The Oxford Dictionary of New Words

in the mid seventies. It became a particularly prominent feature of corporate finance there from the early eighties, associated especially with Michael Milken of investment bankers Drexel

Burnham Lambert and with the whole financial ethos of leveraged buyouts (see leverage and buyout), mezzanine finance, and corporate 'raiders'. Debt incurred through the issuing of junk bonds is known as junk debt; finance based on them is junk finance.

Mr. Milken told them it was time for some companies to de-leverage, urging many companies to swap their junk debt for a combination of equity and higher-grade debt.

Wall Street Journal 18 Sept. 1989, p. 1

As Drexel Burnham fell, two warring junk-bond titans scrambled for their payoffs.

Vanity Fair May 1990, p. 50

To Giuliani, the junk-bond monger's offense was to undermine the apparent 'integrity of the marketplace'. If people don't believe in this integrity, Giuliani

said, they won't participate in the 'capital-formation system'.

Nation 17 Dec. 1990, p. 755

junk food noun (Health and Fitness) (Lifestyle and Leisure)

Food such as confectionery, potato chips, and 'instant' meals that appeals to popular taste (especially among young people) and provides calories fast, but has little lasting nutritional value.

Etymology: Formed by compounding: food that is junk from a nutritional point of view.

History and Usage: The term junk food arose in the US in the mid seventies, when it became clear that young people in particular ate a high proportion of instant foods containing much carbohydrate (often in the form of refined sugars), and were not getting the balanced diet needed for proper nutrition.

This proved to be true of eating habits in other countries, too; the peak of concern about junk foods occurred in the late seventies and early eighties, before the health-and-fitness revolution of the eighties had started to affect people's diets, but both the phenomenon and the name have survived into the nineties. The term is sometimes used figuratively (compare fast-food).

Blyton may be junk food but it's not addictive.

The Times 12 Aug. 1982, p. 6

He's a pretty average kid...Likes junk food, noneducational TV, and playing with guns.

Perri Klass Other Women's Children (1990), p. 5

With the demise of the traditional school dinner, more and more pupils are turning to junk food at lunch-times and unhealthy snacks at breaks.

Health Guardian Nov.-Dec. 1990, p. 13

juppie (People and Society) see buppie

11.0K

11.1K

K abbreviation (Business World) (Science and Technology)

One thousand (widely used as an abbreviation in computing and hence also in financial contexts, newspaper advertisements, tables, etc.).

Etymology: The initial letter of kilo-, the combining form used to denote a factor of 1,000 in metric measurements such as kilogram, kilometre, etc. and to represent either 1,000 or 1,024 in computing, as in kilobyte etc.

History and Usage: The abbreviation K has been used in computing since the early sixties, especially to denote a kilobyte (1,024 bytes) of memory. Although, for technical reasons, K does not represent exactly 1,000 in this context, it was the computing use that brought the abbreviation to public notice during the seventies and early eighties (as computers became commonplace in most people's working lives in industrialized countries) and, at least in popular usage, established its meaning as '1,000'. In the late sixties, job

advertisements for computing personnel would sometimes give the salary offered as '$...K' or 'œ...K', meaning '...thousands of

dollars or pounds sterling'. By the early eighties this practice had been picked up in job advertisements outside computing as well; K also began to be used in place of the three zeros in prices of houses offered for sale etc. It was even possible to hear K in spoken use (unusual for an initial-letter abbreviation); this was associated particularly with the 'yuppiespeak' (see yuppie) of the mid eighties.

Financial administrator, Thames Valley, from œ12k.

advertisement in Daily Telegraph 26 Feb. 1986, p. 25

Alfa-Romeo--'84...Perf. cond. 23k ml.

advertisement in Washington Post 31 Aug. 1986, section K, p. 24

I told him I had been approached by a cash purchaser with thirty-five k.

Andrew Davies Getting Hurt (1989), p. 95

11.2 karaoke

karaoke noun (Lifestyle and Leisure)

A sound system with a pre-recorded soundtrack of popular music from which the vocal part has been erased so as to allow an individual to sing along with it, often recording his or her performance on tape or video. Also, the pastime of singing to this kind of system.

of effort into the singing, aided and abetted once a week by a karaoke machine.

Evening Standard 19 Apr. 1990, p. 19

11.3 keyboard...

keyboard noun (Music) (Science and Technology)

An electronic musical instrument with keys arranged as on a piano, and usually a number of pre-programmed or programmable electronic effects such as drum rhythms, different 'voices',

etc.; known more fully as an electronic keyboard.

Etymology: Formed by dropping the word electronic from the more formal name electronic keyboard. The word keyboard originally meant 'the row of keys on musical instruments such as the organ and piano'; the modern keyboard looks like a section of piano keyboard in a flat plastic casing.

History and Usage: Although electronic keyboard instruments of one kind and another have been in existence since the early years of this century, the type now known as an electronic

keyboard or simply a keyboard did not become available until the late seventies. Much more compact than the earlier electronic organ, the keyboard (which is really little larger than the

depth and width of the set of keys) relies on microchip technology to produce a wide range of sounds and effects. Keyboards became popular and versatile instruments for pop and rock music during the eighties, especially with the development of MIDI, allowing several to be linked together. They were also heavily marketed as ideal instruments for home entertainment. A player of a keyboard is known as a keyboardist.

Combine this with a virtuoso stick player and MIDI keyboards and you get organs, guitars, synthesizers, and lots of other different sounds.

Dirty Linen Spring 1989, p. 15

Let's play keyboard video and the complete keyboard player book. Takes you through the initial learning

exercises to the complete keyboard player.

Family Album Home Shopping Catalogue Spring and Summer 1990, p. 959

keyboarder

noun (Science and Technology)

A person who enters text at a keyboard, especially in typesetting or data capture.

Etymology: Formed by adding the agent suffix -er to the verb keyboard, which was adopted in computer technology from well-established use in typesetting terminology.

History and Usage: A word which has been used in the printing industry for some decades, but which has acquired a much wider currency with the spread of computer technology during the eighties. The word is now sometimes applied to anyone who works at a keyboard, whether or not this is part of a programme of

data capture, and might eventually take over from typist as the typewriter gives way to the computer keyboard.

Much of this work is performed by keyboarders who don't understand English.

Fortune 4 Feb. 1985, p. 51

The standard of accuracy achieved by the keyboarders is outstanding.

Review of English Studies Feb. 1990, p. 77

keyhole surgery

noun (Health and Fitness) (Science and Technology)

Colloquially, minimally invasive surgery, carried out through a very small incision, using fibre-optic tubes for investigation and as a means of passing tiny instruments into the tissue.

Etymology: Formed by compounding: surgery done through a hole which is so small that it is likened to a keyhole.

History and Usage: Keyhole surgery, a technique that is dependent upon advances in fibre optics in the seventies and eighties, has been practised for about a decade, but the colloquial nickname belongs to the second half of the eighties, when it became possible to carry out what would otherwise have been major operations using the technique.

Never an admirer of 'keyhole' surgery, I decided on liberal exposure of the problem.

Sunday Mail (Brisbane) 1 May 1988, p. 28

The first operation in Britain to remove a kidney...by minimal invasive surgery, or 'keyhole' surgery in popular jargon, was carried out in Portsmouth.

The Times 17 May 1990, p. 20

keypad noun Also written key pad (Science and Technology)

A small panel (either hand-held or attached to a larger keyboard) with an array of push-buttons which can be used to control an electronic machine such as a television, video recorder, calculator, or telephone.

Etymology: Formed by compounding: keys arranged on a plastic pad (smaller than the board of keyboard).

History and Usage: The word was introduced in the mid seventies in connection with teletext systems, and was soon also being

used for TV remote-control monitors and the push-button controls which replaced dials on telephones. Many computer keyboards have a separate numeric keypad which can be used as a calculator, and may also have separate groupings of keys which act as keypads for selecting functions, moving the cursor, etc.

Pressing the mute button on the keypad temporarily cuts off your caller.

Sunday Times Magazine 28 Oct. 1984, p. 118

This new terminal has...a numeric keypad, a function keypad and a tamper-resistant pinpad.

Computer Bulletin June 1986, p. 3

11.4 kidflation...

kidflation

noun (Business World)

Humorously, economic inflation as it affects the price of children's toys and activities.

Etymology: Formed by substituting the word kid 'child' for the first syllable of inflation.

History and Usage: A humorous example of the inventive ways in which -flation has been tacked on to words as though it were a combining form since the late seventies; more serious examples included oilflation and taxflation (inflation caused by

increases in oil prices and taxes respectively).

The record and confection industries are among several that believe they have lost sales at the hands of 'kidflation'. When the recording industry, for example, fell into a slump in 1979, some industry officials said part of the reason was that the rising cost of albums was pushing them beyond the financial reach of young people.

Wall Street Journal 2 Mar. 1981, p. 12

kidult adjective and noun (Lifestyle and Leisure) (People and Society)

In US media slang,

adjective: Of a television programme or other piece of entertainment: designed to appeal to all age groups; intended as 'family viewing'.

noun: A piece of entertainment designed to appeal to children and adults equally. Also, a person who likes this kind of entertainment; an adult with immature tastes and interests.

Etymology: Formed by telescoping kid and adult to make a blend.

History and Usage: The word was coined in the US as long ago as the late fifties to refer to the kind of adventure series that

naturally appeals to a young audience but can be so designed as to attract a cult following among older viewers, too. The adjective remained popular with US television reviewers throughout the sixties and seventies (often with the implication that the programme so described was truly appealing to neither group, but fell between two stools), but only acquired any currency outside the US towards the end of the seventies. During the late eighties the noun acquired the secondary sense of the 'typical' viewer of kidult entertainment.

Not a film for either children or adults, but for 'that new, true-blue American of the electronic age, the kidult, who may be 8, 18, 38 or 80'.

New York Times 29 Jan. 1989, section 2, p. 30

kidvid noun (Lifestyle and Leisure)

In media slang (originally in the US): children's television or video; a children's programme or videotape.

Etymology: A clipped compound, formed by combining the rhyming parts of kids' and video.

History and Usage: Kidvid has been an established slang name for children's TV in the US for more than two decades (it first appeared in a new words dictionary in the US in 1955 and is typical of the abbreviated nicknames created by the entertainment paper Variety), but has recently acquired a new lease of life in British use with the explosion of the UK video market during the eighties. In American English it is often used attributively (with a following noun), in kidvid programming, etc. An alternative form kideo (for children's video, often used in trade marks) only recently started to catch on outside the US, while in Australia another variation on the theme, kidflick (a children's film), was more successful.

At the network he moved from the kidvids, those barely animated cartoons he is said to really love, to the