The Oxford Dictionary of New Words
.pdfA prison regulation in the UK whereby an inmate considered to be at risk from the rest of the prison community (for example, because of the nature of the offence that he or she has
committed) may be placed in solitary confinement for his or her own protection. Also, a prisoner isolated under this rule (sometimes abbreviated to 43).
Etymology: The paragraph number of the rule in the Prison Rules.
History and Usage: The rule has been in force since at least the early seventies; what brought the question of segregation
under Rule 43 to public attention was discussion in the media of the prison riots at Strangeways Prison in Manchester in April 1990, when it became clear that rioting prisoners had quickly broken into the segregated areas where Rule 43 prisoners were kept in order to attack them.
Do not suppose that 43s are necessarily the most evil. They may be, they may not be. What is unique to them is their fear.
Daily Telegraph 3 Apr. 1990, p. 16
Most violence was aimed at the vulnerable Rule 43 prisoners... [Sexual offenders] make up to 70 per cent of the Rule 43 prisoners.
Independent 3 Apr. 1990, p. 2
Rust Belt noun (Business World)
Colloquially in the US, the declining industrial heartland of
the Midwest and North-East United States, especially the former steel-producing areas such as Pittsburgh.
Etymology: Humorously formed by compounding: a belt or zone where once-profitable industry (in particular the metals
industry) is left to rust away.
History and Usage: The coinage of the term is often attributed
to US Democratic politician Walter Mondale, who opposed Ronald
Reagan in the presidential election of 1984. Attacking Mr Reagan's economic policies, Mr Mondale said
His...policies are turning our great industrial Midwest and the industrial base of this...country...into a rust bowl.
This was picked up in the media and repeated as Rust Belt. Although Mr Mondale's presidential campaign was unsuccessful, the plight of the American Rust Belt remained a political issue in the US. The term is often used attributively.
We might look upon the glory of our Rust Belt states, where there are hundreds of vast steel mills that are at least 40 years out of date and also spew smoke that causes acid rain.
New York Times Book Review 29 Oct. 1989, p. 48
19.0S
19.1sab...
sab |
noun and verb (Lifestyle and Leisure) (People and Society) |
Colloquially in the UK,
noun: An opponent of blood sports who disrupts a foxhunt as a form of protest, a hunt saboteur; also known more fully as a hunt sab. Also, any animal rights campaigner who engages in sabotage.
transitive or intransitive verb: To disrupt (a hunt) as a hunt saboteur; to go on a sabbing expedition.
Etymology: Formed by abbreviating saboteur to its first three letters.
History and Usage: The word arose among hunt saboteurs as a name for themselves and started to appear in print towards the
end of the seventies. As the movement against blood sports grew during the eighties, so the terms sab and hunt sab became increasingly common in the newspapers. It was also sometimes used more generally for animal rights campaigners whose action involved sabotaging scientific experiments etc.
The battle between the hunters and the 'sabs' is now an integral part of the hunting scene. He is a veteran of countless sabbing missions.
Sunday Times 6 Mar. 1983, p. 11
The sabs made a point of photographing their quarry in the lab before rescuing them, and on publication, these heart-rending photographs of dogs, being experimented on...raised a public outcry.
Illustrated Weekly of India 13 July 1986, p. 44
For two seasons I went and 'sabbed' my local hunt.
Peace News 19 Sept. 1986, p. 9
safe |
adjective (Youth Culture) |
In young people's slang: good, sound, having street cred (see cred°).
Etymology: A sense shift which possibly arises from the sensitivity of young people involved in street culture to peer pressure, and in particular to ridicule from peers: a person or thing that is safe is one that meets with approval.
History and Usage: Safe became a popular adjective of general approbation towards the end of the eighties, especially in the phrase well safe. As a piece of slang used among a small group of people it was naturally limited largely to spoken use, and rarely appeared in printed sources.
British Knights, Nike Jordans and Nike SEs are 'well safe', but copies like Nicks are the object of pure derision.
New Statesman 16 Feb. 1990, p. 12
safe sex noun Also in the form safer sex (Health and Fitness) (People and Society)
Sexual activity in which precautions are taken to ensure that the risk of spreading sexually transmitted diseases (especially Aids) is minimized.
Etymology: Formed by compounding: sex which is safe as regards the risk of contracting or spreading Aids. This combination of words was probably already in use in relation to contraception:
sex which was safe from the point of view of unwanted pregnancy. However, it was only in relation to Aids that it became a fixed phrase with a specific meaning.
History and Usage: The concept of safe sex (or safer sex, as some preferred to call it) arose in the mid eighties, as first American society, and later other societies as well, started to face up to the threat of Aids and think of ways in which it might be controlled. Awareness of the need for safe sex and
general publicity about it were commonest at first among the gay community, but by the second half of the decade the message was being put across deliberately to all sections of society through health advertising. The main elements of safe sex as highlighted in government advertising campaigns were avoidance of promiscuity (by having a single partner) and the use of a condom as a barrier to the exchange of 'body fluids' during
intercourse.
While the city's major bathhouses and clubs...are still in business,...a few of the owners have been helpful in educating clients about safer sex.
New York 17 June 1985, p. 52
The gay community...is now practicing safe sex so conscientiously that the rate of newly infected
homosexual men in cities like San Francisco and New York has fallen dramatically.
Life Fall 1989, p. 135
Part-parody, part safe-sex education, her presentation uses a combination of home movies, slides, vignettes.
Mediamatic Summer 1990 (Edge 90: Special Issue), p. 230
sailboard, sailboarder, sailboarding
(Lifestyle and Leisure) see boardsailing
salmonella-free
(Health and Fitness) see -free
sampling noun (Music) (Science and Technology)
In electronic music, the technique or process of taking a piece of digitally encoded sound and re-using it, often in a modified form, as part of a composition or recording.
Etymology: A specialized use of sampling, which would normally be used in the context of quality control or the taking of
statistical samples.
History and Usage: Sampling became an important technique in musical composition (especially in popular music) in the mid eighties, as a direct result of the advances in electronics and musical technology which followed from the development of the synthesizer. The music which developed from these techniques (including acid house, house, and techno) has a patchwork quality, since it is formed from many different sequences of modified sound. Associated terms include sample (a noun and verb), the adjective sampled (used of a sound or a whole sequence of music), and the noun sampler (the electronic instrument--actually a musical computer--which is used to sample sounds).
With new-romanticism, techno-pop, the revival of disco and growth of synthesized sound, from sampling to scratch, the potential for live performance waned.
Guardian 11 Aug. 1989, p. 24
Advanced Midi Amiga Sampler, High Quality Sound Sampler & Midi interface including all necessary Software...The sound is stunning, too. All effects are sampled, and
very atmospheric.
CU Amiga Apr. 1990, pp. 27 and 43
SAT |
(People and Society) see national curriculum |
satanic abuse
(People and Society) see child abuse
satellite noun (Lifestyle and Leisure) (Science and Technology)
Short for satellite broadcasting or satellite television, the transmission of television programmes via an artificial satellite; a special television service using this technique and receivable by subscribers who have paid a fee and own the appropriate satellite dish or other antenna.
Etymology: Formed by abbreviating satellite television; the satellite is the link in space between the broadcaster and the subscriber, with signals being beamed up to it and the antennas or dishes so positioned that they can receive the re-transmitted signal.
History and Usage: Satellite television (at first known officially by the more cumbersome name direct broadcasting by satellite) was first tried experimentally in the late sixties,
and the use of satellites for broadcasting became commonplace during the following decade. When, in the eighties, communications satellites were launched with the express purpose of providing a television service to compete with network television, the term satellite television and its abbreviated
forms satellite TV and satellite came to be applied specifically to these competing services, while direct broadcasting by satellite (or simply direct broadcast) had to be used for the technique when employed by network stations. Satellite was introduced in the UK in the late eighties by two competing stations, Sky TV and BSB, later merged as BSkyB. The unsightliness of the parabolic dishes used to receive satellite programming led to their being banned by some local authorities and there were moves to use cable (see cable television) to
'pipe' the programmes from a central reception point to individual homes in these areas.
There are also several monthly magazines with a mix of technical information and features about the films and other programmes on satellite and cable.
Which? Sept. 1989, p. 444
While the dollarless majority [in Poland] live in half-finished apartment blocks [and] walk to queue in zloty shops...the wydeos live in ugly villas, drive to shop at Pewex and display satellite dishes in their garden.
Correspondent Magazine 29 Oct. 1989, p. 37
19.2 SBS
SBS |
(Health and Fitness) see sick building |
19.3 scratch...
scratch noun and verb (Music) (Youth Culture)
noun: A technique, often used in rap music, in which a record is briefly and repeatedly interrupted during play and manually moved backwards and forwards to produce a rhythmic scratching effect; also, the style of music characterized by this (known more fully as scratch and rap or scratch music). Also used in other compounds, including:
scratch-mix, a style of popular music in which several records are intercut with each other as they are played, using the scratch technique to create a 'collage' of sound; also used as a verb or as an action noun scratch-mixing;
scratch video, a technique or game of video-making, in which a number of short, sharp images are cut and mixed into a single film and fitted to a synchronized sound track (usually of rap music); a video made by this method.
transitive or intransitive verb: To manipulate (a record) using the scratch technique; to play scratch music or act as a scratch
disc jockey.
Etymology: A reference to the scratching effect of the original technique.
History and Usage: Scratch music originated in rap and hip hop culture in the early eighties; a Scratch 'n' Rap revue was put
on in New York in 1982, and the technique was also popularized by disc jockeys who used it in a number of New York clubs. The same principle was applied to video by 1985, giving scratch video, itself sometimes abbreviated to scratch alone.
On Tuesday, Mr. Hancock and a band that included the 'scratch' disk jockey Grand Mixer D. Street appeared at the Ritz.
New York Times 25 Dec. 1983, section 1, p. 47
Brad Shapiro...produces her outrageous records and stage show, backed by a fine funk outfit, flavored with horns and the latest scratch and synth sounds.
Washington Post 27 Apr. 1984, Weekend section, p. 37
The Rockit Band includes Grandmixer D. ST., whose instrument is a turntable and who makes sounds by 'scratching' records back and forth.
New York Times 17 June 1984, section 2, p. 28
Scratch is a playful reaction to the endless offerings and noise of 'the media'. It interrupts the normal passive flow of TV, bends it a bit.
Honey June 1985, p. 18
A simple scratch can be built up by recording the chosen music/sound onto the audio channel of the video recorder then switch between channels as the vision is being recorded.
Photographer May 1986, p. 26
Pete Shelley's move from The Buzzcocks to a 12" gay classic 'Homo-Sapiens' and John Lydon's rearranged public image, appearing with scratch-mix pioneer Africa Bambaattaa, the self-proclaimed Zulu warrior of the hip hop scene, compounded the drift.
New Musical Express 14 Feb. 1987, p. 27
The 12" dance record is an inevitable liaison with the hi-technology of synthesisers and the rough treatment of rap and scratch.
New Musical Express 14 Feb. 1987, p. 27
scrunch transitive verb (Lifestyle and Leisure)
To style (hair) by squeezing or crushing with the hands to give a tousled look. Often in the verbal phrase scrunch-dry, to blow-dry (hair) while squeezing or crushing it in this way, in order to set it with a crinkled or tousled effect.
Etymology: Probably a blend of squeeze, crumple, crush, and crunch, originally intended to sum up the action and sound of screwing up a piece of paper in the palm of the hand.
History and Usage: Scrunch first started appearing in hairdressing magazines in about 1983; the technique of scrunch-drying followed from about 1985. Both terms spread outside the professional hairdressing press to general-interest magazines during the second half of the eighties.
Rod just used mousse and a scrunch-drying technique to give it more body and to make it...more modern.
Good Housekeeping May 1986, p. 43
To style, he used mousse and his hands to scrunch her hair into a beautiful halo of curls.
Hairdo Ideas July 1987, p. 58
Scud noun Sometimes written SCUD (War and Weaponry)
The NATO code-name (more fully Scud missile) for any of a class of long-range surface-to-surface guided missiles developed in
the Soviet Union, capable of carrying a number of different kinds of warhead, and launchable from a mobile launcher.
Etymology: Although sometimes written in capitals, Scud is not an acronym; the word scud was chosen as part of a series of NATO code-names for Soviet surface-to-surface missiles, all of which conventionally begin with s: other examples include Savage, Sandal, Scapegoat, and Scrooge. Similar series of names (beginning with g, k, and a respectively) have been chosen for surface-to-air, air-to-surface, and air-to-air missiles.
History and Usage: The Scud missile system (first the Scud A, and later the Scud B) was designed and made in the Soviet Union in the late fifties and early sixties and was soon exported to
the Warsaw Pact and other countries friendly to the Soviet Union. Scuds were used in the conflict in Afghanistan in the second half of the eighties, and were sometimes mentioned in news reports; what really brought the Scud into the news in English-speaking countries, though, was its deployment by Iraq during the Gulf War of January-February 1991. Scuds were launched against allied forces in Saudi Arabia and, more controversially, against Israel (a state not otherwise involved in the conflict). Since the Scud is capable of carrying conventional, chemical, or biological warheads, Scud attacks were seen as a significant threat to the civilian population in
Israel and Saudi Arabia; in the event only conventional warheads were used, but there were significant numbers of civilian casualties, especially in Israel. The fact that the missiles
were launched from mobile launchers made it difficult for allied air power to locate and destroy the sources of the attacks;
their effectiveness was minimized, however, by the success of Patriot missiles in intercepting and destroying many of them before they reached their targets. By February 1991 there was already a little evidence to suggest that Scud would develop a figurative sense, 'a devastating or unpredictable attack', much as Exocet had done after the Falklands War.
Now, bad weather in the region and the failure to knock out the Scuds had prolonged the aerial campaign.
Newsweek 28 Jan. 1991, p. 17