I love a good buzzword. It’s the way they tingle in the ear and sparkle in the mind. Especially when combined into a delicious, buzzword-laden mixed salad.
Like the following gem from this tongue-firmly-in-cheek site:
Brand-scaping the social ludosphere with narrative rhizomes to maximise attention-harvest from high-advocacy end-product enjoyers.
Boom. Don Watson would love it. And so do I.
But what I enjoy even more is making up new words. Jumbling them around. Mashing them together to create unusual meanings, to form new phrases. And often, rad new buzzwords.
A wise writerly-type once told me that these words are called neologisms and that if formed correctly, they can be used to encapsulate a feeling, or an otherwise difficult to express idea – in just a single word. Neat, huh?
Here are a few favourites I’ve recently come across:
- “Radvertising”. There’s advertising. And then there’s RADvertising.
- Ever suffered from “Infobesity”? Do you indulge in too much unhealthy snacking of information via the internet, without actually comprehending it?
- Or maybe you have a “Googleganger”? I have one. His name is Scot X Esdaile – he’s always getting up in my Google alert grill.
- What if you took the power of “extreme” and added the goodness of “maximum” to create… “maxtreme”?
- Or my wife’s favourite for when her dresses/skirts/jeans have fake pockets stitched on… “fockets” (note: can be easily misheard).
- And finally, the “mindgasm” for when your mind experiences something sublime. Although this one seems to be open to interpretation.
So in the interests of pseudo-etymology and helping to push these and similarly clever coined words and terms out into the mainstream – what are some of your favourites? Feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to seamlessly drop each one Kanye West style into a sentence tomorrow. BCM’ers – get your buzzword bingo cards ready.
Scott Esdaile is an Interactive Specialist at BCM
Hilarious Scott. All that is missing is a TM registration for some of these words to leverage and merchandised their uniqueness. For example, I can see ladies levis being marketed as the only jeans with fockets (TM).
Very clunny (clever and funny)!
Can’t wait for the Cleo and Cosmopolitan sealed sections on how to achieve a “mindgasm”.
Nice one Scottdog. Is ‘Scottdog’ a neologasm – I mean neologism – I got distracted by your your last example. Actually, could that be one as well? It’s got me so confused.
Thanks Kev and Denver.
Michele – I’m sure it would be a bestseller.
NathDawg – Sure. And that’s the beauty of making up your own buzzwords – you get to make up the meaning too.
Easily my favourite Saysdaile.
Jazzvertising?
Ha! Nice blog Scotty. Don Watson would be proud!
Nice one Scott.
I’ve been known to come down with a bad case of tinselitis at Christmas.
Nice ones Derek and Steve. I like the sound of Jazzvertising. And thanks Jeff and Shak.
Steve, with the little one due soon we can’t overlook Dadvertising.
Jason, I couldn’t agree more. Dadvertising (Copyright, TM). It’s mine!
I have TM’s pending and have purchased url’s for the following:
Badvertising ( Bad ads)
Sadvertsiing ( you know for charities and stuff)
Madvertising (could be retro, think, Don Draper or could be solving problems that make people angry)
Fadvertising ( fashionable techniques that everyone uses for 6 months coz they’re soooh cool- think tilt shift lens)
Nadvertising ( think erectile and other sexual dysfunction)
Ladvertising (targetting the boys- think beer and fast car)
So they’ve been “KevMarked”, or KM’ed?
you know, apparently there was a recent adnalysis of the effect of buzzwords that showed that they can meta-stasise into a nasty cliqueché effect whereby hipstar ad folk engage in an increasingly wankeriffic toss-pottery show ad infinicum
Well played, Jesse. Well played indeed.
Jesse, you just won the interwebs.
Mawesome – more than awesome. Which is what this post is
Thanks Jon. And I see what you did there with “Metricks” – very nice.
Jon. That’s an interesting spelling of your name. I think you owe as an etymological explanation.
It’s short for Jonathan, Dezza
Just had a follow from guy who does mancations!?
How about Briwi – which would be myself, a Brisbane Kiwi.
And another great one………I asked my son how his day was yesterday and be said GRANDTASTIC.
I’m a bit late off the mark with this one… however I reckon I have a category breaker here with my very own neologistic phone greeting: “Hello pipsqueaking”. What fun!
Pip, that’s brilliant!