Worst New Word of 2005: Popesquatter

The American Dialect Society has declared that pope-squatting is the new term least likely to succeed for 2005, rating it ahead of the acronym GSAVE (global struggle against violent extremism) and Brangelina, the nickname given to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

The society defines the term as a verb that means "registering a domain name that is the same of a new pope before the pope chooses his new name in order to profit from it."

This would exclude me, since I donated BenedictXVI.Com to the charity Modest Needs, but I was called a popesquatter by no less august a personage as Katie Couric.

Past winners of the "least likely to succeed" award:

2004: FLOHPA, noun, "collectively, the states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, said to have been important in the 2004 American presidential election. From the postal codes for the three states: FL, OH and PA."
2003: tomacco: noun, "a hybrid of tomato and tobacco, which happens to be poisonous."
2001: Osamaniac, noun, "Woman sexually attracted to Osama bin Laden."
2000: kablokeys, noun, "a hard-to-pronounce and obscure word used in phrases like It scared the kablokeys out of me."
1998: compfusion, noun, "confusion over computers."

This will come as bad news to Bret Fausett, who coined the term around three hours after I announced the papal domain registrations on Workbench.

I'm still holding out hope for googlemilking, a word I devised for a game to find phrases like "I'm totally straight but" that lend themselves to hilarious, off-color or unintentionally self-revealing results in Google.

The game hasn't taken off -- use it in Google and you'll be asked, "did you mean: googlewanking" -- but it has given me the number one spot for the search term totally straight.

Jargon · Google · Domains · 2006/01/16 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

The users at my site have been known to come up with some good ones, the most recent one I was linked for was "manhoodiness"
link:(wordlust.blogspot.com)
original post (landofbob.com)

#1 · bobrocks · 2006/01/16

"Dipspork" is my new favorite word. It was coined by my friend Jon Sullivan in reference to some goofball who hasn't got a clue. Similar to "dipsh*t" or "dickhead." In his words:
"dipspork - I invented that word. Googling indicates only Wulfgar! and I have used it. It's my pet term for a hip, trendy moron. Feel free to pass it around.

Dipspork n. (dip-sprk) - A foolish or stupid person who considers themselves to be hip and savvy. An aloof idiot."

Go now and spread this word around!

#2 · DogsDontPurr · 2006/01/16

I love googlemilking. Next time I'm sitting around bored with a bunch of friends I'll make sure we start entering potentially embarassing phrases into Google. Just now I entered "his head was shaped like a" and was surprised by the number of objects a human head could resemble.

#3 · Ken Yapelli · 2006/01/17