Word: jargon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...takes a special journalistic talent to make medical stories come alive. The subject matter is complex; writers and editors are confronted with jargon- filled journals and stacks of press releases touting "breakthroughs." They must quickly differentiate between true medical advances and sophisticated hyperbole. Getting the story wrong can mean giving sick people false hopes or, even worse, groundless fears. Getting it right can help them discover new pathways to healthier lives...
Until last year, Kei Murrell, 13, like most other girls at Mendocino (Calif.) Middle School, considered the school's computer room to be a male preserve, a place where boys talked in programming jargon and played war games. While Kei and her friends were free to use the machines, they stayed away -- largely because, as she says, "there aren't very many girls my age who are into blowing things up on a computer." Kei is still bored by computer shoot-'em- ups, but she and the other girls now feel right at home at the computers. Perched in front...
...business world. The vivid vocabulary that bounces around corporate corridors has been collected and codified by Journalist Rachel S. Epstein and Nina Liebman, an industrial-development specialist for the New York State department of commerce, in their new book Biz Speak: A Dictionary of Business Terms, Slang and Jargon (Franklin Watts; $17.95). This handy compendium reveals, for example, that a Valium picnic is a slow day on the stock market, warm fuzzies are praise from the boss, and scoodling is actually unauthorized duplication of prerecorded music. Socks and stocks is the nickname for nonbanking companies like Sears that offer financial...
Only one Harvard student, Eric L. Kaplan '89, made it into the anthology. He submitted "Development of an Idea," a mystifying semiparody of philosophical jargon, to Yale's admissions office. In his essay Kaplan circumlocutiously traces an idea he first had at age 12, which developed into empathy with the Nietzschian comment, "Nobody will guess how you looked in your morning, you sudden sparks and wonders of my solitude." Kaplan closed his essay by appealing to admissions officers, "This essay is a try at letting others guess...
...jargon of nuclear strategists, the linkage of West European security to the U.S. nuclear arsenal has always been known as coupling. American bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons were first flown to Europe in 1948 as a gesture of resolve during the Berlin blockade. It was not long before the Soviet Union began building up its own Euromissile arsenal, which eventually surpassed that of the West. In 1979 NATO decided to modernize its intermediate-range nuclear forces by procuring 108 Pershing II ballistic missiles (now all in place) and 464 low-flying cruise missiles (160 of which are already installed...