The Oxford Dictionary of New Words

number of units of telephone time, which may be bought in advance from any of a number of retail outlets and then used in a special call-box known as a cardphone or phonecard kiosk/phone, etc.

Etymology: Formed by compounding: a card for the phone.

History and Usage: Plans for a phonecard system, which would solve many of the problems with theft and vandalism that plagued coin-in-the-slot pay phones, were announced by British Telecom in 1980 (at first using the name Phonocard). A public-service trial of the system began in 1981, and within three years it was being expanded to provide several thousand more cardphone kiosks. The phonecard is inserted into a slot before dialling; a liquid crystal display on the computerized box shows the caller how many units remain to be used and what the computer is deducting for the current call. At first, the kiosks that were

fitted to take the credit-card-sized phonecard were known as cardphones; by the middle of the eighties, though, the logo on

the kiosks read phonecard and it seemed that British Telecom was trying to simplify things by using a single name for all the

parts of the system. Colloquially, though, there is some variation; cardphone remains in use, as do synonyms for phonecard such as telephone card.

There are 700 Phonecard phones in London and these are expected to be increased to around 5,000 by 1987.

Ambit Sept. 1985, p. 8

Subscribers will be sent a 'smart' card--a bit like a phonecard--which switches on the decoder.

Which? Sept. 1989, p. 444

He went into an Indian grocery and provided himself with a telephone card and a stack of change. He walked over Putney Bridge and into Fulham, where he found a cardphone box that had to be functioning because it had

a long queue. He waited. Two people, a black man and a white woman, exhausted their cards.

Antonia Byatt Possession (1990), p. 327

photonovel

noun Also written photo-novel (Lifestyle and Leisure) (Youth Culture)

A piece of (usually romantic) fiction for young adults, in which the story is told in strip-cartoon fashion as a series of

photographs with superimposed speech bubbles (rather than actual cartoons).

Etymology: Formed by compounding: a novel told in a series of photos.

History and Usage: The photonovel, which is often published in serial form with each individual story sometimes known as a photonovelette, was originally a popular form of romantic fiction for European (especially Italian) teenagers, dating from at least the early sixties. In the late seventies the idea was imported to the US with some success, being used among other things for the 'book' publication of a number of films for teenagers such as Grease and Alien. By the mid eighties, photonovel series were available in the UK as well; their

popularity among certain groups of young people was seen by some as a symptom of declining literacy.

Photonovels are here...These photonovels are the American counterparts of magazines that have been raging successes in Europe for decades.

Daily News (New York) 11 July 1978, p. 40

He...fronted a rock band, wrote a porno photo-novel, and for a decade worked for the state phone company.

Time 30 Jan. 1989, p. 68

See also graphic novel

photo opportunity

noun Also written photo-opportunity (Lifestyle and Leisure) (Politics)

In media jargon (especially in the US): an organized opportunity

for press photographers and cameramen to take pictures of a celebrity or group of celebrities.

Etymology: Formed by compounding: an opportunity to take a photo.

History and Usage: The idea of the photo opportunity originated in the US in the mid seventies, but was turned to advantage particularly by President Ronald Reagan and his administration during the eighties--a technique which other politicians did not fail to note. Journalism developed in such a way during the eighties that a historic agreement or summit of world leaders could be summarized in the results of a photo opportunity and perhaps a sound bite of an official statement, and politicians became the ones hounded for a picture, taking the place of the film stars of previous decades. This approach to world events has been called photo-opportunistic; a person who takes advantage of it is a photo opportunist. By the end of the

eighties photo opportunity itself was often abbreviated to photo op.

They operate in the slick new tradition of political handlers, whose job is to reduce a campaign to photo ops and sound bites.

Time 21 Nov. 1988, p. 144

We must not be dazzled by these photo-opportunistic images. This modern magical foil for our memory can help us discover anew the luxury of retrospect.

Life Fall 1989, p. 37

The rebuilding of Eastern Europe offers Tories photo-opportunities galore but confronts the Foreign Office with one of its trickiest tests in years.

Economist 2 June 1990, p. 29

16.6 piece...

reflecting differing attitudes to John Pilger's own style of reporting. On the one hand (represented by Waugh and friends), it can be a highly critical and negative word, implying that the subject is being treated emotionally and with little regard for factual detail; sometimes, in fact, it is used as though it were only one step removed from outright lying. On the other hand (usually represented by the politically left-wing), there are those who admire Pilger's style and nerve and who use it with implications of compassionate reporting on behalf of powerless victims against the rich and powerful. A plethora of other words

based on pilger grew up during the eighties, the commonest being the action noun pilgering and the adjective pilgerish; rarer and less established derivatives include pilgerism, pilgerist, and pilgerization.

It was a brilliant piece of pilgering to claim that he

knew of a miner's family in Durham which possessed only one pair of shoes, although at the time of writing he

has not produced so much as a photograph of this model family for us to weep over as John [Pilger] would undoubtedly have done.

Auberon Waugh in Spectator 24 Nov. 1984, p. 8

Le pilgerisme. From the English verb 'to pilger', this expresses the continuous action of going on the television and suggesting at length...that war, pestilence, governmental corruption in South-east Asia/Central America/the Lebanon etc. are essentially the fault of the Americans in general and the lack of land reform in particular.

Spectator 24 Mar. 1984, p. 12

J. G. Dudley's question (Letters, 31 January) about the word 'pilgering' and 'pilgerish' is quickly answered. The verb to pilger means to regard with insight, compassion and sympathy.

Spectator 7 Feb. 1987, p. 26

Short for personal identification number, a confidential code-number allocated to the holder of a cash card or credit card for use when the card is inserted into a cash dispenser or ATM.

Etymology: The initial letters of Personal Identification Number.

History and Usage: The PIN (sometimes tautologically called a PIN code or PIN number) appeared at the beginning of the eighties, when greatly improved machines ensured that public take-up of automatic cash dispensing began to increase, and greater protection against misuse became necessary. The PIN is a security measure, designed to render the cards useless to a thief, since the machine will not carry out a transaction until

the PIN has been keyed in correctly; the PIN relating to a particular card must therefore be revealed only to the card-holder, who must keep it secret. This need for secrecy has led to all kinds of mnemonics and means of writing the number down in a way which a thief would not recognize. Self-service machines which allow a customer to pay for goods and services using a credit card and the appropriate PIN were introduced in 1984 with the trade mark Pinpoint.

Where the card-holder had disclosed his PIN, or recorded the PIN with the card, the card-holder was liable for

any unauthorized transactions.

Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 14 July 1986, p. 25

For motorists..., we're installing Pinpoint machines for buying petrol in Shell garages all over the country.

Daily Telegraph 24 Feb. 1987, p. 5

I reported the missing credit cards...but I did not call my bank that evening, trusting that nobody could use that card without the PIN code.

New York Times 21 Nov. 1989, section A, p. 24

16.7 PLA, PLWA...

16.8 pneumocystis carinii pneumonia...

pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (Health and Fitness) see PCPý

16.9 poaching...

poaching (Business World) see headhunt

poison pill

noun (Business World)

Any of a number of ploys (such as a conditional rights issue) which may be adopted by the intended target of an unwelcome take-over bid in order to make itself unattractive to the

bidder.

Etymology: A metaphorical application of a word-combination which is usually used in the context of combat and espionage. Whereas the spy carries a poison pill for personal use when cornered, the company facing a hostile bid uses it to give the aggressors a taste of their own medicine.

History and Usage: In its literal sense, poison pill has been

in use since the Second World War; the figurative use arose in the US financial markets in the early eighties, at first usually in the phrase poison pill defence or poison pill device, and was

allegedly coined by US lawyer Martin Lipman in his defence of El Paso Natural Gas in 1982. It was adopted (as a device and a

term) on the British Stock Exchange in the mid eighties. Despite attempts to limit the practice, it remained popular in a number of markets and generated several variants. Another name for essentially the same type of defence is a shark repellent.

Lenox played hard to get...and implemented a novel anti-takeover devise to discourage Brown-Forman Distillers takeover bid. The move is called the 'Poison Pill defense'.

New York Times 19 June 1983, section 3, p. 14