitation

noun (Politics)

Coexistence or co-operation in government between members of opposing parties, especially when one is the President and the other the Prime Minister. Hence, by extension, the coexistence of different currencies in a single monetary system. Also as an intransitive verb, cohabit.

Etymology: Borrowed into English from French cohabitation. In both languages, this is a figurative use of cohabitation in the sense 'living together as though man and wife, although not actually married'. Political cohabitation is seen as a marriage

of inconvenience brought about by the fickleness of the voting public.

History and Usage: The word was first used in this sense in English in a report of a speech made by French President Val‚ry Giscard d'Estaing in 1978, during a period of coalition government in France. As the eighties progressed, the French voting public tended to favour a Socialist President (Fran‡ois Mitterrand) in combination with a conservative Prime Minister,