Thursday, December 08, 2005

Tackle tart

So, apologies first up for not having posted for over a week. I've been a bit tied up teaching a residential course for English Language teachers on using very cool ICT gizmos. So, if you're one of the students who gets guinea-pigged as a result, way to go, have fun!

During the course I learned a phrase I'd not heard before.
"You know what?" one of the teachers said. "You're a right tackle tart!"
A 'tackle tart'?!! That's fantastic! It's someone who is obsessed with the beauty and perfection of their equipment, and as I was at the time caressing my custom engraved iPod, it seemed a reasonable comment...

This epithet also partly came about because we were investigating new words and meanings in assorted online dictionaries. "Bilking"? "Mef"? "Spork"? Go check 'em out. And that takes me to today's news that "podcast" is officially the word of the year with the New Oxford Dictionary, pipping "bird flu" and "ICE" to the post.

The list of top new words compiled by this authoritative source is interesting. I like to think I'm a bit of an early adopter of new words. Not the real hardcore slang stuff cos I'm far too old to get away with that, but I am a magpie for shiny new words or meanings that get used in the papers or by the people I meet. So, the fact that I'd never seen or heard 7 of the 12 items on the list quoted in the article linked below surprised me. Check it out. Any surprises for you?

Podcast voted word of the year

3 Comments:

At 10:06 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi, thought I had better do something pro-active -I am teaching language and technology to a bunch of very elite 6th Formers who are all convinced I have the Midas touch in reverse when it comes to computers...

Anyhow, if one of my lovelies 'cracks a funny' (usually at my expense) I am told I have been 'Powned' meaning 'Power owned'. Still not sure how insulted I should be by this - any ideas about what it really means? Ps brilliant site - might persuade my lot to actually do some research!

 
At 7:00 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I had to ask one of my more tech savvy friends what "pwned" meant when I came across it - sounds like the same word.

His explanation, right or wrong, was that it began as the phrase "I own you!" or "You've been owned" and that it was assosciated with being outsmarted or shown up in internet chatrooms and forums. Because of the letter "P" being next to the "O" on a keyboard, it somehow got changed to pwned. Or when you try to say that out loud, Powned.

 
At 8:35 am, Blogger esha fatima said...

Everyone is spoken different languages in their own zone. Mostly I spoke English because it's a international languages you can easily spoke anywhere. I want to write an article so I want to search on article writing in Karachi to get some offers.

 

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