The Oxford Dictionary of New Words

A spokesman said the contraflow was working smoothly at the time of the crash and visibility was good.

Daily Telegraph 7 Sept. 1987, p. 4

Contragate

(Politics) see -gate

cook-chill

adjective and noun (Lifestyle and Leisure)

adjective: Of foods: sold in a pre-cooked and refrigerated form, for consumption within a specified time (usually after thorough reheating). Also in the form cook-chilled.

noun: The process of pre-cooking and refrigerating foods for reheating later.

Etymology: Formed by compounding: the principle is first to cook and then to chill the food.

History and Usage: The system was invented as an offshoot of partially cooked frozen meals, and had become popular in institutional catering by the early eighties. The term was

widely popularized in the UK in 1989, when there was an increase in cases of listeriosis thought to be caused at least in part by failure to store cook-chill foods correctly or reheat them thoroughly.

The Department of Health has already advised people in at-risk groups not to eat cook-chill foods cold, and--if you buy one to eat hot--to make sure that it's reheated until it's 'piping hot'.

Which? Apr. 1990, p. 206

core wars plural noun (Science and Technology)

In computing jargon, a type of computer game played by programming experts, in which the object is to design and run a program which will destroy the one designed and run by the opponent.

Etymology: Formed by compounding; core is a reference to the old ferromagnetic cores which made up the memory elements of computers used in the fifties and sixties, before the advent of semiconductor chips. Active memory is still sometimes referred to as core memory, even in modern computers.

History and Usage: The 'sport' of core wars originated among computer scientists at Bell Laboratories in the US in the late fifties and sixties and was originally the proper name of a program developed by the computer-games group there. It was popularized in the US in the mid eighties, probably as a more respectable offshoot of the interest in mischievous programs

such as the computer virus and worm and in defensive programming techniques which could be used to protect software from attack.

By 1986 it had been raised to the level of international competition, but remains a minority interest.

Robert Morris Sr....played a game based on a computer virus over 40 years ago...Called Core Wars, the game centered around the design of a program that multiplied and tried to destroy other players' programs.

Personal Computing May 1989, p. 92

corn circle

(Environment) see crop circle

cornflakes

(Drugs) see angel dust

corn-free (Lifestyle and Leisure) see -free

corpocracy

noun (Business World)

Corporate bureaucracy: bureaucratic organization in large companies (or in a particular company), especially when excessively hierarchical structures lead to overstaffing and inefficiency. Such companies are described as corpocratic; a director of one is a corpocrat.

Etymology: Formed by combining the first two syllables of corporate with the last two of bureaucracy to make a blend.

History and Usage: The word was coined by American economist Robert Heller in his book The Common Millionaire (1974), but was still sufficiently unfamiliar in the mid eighties for John S.

Berry and Mark Green to present it as a new coinage in The Challenge of Hidden Profits: Reducing Corporate Bureaucracy and Waste (1985). In the UK the word--although not the phenomenon--was popularized by financier Sir James Goldsmith. Corpocracy was presented as an important reason for the uncompetitiveness of British and American businesses during the eighties.

It doesn't believe much in hierarchy, rule books, dress codes, company cars, executive dining rooms, lofty titles, country club memberships or most other trappings of corpocracy.

Forbes 23 Mar. 1987, p. 154

Such a complete change of direction is not likely to be welcomed by directors who I would describe as complacent or entrenched in their current 'corpocratic' culture.

Sir James Goldsmith in First, 3.3 (1989), p. 18

corporate makeover

(Business World) see makeover

couch potato

noun (Lifestyle and Leisure) (People and Society)

In slang, a person who spends leisure time passively (for example by sitting watching television or videos), eats junk food, and takes little or no physical exercise.

Etymology: Formed by compounding; a person with the physical shape of a potato who spends as much time as possible slouching on the couch. The original humorous coinage by Californian Tom Iacino relied on a pun: because of their love for continuous viewing of the television (known in US slang as the boob tube, unlike British slang, which uses the term for a skimpy stretch bodice), these people had formerly been called boob tubers; for their emblem, cartoonist Robert Armstrong therefore drew the

best known tuber--a potato--reclining on a couch watching TV, formed a club called The Couch Potatoes, and later went on to register the term as a trade mark.

History and Usage: The US trade mark registration for the term couch potato claims that it was first used on 15 July 1976. Robert Armstrong (who is really responsible for popularizing the term and maintaining the cult) has claimed that this coinage was not his, attributing it instead to Tom Iacino, another 'Elder'

of the cult, who used it when asking to speak to a fellow Elder (known only as 'The Hallidonian') on the telephone. The Couch Potatoes club which Armstrong formed aimed to raise the self-esteem of tubers, and provided a counterbalance to the cult of physical fitness which was by then a dominant influence in American society. With the growth of the domestic video market, the couch potato cult became very popular during the eighties and resulted in much merchandising-- couch potato teeshirts, dolls, stationery, books, etc. designed to promote pride in the tuber culture. Many variations on the term developed too: the

obvious couch potatoing and couch potatodom and a whole range of words based on spud, such as vid spud, telespud, spud suit, and spudismo. With the coining of the trend analyst's term cocooning

in 1986, couch potatoes felt that their way of life was being officially recognized; however, a National Children and Youth Fitness Study carried out in the US in 1987 made it clear that it was not to be officially condoned, criticizing parents for

not getting children to take outdoor exercise and for raising a nation of couch potatoes. The couch potato concept and merchandising reached the UK in the late eighties, although the lifestyle had existed without a name for some time before that.

Though Mr. Armstrong's brainchild has yet to make him rich, he is still undaunted, spreading the Couch Potato gospel: 'We feel that watching TV is an indigenous American form of meditation. We call it "transcendental vegetation".'

Parade 3 Jan. 1988, p. 6

The economy could be thrown into recession because of the couch potato's penchant for staying home with the family, watching TV and munching on microwave popcorn.

The fact that so many counter-culturalists have now cut their hair...and...become green 'rainbow warriors', is a point which seems to have been overlooked.

Films & Filming Mar. 1990, p. 50

courseware

(Science and Technology) see -ware

Cowabunga Originally written kowa-bunga or Kawabonga; now also cowabunga interjection (Youth Culture)

In young people's slang (originally in the US), an exclamation of exhilaration or satisfaction, or sometimes a rallying cry to action: yippee!, yahoo!, yabbadabba doo!

Etymology: The word was originally used in the fifties (in the form kowa-bunga or Kawabonga) as an exclamation of anger by the cartoon character Chief Thunderthud in The Howdy Doody Show, written by Eddie Kean. By the sixties, it had entered surfing

slang as a cry of exhilaration when riding the crest of a wave. Since the surfers of the sixties had been the children for whom

The Howdy Doody Show was written, it is easy to see how the word made this transition; it is less clear how Eddie Kean came upon

it. Chief Thunderthud used the expression when annoyed, or if something went wrong; when things went well, he said Kawagoopa. Although Thunderthud was meant to be an American Indian, there had been early speculation that cowabunga might come from the Australian or South Seas surfing world; interestingly, kauwul is recorded as an aboriginal word in New South Wales for 'big',

bong for 'death', and gubba for 'good', but this is surely no more than a curious coincidence.

History and Usage: As mentioned above, Cowabunga was in use as an exclamation among Californian surfers by the sixties. It

reached a wider audience through a series of films about a surfer called Gidget in the sixties, through its use by the cookie monster in the children's television series Sesame Street in the seventies, and more particularly from 1990, when it was taken up as the rallying cry of the Teenage Mutant Turtles. In

the book of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: the Movie, the turtles are searching for a suitable cry:

They turned to Donatello, who struggled to come up with the perfect word to describe their exploits. But

Donatello was at a loss. His brothers continued to top each other: 'Tubular!' 'Radical!' 'Dynamite!' At last Splinter raised a finger and brought an end to the debate. 'I have always liked', he said quietly, 'cowabunga.' The turtles stared at him, grinning, then laid down high-threes all around. 'Cow-a-bung-a!' they cried in unison. And the battle-cry was born.

The word soon crossed the Atlantic as part of turtlemania, with the result that one could hear the cry of 'Cowabunga, dudes!' from British children apparently unaware that, as far as their parents were concerned, they were speaking a foreign language.

'Hey, Mike, I didn't know that you could drive!' 'Me neither...cowabunga!'

Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles 10-23 Feb. 1990, p. 20

Marketers are betting that youngsters will have the same reaction as American kids: Cowabunga!

Newsweek 16 Apr. 1990, p. 61

3.9 crack...

crack noun (Drugs)

In the slang of drug users, a highly addictive, crystalline form of cocaine made by heating a mixture of it with baking powder and water until it is hard, and breaking it into small pieces which are burnt and smoked for their stimulating effect.

Etymology: The name arises from the fact that the hard-baked substance has to be cracked into small pieces for use, as well as the cracking sound the pieces make when smoked.

History and Usage: The substance itself first came to the attention of US drug enforcement agencies in 1983, but at that time was generally known on the streets as rock or freebase. The name crack appeared during 1985 and by 1986 had become

established as the usual term, both among drug users and by the authorities; since 1988, the fuller term crack cocaine has tended to replace crack alone in official use. Crack's

appearance on the US drug market coincided with a marked rise in violent crime, testifying to its potency and addictiveness, with users prepared to go to almost any lengths to get more. The word crack quickly became the basis for compounds, notably crackhead (in drugs slang, a user of crack) and crack house (a house where crack is prepared or from which it is sold). The phrasal verb

crack (it) up has also acquired the specialized meaning in drugs slang of smoking crack.

In New York and Los Angeles drug dealers have opened up drug galleries, called 'crack houses'.

San Francisco Chronicle 6 Dec. 1985, p. 3

'Crack it up, crack it up,' the drug dealers murmur from the leafy parks of the suburbs to New York City's meanest streets.

Time 4 Aug. 1986, p. 27

Charlie and two fellow 'crackheads' took me to a vast concrete housing estate in South London where crack is on sale for between œ20 and œ25 a deal.

Observer 24 July 1988, p. 15

Some crack users [in Washington DC], unable to work for a living, will go out with a lead pipe or a bat and hit defenceless women.

Japan Times 19 May 1989, p. 20

See also wack

In the slang of drug users in the UK: to inject (a drug). Often as a phrasal verb crank up.