The Oxford Dictionary of New Words
.pdfHistory and Usage: The magalog was an invention of US advertisers in the second half of the seventies which caught on in many other affluent countries during the eighties. Typically, the 'magazine' is issued free of charge to a limited number of people (cardmembers of a particular credit card, users of a mail-order house, etc.) or given away in another publication; the content is a mixture of editorial, advertorial, and
straightforward advertising. Many magalogs are issued at regular monthly or quarterly intervals and are difficult to distinguish visually from a magazine (except, perhaps, for the absence of a price from the cover).
GUS, the market leader in traditional mail order, is also responding to the new challenge. Next month sees the launch of Complete KIT, a fashion magalogue (its word), through W H Smith and associated newsagents.
Daily Telegraph 18 Feb. 1988, p. 17
The products include bulletin boards, early learning books, post-it notes and reading aids. The Kids' Stuff magalog also contains editorial pages and teaching tips. It is mailed twice a year.
DM News 15 Apr. 1988, p. 74
magnetic resonance imaging
(Health and Fitness) (Science and Technology) see MRI
mainline (Drugs) see line
makeover noun Also written make-over (Business World) (Lifestyle and Leisure)
A complete transformation or remodelling; specifically, the remodelling of a person's appearance (or some aspect of it, such as hairstyle), especially when this is carried out by a professional.
Etymology: Formed by turning the verbal phrase to make over ('to refashion') into a compound noun.
History and Usage: The noun makeover was first used in the late
sixties and by the seventies was not unusual in professional hairstylists' and beauticians' publications. It remained in relatively limited use until the end of the seventies, when it started to appear in magazines aimed at a wider audience; by the mid eighties it had become a part of the stock vocabulary of women's magazines, especially those which featured an opportunity for an ordinary reader to have her whole appearance and image rethought by experts, with markedly different 'before' and 'after' photographs. This was extended to all kinds of remodelling (for example, of interior decoration, houses, etc.) from the early eighties. The word was also taken up in the business world in a figurative sense from about the mid eighties: when a company is restructured by a new management, this is described as a makeover or corporate makeover, especially if the results seem only cosmetic.
Mr Segal insists that hostile takeovers, leveraged buyouts and forced restructurings--which he bundles together under the...label 'corporate makeovers'--are 'symptoms, not the disease'.
New York Times Book Review 29 Oct. 1989, p. 32
The make-over of California Cosmetics has worked. Although sales slipped...last year,...the company is now more profitable than ever.
Financial Review (Sydney) 23 Feb. 1990, p. 48
We did this make-over for six ladies in the region. You know the sort of thing--you get an expert in to show them what they should wear.
She Oct. 1990, p. 9
mall |
noun (Lifestyle and Leisure) |
A covered shopping precinct, usually situated outside a town and provided with car-parking facilities and other amenities.
Etymology: A mall has meant 'a covered or sheltered walk' since the eighteenth century; some towns have the evidence of this historical usage in the name of a particular street or
promenade, but this is usually pronounced /--/. The shopping mall is a specialized use of this sense.
History and Usage: A well-established concept in North America (where they were first written about in the late sixties), malls were tried in the UK during the seventies, but with little
success. In the eighties, however, increasing traffic congestion and parking problems in large towns, as well as the
changeover to the megastore approach to shopping, meant that the mall became increasingly popular. In the UK the longer term shopping mall is still commoner than mall alone.
Most striking is the way individually-designed shop fronts spill over into the malls themselves.
Which? Aug. 1989, p. 406
The downtown Los Angeles car wash used in the original [film] was recently torn down and replaced by a mini-mall.
People 19 Feb. 1990, p. 51
Telecommuting will also be promoted, along with no-go zones for cars, pedestrian shopping malls and park-and-ride schemes.
BBC Wildlife July 1990, p. 456
management buyout
(Business World) see buyout
marginalize
transitive verb Also written marginalise (Politics) (People and Society)
To treat (a person or group of people) as marginal and therefore unimportant; to push from the centre or mainstream towards the periphery of one's interests, of society, etc. Also as an
adjective marginalized; adjective and noun marginalizing; process noun marginalization.
Etymology: Formed by adding the verbal suffix -ize to marginal;
the verb was originally formed in the nineteenth century in the sense 'to make marginal notes (on)'.
History and Usage: Marginalization was originally a sociologists' term, in use from about the early 1970s. It was during the mid to late seventies that a number of interest groups and liberation movements (including feminism, Black power, and gay rights groups) took up the term to focus public attention on their causes, eventually turning it into one of the main social buzzwords of the eighties.
Society, taking its lead from the media and its politicians, begins to reject a whole class and marginalizes them in the job market.
Caryl Phillips The European Tribe (1987), p. 123
One of the many tales that we have been told is that there was once a homogenous national culture which is now under threat from multiculturalism, as if there was, is, or is ever likely to be, one tradition within England--not to mention the traditions within each of the marginalised nations in the United Kingdom.
New Statesman 17 June 1988, p. 46
Although the curve of decline has been flattening gradually, it is not yet clear that the church's long years of marginalisation in our national life have been ended.
Independent 29 July 1990, p. 20
market maker
noun Also written market-maker or marketmaker (Business World)
In the jargon of the Stock Exchange after big bang, a broker-dealer who deals in wholesale buying and selling, guaranteeing to make a market in a given stock; essentially the same thing as a stock-jobber before Big Bang.
Etymology: Formed by compounding; the one who makes a market. The phrase make a market has been in use on the London Stock
Exchange since the turn of the century; the form market maker also already existed before the big bang, but was not an official term and was used pejoratively (see below).
History and Usage: The word market maker is not new, but it has been used in a new sense in the Stock Exchange since the deregulation of 1986. Whereas the market maker of the turn of the century specialized in making a market by dealing in a stock to drum up interest in it, today's market maker simply
guarantees to buy and sell a specified stock and so make the market available. The main business of a market maker consists in buying stock wholesale and then selling it on at a profit;
this is essentially what stock-jobbers did before the
distinction between brokers and jobbers was abolished in 1986. The activity of a market maker is market making; occasionally the intransitive verb market-make is also used.
After last week's hefty fall on Wall Street there must be many in the City wondering if the London equity
market will suffer bouts of guruitis...when the American market makers begin to extend their influence.
Sunday Telegraph 13 July 1986, p. 23
Marketmakers are obliged to deal at the price shown on their screens.
The Times 20 Oct. 1986, p. 25
mascarpone
noun (Lifestyle and Leisure)
A soft, mild cream cheese from Lombardy in Italy.
Etymology: A direct borrowing from the Italian name of the cheese mascarpone or mascherpone.
History and Usage: Mascarpone, which is a relative of the better-known ricotta, has been written about in English since at least the thirties; for some reason it became a fashionable food in the mid and late eighties, cropping up frequently in writing for and by foodies.
Tiramis—, which means 'pick-me-up', consists of layers of espresso-soaked spongecake or ladyfingers, sprinkled
with rum and slathered with sweetened mascarpone cheese.
New York Times 8 Mar. 1989, section C, p. 3
Chef Leigh correctly detected a touch of horse-radish in the cream topping...but affected not to have heard of the other principal ingredient, mascarpone.
The Times 17 Feb. 1990, p. 36
masculist noun and adjective (People and Society)
noun: A person who upholds the rights of men in the same way as a feminist upholds those of women; also, a person who opposes feminism.
adjective: Representing or upholding men's rights or masculine attitudes in general.
Etymology: Formed by adding the suffix -ist to the stem of masculine, after the model of feminist. The word masculinist had already been coined in the same meaning by Virginia Woolf in 1918, and is also in current use (although rare).
History and Usage: The word was coined at the beginning of the eighties, after the feminist movement had radically altered the position of women in Western societies. The term masculism is also sometimes used for the men's rights movement or the attitudes that it enshrines, but it is considerably less common than masculist.
What is claimed to be the first ever European petition for men's rights is to be handed in to the European Parliament by a new 'masculist' group...There are already some 20,000 militant masculists in Europe.
The Times 20 Mar. 1984, p. 6
It does not matter if the cartoon is insulting to men. The number of such cartoons is so small that, set against the insults to women broadcast by every
newsagent and television channel, only a loony masculist would object to them.
Guardian 23 Nov. 1989, p. 38
Phoebe thought that science in general was a crude product of masculist thinking, designed to separate knowledge and experience.
Sara Maitland Three Times Table (1990), p. 93
massage verb and noun (Business World)
transitive verb: To manipulate (figures, computer data, etc.) so as to give them a more acceptable or desirable appearance.
noun: The action of manipulating figures or data in this way.
Etymology: A figurative application of massage, which had already been used metaphorically in the sixties to refer to the 'touching up' of written material such as an official report.
History and Usage: The business use of the word dates from the mid seventies, when the widespread application of computing to business statistics made data massage possible. During the eighties, the verb in particular became increasingly common, and it is now usually printed without inverted commas. In most cases, the activity is not actually fraudulent, but takes place
on the fringes of legality and propriety as a way of putting the desired 'spin' on the data. Figures which have been manipulated in this way are described by the adjective massaged.
He...uses the manipulated data to prove the link between money and prices...Professor Hendry's feat, however, is to take this heavily massaged data and show that not even such distortion can save the empirical support for Friedman's theory.
Guardian Weekly 25 Dec. 1983, p. 9
The headline writers will be wondering endlessly about Mrs Thatcher's choice of an election date; with the drear descant that, if she delays, the figures for the
following year will have to be massaged all over again.
Guardian 20 July 1989, p. 22
Numbers can be massaged by putting them in different places in the accounts...but it is difficult to
manipulate them over several years.
Business Apr. 1990, p. 59
See also creative
max |
noun and verb (Youth Culture) |
noun: In the US slang phrase to the max, totally, completely, to the highest degree.
transitive or intransitive verb: In US slang, to do (something) to the limit; to excel, to perform to maximum ability or capacity, to peak. (Often as a phrasal verb max out.)
Etymology: Max has been an abbreviated colloquial form of maximum since the middle of the nineteenth century, and there is some evidence that it was also occasionally used as a verb at
that time. Both the phrasal uses result from the tendency for 'in' expressions to become fixed phrases among a particular group of people and then be picked up as phrases by outsiders.
Out can be added to almost any verb in US slang: compare pig out and mellow out.
History and Usage: The phrase to the max may have originated in US prep school slang in the late seventies, but is now
particularly associated with the speech of young Californians. In the late eighties it started to appear in British sources as
well, but is still a conscious Americanism. The verb max out has its roots in US prison slang, where it has been used in the
sense 'to complete a maximum prison sentence' since at least the mid seventies. In the eighties, it was used in a wide variety of different contexts, including the financial (giving or spending to the limit of one's resources), the physical (for example, exercising to the limit of one's endurance), and cases in which it simply means 'to peak'. The phrasal verb is the foundation
for an adjective maxed out, at the limit of one's abilities,
endurance, etc.
In the past three years, 81 percent of those who've 'maxed out' on psychiatry (that is, exceeded the Blues' $50,000 lifetime limit on outpatient bills) have been from Washington.
Washington Post Magazine 22 Nov. 1981, p. 28
Pop 1987 was choc-a-bloc with 'good songs', was human-all-too-human, warm and fleshy to the max.
New Statesman 18 Dec. 1987, p. 36
On stage and in interview, Sandra Bernhard works her sharp tongue to the max.
The Face Jan. 1989, p. 20
'We are maxed out. We are practically pushing the walls out', said Jane Marie Schrader, library director.
Newark Star-Ledger (New Jersey) 14 Jan. 1990, p. 56
See also grody
13.3 MBO
MBO (Business World) see buyout
13.4 MDMA
MDMA (Drugs) see Adam and Ecstasy
13.5 ME...
ME |
abbreviation (Health and Fitness) |
Short for myalgic encephalomyelitis, a benign but debilitating and often long-lasting condition which usually occurs after a
viral infection and causes headaches, fever, muscular pain, extreme fatigue, and weakness.
Etymology: The initial letters of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.
History and Usage: ME, which has also been known as post-viral fatigue syndrome or post-viral syndrome (because it so often follows a viral infection), or Royal Free or Iceland disease
(after two famous unexplained outbreaks), has been the cause of considerable debate in the medical world since the late seventies. Although there have been documented cases of the symptoms associated with ME since the fifties, no definite cause could at first be found (some connection with coxsackieviruses was identified in the late eighties); it is really only during
the eighties that ME was recognized as anything more than a psychosomatic condition by doctors and public alike. The syndrome tends to attack high achievers with a busy lifestyle, causing them to take months or even years to recover from what at first sight appeared to be no more than an attack of flu--hence the colloquial nicknames which have been applied to
it, including yuppie flu. The abbreviation ME has been in common use since the early eighties.
Post-viral syndrome, or Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), is a mysterious illness, a chronic disease a generation
of doctors dismissed as 'shirker's sickness'.
Woman's Day (Melbourne) 4 Jan. 1988, p. 29
Maria-Elsa Bragg, 23, has been battling for more than two years against the mystery disease ME...The illness, full name Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, affects about 150,000 Britons, mostly women.
Sunday Mirror 16 Apr. 1989, p. 9
My local bookshop has just given 'ME' (myalgic encephalomyelitis) the final seal of approval, its own shelf.
British Medical Journal 3 June 1989, p. 1532
meat-free (Health and Fitness) (Lifestyle and Leisure) see -free