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The Oxford Dictionary of New Words

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preventing calcium loss from the bone, lowering incidences of heart disease.'

Independent 28 Apr. 1990, p. 3

fundie noun Also written fundy or (in discussions of German Green Party politics) Fundi (Environment) (Politics)

In colloquial use: a fundamentalist; especially either a religious fundamentalist or a member of a radical branch of the green movement, a 'deep' green.

Etymology: Formed by adding the suffix -ie to the first four letters of fundamentalist; the spelling Fundi reflects borrowing from the German slang name of the radical wing of the German Green Party.

History and Usage: A nickname which belongs to the political debates of the early eighties, when the Moral Majority and other fundamentalist Christian groups in the US and the Greens in Germany became a political force to be reckoned with. In the green sense, fundie has its origins in the arguments from 1985

onwards between the German Greens' realo wing, who were prepared to take a normal co-operative approach to parliamentary life,

and the more radical fundamentalists, who did not wish to co-operate with other parties and favoured extreme measures to solve environmental problems.

The Fundies are not a serious political force and their current hero is not a serious political candidate.

New York Times 7 Mar. 1988, section A, p. 19

The fundies are the purists who believe the only way to save the Earth is to dismantle industry.

Daily Telegraph 20 Sept. 1989, p. 15

funk

noun (Music) (Youth Culture)

In recent use in popular music, a style that draws upon Black cultural roots and includes bluesy or soulful elements, especially syncopated rhythms and chord progressions including

sevenths and ninths; often as the second word in combinations (see below).

Etymology: In US English the word funk originally meant 'a bad smell' but a new sense was back-formed from the slang adjective funky in the fifties to refer to the fashion then for

down-to-earth bluesy music; funky also meant 'swinging' or 'fashionable'. (There is no connection with the British English word funk meaning 'a state of fear'.) In the latest development of its meaning, Funk has been extended outside the styles traditionally thought of as funky, tending to become a catch-all tag for whatever is fashionable in a particular area of popular music.

History and Usage: As mentioned above, funk has existed since the fifties, but has acquired a broader meaning recently. The first crossovers between funk and other styles came in the seventies with disco-funk, a funky (that is, fast and rootsy) style of disco music. This was followed in the eighties by electrofunk (see electro), jazz-funk (which, it has more than once been claimed, is neither jazz nor funk), p-funk (a style developed by George Clinton of Parliament/Funkadelic), slack-funk, slow-funk, and techno-funk (see techno), to name

only a few of the styles which claimed to include funk elements. A leading and influential practitioner of funk proper is James Brown. Often the funk tag signifies no more than an attempt to incorporate Black musical traditions and jagged rhythms, funky chord progressions, or soulful lyrics into the White music

style: funk has been widely played by White musicians since the mid seventies. Derivatives formed on funk have also been common in the eighties: funker and funkster extended their meaning to cover the broader sense of funk, and there were other, one-off formations along the lines of funkadelic (originally a proper

name but also adopted as a common noun or adjective), funkateer, funkathon, and funketize.

We scored No 1 disco albums with legendary jazz-funk duo Morrissey Mullen.

Music Week 2 Feb. 1985, Advertisement pullout, p. i

If old bubblegum music is on I sing at the top of my lungs, and if new funkadelic is on I bop in my seat.

New York Times 14 May 1986, section C, p. 1

If you've never fancied this kind of frantic funk try this for size. Blackman's wild and witty lyrical style combines macho street level cliche with sharp social awareness.

Hi-Fi Answers Dec. 1986, p. 78

These 10 songs demonstrate that all it takes is a good kick in the pants, a bottleneck slide guitar, and a feel

for Muscle Shoals slow-funk to make a boy want to whoop and holler all night long.

Dirty Linen Spring 1989, p. 56

The second track on the album, 'Have a Talk with God' is a simple message to people with problems...backed with a slack-funk beat.

Shades No. 1 1990, p. 19

fun run noun (Health and Fitness) (Lifestyle and Leisure)

An organized long-distance run in which amateur athletes take part for fun or to raise money for charity rather than competitively.

Etymology: A transparent compound of fun and run, exploiting the rhyme.

History and Usage: The first fun runs took place in the US in the mid seventies as a way of bringing together people who had taken up jogging or long-distance running recreationally. The idea was introduced into the UK in the late seventies, and by the mid eighties the fun run was an established part of many Western countries' culture, with large races such as the annual London Marathon attracting thousands of participants. Often the

fun runners, who are only competing for the enjoyment of running or so as to raise money for charity from sponsors, run alongside serious international athletes in the same race.

Thousands of fun runners and disabled competitors pounded the same rain-soaked course as the stars.

New York Times 21 Apr. 1986, section C, p. 6

A fun run over 8km was held at the Phobians Athletics Club.

South African Panorama Jan. 1988, p. 50

Before the main race, limited to 150 runners, there will also be a charity one-mile Family Fun Run.

Northern Runner Apr./May 1988, p. 6

futon noun (Lifestyle and Leisure)

A low-slung Japanese-style bed or mattress.

Etymology: A direct borrowing from Japanese, in which it traditionally refers to a bed-quilt or thin cotton mattress

which is laid on a mat on the floor overnight, and may be rolled up and put away during the day.

History and Usage: The word has been used in descriptions of Japanese culture since the end of the last century, but the present Western application dates from the early 1980s. The

futon as marketed in the West may include a slatted wooden base which stands only a few inches from the floor, is often capable of conversion into a sofa for day-time use, and usually includes a stuffed cotton mattress similar to the Japanese version.

They fall onto the stripped-pine futon.

Artseen Dec. 1986, p. 19

Slatted bases are often used in traditional bedstead designs and low line beds such as futons.

Daily Mail DIY Home Interiors 1988, p. 112

fuzzword noun

A deliberately confusing, euphemistic, or imprecise piece of jargon, used more to impress than to inform.

Etymology: Formed by compounding and abbreviation: a word that is fuzzy in its twentieth-century sense 'imprecisely defined, confused, vague'. It is also a deliberate alteration of buzzword

(a fashionable but often meaningless piece of jargon, a vogue word), which has been in use since the late sixties.

History and Usage: Fuzzword was coined by the Washington Post in 1983 and is still principally a US usage.

In the often emotional arms control debate, there may be no more common fuzzword than 'verification'.

National Journal 14 Apr. 1984, p. 730

7.0G

7.1gag me with a spoon...

gag me with a spoon

(Youth Culture) see Valspeak

Gaia

noun (Environment)

The Earth viewed as a vast self-regulating organism, in which the whole range of living matter defines the conditions for its own survival, modifying the physical environment to suit its needs. Used especially in Gaia hypothesis or Gaia theory, the theory that this is how the global ecosystem functions.

Etymology: Named after Gaia, the Earth goddess in Greek mythology (the daughter of Chaos).

History and Usage: The term was coined by the British scientist James Lovelock, who first put forward the hypothesis at a scientific meeting about the origins of life on Earth in 1969;

the suggestion that it should be named after the goddess Gaia had come from William Golding. Although not especially well

received by the scientific community, the theory reached a wider audience in the eighties and early nineties and proved very attractive both to environmentalists and to the New Age movement, with its emphasis on holistic concepts and an Earth Mother. Gaia is used as a proper name for the hypothetical organism itself, and also as a shorthand way of referring to the Gaia hypothesis. Gaian (as an adjective and noun) and Gaiaist (as an adjective) have been derived from it.

'The Biosphere Catalogue' expresses a kind of spirituality in science, a metaphysical belief in the biosphere as an entity which has been dubbed 'Gaia', as if to acknowledge its divine qualities.

Los Angeles Times 15 Dec. 1985, p. 12

Gaians (to use an abbreviation popular at the meeting) argue that this state of affairs is indeed evidence of the interconnectedness of life on Earth, and that it would be foolish to expect to find a series of isolated and independent mechanisms.

Nature 7 Apr. 1988, p. 483

Will tomorrow bring hordes of militant Gaiaist activists enforcing some pseudoscientific idiocy on the community?

New Scientist 7 Apr. 1988, p. 60

It is at the core of the current debate over the 'Gaia hypothesis', which holds that the planet is one huge organism in which everything interacts to sustain and maintain life on Earth.

Christian Science Monitor 30 Jan. 1990, p. 12

Understanding Gaia means understanding that the survival of the plants, trees and wildlife which live on this

planet with us is crucial to our own survival.

Debbie Silver & Bernadette Vallely The Young Person's Guide to Saving the Planet (1990), p. 52

galleria noun (Business World) (Lifestyle and Leisure)

In marketing and planning jargon, a collection of small shops under a single roof, either in an arcade or as concessions in a large store.

Etymology: A direct borrowing from Italian galleria 'arcade'.

History and Usage: Architects in English-speaking countries were first inspired by the idea of the Italian galleria in the sixties and began to design shopping arcades on the same model, but it was not until the early eighties that the word galleria suddenly came into vogue as a fashionable way of saying 'arcade'. The vogue was continued by the application of the term to shops-within-a-shop as well.

Burton and Habitat intend to create a new format at Debenhams with the 'Galleria concept'--an integrated collection of highly-focused speciality stores under one roof.

Yorkshire Post 23 May 1985, p. 4

The winning scheme...incorporated the inevitable 'galleria'.

The Times 17 Feb. 1990, p. 10

Johnson took over eleven floors in an unremarkable glass tower at a suburban shopping center named The Galleria.

Bryan Burrough & John Helyar Barbarians at the Gate (1990), p. 85

gamete intra-fallopian transfer

(Health and Fitness) (Science and Technology) see GIFT

gaming

(Lifestyle and Leisure) see role-playing game

garage

noun Also written Garage (Music) (Youth Culture)

A variety of house music from New York which incorporates elements of soul music, especially in its vocals.

Etymology: Probably named after the Paradise Garage, the former nightclub in New York where this style of music was first

played; there may also be some influence from the term garage band, which has been applied since the late sixties to groups (originally amateurs who practised in empty garages and other disused buildings) with a loud, energetic, and unpolished sound which is also sometimes known as garage or garage punk.

History and Usage: New York garage developed in the early eighties (principally at the Paradise Garage but later also at other New York clubs), but only came to be called garage--or by the fuller name garage house--in the second half of the decade.

The founding influence on the style was the New York group The Peech Boys. In its later manifestations garage is very closely related to deep house (see house)--indeed some consider deep house to be simply the Chicago version of garage, incorporating the lyrical and vocal traditions of American soul into the fast, synthesized dance music which is typical of house.

The void left in trendier clubs following the over-commercialisation and subsequent ridiculing of 'acieed!'...is being filled by 'garage' and 'deep house'.

Music Week 10 Dec. 1988, p. 14

The records will be anything dance-orientated: 'Rap, reggae, hip hop, house, jazz, garage or soul,' says Anita Mackie...'What is garage?' I ask. She consults a colleague and they decide on 'Soulful house'. I decline to ask them what 'house' is.

The Times 25 July 1990, p. 17

garbage in, garbage out

(Science and Technology) see expert system

gas-permeable

(Health and Fitness) see lens

-gate combining form (Politics)

Part of the name Watergate, widely used in compounds to form names for actual or alleged scandals (usually also involving an attempted cover-up), comparable in some way to the Watergate scandal of 1972.

Etymology: Formed by abbreviating Watergate, treating the -gate part as a word-forming element in its own right.

History and Usage: Before the Watergate scandal and the ensuing hearings were even fully over, journalists began to use -gate allusively to form names for other (major or minor) scandals, turning it into one of the most productive word-final combining forms of the seventies and eighties. In August 1973, for

example, the US satirical paper National Lampoon wrote of persistent rumours in Russia of a vast scandal, and nicknamed this Volgagate; in 1975 the financial paper Wall Street Journal called a fraud inquiry at General Motors Motorgate, and in 1978 Time magazine wrote of an Oilgate concerning British North Sea oil. The suffix was used in a variety of ways: tacked on to the name of the place where the scandal occurred (as in the original Watergate), to the name of the person or organization at the centre of the scandal (for example Billygate or Cartergate for

the scandal over the Libyan connections of Billy Carter, brother of US President Jimmy Carter, in 1980), or to the commodity or activity involved (for example Altergate for allegations that transcripts of official hearings in the US had been altered in 1983). It was principally a feature of US English until 1978, when the South African Muldergate scandal brought it wider publicity.

Perhaps surprisingly, the productivity of -gate did not really wane in the eighties: in the US it was kept in the public eye principally because of the Iran-contra affair of 1986 (see contra), immediately nicknamed Contragate or Irangate (and still sometimes referred to by these names into the nineties) and by scandals over frauds allegedly perpetrated by televangelists, including the punningly named Pearlygate; in the UK there was

Westlandgate in 1985 (involving Cabinet members in conflict over plans to bail out the helicopter company Westland), Stalkergate

in 1986 (named after the Deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester police, John Stalker, who was invited to chair an inquiry into allegations of an RUC 'shoot-to-kill' policy in Northern Ireland and was then removed from this inquiry for

several months while allegations of his own improper association with a known criminal were considered and rejected), and Lawsongate in 1988, involving allegations that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, had deliberately deceived the public about the economy, to mention but a few.

It suits the White House to flatter Mrs Thatcher's diplomatic pretensions, just as it suits it to deflate those of the Labour leader, Mr Neil Kinnock. But it is a

long way from 'Kinnockgate' for the good reason that the Americans are barely aware of the 'Neil-snubs-Ron-snubs-Maggie-snubs-Neil' row they are embroiled in.

Guardian 30 Mar. 1984, p. 6

The current deterioration of the Ulster environment will continue unabated...if future developments significantly touch the RUC ('Stalkergate') or the judiciary.

Marxism Today Sept. 1986, p. 41

Europeans...are not going to stomach the star-spangled strain of bible-thumping religiosity peddled by smooth-talking American preachers like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Jim Bakker (he of the 'Pearlygate' sex and corruption scandal).

Observer Magazine 22 Nov. 1987, p. 50

From the 'Lawsongate' headline...through to the...allegation of a 'cover-up'...newspapers were unanimous in their belief that it was Nigel Lawson who had misled people.

Independent 14 Nov. 1988, p. 2

In those days...the Higher Skepticism had not yet appeared, fueled by the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King and the others and by the Vietnam war and by Watergate...and by Irangate, etc.

Paul Fussell Wartime (1989), p. 167

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