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The Oxford Dictionary of New Words

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Artists Newsletter Nov. 1987, p. 20

posse noun (Drugs) (Youth Culture)

A gang of Black (especially Jamaican) youths involved in organized or violent (often drug-related) crime in the US. Now more widely in youth slang, one's gang or crowd; a group of friends.

Etymology: A specialized sense of the existing word, representing a substantial shift of meaning: a posse was originally a group of people whose purpose was the enforcement of the law (and in this sense will be familiar to all lovers of Westerns). From here it developed to mean any strong band or company, was taken up in Black street slang (see below), and then came to be used specifically by police and journalists for

a forceful band operating on the wrong side of the law.

History and Usage: The first reports of the criminal kind of posse arose from the spread of the cocaine derivative crack in the US, and the associated rise of drug-related crime there in the mid eighties. Originating as it does from Black street slang, where it means no more than 'a gang or crowd' (and has been used since at least the early eighties), the word figured in the names of rap groups and lyrics and thereby spread to White youngsters as well, so that by the end of the decade it had become a fashionable way to refer to a group of one's friends--the people with whom one 'hangs out'.

Having restrained my homeboys we walked away with dignity, but the whole posse was quite visibly in tears.

City Limits 9 Oct. 1986, p. 52

Copeland's people are called the Beboes, a violent Jamaican drug posse operating big time in Queen's and Brooklyn.

Newsday 17 May 1989, p. 3

You gotta mention my baby daughter AJ and the CIA dance posse.

Sky Magazine Apr. 1990, p. 18

post-bang (Business World) see big bang

post-boomer

(People and Society) see boomer

post-lingually deafened

(Health and Fitness) (People and Society) see deafened

post-viral (fatigue) syndrome (Health and Fitness) see ME

16.10 pre-Aids...

pre-Aids (Health and Fitness) see Aids

pre-lingually deaf

(Health and Fitness) (People and Society) see deafened

primeur (Lifestyle and Leisure) see Beaujolais Nouveau

privatizer

noun (Business World) (Politics)

A person who advocates the transfer of nationalized industries to the private sector; someone who carries out privatization.

Etymology: Formed by adding the agent suffix -er to the verb privatize, which has been used since the early seventies in the sense 'to assign (services, industries, etc.) to private enterprise'.

History and Usage: Privatizer arose at the beginning of the eighties and has been used especially of members of the Conservative government in the UK, with its policy of selling national service industries and encouraging ordinary citizens to own the shares.

Mr Redwood, the new under secretary, is an evangelical privatiser of similar persuasion and a leading light in the No Turning Back group of radical reformers.

Guardian 27 July 1989, p. 18

priviligentsia

noun Also written privilegentsia (Politics) (People and Society)

A class of intellectuals and Party bureaucrats in Communist countries who, until the reforms of the late eighties, enjoyed social and economic privileges over ordinary citizens; more widely, any privileged class.

Etymology: Formed by telescoping privilege and intelligentsia to make a blend.

History and Usage: Priviligentsia was coined, probably by Western observers, as the name for the privileged class of important Party members in the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact states as long ago as the fifties, but remained a

specialized word used only in academic journals until the early eighties. Then it was taken up by the media as a convenient shorthand for all those who could avoid food shortages by shopping in special shops, speed through the traffic by travelling in specially reserved lanes, get jobs through friends and contacts, and generally lead a life of privilege and luxury which starkly contrasted with the life of ordinary people in the Soviet Union. The priviligentsia was one of the main targets of Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of perestroika in the second half of the eighties, and the group which had most to lose from the reform programme. By the middle of the decade, the English-language press had already extended the word's use to cover any group of people who either enjoyed or advocated privilege.

An unholy alliance of Labour 'egalitarians' and the Tory 'priviligentsia'.

Daily Telegraph 28 Jan. 1985, p. 16

These bureaucrats get their jobs under the nomenklatura or privilegentsia system, whereby Communist party members nominate their friends in return for kickbacks and privileged access to rationed goods.

Economist 30 May 1987, p. 72

When technology is expanding as fast as it...is now, freer markets bring gains to everybody except the conservative privilegentsia.

Sunday Telegraph 9 Aug. 1987, p. 20

proprefix (People and Society)

In favour of; used in a number of adjectives relating to the abortion debates of the late seventies and eighties, especially:

pro-choice, in favour of a woman's right to choose whether or not to have an abortion;

pro-family, promoting family life and a return to a Christian moral code based on the family unit (and therefore opposed to the legalizing of abortion);

pro-life, in favour of upholding the right to life of the developing foetus (and therefore against abortion).

Etymology: The Latin prefix proused in its usual sense 'in favour of, on behalf of'; in all of these formations, whichever side of the issue they represent, there is an attempt to present a positive approach by choosing a term containing this prefix rather than a complementary term containing anti-: see the comments at anti-choice.

History and Usage: All of these terms arose in the US in the seventies and by the early eighties had become central to an understanding of political debate there and important election issues in many States. Pro-choice was first used in the mid seventies, sometimes as a noun (short for pro-choice movement) as well as an adjective; by the end of the decade a supporter of this view was regularly known as a pro-choicer. Pro-life was a more positive adjective which the anti-abortion lobby applied to itself from the late seventies onwards (see the discussion under anti-choice); a supporter of this view is a pro-lifer. The pro-family campaign was a rather broader political issue (also a product of the late seventies), advocating a return to the

values of family life and the moral standards of biblical

Christianity, but this, of course, also embraced a stand against abortion.

Some 'pro-family' activists...noisily pressed their antiabortion and 'morality' platform.

Bob Frishman American Families (1984), p. 15

Right-to-life groups, re-energized by the ruling, press for new laws limiting abortion, and their pro-choice counterparts rally to protect the gains embodied in Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision.

New York Times Magazine 6 Aug. 1989, p. 18

Abortion was legalized in 1973, but with 1.5 million women annually opting for the procedure during the '80s, the issue flared anew. Right-to-life advocates fostered shows of civil disobedience while a lunatic fringe bombed clinics. Last July the Supreme Court retreated from its landmark Roe v. Wade decision by allowing individual states to impose restrictions. [Photo

caption] Cleveland: Steven Green, 25, is hauled from the entrance of an abortion clinic that he and other members of Operation Rescue, a national 'pro-life' group, had been blocking.

Life Fall 1989, p. 98

See also right-to-life

professional carer

(People and Society) see carer

program trading

noun Also written programme trading (Business World)

In financial jargon, trading in a basket of securities rather than single issues; more specifically, a type of arbitrage (see arb) in which traders take advantage of a difference in market

values between a portfolio of securities and stock-index futures on essentially the same stocks, by taking a long or short position in the stocks at the same time as an offsetting

position in a futures contract.

Etymology: Formed by compounding: this form of trading is complex and sophisticated, and can only be carried out with the

aid of high-powered computer programs which show when there is a suitable discrepancy in values for the trader to exploit.

History and Usage: Program trading is a phenomenon of the computerized financial markets of the eighties and arose in the US in the early years of the decade. It is a low-risk form of arbitrage, but one which normally involves very large portfolios of securities and considerable sums of money, and so it is only practised by those with substantial capital behind them. It has been criticized for creating great volatility in the markets, particularly at the times when options are about to expire (see triple witching hour), since a great deal of buying and selling can be sparked off at these times by program trading and the computer-driven nature of these deals means that they are regarded as less controllable than deals decided upon by human agents.

The collapse of Wall Street's biggest sustained rally last week sparked new controversy over the use of computers by big investors for so-called program trading.

Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 27 Jan. 1987, p. 21

Wall Street is gradually returning to some semblance of stability. This process will greatly be helped by the curbs on computerised programme trading announced on Thursday by the New York Stock Exchange.

Financial Times 4 Nov. 1989, Weekend FT, p. II

If small investors want to end the stock market volatility that is being caused by program trading, they may have to stop complaining to their congressional representatives and stockbrokers and, instead, send off an angry letter to the guy who watches over their own pension money.

Washington Post 5 Nov. 1989, section H, p. 15

PRP

(Business World) see OTE

16.11 psychobabble...

psychobabble

(Lifestyle and Leisure) see -babble

16.12 puff-ball...

puff-ball noun Also written puffball (Lifestyle and Leisure)

A short full skirt which is gathered in at the hemline to produce a soft puffy effect; a balloon skirt. (Usually attributive, in puff-ball dress or puff-ball skirt.)

Etymology: So named because the resulting shape of the garment is like that of the puff-ball fungus.

History and Usage: The puff-ball has been known to fashion designers under this name since the sixties; it enjoyed a brief fashion in 1986-8 after being promoted by a number of the top Paris designers, and this brought the word into the news.

Christian Lacroix, the Paris designer, ...is credited with introducing the pouffe, otherwise known as the puffball, into the grandest parties.

The Times 9 June 1987, p. 25

She has abandoned skintight leathers and puffball minis, platinum rinses and bootlace ties.

Sunday Mail (Brisbane) 16 Oct. 1988, p. 17

pull-by date

(Health and Fitness) see sell-by date

puppie (People and Society) see yuppie

16.13 PWA...

PWA

abbreviation (Health and Fitness) (People and Society)

Short for person with Aids, an official designation in the US which is also the preferred term for themselves (rather than Aids patient, Aids sufferer, or--most disliked of all--Aids victim) among those who have Aids.

Etymology: The initial letters of Person With Aids.

History and Usage: The term PWA arose as a direct result of the coming together of people with first-hand experience of Aids at the second Aids forum in the US, held in Denver, Colorado, in December 1983. At this forum a group of people who had Aids or

ARC (see Aids) formed themselves into the Advisory Committee of People with Aids and issued a statement objecting to some of the other terms which had been applied to them in the past:

We condemn attempts to label us as 'victims', which implies defeat, and we are only occasionally 'patients', which implies passivity, helplessness, and dependence upon the care of others.

A variation on PWA is PLWA or PLA, both denoting person living with Aids. This arose, again among the people most intimately concerned, in the second half of the eighties and was designed

to counteract the negative responses of the general public by emphasizing the fact of living with--rather than dying from--Aids. Among journalists and others who influence popular usage, however, PWA is the only one of these designations which has gained any currency; in the US in particular, it had become

a well-known and widely used abbreviation by the early nineties, although the terms to which PWAs most object also remained frequent in the popular press. Sometimes the apparent sensitivity of the writer to the feelings of PWAs is cancelled

out by an insensitive reversion to Aids victim within a few words.

He found a place to live thanks to the Shanti Project, a charity subsidised by the municipality to help PWAs. It makes houses available to AIDS victims.

Guardian Weekly 26 Jan. 1986, p. 12

He explains that the race and class of most straight PWA's are proof that the 'heterosexual epidemic continued to fail to show up'.

Village Voice (New York) 30 Jan. 1990, p. 61

17.0Q

17.1qinghaosu...

qinghaosu noun (Health and Fitness)

A naturally occurring compound (also known as artemisinin) which is extracted from the Chinese plant Artemisia annua for use in

the treatment of malaria.

Etymology: A direct borrowing from Chinese qinghaosu, itself derived from qinghao, the Chinese name for the Artemisia plant, and a suffix meaning 'active principle'. The plant (a member of the wormwood family) grows alongside rivers in the North-East and South-West of China and is used as feed for pigs or against mosquitoes.

History and Usage: The Chinese have known about the anti-malarial properties of the qinghao for many centuries--the leaves and stems are used in traditional Chinese medicine against fevers--but it was not until the early seventies that these were confirmed by rigorous testing and identification of the active ingredient, qinghaosu. News of the discovery was reported in the West in the late seventies and eighties; one reason for excitement over the discovery in medical circles is that this natural drug is effective against some types of malaria that are not treatable with synthetic anti-malarials. During the eighties qinghaosu was extracted from Artemisia plants cultivated outside China as well.

One of the plants to come under scrutiny was a weed with a long history of use known in China as qing hao...The

Chinese named the crystalline compound qinghaosu, meaning active principle, and the western version of the name is Artemisinin.

The Times 22 July 1985, p. 12

17.2 quaffable...

quaffable adjective (Lifestyle and Leisure)

Of a wine: lending itself to being drunk copiously, drinkable.

Etymology: Formed by adding the suffix -able to the verb quaff 'to drink (liquor) copiously'.

History and Usage: This is one of the many words on the borderline between wine-lovers' slang and technical terminology that have thrived in the growing literature on wine in the eighties.

It is an intensively fruity, soft-bodied wine,...charming and eminently quaffable.

Washington Post 1 Dec. 1982, section E, p. 1

Were it not for 'a little local difficulty' we would here in Britain already be able to drink the very quaffable wines of Argentina.

Wine Society Annual Review 21 Apr. 1987, p. 12

quagma noun (Science and Technology)

In physics, a hypothetical state or body of matter consisting of free quarks and gluons.

Etymology: Formed by combining the first three letters of quark, the initial letter of gluon, and the last two of plasma to make an artificial word designed to rhyme with magma.

History and Usage: One of the most important areas of development in particle physics in the past two decades arises

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