The Oxford Dictionary of New Words

and thoroughly, since they tend to use surfactants based on vegetable oils rather than petro-chemicals.

Which? Sept. 1989, p. 431

Vegetarians and the more self-denying Greenies may find themselves in an awkward moral dilemma.

Guardian 23 Feb. 1990, p. 29

Although 'deep greens' only account for a small percentage of the population, they are becoming more influential.

The Times 28 Mar. 1990, p. 21

British Gas has been quick to seek to capitalise on worries about the effect of energy consumption on the environment. It has advertised the 'greenness' of its main product--natural gas--in comparison with other hydrocarbons.

Financial Times 20 Apr. 1990, section 5, p. 1

Greenham wimmin

(Politics) (People and Society) see wimmin

greenhouse

noun (Environment)

In environmental jargon, the Earth's atmosphere regarded as acting like a greenhouse, as pollutants (especially carbon dioxide) build up in it, allowing through more heat from the sun than reflected heat rising from the Earth's surface, so that

heat in the lower atmosphere is unable to escape and global warming occurs; mostly used attributively, especially in:

greenhouse effect, the trapping of the sun's warmth in the lower atmosphere because of this process;

greenhouse gas, any of the various gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect (especially carbon dioxide).

Etymology: A figurative use of greenhouse; in a real greenhouse, the air temperature can be kept high because the glass allows sunlight through but prevents the warmed air from escaping.

History and Usage: The concept of the greenhouse effect was first worked on by meteorologists in the late nineteenth century, but it was not given this name until the 1920s. Public interest in the effect, and in the problem of global warming generally, has grown steadily since the beginning of the eighties, allowing the term to pass from specialist use in meteorology into a more widespread currency. During the eighties, attributive uses of greenhouse multiplied, as

greenhouse became a shorthand way of saying 'greenhouse effect', and anything which contributed to this could then be described

as 'greenhouse x'. By far the commonest of these shorthand terms is greenhouse gas, but there have also been greenhouse-friendly (see -friendly), greenhouse pollutant, greenhouse potential (the potential of a substance to contribute to the greenhouse

effect), greenhouse tax (a tax on greenhouse gases, also known as carbon tax: here greenhouse means 'designed to combat the greenhouse effect'), and greenhouse warming (another name for global warming).

The Greenhouse melted the poles and the glaciers, and those won't reform overnight.

George Turner The Sea & Summer (1987), p. 12

We calculate that the solar flux necessary to trigger a runaway greenhouse is about 1.4 times the amount of sunlight that currently impinges on the earth.

Scientific American Feb. 1988, p. 52

HCFC 142b...has 40 per cent of the so-called 'greenhouse potential' of CFC 11.

New Scientist 13 May 1989, p. 26

The criticism was especially pointed in light of Bush's campaign rhetoric promising to tackle the problem of greenhouse warming.

Nature 18 May 1989, p. 168

The destruction of the tropical rain-forest is also contributing to the greenhouse effect, since forests help to regulate the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Which? Sept. 1989, p. 431

greenmail noun (Business World)

In financial jargon, the practice of buying up enough stock in a company to threaten a hostile take-over, thereby forcing the company's management to buy the shares back at an inflated price if they are to retain control of the business.

Etymology: Formed by substituting green for the black of blackmail; unlike blackmail, greenmail remains within the law, and it is backed by dollars ('greens'). This is not the first

such alteration of the word blackmail: in the seventies there were a number of court cases in the US in which the defence threatened to expose government secrets unless charges were dropped, and these became known as greymail (or, in the US, graymail) cases.

History and Usage: Greenmail was one of many financial manoeuvres surrounding take-over bids that developed, principally in the US, during the first half of the eighties. In the UK the practice was limited by the Takeover Panel. By the middle of the decade the word had also started to be used as a

verb, and an agent noun greenmailer had been derived from this. It has been claimed that, when the deal is worth more than a certain sum of money, it becomes known as goldmail.

She went into hostile corporate takeovers, the money being made...in greenmail and arbitrage.

Saul Bellow More Die of Heartbreak (1987), p. 79

His clients were little-known 'wanna-be' raiders, third-tier greenmailers such as...Herbert Haft, the pompadoured scourge of the retail industry.

Bryan Burrough & John Helyar Barbarians at the Gate (1990), p. 157

Greenpeace

noun (Environment) see green

green PEP (Business World) see PEP

grey economy

noun Written gray economy in the US (Business World)

In financial jargon, the consumption, income, earnings, etc. generated by or relating to commercial activity which is unaccounted for in official statistics.

Etymology: Formed by applying the grey of grey market to the economy as a whole (see below); a lesser version of the black economy.

History and Usage: The term grey economy first appeared in the early eighties; the term grey market from which it derives can be traced back to post-war America, where it described the unscrupulous selling of scarce or rationed goods at inflated prices (a lesser black market). As the phrase grey economy became established its meaning was extended to cover any unorthodox or unofficial trading which is conducted in the wide

grey area between official indicators of economic growth and the black market. In specific applications the term has been used with reference to any unwaged but significant activity (such as housework); to the earnings of those who 'moonlight' by taking a

second job, often under an assumed name; to the makeshift system of bartering, exchange of goods, etc. which co-exists with the State economy, especially in the countries of the old Eastern

bloc; and to the growing practice among small independent retailers in Britain of importing a product direct from its manufacturer or a foreign supplier in order to retail it at a price lower than that of its official distributor. The steady

emergence of this last phenomenon during the eighties is in part explained by the strong encouragement given to small businesses in the enterprise culture.

Street vendors...have sprouted lately as an above-ground grey economy. Their goods--clothes, watches, jewellery--are not stolen, but bought wholesale.

Economist 2 Apr. 1983, p. 70

Italy, too, has a thriving entrepreneurial sector, but

it is largely part of the 'gray' economy and so does not appear in the figures of tax collectors or government statisticians.

Harvard Business Review Jan.-Feb. 1984, p. 60

greymail (Business World) see greenmail

In the slang of US teenagers: vile, revolting, grotty. Especially in the phrase grody to the max (i.e. maximum: see max), unspeakably awful, 'the pits'.

Etymology: This is generally thought to be a clipped form of grotesque, like the more familiar grotty, but it could perhaps be a diminutive of gross, which has been a favourite term of

disgust among American youngsters in recent decades (compare scuzzy for 'disgusting': see scuzz).

History and Usage: Grody has been in spoken use since the late sixties but became fashionable through the spread of Valspeak in the early eighties (especially in the phrase grody to the max).

It was widely popularized by a Moon Unit Zappa record of 1983, in which Moon Unit is heard to say:

Like my mother makes me do all the dishes. It's like so gross like all the stuff sticks to the plates...It's

like grody, grody to the max.

By 1985 a new noun had appeared: the grodies were the bag people, the homeless tramps who slept rough in the streets. Grody is not yet used in British English except in conscious

imitation of American Valspeak.

Omigod, Mom, like that's totally beige...I mean grody to the max, just gruesome. Gimme a royal break.

New York Times 12 Dec. 1982 (Connecticut Weekly), p. 4

groupware (Science and Technology) see -ware

7.9 guestage...

guestage noun (Politics)

A foreign national held as a hostage (but called a 'guest') in Iraq or Kuwait during the period following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990.

Etymology: Formed by telescoping guest and hostage to make a blend.

History and Usage: This is a name which the hostages themselves invented in about September 1990. It remained in use until after they were allowed to return home in December 1990, but did not gain the enthusiastic support from the media that such words might usually enjoy, and is unlikely to survive in the language (except, perhaps, in historical accounts of the Gulf War) now

that the motivation for it no longer exists.

In his second television appearance with the 'guestages', as they had come to be known, he [Saddam Hussein] had not bargained for a forthright English woman.

Independent 3 Sept. 1990, p. 5

guppie noun Sometimes written Guppie or guppy (Environment) (People and Society)

Either (mostly in the US) a gay yuppie or (mostly in the UK) a green yuppie: a yuppie who is concerned about the environment

(a computer system or electronic data); to engage in computing as an end in itself, especially when this involves 'outwitting' the system (an activity known as hacking).

noun: A person (also known as a hacker) who enjoys using computing as an end in itself, especially when it involves trying to break into other people's systems. Also, an attempt to break into a system; a spell of hacking.

Etymology: In both parts of speech, this is a specialized sense development relying on more than one existing sense. The verb probably arises from a US slang sense of hack meaning 'to manage, accomplish, comprehend' (usually in the phrase to hack it), since it first appeared in computing slang to describe enthusiastic use of computers, without any connotation of looking at other people's data; as a word for breaking into

other computer systems, though, it must also be influenced by the original sense of the verb, 'to cut with heavy blows'. The noun was probably back-formed from hacking, but in the sense of an attempt to break into a computer system it has links with a more general US sense, 'a try, attempt'.

History and Usage: Computing enthusiasts first used this group of words in print to refer to enthusiastic (if not obsessive)

use of computers in the mid seventies, although they were almost certainly using them in speech before that. By the early

eighties, the 'sport' of breaking into computer systems, whether purely for pleasure, to expose some form of corruption, or as part of a more complex crime, had begun to be reported in the media, and soon appeared to be reaching epidemic proportions. Certainly it is the unauthorized type of hacking that has received greater media exposure, and therefore this set of meanings that has become widely popularized rather than the earlier ones (which nevertheless remain in use among enthusiasts, who still call themselves hacks or hackers). The verb is used either transitively (one can hack a system) or intransitively, often followed by the adverb in or the preposition into. With the almost universal use of computers in the business world and in defence planning and research in the late eighties, the activities of hackers could prove expensive

or dangerous to their targets and various measures were taken to make systems hacker-proof or to provide an electronic hacker watch to catch the culprits red-handed. In the UK the Computer