The Oxford Dictionary of New Words

History and Usage: Although congenital factor VIII deficiency had been identified as the cause of haemophilia by the fifties, the term did not become widely known until the Aids era. In the mid eighties, before the implications of Aids for the blood donor system were fully understood, thousands of haemophiliacs worldwide were infected with the Aids virus HIV as a result of receiving injections to boost their levels of factor VIII. This,

and the subsequent actions for damages, brought the term factor VIII to public attention.

Doctors, unaware of the cause of his illness, pumped him with huge doses of Factor VIII...But with AIDS becoming a public issue...both he and Elizabeth were aware that

the massive transfusions of blood could well have exposed him to the virus.

New Idea (Melbourne) 9 May 1987, p. 8

More than 1,200 haemophiliacs were infected with the Aids virus after treatment with contaminated Factor VIII, a blood-clotting agent that was administered through the NHS.

Sunday Times 30 Sept. 1990, p. 1

fanny pack

noun Also written fannypack (Lifestyle and Leisure)

The US slang name for a bum-bag.

Etymology: Formed by compounding; in US slang, fanny is the equivalent of British slang bum and has none of the sexual connotations of the British English fanny.

History and Usage: Fanny pack has a similar history in US English to that of bum-bag in British English, arising as long as twenty years ago as a term used by skiers, motorcyclists, etc. (sometimes with variations on the name, such as fanny bag

or fanny belt) and moving into the more general vocabulary when the idea was taken up by the fashion world in the late eighties. As a fashion accessory in the US, the fanny pack has also been called a belly-bag, reflecting the fact that it is worn at the

front rather than the back (see bum-bag) or belt bag, avoiding all reference to human anatomy.

I've hurt myself and my cameras numerous times...but I've never had a problem, even doing an eggbeater at

full speed, with my gear tucked away inside a fannypack.

Sierra Jan.-Feb. 1985, p. 45

Christin Ranger...says her company put out six versions this year (compared with only two last year), including larger fanny packs that hold lunches or tennis shoes and front-loaders with just enough room for a wallet.

Newsweek 5 Dec. 1988, p. 81

fast-food adjective (Drugs)

Of substances other than food, especially drugs: instant; quick and easy to make, obtain, and use. Also occasionally of non-material things: intellectually accessible; easy to present or understand.

Etymology: A figurative use of fast food, a term which has been used since the fifties in the US and the seventies in the UK for food which is kept hot or partially prepared in a restaurant and so can be served quickly when required. The term fast food was used attributively (in fast-food service, fast-food outlet,

etc.) before being used as a compound noun in its own right, so it is hardly surprising that it should now be perceived and used as an adjective, replacing instant in some contexts.

History and Usage: Fast-food was first used in this figurative way in the late seventies and was applied to drugs from the middle of the eighties, when the rapid spread of crack on the streets of US cities could be attributed to the fact that it was easily made, cheap to buy, and instantly smokable--it seemed to drug enforcement agencies that anyone who wanted to obtain the drug could do so as easily as buying a hamburger. The description provides a useful distinction between the fast-food drugs offering instant gratification (like crack and ice) and

the more complex designer drugs, and so has stuck. The term can be applied in its figurative sense also to consumable but

non-material things (such as broadcasting or the arts); this is the more established figurative use and may yet prove to be the most enduring as well.

If he does talk, listen. Do not respond with 'fast-food' answers such as 'Heck, it can't be so bad', or 'Why don't you take the afternoon off?'

Industry Week 9 Mar. 1981, p. 45

Fast-food opera that will face an anniversary judgment.

headline in Guardian 3 July 1989, p. 19

A few years ago, all the talk was about more complex, more expensive 'designer drugs'. Ironically it has turned out to be the fast-food drugs like crack and ice...that are tearing us apart.

People 13 Nov. 1989, p. 13

fast track

noun, adjective, and verb Also written fast-track when used as an adjective or verb (Business World) (Lifestyle and Leisure)

noun: A hectic lifestyle or job involving rapid promotion and intense competition; also called the fast lane.

adjective: High-flying, enjoying or capable of rapid advancement.

transitive verb: To promote (a person) rapidly, to accelerate or rush (something) through.

Etymology: A figurative use of the horse-racing term fast track (which dates from the thirties), a race-track on which the going is dry and hard enough to enable the horses to run fast; track has a long history in US terms to do with careers, for example in the concept of a tenure track for academics.

History and Usage: The figurative use of fast track in business arose in the mid sixties; it may owe its popularity to US President Richard Nixon, who claimed at that time that he

preferred New York to California because it was the fast track. Certainly it became a vogue word in US business circles during the seventies, in all its grammatical uses, and developed a number of derivatives: the agent-noun fast-tracker (and even fast-tracknik), a person who lives or works in the fast track; also the verbal noun fast-tracking, the practice of promoting staff rapidly or accelerating processes. In the eighties this vogue has spread to British English, although in the UK fast lane is still probably better known as the name for the hectic, competitive lifestyle of the yuppie.

Some of the fast trackers seem so preoccupied with getting ahead that they don't always notice the implications of what they do.

Discrimination against, or the tendency to poke fun at, overweight people.

Etymology: Formed by adding the suffix -ism (as in racism and sexism) to fat.

History and Usage: Fattism is one of a large number of formations ending in -ism which became popular in the eighties to describe perceived forms of discrimination (see also ableism, ageism, and heterosexism). This one belongs to the second half of the eighties, a time when general diet-consciousness and an emphasis on physical fitness in Western societies made being

overweight almost into a moral issue. It was coined by American psychologist Rita Freedman in the book Bodylove (1988), in which she points out the insidious influence of one's personal

appearance on others (in particular the notion that obese people are lazy or undisciplined):

Looksism gives birth to fatism, another cruel stereotype that affects us all.

It is usually used only half-seriously, though, as is the corresponding adjective fat(t)ist. The adjective appears to be becoming more established in the language than the noun at present, but neither promises to be permanent.

Fatist is a refreshing new word to me, as opposed to fattest which is much more familiar.

Spare Rib Oct. 1987, p. 5

Dawn French makes no apologies about her size, and any frisson of incipient fattism is instantly quashed in her commanding presence.

Sunday Express Magazine 25 Mar. 1990, p. 18

Now Ms Wood looks smarter and has lost so much weight, some of her fattist pieces lose their credibility.

Gay Times Nov. 1990, p. 71

fatwa noun Also written Fatwa or fatwah (Politics)

A legal decision or ruling given by an Islamic religious leader.

Etymology: A direct borrowing from Arabic; the root in the original language is the same verb fata (to instruct by a legal decision) from which we get the word Mufti, a Muslim legal expert or teacher.

History and Usage: Actually an old borrowing from Arabic (in the form fetfa or fetwa it has been in use in English since the seventeenth century), the fatwa acquired a new currency in the English-language media in February 1989, when Iran's Ayatollah

Khomeini issued a fatwa sentencing the British writer Salman Rushdie to death for publishing The Satanic Verses (1988), a book which many Muslims considered blasphemous and highly offensive. Fatwa is a generic term for any legal decision made by a Mufti or other Islamic religious authority, but, because of the particular context in which the West became familiar with the word, it is sometimes erroneously thought to mean 'a death sentence'.

The...International Committee...have capitalized on the outrage felt at the notorious fatwa to drive forward

with new confidence the long-nurtured campaign for total abolition of blasphemy laws in this country.

Bookseller 29 Sept. 1989, p. 1068

This Fatwa...was written and signed by the Grand Ayatollah of Shia in Iraq, explaining his position regarding the executions of 16 Kuwaiti Pilgrims after the Saudi media quoted his name.

Independent 27 Oct. 1989, p. 10

[He]...rejected the findings of a BBC opinion poll which claimed that only 42 per cent of Muslims in Britain supported the fatwah.

Independent 16 July 1990, p. 5

noun: Facsimile telegraphy (a system allowing documents to be scanned, digitized, and transmitted to a remote destination using the telephone network); a copy of a document transmitted in this way; a machine capable of performing facsimile telegraphy (known more fully as a fax machine).

transitive verb: To transmit (a document) by fax.

Etymology: An abbreviated and respelt form of facsimile; sometimes popularly associated with the respelt form of facts in the next entry.

History and Usage: Experiments in different methods of facsimile transmission began in the late nineteenth century; the first successful transmission of a document took place in 1925. Fax technology was first written about using this name in the forties, describing a method of transmitting newspaper text by radio rather than by telephone; this was the result of research and development work carried out by the American electrical engineer and inventor John V. L. Hogan during the late twenties and thirties. In 1944, after contributing to military use of facsimile during the Second World War, he was instrumental in forming Broadcasters' Faximile Analysis, a research project linking broadcasters and newspaper publishers in the US, but their plans to provide a facsimile news service in individual homes failed because of licensing difficulties. Legal

restrictions on the use of telephone equipment which did not belong to the telephone company also stood in the way of widespread application of telephone fax, and the word fax remained in the technical jargon of telegraphy until these restrictions were lifted and the machines became widely affordable for business use in the early eighties. By the middle of the eighties, it had already developed the three distinct

uses mentioned above as well as being widely used as a verb, and it was commonplace for company notepaper to carry a firm's fax number (the telephone number to be dialled to enable the firm to receive a faxed document) as well as standard telephone and telex numbers. Derivatives include faxable (capable of being faxed), faxee (a person to whom a fax is sent), faxer (a sender

of faxes), faxham (a person who uses the fax as a radio ham uses short-wave radio to contact unknown enthusiasts), and faxing (the sending of faxes).

As the technology improved, fax became faster and cheaper.

Daily Telegraph 21 Nov. 1986, p. 16

In a five-storey office building, there may be a fax on each floor.

Observer Magazine 19 June 1988, p. vi

NFUC sent out several thousand faxes urging the faxees to refax the fax to the fax machines in the governor's