The Oxford Dictionary of New Words
.pdf3.12 cyberpunk...
cyberpunk noun Sometimes written Cyberpunk (Lifestyle and Leisure)
A style of science fiction writing combining high-tech plots (in which the world is controlled by artificial intelligence) with unconventional or nihilistic social values. Also, a writer of
(or sometimes a character in or follower of) cyberpunk.
Etymology: Formed by combining the first two syllables of cybernetics (the science of control systems) with punk (probably as an allusion to the hard, aggressive character of punk music, with which cyberpunk has much in common, particularly in its harshness and deliberate attempt to shock).
History and Usage: Although only a few years old, cyberpunk has grown into a leading genre of science fiction. The word may have been coined by Gardner Dozois to describe the work of a number of writers in the mid eighties, notably William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. William Gibson's book Neuromancer (1984) is seen as a foundational influence; so much so, in fact, that another name
for the writers of this type of fiction is Neuromantics. They have also been called outlaw technologists or the mirror-shades group, while the genre has been called technopunk or radical hard SF as well as cyberpunk. Outside the world of science fiction only cyberpunk has been widely popularized, especially as a result of the television adaptation of Neuromancer, Max Headroom. In 1991 Cyberpunk was the title of Peter von Brandenburg's documentary film on the genre, which itself used some of the techniques characteristic of cyberpunk writing.
The purveyors of bizarre, hard-edged, high-tech stuff, who have on occasion been referred to as 'cyberpunks'...They are the '80s generation.
Washington Post 30 Dec. 1984, p. 9
It's the Rhetoric of the New. Pitched somewhere between the SF genre of cyberpunk and the mainstream brat novel.
Listener 4 May 1989, p. 29
4.0D
4.1dairy-free...
dairy-free
(Lifestyle and Leisure) see -free
daisy chain°
noun and verb (Business World)
noun: In financial jargon, a string of buyers who concentrate their dealings on a particular stock in order to raise its price artificially.
transitive verb: To raise (prices) artificially in this way.
Etymology: A specialized use of the figurative sense of daisy chain, which has been used as a noun since the middle of the last century to refer to any linking together of people or things in the fashion of a real daisy chain.
History and Usage: A practice which began with strings of traders in crude oil who bought and sold to each other on paper in the seventies, the daisy chain became a shady and only semi-legal activity on the wider market in the mid eighties. The conspirators make a show of activity in their chosen market, thereby pushing up the price and attracting unsuspecting investors. They then pull out, leaving the new investors with overpriced stock. Most countries have tried to curb the practice legally.
They have been buying crude from resellers who illegally inflated the prices and supplying products to brokers whose only function was to 'daisy chain' the prices.
Washington Post 31 May 1979, section A, p. 11
Can order be brought to the daisy chain market?
The Times 19 Feb. 1986, p. 17
Lincoln traded junk bonds with other daisy chain members at 'artificial and escalating prices so that both
parties could recognize artificial and improper profits', the suit said.
Los Angeles Times (Orange County edition) 10 Feb. 1990, section D, p. 11
daisy chainý
transitive verb (Science and Technology)
To link (computers and other electronic devices used with them) to each other in series, forming a chain which is connected to a single controlling device.
Etymology: Daisy chain had come to be used as a verb meaning 'to join things together in the manner of a daisy chain' during
the middle years of the century; the computing sense is a specialization of that use.
Occupying a full-size slot, each SCSI device lets you daisy-chain other devices to it.
PC World Oct. 1989, p. 80
Twenty or more players can be daisy-chained to one card.
Guardian 18 Jan. 1990, p. 29
daisy wheel
noun Also written daisy-wheel or daisywheel (Science and Technology)
A removable printing unit in some computer printers and electronic typewriters, consisting of a disc of spokes extending radially from a central hub, each spoke having a single printing character at its outer end.
Etymology: Formed by compounding: a wheel which in some ways resembles a daisy with its radiating 'petals'.
History and Usage: The daisy wheel type of printer was introduced in the late seventies and proved a popular alternative to dot-matrix printing in cases where clear, typewriter-like quality was needed. The wheel revolves to position the next character in front of a single hammer (a process which in the early machines was both slow and noisy, although this was improved in later models). The wheels are removable, allowing a number of different scripts or founts to be used on a single printer, but only text can be printed (a limitation which does not apply to the cheaper, poorer-quality dot-matrix or the more expensive, top-quality laser printers--both can also print graphics such as charts and graphs).
As I write, an IBM word processor with daisywheel sits malevolently waiting for me in a customs shed.
Anthony Burgess Homage to QWERTYUIOP (1986), p. xii
damage limitation noun (Politics)
The action or process of minimizing the damage to one's cause (usually a political one) after an accident, mistake, etc. has occurred. Also sometimes called damage control.
Etymology: Formed by compounding.
History and Usage: The term damage limitation was first used in the mid sixties to refer to a policy in US politics of planning
for the disaster of nuclear war, so as to have mechanisms in place for minimizing the damage to the US of a first strike by the enemy; damage control originated in international shipping law and later came to be used figuratively in politics. Both terms were applied in new contexts in the eighties as a series of political scandals and mistakes involving individual politicians or whole parties threatened to affect the polls unless damage-limiting measures were taken.
The meeting decided to put Lord Whitelaw in charge of a 'damage limitation' exercise. Part of this would be a speech by Mrs Thatcher distancing the government from the [Channel] tunnel.
Economist 14 Feb. 1987, p. 19
daminozide
(Environment) see Alar
4.2 ...
DAT |
acronym Also written dat (Lifestyle and Leisure) (Science and |
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Technology) |
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Short for digital audio tape, a kind of audio tape on which |
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sound is recorded digitally, equivalent in quality to a digital |
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recording on CD. Also, a piece or cassette of digital audio |
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tape. |
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Etymology: An acronym, formed on the initial letters of Digital |
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Audio Tape. |
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History and Usage: Digital audio tape was developed |
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experimentally at the beginning of the eighties and had started |
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to be called DAT outside technical trade sources by 1985. It was |
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widely used in recording studios as a convenient form of |
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high-quality master tape. However, when commercial production |
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was first talked about in the mid eighties there was near panic |
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among some record producers (called DATphobia by one music |
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paper), since DAT was expected to pose a considerable threat to |
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the growing compact disc market, and to be much more difficult |
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to protect from copying and piracy. After a lull in the late |
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eighties, the word came back into the news in 1990 as companies |
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talked of making DAT commercially available in 1991. |
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Compact Discs have been marketed as the ultimate in |
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sound. If DAT allows you to copy CDs...with absolutely |
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no loss in that quality, where does this put the major |
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record houses currently investing sharp-intake-of-breath |
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sized sums on CD pressing plants? |
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Q Oct. 1986, p. 18 |
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The introduction of DAT has been bitterly fought here by |
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record companies fearing unstoppable competition to |
compact discs.
Music & Musicians International Feb. 1988, p. 14
During a visit to Japan a year or so ago, I was convinced the year for consumer DAT is '91. I still believe that to be the case.
Music Week 23 June 1990, p. 4
data capture
(Science and Technology) see capture
Data Discman
(Science and Technology) see Walkman
data massage
(Business World) (Science and Technology) see massage
data tablet
(Science and Technology) see tablet
dawn raid noun (Business World)
In financial jargon, a swift buying operation carried out at the beginning of the day's trading, in which a substantially increased shareholding is obtained for a client, often as a preliminary to a take-over.
Etymology: A figurative use of a compound which comes originally from military contexts but had become something of a journalistic clich‚ in reports of police operations during the twentieth century: the media often reported that a dawn raid had been carried out on a house occupied by suspected drug dealers or other criminals.
History and Usage: A phenomenon which began at the very beginning of the eighties, the dawn raid offers a 'predator' company the chance to take an intended victim by surprise, and is therefore a popular preliminary to a take-over. The proportion of shares which may be bought up in this way by a dawn raider has been successively limited during the eighties so as to give a fairer chance to the target company.
Market lethargy has brought out the dawn raiders again, despite the recent stock exchange report on such practices.
Economist 26 July 1980, p. 84
Its shares rose 14p to 235p, 5p below the new terms, as Blue Circle picked up a 29.5 per cent stake in a dawn raid on the stock market.
Guardian 3 Aug. 1989, p. 11
4.3 ddI...
ddI |
abbreviation Also written DDI (Health and Fitness) |
Short for dideoxyinosine, a drug which has been tested for use in the treatment of Aids.
Etymology: The initial letters of Di-, Deoxy-, and Inosine.
History and Usage: The compound dideoxyinosine was first synthesized in the mid seventies in connection with cancer research; in the late eighties it was suggested that it should be tried as an alternative to AZT (Zidovudine) in treating people with Aids. It was successfully tested in clinical trials in the US in 1989 and trials in the UK followed in 1990. Like AZT, ddI prevents the Aids virus HIV from replicating itself within the body.
Almost 20 times as many people have flocked to free distributions of the new drug DDI than have signed up for the clinical trial.
New York Times 21 Nov. 1989, section A, p. 1
The UK trial of ddI will be accompanied by a similar trial in France.
Lancet 10 Mar. 1990, p. 596
DDI may offer an alternative treatment to the many people with AIDS who cannot tolerate zidovudine.
New Scientist 26 May 1990, p. 32
4.4 deafened...
deafened adjective (Health and Fitness) (People and Society)
Of a person: having lost the faculty of hearing (although not deaf from birth) to such an extent as to have to rely on visual aids such as lip-reading in order to understand speech. The corresponding noun for the state of being deafened is deafenedness.
Etymology: A specialized use of the adjective, which has existed since the seventeenth century in the more general sense 'deprived of hearing', but has usually referred to temporary deafening (as, for example, by a loud noise).
History and Usage: The distinction between the deaf (who have never been able to hear) and the deafened (who lose their hearing after having acquired normal language skills) has been made in medical literature for some time, often with an adverb making the situation absolutely clear, as pre-lingually deaf and post-lingually deafened. In popular usage, though, deaf has tended to serve both functions, as well as being used frequently to mean 'hard of hearing' (for which the official term is now hearing-impaired). The term deafened was brought into wider usage--partly as an attempt to alert the public to this
important distinction and make them aware of the special problems of the deafened--by the formation of the National Association for Deafened People in 1984.
Deafened people share many problems with those born deaf, but there is a gulf between us in terms of lifestyle.
Good Housekeeping Sept. 1986, p. 45
Lip-reading...confounds crucial distinctions between the hard of hearing, the profoundly deafened and the
pre-lingually profoundly deaf. The hard of hearing and the deafened have...been...supporters of oralism; and the born deaf have retaliated by speaking as if they alone were the true deaf.
Independent 16 May 1989, p. 15
death metal
(Music) (Youth Culture) see thrash
debit card
(Business World) see card°
debrezhnevization
(Politics) see decommunize
debt counselling
noun Written debt counseling in the US (Business World) (People and Society)
Professional advice and support provided for those who have fallen into debt and are unable to meet their financial commitments. The work of a debt counsellor.
Etymology: Formed by compounding: counselling about debt.
History and Usage: The term was first used in technical sources as long ago as the late sixties, but did not become at all common in general usage until the late seventies in the US and the eighties in the UK. The successive problems of the credit boom (leading to credit-card debt) and high interest rates (causing people to default on mortgage payments) have made it increasingly common since then.
As debt counselors all over the state can attest: The woods around here are full of people who can't handle a single credit card without getting into deep, deep trouble.
Los Angeles Times 30 Jan. 1986, section 5, p. 14
For homeowners forced into debt by rising interest rates, the Portsmouth Building Society has set up a free
debt counselling phoneline...manned by staff trained in debt counselling.
Daily Telegraph 10 Feb. 1990, p. 34
decommunize
transitive verb (Politics)
To remove the communist basis from (a country, its institutions or economy), especially in Eastern Europe; loosely, to democratize. Also as a noun decommunization, the process of dismantling communism; adjective decommunized.
Etymology: Formed by adding the prefix de- (in its commonest sense of removal or reversal) and the verbal suffix -ize to the root commun-.
History and Usage: The word has been in use since the early eighties, when the first signs emerged of a willingness in communist countries to allow a small amount of private enterprise in some areas of their economies. Its use became more frequent in the late eighties--first in relation to Poland and Hungary and later to all former Warsaw Pact countries, as the whole edifice of Marxism in Eastern Europe began to be replaced by varying degrees of democracy and capitalism. The verb is sometimes used intransitively, in the sense 'to become decommunized'. The noun decommunization covers all the processes, both economic and political, which contribute to the dismantling of communism, whereas democratization and its Russian equivalent demokratizatsiya really refer only to the political process. Debrezhnevization was used for a short time to describe the personal discrediting of Leonid Brezhnev and his style of government, a process which took place during the mid eighties, shortly after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union.
The momentum of decommunization is likely to carry most of the successor states of the Soviet Union quite far to
the right.
The Times 24 Feb. 1990, p. 10
'We cannot decommunize a whole society overnight,' says