Tuesday, November 13, 2012

omnishambles

If you go back into the ancient history of this blog, you will find one of my personal favorite posts, that of shambolic. Now it turns out that Oxford Dictionaries has a certain predeliction in that direction, at  least, based on their current choice for UK Word of the Year 2012. As they say in their blog post about it, this doesn't meant that 'omnishambles' will make their dictionaries any time soon. But this word from a British television favorite, The Thick of It, has gained a lot of currency over the last few years. As they point out, a promising aspect of any words longevity is how well it spawns new words. As an American left-leaning Democrat, Romneyshambles is about as good as it gets--that is, if you discount Romnesia, which I do not.
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9 comments:

  1. Peter RozovskyNovember 16, 2012 at 11:59 AM

    But the other side could counter -- or could have countered -- with Romneypotent or even Romneypresent.

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  2. Peter RozovskyNovember 16, 2012 at 12:00 PM

    I will say that I like omnishambles much better than I do clusterfuck.

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  3. seana grahamNovember 16, 2012 at 5:07 PM

    Coulda, shoulda--didn't.

    Omnishambles is good, but I can't say I see myself using it in conversation.

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  4. Peter RozovskyNovember 16, 2012 at 5:31 PM

    It's like the good china -- one is proud of it but rarely uses it.

    I could see myself using "onmishambles" on deadline at work some night.

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  5. Peter RozovskyNovember 16, 2012 at 5:33 PM

    Have you ever watched The Thick of It, by the way? I know you've seen a fair amount of discussion of it.

    I'd start with the first two seasons.

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  6. seana grahamNovember 16, 2012 at 9:47 PM

    I started watching the first episode and thought it looked promising, but got distracted before I got too far. It's on my list though.

    As the OUP article said, omnishambolic is a bit more somber, and I think I might be able to work that into a sentence at some point, though I hope I won't have to.

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  7. Peter RozovskyNovember 16, 2012 at 9:53 PM

    This could be the omnishambolic century!

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  8. seana grahamNovember 16, 2012 at 9:59 PM

    Well, yeah--if we get past that pesky December 21st doomsday thing.

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  9. Peter RozovskyNovember 16, 2012 at 10:16 PM

    Oh, the 21st? Is that when the world ends?

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