Disease you probably have: phantom vibration syndrome
NPR’s weekly news quiz (and general hoot) Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me! put on a health-themed show this New Year’s Eve, in honor of all the gym-related resolutions we’ll be breaking in about two weeks. One segment was dedicated to diseases that got press this year. And “phantom vibration syndrome” is one that the 83% of Americans with cell phones have all likely suffered. It is the tendency to reach for your phone even when unprovoked by a beep or hum, and it’s a good thing the condition was diagnosed: Now the disappointment of going for your mobile, only to find that no one really wants to talk to you, can be blunted by the opportunity to tweet about your devastating case of PVS.
Another fun one: uncombable hair syndrome
As they put it on Wait, Wait, if your doctor is going to tell you that you have an incurable genetic disorder, you best hope it’s “uncombable hair syndrome.” This is not just a matter of having hair that’s so hard to manage when it rains. When someone has medical-grade uncombable hair, the structure of a protein in the hair follicle is affected, making the hair impossible to put flat. In this case, the hair can also grow slower than usual and be difficult to pull out (which you and/or your mother would probably try to do, in frustration).
(STUDY: Bad Relationship With Mom May Lead to Weight Gain)
Campaign cant: statesman
I’ve been following presidential hopeful Ron Paul around Iowa to town halls, where you can’t flip open your notepad without hitting someone who refers to the Texas congressman as a statesman. As with many go-to political terms, statesman is one of those sound-good words you can hear or read a thousand times without ever considering the meaning. This is the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition: “one who takes a leading part in the affairs of a state or body politic; esp. one who is skilled.” Which gives no guarantee of being just or good, if still adept. In fact, the OED’s first example comes from a man noting that the label “statesman” encompasses politicos like the brilliantly bad Machiavelli.
They might be better off calling the 76-year-old an “elder statesman,” a term derived from the Genro, a group of retired politicians who were informally consulted by the Japanese emperor, because their advice was the cat’s meow. The term can refer to any “person of ripe years” who has advice that is sought and valued. (And, come on, it has a nice ring to it. You could call someone an elder dishwasher, and they would sound pretty important.)
(MORE: Q&A: Ron Paul, Third-Place Finisher in Iowa)
Sassy classification: “Romney-boated”
Newt Gingrich, another politician angling for the White House, said this week that he felt “Romney-boated” by ad attacks from rival Mitt Romney. This was a reference to the then-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that attacked John Kerry’s military service record during his race in 2004. Even though the attacks were discredited, the barrage damaged his campaign.
Since then, Swiftboating has been used to describe dastardly campaign smears. In 2008, a new New York Times writer said, for example, that “pundits wait to proclaim that the Swiftboating has begun and candidates declare that they will not be Swiftboated.” The veterans from the boats themselves, small Navy vessels used in Vietnam, are none too pleased with the slang—because they feel Swiftboated each time the term is used.
(LIST: TIME’s Most Popular Political Stories of 2011)
Neologism of the week: turboparalysis
Salon’s Michael Lind has suggested turboparalysis as the word capturing the zeitgeist going into 2012, “for the combination of vigorous and dramatic motion with the absence of steady movement in any particular direction.” He believes that “wheels are spinning furiously and engines are being gunned, to no effect,” whether in trying to save the economy or accomplish change among politicians. And he’s not optimistic about anything putting the world into gear. But hey, no matter how pessimistic anyone gets about the world’s prospects next year, we will still have the Olympics to look forward to. Cartwheels and flips! Make that your happy place.
Not-so-new neologism: paraprosdokian
Yet another term has been designated as the word of the year. Usually these words were coined in 2011, or appeared constantly in 2011, or somehow summed up an entire year’s worth of life. But this time the criterion was exceedingly simple: the writer for Canada’s West Island Gazette just liked it, and it’s hard not to. Paraprosdokian is a Greek term that describes a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or a phrase is unexpected. Comedy is rife with them. Take this bit of stand-up: “I suffered through my poetry; now it’s your turn.” Or even something so simple as, “‘Shut up,’ he explained.'” Granted, it would take more time to say the term than to deliver an example, but as they often say of knowledge: the more you know, the more you can show off.