DVDs, e-commerce, pogs, and cannabis clubs

I’m experimenting with the format a bit, reducing the size of the events section and eliminating the paragraph up front where I recap the lexical highlights from the year. Let me know what you think.

(If you haven’t gathered it already, I’m going to re-edit all these entries into a book. And I’m going to have to cut them down somewhat, and the events section, since it doesn’t deal directly with words, is a relatively painless way to start. But I don’t want to eliminate it completely, because it provides some useful context for the words. And the format of the recap paragraph is a rather tired and overused trope in articles about slang and neologisms.)

I approve of both changes; the focus should be on the words.  (I’m also glad you mentioned a while back that you were going to eventually insert the words where they chronologically belong instead of keeping the “this has been antedated to...”; it greatly reduces the twitching I experience on encountering such statements.)

cosplay, n. Cosplay is the practice of dressing up as a character from anime, manga, or other form of entertainment. The word sounds like it comes from a blend of costume play, and in a way it does, but it immediate source is the Japanese kosupure, which is a blend of kosuchumu-pure, which in turn is from the English costume play. Kosupure appears in Japanese by 1982.

Very minor, but the second occurrence of “costume play” needs to be in italics as well.

web site, n. Not much needs to be said about this one.

Except that it’s now written as one word except by fuddy-duddies (and people forced to use fuddy-duddy style guides—happily, the new Chicago has made the switch).

year 2000, n. People were starting to talk about the problems that would be encountered by computers and legacy software systems when year 99 rolled over into year 00 seven years hence.

I don’t understand the rationale for this entry.  Isn’t this just the normal phrase “year 2000,” which has doubtless been used for centuries, mentioned in the context of computer problems?

Clipper, n.3 ... The idea might stiff opposition, and the Clipper Chip was defunct by 1996.

The idea met stiff opposition…

Thanks all. For the life of me, I don’t know how I could mistype might for met.

Sometimes our fingers just don’t listen to our brains.