The Oxford Dictionary of New Words
.pdfbetween the price of stock index futures and the actual level of the market in the mid eighties. This and the increasing use of program trading brought the term into the daily papers, especially when one of the quarterly triple witching hours was approaching; they occur on the third Friday of the final month of each quarter and involve stock options, stock index options, and stock index futures.
Several days before last Friday's 'triple witching
hour', many professional stock traders again braced for a wild final 60 minutes in the life of three key market forces...and a wild 60 minutes it was.
New York Times 24 June 1985, p. 5
Wall Street also responded to concerted action by the major U.S. financial markets to close down programme trading...which became notorious because of the so-called triple witching hour volatility.
Jordan Times 21 Oct. 1987, p. 1
triple zero option (Politics) see zero
trivia plural noun (Lifestyle and Leisure)
Miscellaneous (often unusual or peripheral) facts about something; a quiz game in which the object is to answer questions eliciting such facts.
Etymology: Originally the name of one such quiz game; it refers to the peripheral or trivial nature of many of the facts
included in the game.
History and Usage: The craze for trivia quiz games began in the late sixties, but really took off only with the invention in
1982 of Trivial Pursuit (a trade mark), a board game devised in Canada by two journalists, Chris Haney and Scott Abbott. This game combined the quiz element with the traditional board game format, with each player acquiring credits by answering general knowledge questions in six subject areas represented by different spaces on the board. The game was enormously
successful throughout the world and was followed by many imitations using the word trivia somewhere in their name. As a result, many people associate the word trivia not with 'matters of little importance' (its original meaning) but with quizzes and the arcane facts that it is always useful to know when competing in these games.
Here's a question even a three-year-old could answer: What was the best-selling new board game of the 1980s? Trivial Pursuit.
Life Fall 1989, p. 64
Doing a column on presidential trivia is like volunteering to be the victim in a dunking booth at the country fair.
Baltimore Sun 7 Mar. 1990, section A, p. 15
Sounds readers may prefer to wait for the paperback to appear, by which time most mistakes will have been ironed out. But anyone buying it will find it invaluable for answering tricky trivia questions.
Sounds 28 July 1990, p. 20
Trojan noun Also written trojan (Science and Technology)
A computer program which (like a virus or worm) is designed to sabotage a computer system, but which usually breaks the security of the system by appearing to be part of a legitimate program, only starting to erase or retrieve data once it has
been carried successfully into the system. Also known more fully as a Trojan horse.
Etymology: A reference to the Trojan horse in the Greek epic tradition: a hollow wooden horse in Homer's Iliad in which Greek soldiers concealed themselves to enter and defeat the town of Troy. Since the nineteenth century, the term Trojan horse had been applied figuratively to any person or device concealed as a trick to undermine something from within. The computing sense was the first to abbreviate this further to Trojan (and it is
perhaps surprising that this happened even in the computing
sense, since Trojan is the trade mark of a well-known brand of contraceptive sheath in the US).
History and Usage: Under the name Trojan horse, the Trojan was first developed in the seventies by hackers (see hack) wanting
to gain access to other people's systems or carry out computer frauds involving the transfer of funds by computer. By the second half of the eighties, Trojans were considered an important hazard and special systems had been set up to detect and block them. The Trojan may be no more than a few lines of code inserted into another (apparently useful) program; it cannot replicate itself, but once the program is running it can start carrying out its under-cover activities, copying or destroying data as required. In many ways, a Trojan is similar to a logic bomb except that it does not usually require a specific set of conditions to obtain before it can be activated.
Among the dozens of trojans in circulation, some begin their destruction within minutes.
The Times 26 May 1987, p. 26
A perfect place to plant a Trojan horse. By changing a couple [of] lines of code in our telnet program, he
could make a password grabber. Whenever my scientists connected to a distant system, his insidious program would stash their passwords into a secret file.
Clifford Stoll The Cuckoo's Egg (1989), p. 154
20.8 tubular...
tubular adjective (Youth Culture)
In young people's slang, originally in the US: excellent, wonderful, very good or exciting, awesome. Often in the phrase totally tubular, superlative.
Etymology: Originally from Californian surfers' slang, in which
a tubular wave was one which was well-curved (and so shaped like a tube); a hollow, well curved wave was the best and most exciting kind to ride on, so tubular soon came to mean no more
than 'very good'.
History and Usage: Tubular originated in the slang of Californian surfers in the seventies; in its more general sense it was one of the words taken up by Valspeak in the early eighties and spread to a whole generation of American youngsters. Although already considered a little pass‚ by teenagers, in the second half of the decade it acquired a new currency among younger children (partly as a result of its use by the Turtles and other screen idols). This later vogue extended to British English, at least among children.
It would be nice to be able to say that last night's opening round of The Story of English (BBC-2) was 'tubular', 'the max' or just 'totally'. It was not up
to that standard. But it was quite exciting.
Daily Telegraph 23 Sept. 1986, p. 14
Hey Ron, you and Nancy were totally tubular, dude. I'm talking radical to the bone, buddy. Nobody can beat your admin, you know what I'm saying? Oh man, you were awesome, the best.
USA Today 11 Jan. 1989, section A, p. 7
Donatello [one of the Turtles] is totally tubular when he's jamming on his hand-held keyboards.
Daily Star 23 Oct. 1990, p. 19
Turtle noun Also written turtle (Lifestyle and Leisure) (Youth Culture)
In full, (in the US) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle or (in the UK) Teenage Mutant Hero Turtle: any of a group of four fantasy characters for children, in the form of terrapins who have supposedly been mutated through being covered in radioactive slime in a New York sewer. In the plural, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the trade mark of a series of children's stories, programmes, games, and toys based on the exploits of these characters.
Etymology: An abbreviated form of the full name, Teenage Mutant
etc.; in US English, turtle is the standard word for all the animals of the order Chelonia, which in British English are known variously as terrapins, tortoises, and turtles.
History and Usage: The pizza-loving Turtles were the invention of American comic-book artists Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird in 1988 and early in their history as comic-book figures were apparently used by a New York pizza house as a way of providing amusement for children while they were waiting to be served with their pizzas. The idea proved so successful that soon a whole range of Turtle licensed products appeared on the market, including computer games, toys, stationery, and a television series. The craze for Turtle licensed products was particularly intense in the US in 1989 and in the UK in 1990; so intense, in fact, that it became known as turtlemania. The Turtles, also known in the merchandising hype as the awesome foursome or the heroes in a half shell, helped to popularize a version of Californian youngsters' slang heavily influenced by Valspeak and surfers' talk; this language, including the cry of Cowabunga and adjectives such as awesome, rad, tubular, etc., has been called turtlespeak. In the US the Turtles were known in full as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but when they were introduced to the UK market the name was changed to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles in some cases (presumably because the word ninja was felt to be too unfamiliar to British ears). The name is often abbreviated to
Ninja Turtle rather than simply Turtle (even in the UK).
Actors wearing mutated-turtle outfits and hired to sign autographs at a toy store outdrew President Reagan, who made an appearance in town on the same day.
New Yorker 11 Dec. 1989, p. 142
Their new line of cereals includes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Nintendo Cereal System...and Batman, as well as Breakfast with Barbie.
People 19 Feb. 1990, p. 9
Turtlemania!
headline in The Sun (Brisbane) 5 Apr. 1990, p. 24
Hollywood declined to fund a full-length Ninja Turtles feature, thus missing the chance to cash in on this extraordinary craze.
20/20 July 1990, p. 21
Now the rock world is reeling from the most awesome teenage heart-throbs of the lot--the Turtles.
Daily Star 23 Oct. 1990, p. 19
20.9 tweak...
tweak° noun (Science and Technology)
A minor modification to a computer system or some other mechanism; hence, an inessential but desirable enhancement, an optional extra.
Etymology: A figurative sense development based on the idea of giving a mechanical device a tweak or fine-tuning twitch into shape; the corresponding verb has been in use in a number of technical contexts since the mid sixties.
History and Usage: Originally a feature of US English, this sense became associated particularly with the world of computing
and with the design and manufacture of large consumer items such as cars and motorcycles in the second half of the eighties.
Some tweaks were necessary. He had to adjust the screen code to accommodate the different sizes of the DEC and personal computer displays.
Computerworld 18 Dec. 1989, p. 35
The game is very neat and the ability to edit the levels is an additional tweak.
Your Amiga Mar. 1990, p. 25
tweaký intransitive verb (Drugs)
In the slang of drug users, especially in the US: to suffer from nervous twitching, mental disturbance, etc. as a result of addiction to a drug.
Etymology: Formed by using what would normally be a transitive verb intransitively; a reference to the involuntary twitching associated with withdrawal from drugs, as though the person were being tweaked. An earlier sense in drugs slang had been 'to
inject heroin', and heroin users are sometimes known as tweakers.
History and Usage: Although no doubt in spoken use among drug users for some years, this sense of tweak only began to appear
in print in the late eighties as a result of media interest in the growing drugs problem in the US.
Redneck, tweaking as the coke wears off, erupts when he hears that. He begins smashing his right hand into a wall.
Newsweek 25 Apr. 1988, p. 64
Then there are wounds inflicted with knives, baseball bats and other weapons when drug users are 'tweaking', the street jargon for the volatile behavior that accompanies crack.
New York Times 6 Aug. 1989, section 1, p. 1
21.0U
21.1UDMH...
UDMH (Environment) see Alar
21.2 unban...
unban |
transitive verb (Politics) |
To remove a ban from (an organization, activity, etc.); to legitimize.
Etymology: Formed by adding the prefix un- (indicating reversal) to the verb ban; the fact that the verb ban itself has negative meaning makes the addition of unto it rather unexpected and means that unban has a droll effect for some people.
History and Usage: The word unban has existed since at least the late sixties, but most people were probably unaware of it until discussion of the possible lifting of the South African government's ban on the African National Congress became a feature of the news in the second half of the eighties. This unbanning actually took place in February 1990, providing a concentration of uses in journalism at that time and helping to establish the noun unbanning and the adjective unbanned. All three forms have since been applied in other contexts.
He announced that he was unbanning the long-outlawed African National Congress and would soon free its aging leader.
People 19 Feb. 1990, p. 57
The unbanning of foreign investment in Finnish markka bonds has taken place but has not encouraged a flood of interest.
European Investor May 1990, p. 63
Now that Dr Boesak has forsaken his power base in the church, now that Nelson Mandela and his colleagues are free and the unbanned African National Congress is talking with the government, will there be a role centre-stage for him?
Independent on Sunday 29 July 1990, p. 21
unbundle transitive or intransitive verb (Business World)
In financial jargon, to divide (a company or group, its assets, products, etc.) into a core company and a number of smaller
businesses, usually so as to sell off the smaller companies to finance a take-over. Occasionally used intransitively: to carry out this kind of activity.
Etymology: A specialized figurative sense of a verb which was already in use in the business world in the sense 'to charge separately for (items previously treated as a group)'.
History and Usage: The activity of unbundling was first practised under this name in the US in the seventies, but many financiers see it as no more than a more up-to-date term for asset-stripping (see asset). In the UK, the whole process is specially associated with Sir James Goldsmith and his dealings with the BAT Industries conglomerate at the end of the eighties: in fact, he became so famous as an unbundler that he acquired the nickname 'the great unbundler' for his attempts to deal with corpocracy in large conglomerates. A conglomerate to which this process has been applied may be described as unbundled.
In practical terms, companies are learning to 'unbundle', to move away from the classic idea of the traditional package of equity, technology, and management.
American Banker 28 July 1982, p. 20
Conglomerates, who needs 'em? That sums up the prevailing attitude following the bid for BAT Industries by Sir James Goldsmith and friends. The immediate response is that Sir James certainly doesn't need them.
If there were no conglomerates to 'unbundle' he would no doubt argue in favour of the concept and buy companies to create a conglomerate.
Guardian 8 Aug. 1989, p. 11
Since the demerger forced on it by the Great Unbundler and Co, its simplified business has not been properly understood.
Independent on Sunday 29 July 1990, Business on Sunday section, p. 2
undink (People and Society) see DINK
unfriendly°
noun (Politics)
A hostile person or thing; in military jargon, an enemy.
Etymology: Formed by treating the adjective unfriendly as a noun; in the military usage there could be some influence from the adjective friendly meaning 'fighting on one's own side'.
History and Usage: Unfriendly was first used as a noun in the seventies. Apart from the military usage recorded here, it has been used to refer to any hostile person or thing (for example, a hostile take-over bid or an attacking rogue program such as a virus).
The old model [missiles] you can buy...Makes a big difference if the friendlies or the unfriendlies get 'em, and what kind of encoding hardware, computer directors, and so on go with 'em.
S. F. X. Dean Such Pretty Things (1982), p. 146
We violated the sovereign nation's borders with our troops; shot and killed 'unfriendlies' as well as that nation's civilians.
Charlotte Observer 2 Jan. 1990, section A, p. 5
unfriendlyý
adjective (Environment) (Science and Technology)
Unhelpful or harmful; used especially as a combining form in compound adjectives in which the preceding noun names the person or thing hindered or harmed, including:
environment-unfriendly, harmful to the environment (see environment°); not ecological;
ozone-unfriendly, contributing to ozone depletion; not ozone-friendly (see ozone);