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The Oxford Dictionary of New Words

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during the eighties was enthusiastically taken up by advertisers as a fashionable way of claiming their products to be in the forefront of design. In the UK the term leading edge was even chosen as the name for a chain of shops selling technological gadgetry and new design 'concepts'. An alternative term for the same idea, also popular with advertisers, is cutting edge.

Three choices from the Burton Group's spring ranges. Sophisticated style from Principles...Leading-edge young fashion from Top Shop...Mainstream young fashion from Dorothy Perkins.

Daily Telegraph 26 Feb. 1986, p. 13

The information systems available in the dealing room are quite astonishing for someone whose idea of leading-edge technology is teletext.

Meridian (Midland Group) Spring 1990, p. 15

The company also puts out Gorgon, on horror movies, and Impact, on cutting-edge pop culture.

Premiere May 1990, p. 96

lemon law noun (Business World)

In the US, a law designed to provide some redress for buyers of faulty or substandard cars.

Etymology: Formed by compounding; in US slang, a lemon is anything that is faulty or undesirable.

History and Usage: The first lemon laws were passed in the US (as individual State Laws) in the early eighties, after much public discussion during the seventies of the high proportion of

lemons among new and second-hand cars, and the impossibility of doing anything about their poor quality. The different laws

passed for different States vary in their provisions, but all give the buyer of a substandard car some redress from the manufacturer or salesperson.

There are now at least 42 variations on the three basic

types of 'lemon laws' among the states. To say the least, most manufacturers do not find such variation among the states encouraging.

Legal Times 11 Apr. 1988, p. 19

Mr Forth, American Consumer Affairs Minister, has rejected demands from consumer organisations to adopt American-style 'lemon laws' for purchasers of cars.

Daily Telegraph 24 Jan. 1989, p. 4

lens

noun (Health and Fitness)

Short for contact lens: a small, very thin piece of plastic which can be worn inside the eyelid, in contact with the eyeball, to correct faulty vision; often in the plural lenses.

Etymology: An abbreviated form of contact lens.

History and Usage: Contact lenses were invented by Dr A. E. Fick of Zurich as long ago as the 1880s (when they were made of glass), but did not become available to the general public until the forties, and have only been widely worn from about the sixties onwards. The full term contact lens had been abbreviated to contact by the early sixties and to lens by the seventies; by

the eighties it was nearly always abbreviated in colloquial use, although the full term remained in use among opticians. The technology has developed during the seventies and eighties to make several types available: hard lenses, the original type available to the public, are made of rigid plastic; soft lenses, made of a hydrophilic gel which is soft to the touch and moulds itself to the shape of the eye, were introduced in the sixties

as less harmful to the cornea; gas-permeable lenses, which are more rigid but allow the passage of oxygen to the eye, were developed soon afterwards and became widely available in the eighties. The fact that contact lens became the slang name for a mixture of hallucinogenic drugs in the eighties is an indication that lenses are considered commonplace in modern society.

Although many astigmatics can wear lenses successfully, prescribing and fitting them can be complex.

Which? June 1987, p. 272

These are extended-wear lenses...and people should be aware that they run a 20 per cent higher risk of bacterial infection.

Woman's Journal Mar. 1990, p. 155

leverage intransitive verb (Business World)

To speculate financially (or cause someone else to do so), using borrowed capital and relying on the profits made being greater than the interest payable.

Etymology: The verb is formed on the noun leverage, which originally meant the action or power of a lever, but acquired a figurative use in the nineteenth century. In the 1930s a specialized meaning developed in US financial circles: the ratio of a company's debt to its equity, which could be used to

maximize returns on an investment. Although leverage is normally pronounced /--/ in British English, the verb reflects in its pronunciation the specialized American sense of the noun from which it derives.

History and Usage: Leverage was first used in US financial writing in the thirties, but remained limited to the technical vocabulary of finance for several decades. The increasing involvement of ordinary people in the stock market, as well as the adventurousness of investment generally, brought it into the public eye in the eighties, but it remains principally an American word. The verbal noun leveraging is used for the practice of speculating in this way; the adjective leveraged is applied to companies and transactions based on borrowed capital (see also buyout). In the late eighties, after a decade of

leveraging, there was a widespread move to deleverage in the US and UK markets.

The corporation discovered that the more it borrowed, the higher the earnings and the higher the stock, so it began to leverage.

'A. Smith' Supermoney (1972), p. 209

Safeway's announcement that it intends to deleverage itself via a $160 million public share issue was heralded as the start of a trend.

Observer 18 Feb. 1990, p. 53

leveraged buyout

(Business World) see buyout

12.4 lifestyle...

lifestyle noun and adjective Also written life-style (Business World) (Lifestyle and Leisure)

In marketing jargon:

noun: The sum total of the likes and dislikes of particular customers or a section of the market, as expressed in the products that they would buy to fit their self-image and way of life; a marketing strategy based on the idea of appealing to this sense of self-image and way of life.

adjective: Using or belonging to this strategy of marketing; (of a product) fitting into or conceived as part of such a strategy, appealing to a customer's sense of lifestyle.

Etymology: A specialized use of the compound noun lifestyle in the sense 'way of life', itself a concept of the sixties.

History and Usage: The concept of lifestyle merchandising goes back to at least the beginning of the eighties, but was particularly in evidence in the second half of the decade, as advertisers attempted to cash in on and shape the demand for fashion goods, interior decorations, foods, and sports equipment that expressed the new awareness of lifestyle. In consequence lifestyle came to be used over-freely and imprecisely in marketing, sometimes ending up as an almost meaningless adjectival 'filler'. At the same time a movement in the very opposite direction, away from conspicuous consumption and

consumerism, was also under way; this movement, influenced by A. H. Dammers' book Lifestyle, urged a simpler and greener

lifestyle on Western societies. Both the consumers of yuppie

lifestyle products and the followers of this movement towards simplicity have been called lifestylers.

Being a meat-free lifestyler on Gozo is no problem.

Lean Living Feb.-Mar. 1987, p. 4

Creative talents in marketing have grasped the concept of lifestyle so insistently that it is changing the face

of the high street, the commercials break, even the media.

Creative Review Jan. 1988, p. 14

B & Q is targeting the 'lifestyle' market with...quick-drying acrylic paints...in tins featuring illustrations of country house interiors.

Design Week 26 May 1989, p. 6

Swissair has gone life-style with its series of 'customer portraits' (would you buy a second-hand seat from this man?).

International Management Mar. 1990, p. 60

lig

intransitive verb (Lifestyle and Leisure) (Youth Culture)

In media and youth slang: to sponge or freeload; to gatecrash parties.

Etymology: Lig was originally a dialect word corresponding to standard English lie, mainly in Scottish, Northern Irish, and Northern English dialects. It entered standard English in the early sixties in the general sense 'to idle or lie about' and

was then adopted by media people in the more specialized meaning given above.

History and Usage: This is a usage which arose in the late seventies, especially among journalists and entertainers, whose lifestyle involves accepting free hospitality of one kind and another. The word was popularized by media people themselves during the mid eighties. The corresponding action noun is

ligging; the word for a freeloader is ligger.

[I] suddenly twigged what ligging was all about when I got my first job as a researcher on Aquarius. I found...I could get free tickets for everything, everywhere.

Radio Times 6 Apr. 1985, p. 16

A penniless young man who begins in Trafalgar Square with nothing but a pair of underpants and ligs his way onward and upward with clean-cut charm.

The Times 9 Apr. 1985, p. 8

Once the last lingering ligger has been escorted out, Dylan and his three piece band...shamble through on to the dimly lit stage.

Q Dec. 1989, p. 64

light adjective Often written lite in brand names (Lifestyle and Leisure)

Of foods and drinks: containing few calories; especially, low in fat or cholesterol.

Etymology: A specialization of sense arising almost entirely from the use of the word in advertising and brand names; the current use when applied to food and drink deliberately combines elements of a number of well-established senses. On the one hand, it is the food that is being described as light (in the

same sense as one might speak of a light meal, or think of lager as light compared with bitter); on the other, it is the effect

on the consumer that is at issue (implying that light foods and drinks will not make you fat and heavy). Light has been used of drinks (especially beer), as in light ale, to mean 'not strong' since the late nineteenth century (and in this sense is the opposite of stout), but in the 1980s this development moved one step further. The spelling lite in brand names reflects the

same process as the one which produced nite from night.

History and Usage: This is a usage which has become especially

common as a result of the prevailing fashion in the eighties for a low-fat, high-fibre diet and the consequent marketing of foodstuffs, drinks, and prepared meals specifically to take advantage of this. The first beer to carry the brand name Lite was launched in the late sixties by Meister Brau in the US; this became Miller Lite in the seventies and started to become very popular in the second half of that decade. Now, the word light (or lite) is often part of the name of a product, following a

proper noun (as in the trade marks Meadow Lea Lite and Vitaquell Light margarines, Budweiser Lite beer, etc.)--a departure from

the normal pattern of usage in English, where adjectives would normally precede the nouns they qualify, but consistent with a trend in the naming of products. In the US the word has also been applied to other consumables, such as cigarettes with a low tar content.

Its idea of what makes a light beer light is that it contains 100 calories or less in a 12-oz serving.

Marketing Week 29 Aug. 1986, p. 16

Polyunsaturated Meadow Lea Lite and Mrs McGregors Lite are reduced fat spreads with only half the fat and half

the kilojoules of regular margarine and butter.

Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 28 June 1989, p. 29

line

noun (Drugs)

In the slang of drug users: a dose of a powdered drug (especially cocaine).

Etymology: So named because the powder is formed into a long trail like a line on a shiny surface, ready for 'snorting'

through a straw or tube. An earlier use of the word in drugs slang was as an abbreviation of mainline, a main artery into which drugs such as heroin could be injected.

History and Usage: A term of the late seventies and eighties, this word is rarely found in print but is apparently in common spoken use among drug users.

Graffiti recently collected at the University of North

Carolina (Chapel Hill) include:...Cocaine is like a good joke. You can't wait for the next line.

Maledicta Winter 1979, p. 276

[She] produced a six-inch ivory tube, sank to her knees and greedily did her lines, sniffing angel dust into each nostril.

Roger Busby The Snow Man (1987), p. 21

-line combining form (Lifestyle and Leisure) (People and Society)

A telephone service. (Usually as the second element of a compound name, the first part of which describes the purpose or target of the service.)

Etymology: From the noun line in the sense 'telephone connection', perhaps with some conscious alteration of hotline (see below).

History and Usage: A well-known early example of this use was the so-called hotline, or emergency telephone link, set up between the US and the Soviet Union in the early sixties. During the seventies some organizations offering help or advice, especially in emergencies, would call the service a hotline, but from the beginning of the eighties the first part started to be replaced by some other word describing the service. Any service that offered help and advice to people in difficulty was named a helpline, with hotline now reserved for matters of extreme urgency (although this apparently includes 'rushing' orders to mail-order companies!). Helplines devoted to particular types

of advice are sometimes named accordingly--for example Aidsline for people with Aids, Childline for children in trouble or

danger (especially as a result of child abuse), Parentline for parents who need advice about their children. The helpline which simply gives the caller a chance to talk over the problem with

an anonymous helper is also often called a talkline. In the second half of the eighties there was public consternation over the high telephone bills run up by teenagers using a service called a chatline, which allowed them to take part in a conference call with other youngsters who just wanted a chat. In the UK, the familiar speaking clock has been renamed Timeline,

and a service allowing a business to pay for the calls made direct to it by prospective customers is known as Linkline. Many formations using -line are trade marks and are therefore written with a capital initial.

Although Jenni seems to have the only official help-line in the country for battered husbands, there are other places where men can go for help.

Woman 20 Feb. 1988, p. 13

The controversial telephone chatlines, withdrawn earlier this year after complaints about exorbitant bills, are likely to be allowed to resume in the near future.

The Times 28 July 1989, p. 3

Since the beginning of 1988, 13 volunteers have run a 'telephone friendline' for latchkey children--youngsters who return to empty homes after school--in La Verne and San Dimas.

Los Angeles Times 7 Sept. 1989, section 9, p. 8

The Wellington Parentline, a telephone advice service, has received 32 calls reporting violence from children towards parents.

Independent 29 Jan. 1990, p. 8

linkage noun (Politics)

The linking together of quite different political issues in international negotiations by declaring that progress on one front is relevant and necessary to progress on other fronts.

Etymology: A specialized use of linkage in the sense 'connection, the act or process of linking together'.

History and Usage: Linkage emerged in the US in the context of US-Soviet relations in the mid and late sixties, when it was

used by senior White House officials in order to establish a link between nuclear arms control and general East-West

political relations; in practice, it became associated with the

way that Cold War tensions were eased by a bargaining process in which one side made concessions in a given area in return for a promise on arms control or other concessions in a different

area. Linkage remained an important concept in the seventies and eighties--as, for example, the US demand in 1987 for progress on arms control in return for Soviet movement on human rights and withdrawal from Afghanistan--but it acquired an especial currency after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August

1990, when Saddam Hussein and his allies sought unsuccessfully to place the Palestinian question firmly on the agenda for any negotiations about Iraq's withdrawal.

Mr. Kissinger's version of d‚tente included a strategy of 'linkage' designed to deter the Russians from

misbehaving. The idea was that Moscow would not risk the loss of favorable arms agreements...by engaging in risky adventures around the world.

US News & World Report 29 Mar. 1976, p. 17

Many speculate that the message carried by Hussein will only be a repeat of Saddam's call for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories and Syria to leave Lebanon. The State Department has dismissed this proposal out of hand, calling it 'false linkage'.

USA Today 16 Aug. 1990, section A, p. 2

liposuction

noun (Health and Fitness) (Lifestyle and Leisure)

A technique used in cosmetic surgery in which particles of excess fat beneath the skin are loosened and then sucked out with a vacuum pump through a tube or cannula inserted into a small incision.

Etymology: Formed from lipo-, the combining form of Greek lipos 'fat', and suction.

History and Usage: The technique of liposuction was developed in the early eighties, principally as a means of removing unwanted fat which is resistant to dieting and exercise. Not

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