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The future is a risky proposition
I know what you're going to say: This is crazy and foolish, like trying to hitch a ride to the moon or play pinochle with a polar bear. And it is.But there's no escaping craziness or foolishness -- they have reserved parking spots in most mental garages -- and why would you want to, as long as they're not pernicious? Cra foolishness is indispensable. They l without them everybody would shamble through life slumped over like a question mark.And so people do foolish things, take unnecessary risks, and not only to distinguish this day from any other, but also to hear and feel the crash of cymbals when the endorphins strike the hypothalamus and then to discover what peace or fulfillment might await them when the music subsides. People jump off of bridges and out of airplanes, slide down and climb up mountains, ride bulls, roller coasters and unicycles, all to answer some compelling need to expose themselves to risk and take a chance. That's also why people buy racehorses and, of course, bet on them. Betting for many is just a sublimation of risk-taking.For some, taking a risk is like sticking a toe into fate' checking the temperature is all th a cold, damp toe all they really care to risk. That's fine. Vicarious risk-taking satisfies many, too, and so people flock to movies about monster-defying heroes. But for a few, only the headlong immersion will suffice and only an extreme risk can quicken the pulse. Some have to climb Mount Everest, not despite its "death zone" but because of it. And some have to bet the Kentucky Derby futures, not in spite of its being the foolish thing to do but because of it.Anyway, it's here, in all its risk-taking, crazy foolishness, the first Kentucky Derby futures pool for 2015. Maybe this is what they mean by global warming: spring fever in September. If people want to bet on it, Johnny Avello, the executive director of the race and sports book at the Wynn in Las Vegas, will give them odds, and people, it seems, always want to bet on the Derby, even when it's so distant in the future it looks like a speck. And so Avello this week has released his opening odds.Trying to apply logic to something so inherently illogical as betting on a race nearly eight months in advance would be pointless. Sure, don't take odds less than 150-1, that's easy to say, but in May, who knows, 85-1 on Lord Nelson might look like strawberry shortcake. Some bettors will toss logic altogether and follow whimsy by betting on a horse with a clever name (Smart as a Fawkes, 300-1) or a place name (Dallas Skyline, 250-1), or on a horse that shares a name with a super hero (Daredevil, 85-1; and Tony Stark, 400-1), a sports hero (Mr. Jordan, 150-1) or even a super villain (Blofeld, 100-1), and some might bet because of occupation: lawyers on Bench Warrant, 200-1, for example, or because of aspiration, as in King of New York, 175-1. But most players, I suspect, will bet the futures to assume some measure of risk, to share, in other words, the precariousness of D and then, having invested, they can follow as shareholders those dreams all the way to Kentucky.But the Derby futures are most interesting, perhaps, in that they reveal what Vegas thinks of these horses. And Vegas has a high opinion of American Pharoah, the winner of the Del Mar Futurity. In the opening odds, he's the early favorite, at 40-1, for next year's Kentucky Derby."I don't want to get too far ahead of myself," said his Hall of Fame trainer, Bob Baffert, "but he's pretty talented. He's an exciting 2-year-old."The question, of course, is whether he'll be an equally exciting 3-year-old. Always regarded as one of the best youngsters in Baffert's talent-rich barn, American Pharoah nevertheless finished fifth in his debut. Before he even got into the starting gate, though, he probably had lost the race. He misbehaved, acted up in the post parade and was, in his trainer's words, "a mess." And so for the Futurity, Baffert removed the blinkers American Pharoah had worn in his debut and put cotton in the horse's ears. Oblivious to any noisy distractions, the Pharoah behaved himself, took control after a hesitant start, led the field through an opening half-mile in 45.23 seconds and then drew clear to win by nearly five lengths, completing the seven furlongs in 1:21.48. In only his second start, without a victory on his résumé, he had dominated in a major stakes, running the final three-eighths of a mile in 36.25 seconds.He'll stretch out to 1 1/16 miles in his next start, the Frontrunner Stakes on Sept. 27 at Santa Anita. And Baffert said he's confident that the son of Pioneerof the Nile will handle the added distance. "He hasn't given me a glimpse of anything that would tell me he doesn't want to stretch out around two turns," Baffert said.I Spent It, at 50-1, is the second choice. The son of Super Saver has won two of three, including the Saratoga Special.At 60-1 in the opening odds are Competitive Edge, Lucky Player and Hashtag Bourbon. Also a son of Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver, Competitive Edge has won his two races by a total of 16 lengths. So why did he not open as the favorite in the Futures? Perhaps it's because of his pedigree. Although he has sparkled in his brief career, distance might become an issue for him: His dam, Magdalena's Chase, she had little success and no wins beyond 6 1/2
furlongs. When Competitive Edge won the Hopeful at Saratoga, he scorched the opening half-mile in 44.81 seconds, and from there everybody staggered home, including the winner, running the final three-eighths in 39.20. He's to make his next start Oct. 4 at Belmont Park, where the one-mile Champagne Stakes could be telling.Lucky Player has prominence in the opening odds because of his victory in the Iroquois Stakes at Churchill Downs. The race wasn't especially fast, and he enjoyed a perfect trip. Still, any Churchill victory weighs heavily in an early Derby reckoning. Hashtag Bourbon, although third, might have been more impressive in the Iroquois. He was blocked in traffic and lacked running room until nearly mid-stretch. Bold Conquest, the Iroquois runner-up who raced four wide, is 100-1.Also at 60-1, even though they've never raced, are Jess's Dream and Cozmic O the fascination with them descends from two of the most popular horses of recent years. Jess's Dream, who has had six published workouts, is out of the great mare Rachel Alexandra by Curlin. And Cozmic One, who has had but one published workout, is out of the great mare Zenyatta by Bernardini.Some others worth noting perhaps are El Kabeir, a flashy and fast maiden winner who's aimed at the Champagne, at 65-1; Calculator, the Del Mar Futurity runner-up, at 100-1; and Carpe Diem, a handsome son of Giant's Causeway who won his debut at Saratoga, at 100-1.But for a wager like this, based on the appropriateness of his name, one horse stands out, a colt that won the first two races of his career at Woodbine: Imperial Dream, at 300-1.Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2013 | OxfordWords blog
Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2013SELFIE
is named Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2013
selfie noun, informal
(also selfy; plural selfies)
a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website
19 November 2013, Oxford, UK:
Today Oxford Dictionaries announces as their international Word of the Year 2013. The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a word or expression that has attracted a great deal of interest during the year to date. Language research conducted by Oxford Dictionaries editors reveals that the frequency of the word selfie in the English language has increased by 17,000% since this time last year.
Selfie can actually be traced back to 2002 when it was used in an Australian online forum.
The word gained momentum throughout the English-speaking world in 2013 as it evolved from a social media buzzword to mainstream shorthand for a self-portrait photograph. Its linguistic productivity is already evident in the creation of numerous related spin-off terms showcasing particular parts of the body like helfie (a picture of one’s hair) and belfie (a picture of one’s posterior); a particular activity – welfie (workout selfie) and drelfie (drunken selfie), and even items of furniture – shelfie and bookshelfie.
Judy Pearsall, Editorial Director for Oxford Dictionaries, explained the decision: “Using the Oxford Dictionaries language research programme, which collects around 150 million words of current English in use each month, we can see a phenomenal upward trend in the use of selfie in 2013, and this helped to cement its selection as Word of the Year.”
The Word of the Year need not have been coined within the past twelve months, but it does need to have become prominent or notable in that time., although the Word of the Year selection is made irrespective of whether the candidates are already included in an Oxford dictionary. Selfie is not yet in the Oxford English Dictionary (), but is currently being considered for future inclusion.
The earliest known selfie
Research shows the word selfie in use by 2002. The earliest known usage is found in an Australian online forum post:
2002 ABC Online (forum posting) 13 Sept.
“Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped ofer [sic] and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie.”
The rise of the selfie
Judy Pearsall explained the evolution of the word selfie: “Social media sites helped to popularize the term, with the tag ‘selfie’ appearing on the photo-sharing website Flickr as early as 2004, but usage wasn’t widespread until around 2012, when selfie was being used commonly in mainstream media sources.
“In early examples, the word was often spelled with a -y, but the -ie form is more common today and has become the accepted spelling. The use of the diminutive -ie suffix is notable, as it helps to turn an essentially narcissistic enterprise into something rather more endearing. Australian English has something of a penchant for -ie words – barbie for barbecue, firie for firefighter, tinnie for a can of beer – so this helps to support the evidence for selfie having originated in Australia.”
The Word of the Year shortlist
In alphabetical order, the shortlisted words for the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2013 are:
bedroom tax, noun, informal:
(in the UK) a reduction in the amount of housing benefit paid to a claimant if the property they are renting is judged to have more bedrooms than is necessary for the number of the people in the household, according to criteria set down by the government.
The Welfare Reform Act 2012 proposed various changes to the rules governing social security benefits in the UK, including an ‘under-occupancy penalty’ to be imposed on households that were receiving housing benefit and that were judged to have bedrooms surplus to their requirements. Critics and opponents soon began to refer to the new penalty as the ‘bedroom tax’. The first references to the bedroom tax in our corpus appear in 2011 but usage increased dramatically around the time this new provision came into force, in April 2013.
binge-watch, verb:
to watch multiple episodes of a television programme in rapid succession, typically by means of DVDs or digital streaming. [ORIGIN 1990s: from BINGE + WATCH, after BINGE-EAT, BINGE-DRINK.]
The word binge-watch has been used in the circles of television fandom since the late 1990s, but it has exploded into mainstream use in 2013. The original context was watching programmes on full-season DVD sets, but the word has come into its own with the advent of on-demand viewing and online streaming. In 2013, binge-watching got a further boost when the video-streaming company Netflix began releasing episodes of its serial programming all at once. In the past year, binge-watching chalked up almost as much evidence on our corpus as binge-eating. (Binge-drinking remains unchallenged in the top position, at least for the moment.)
bitcoin, noun:
a digital currency in which transactions can be performed without the need for a central bank. Also, a unit of bitcoin. [ORIGIN early 21st century: from BIT, in the computing sense of ‘a unit of information’ and COIN.]
The term first appeared in late 2008 in a research paper, and the first bitcoins were created in 2009. By 2012, the virtual currency was attracting wider attention and we began to see its steadily increasing use. A spike in usage was apparent in March – May 2013, which may be due in part to the market crash around that time.
olinguito, noun:
a small furry mammal found in mountain forests in Colombia and Ecuador, the smallest member of the raccoon family. (Taxonomic name Bassaricyon neblina)
[ORIGIN 2013: diminutive form of OLINGO, a South American mammal resembling the kinkajou.]
The discovery of the olinguito was announced by the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in August 2013: it represented the first identification of a new species of mammalian carnivore in the Western hemisphere in 35 years.
Extensive coverage of the story in the world’s media was guaranteed by the animal’s appearance – it was described as looking like a cross between a teddy bear and a domestic cat.
schmeat, noun, informal:
a form of meat
produced synthetically from biological tissue. [ORIGIN early 21st century: perhaps from SYNTHETIC and MEAT, influenced by the use of ‘- -, schm – -’ as a disparaging or dismissive exclamation (e.g. fancy schmancy: ‘some of the gourmet sauces you get in fancy schmancy places are just too spicy for me’).]
Man-made meat is more commonly (and neutrally) known as ‘in-vitro meat’ or ‘cultured meat’. This word remains very rare, largely because the phenomenon it refers to is still in its infancy. However, in August 2013, the world’s first hamburger made with in-vitro meat was served up by Dutch scientists, raising the possibility that the general public may have more occasion to use this word in the not-too-distant future.
showrooming, noun:
the practice of visiting a shop or shops in order to examine a product before buying it online at a lower price. [ORIGIN early 21st century: from SHOWROOM ‘a room used to display goods for sale’.]
Before 2013, there were just a handful of examples of this on our corpus. We’ve seen this figure increase significantly, along with use of the related verb ‘to showroom’ (A survey last year found that 35 percent of shoppers had showroomed) and the noun ‘showroomer’ (Some retailers have tried to compete with showroomers by reducing prices).
twerk, verb:
dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance. [ORIGIN 1990s: probably an alteration of WORK.]
Twerk seems to have arisen in the early 1990s, in the context of the bounce music scene in New Orleans. It’s likely that the word was being used in clubs and at parties before that, as an exhortation to dancers. By the mid-1990s, we see evidence of twerk being used online in newsgroups to describe a specific type of dancing. The most likely theory about the origin of this word is that it is an alteration of work, because that word has a history of being used in similar ways, with dancers being encouraged to ‘work it’. The ‘t’ could be a result of blending with another word such as twist or twitch. By early 2013, the word had generated enough currency across its association with Miley Cyrus this summer created a huge spike of usage in the media, especially social media.
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Is selfie in an Oxford dictionary?
Selfie was added
in August 2013: . Selfie is not yet in the Oxford English Dictionary (), but is currently being considered for future inclusion. See the OED website for .
What is the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year (WOTY)?
The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a word, or expression, that we can see has attracted a great deal of interest during the year to date. Every year, candidates for Word of the Year are debated and one is eventually chosen that is judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year and to have lasting potential as a word of cultural significance.
The Word of the Year selection is made irrespective of whether the candidates are already included in an Oxford dictionary, and selection does not guarantee future inclusion. The names of people, places, or events are not suitable as Words of the Year.
Does the Word of the Year have to be a new word?
The Word of the Year need not have been coined within the past twelve months but it does need to have become prominent or notable during that time.
How is the Word of the Year chosen?
The candidates for the Word of the Year are drawn initially from the Oxford Dictionaries New Monitor Corpus, a research programme which collects around 150 million words of current English in use each month, using automated search criteria to scan new web content. Sophisticated software allows us to identify new and emerging words on a daily basis and examine the shifts that occur in geography, register, and frequency of use.
Dictionary editors will also flag other notable words for consideration, and suggestions made via the OxfordWords blog and social media are also taken into account. The final Word of the Year selection team is made up of lexicographers and consultants to the dictionary team, and editorial, marketing, and publicity staff.
Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year in the US and the UK
Oxford Dictionaries has editorial staff based in the UK and in the US. Over the years, the UK and US dictionary teams have often chosen different Words of the Year. Each country’s vocabulary develops in different ways, according to what is happening culturally and in the news, and as such the Words of the Year can be different. Sometimes, a word captures the imagination on both sides of the Atlantic and can therefore be considered as a joint Word of the Year, as with selfie in 2013.
Which words have been selected as Word of the Year in recent years?
Oxford Dictionaries UK Word of the Year
Oxford Dictionaries US Word of the Year
carbon-neutral
carbon footprint
credit crunch
hypermiling
big society
squeezed middle
omnishambles
GIF (verb)
Is this the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) Word of the Year?
OED editors are an integral part of the Word of the Year selection team, but this Word of the Year is not exclusively chosen by the
editors. Oxford University Press publishes many dictionaries including the OED, and the Word of the Year is selected by editorial staff from each of these dictionary teams, including editors of . Find out more about the .
About Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press, a department of the University of Oxford, furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. The world’s largest and most international university press, Oxford University Press currently publishes more than 6,000 new publications per year, has offices in around fifty countries, and employs some 5,000 people worldwide. It has become familiar to millions through a diverse publishing programme that includes scholarly works in all academic disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks, children’s books, materials for teaching English as a foreign language, business books, dictionaries and reference books, and journals. Oxford Dictionaries is part of Oxford University Press. For more information about Oxford University Press visit .