bracket (v.): in politics, to give a speech before and after one scheduled by one’s opponent, with the hope of weakening the opponent’s message. This is Mitt Romney’s strategy now that President Obama has his 2012 campaign in gear. It’s roughly the equivalent of sitting in an audience where your nemesis is scheduled to make remarks and loudly scoffing, “Oh, this should be rich!” before the speech, then rolling your eyes throughout the speech and finishing off with an overly loud “What a jerk, huh?”
supermoon (n.): the biggest full moon of the year. Supermoon 2012 is scheduled to grace our sky this weekend, according to Space.com. This year, the supermoon’s appearance will coincide with the moon’s perigee, the time when the moon is the closest to our planet. That means it’s supposed to be “extra-big” and “extra-bright”—certainly a werewolf’s delight.
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store d’oeuvres (n.): food samples that a grocery store serves to tempt patrons into buying something. In the new edition of Urban Dictionary, the print guide to street slang, this delicious term makes an appearance. Some grocery stores have stepped up their game beyond mere samples and used machines that waft scents into the air, with hopes of encouraging hunger-driven impulse buys. “Why do I smell chocolate chip cookies everywhere?! JUST GIVE ME THE WHOLE AISLE.”
breastaurant (n.): a “mammary-centric casual dining” eatery that gives customers an eyeful with every plateful. According to Macleans, this is the new hot trend sweeping the Canadian culinary scene: restaurants (primarily outlets of U.S.-based chains) that feature scantily clad servers. There is, for example, the Tempe, Ariz.-based Tilted Kilt, where “servers wear tiny tartan tops and micro-mini kilts.” Way to keep it classy, North America.
whitewash (v.): attempting to purge educational curricula of “apparently subversive facts that nonwhite people have at times suffered at the hands of white people.” In a TIME column on changes being made to Arizona schools, Eric Liu cries whitewashing. The legislators making changes, such as chucking books that rethink Christopher Columbus’ legacy, say it’s an attempt to make sure students are viewed as individuals rather than members of ethnic blocs. Let’s just put the Arizona lawmakers in a room with the staff from UC-Berkeley and see what happens.