#wordbirds

[wordbirds]

MacGiftin (n) muh-GIFT-in Like a MacGuffin—an irrelevant device in Hitchcock films (et al.) that pops up just to jolly along the audience—a MacGiftin is an unwanted gift that you must prominently display whenever its bestowers visit. Usage: “Aunt Ida just called, she and Uncle Max are dropping by.” “Oh god, we’ll have to bring out the McGiftin— that hideous Kinkade painting they gave us. Where did we stow it?”

[lieslschillingerarticles]

Brusque Lyricism: Liesl Schillinger on Translating Inès Cagnati - Asymptote Blog

Cagnati’s images . . . her intentionally repetitive reflections and refrains, have a force and strength that are magnified by their rough grain.

Q&A in Asymptote about translating Cagnati, and about the origins of my neologisms book “Wordbirds.”

[wordbirds]

NONBURGER

NON-bur-gur ( N.) Word to use for a meatless hamburger that tastes and looks (pretty much) like a hamburger made of beef, but contains no animal proteins. Also may be used as adj. to describe the ground product used in cooking, available in grocery stores (and in Impossible Tacos and Bowls at Qdoba and Taco Bell.)  Usage: Joel ate a nonburger and fries at Burger King (the Impossible Whopper, they called it) and wondered when McDonald’s would start serving its version, the P.L.T. That night, at home, he made nonburger chili for dinner.

‡ For 200 other useful, illustrated 21st-century coinages, check out Wordbirds, on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Wordbirds-Irreverent-Lexicon-21st-Century/dp/1982104481/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1576848737&sr=8-1

[wordbirds]

[to] Goldstein

GOLD-styne (V.) To transform a political foe into a supernatural focus of hatred and fear, in order to increase loyalty and submission to yourself—as Big Brother did with Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell’s 1984. Usage: Trump Goldsteined Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign, turning her into a rabble-rousing, all-purpose scapegoat and a fundraising money-spinner. Gearing up for the 2020 campaign, he began to Goldstein the controversial Democratic Muslim Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, too. But he did not stop Goldsteining Clinton. —§For other useful new coinages, check out the Wordbirds book—§

[wordbirds]

SUMMUMN

(N.) (SUM-um) That in-between season, not strictly summer, not quite autumn, when it’s weird to wear sandals but too warm for boots; too hot for a jacket by day, too cool for shirtsleeves alone at night. USAGE: Jules shivered in her cotton dress as she rode the L train home. She wanted summumn to end already and proper fall to begin, so she wouldn’t need a costume change to weather each day’s temperature swings.

[wordbirds]

SPART

(N.) SPART  (pl. sparts) Name for those who put themselves at risk to denounce abuse of power. A shortening of the name Spartacus– the gladiator who led a slave rebellion against the power-hungry real-estate mogul Crassus (who ruled the Roman empire along with Caesar and Pompey in the First Triumvirate, in the first century BC). USAGE: During the Trump presidency, a succession of sparts emerged, who put themselves in the firing line to defend democracy--from James Comey to Colin Kaepernick, to William McRaven, Corey Booker, and even a member of Trump’s inner circle, who published an anonymous call to alarm in the New York Times.

[wordbirds]

SOCCER SPRAY

(N.) SOK-kur spray. (Figurative) A magical panacea, which, like the aerosol unguents sprayed on hobbled soccer players, instantly restores the ailing to vigor, or more broadly, fixes something that’s broken. Usage: “Did you see? The giant oak fell onto the Millers’ garage in the storm.” “Yup. It’s gonna take more than soccer spray to fix that one.”

[wordbirds]

Red-Hen

red-HEN (v.) To red-hen is to publicly confront an off-duty member of the Trump administration in a public place, usually a restaurant. (A political nonce word, like “Borkability.”) USAGE: As news spread of the Trump policy of separating children from asylum-seeking parents on the U.S.- Mexico border, citizens began confronting Trump coterie members in public, from presidential press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was ejected from the Red Hen restaurant in Virginia; to Homeland Security head Kirstjen Neilsen, and White House adviser Stephen Miller, who were both red-henned as they dined on Mexican food in at a D.C., to EPA head Scott Pruitt, who was red-henned a week later, as he ate tacos at another D.C. eatery.