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This is the first dictionary entirely devoted to new words and meanings to have been published by the Oxford University Press. It follows in the tradition of the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary in attempting to record the history of some recent additions to the language, but, unlike the Supplement, it is necessarily very selective in the words, phrases, and meanings whose stories it sets out to tell and it stands as an independent work, unrelated (except in the resources it draws upon) to the Oxford English Dictionary.
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This, of course, is a question which can never be answered satisfactorily, any more than one can answer the question "How long is a piece of string?" It is a commonplace to point out that the language is a constantly changing resource, growing in some areas and shrinking in others from day to day The best one can hope to in a book of this kind is to take a snapshot of the words and senses which seem to characterize our age and which a reader in fifty or a hundred years' time might be unable to understand fully (even if these words were entered in standard dictionaries) without a more expansive explanation of their social, political, or cultural context For the purposes of this dictionary, a new word is any word, phrase, or meaning that came into popular use in English or enjoyed a vogue during the eighties and early nineties It is a book which therefore necessarily deals with passing fashions: most, although probably not all, of the words and senses defined here will eventually find their way into the complete history of the language provided by the Oxford English Dictionary, but many will not be entered in smaller dictionaries for some time to come, if at all It tends to be the case that "new" words turn out to be older than people expect them to be This book is not limited to words and senses which entered the language for the first time during the eighties, nor even the seventies and eighties, because such a policy would mean excluding most of the words which ordinary speakers of English think of as new; instead, the deciding factor has been whether or not the general public was made aware of the word or sense during the eighties and early nineties A few words included here actually entered the language as technical terms as long ago as the nineteenth century (for example, acid rain was first written about in the 1850s and the greenhouse effect was investigated in the late nineteenth century, although it may not have acquired this name until the 1920s); many computing terms date from the late 1950s or early 1960s in technical usage It was only (in the first case) the surge of interest in environmental issues and the sudden fashion for "green" concerns and (in the second) the boom in home and personal computing touching the lives of large numbers of people that brought these words into everyday vocabulary during the eighties There is, of course, a main core of words defined here which did only appear for the first time in the eighties There are even a few which arose in the nineties, for which there is as yet insufficient evidence to say whether they are likely to survive Some new-words dictionaries in the past have limited themselves to words and senses which have not yet been entered in general dictionaries The words treated in the Oxford Dictionary of New Words not all fall into this category, for the reasons outlined above Approximately one-quarter of the main headwords here were included in the new words and senses added to the Oxford English Dictionary for its second edition in 1989; a small number of others were entered for the first time in the Concise Oxford Dictionary's eighth edition in 1990 The articles in this book relate to a wide range of different subject fields and spheres of interest, from environmentalism to rock music, politics to youth culture, technology to children's toys Just as the subject coverage is inclusive, treating weighty and superficial topics as even-handedly as possible, so the coverage of different registers, or levels of use, of the language is intended to give equal weight to the formal, the informal, and examples of slang and colloquialism This results in a higher proportion of informal and slang usage than would be found in a general dictionary, reflecting amongst other things the way in which awareness of register seems to be disappearing as writers increasingly use slang expressions in print without inverted commas or any other indication of their register The only registers deliberately excluded are the highly literary or technical in cases where the vocabulary concerned had not gained any real popular exposure Finally, a deliberate attempt was made to represent English as a world language, with new words and senses from US English accounting for a significant proportion of the entries, along with more occasional contributions from Australia, Canada, and other English-speaking countries It is hoped that the resulting book will prove entertaining reading for English speakers of all ages and from all countries PREFACE.1 Acknowledgements I am grateful to John Simpson and Edmund Weiner, Co-Editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, for their help and advice throughout the writing of this book, and in particular for their constructive comments on the first draft of the text; to OED New Words editors Edith Bonner, Peter Gilliver, Danuta Padley, Bernadette Paton, Judith Pearsall, Michael Proffitt, and Anthony Waddell, on whose draft entries for the OED I based much of what I have written here; to Peter Gilliver, Simon Hunt, Veronica Hurst, and Judith Pearsall for help with corrections and additions to the text; to Melinda Babcock, Nancy Balz, Julie Bowdler, George Chowdharay-Best, Melissa Conway, Margaret Davies, Margery Fee, Ken Feinstein, Daphne Gilbert-Carter, Dorothy Hanks, Sally Hinkle, Sarah Hutchinson, Rita Keckeissen, Adriana Orr, and Jeffery Triggs for quotation and library research; and, last but not least, to Trish Stableford for giving up evenings and weekends to the proofreading HOWTO How to Use this Dictionary This topic, with some modification, has been reproduced from the printed hard-copy version of this dictionary Some display devices limit the effects of the highlighting techniques used in this book You can see what your display device provides by looking at the following examples: This is an example of large bold type This is an example of italic type This is an example of bold type The entries in this dictionary are of two types: full entries and cross-reference entries HOWTO.1 Full entries Full entries normally contain five sections: Headword section The first paragraph of the entry, or headword section, gives ° the main headword in large bold type Where there are two different headwords which are spelt in the same way, or two distinct new meanings of the same word, these are distinguished by superior numbers after the headword ° the part of speech, or grammatical category, of the word in italic type In this book, all the names of the parts of speech are written out in full The ones used in the book are adjective, adverb, interjection, noun, pronoun, and verb There are also entries in this book for the word-forming elements (combining form, prefix, and suffix) and for abbreviations, which have abbreviation in the part-of-speech slot if they are pronounced letter by letter in speech (as is the case, for example, with BSE or PWA), but acronym if they are normally pronounced as words in their own right (Aids, NIMBY, PIN, etc.) When a new word or sense is used in more than one part of speech, the parts of speech are listed in the headword section of the entry and a separate definition section is given for each part of speech ° other spellings of the headword (if any) follow the part of speech in bold type ° the subject area(s) to which the word relates are shown at the end of the headword section in parentheses (see "Subject Areas" in topic HOWTO.5) The subject areas are only intended to give a general guide to the field of use of a particular word or sense In addition to the subject area, the defining section of the entry often begins with further explanation of the headword's application Definition section The definition section explains the meaning of the word and sometimes contains information about its register (the level or type of language in which it is used) or its more specific application in a particular field; it may also include phrases and derived forms of the headword (in bold type) or references to other entries References to other entries have been converted to hypertext links Etymology The third section of the entry begins a new paragraph and starts with the heading Etymology: This explains the origin and formation of the headword Some words or phrases in this section may be in italic type, showing that they are the forms under discussion Cross-references to other headwords in this book have been converted to hypertext links History and Usage The fourth section also begins a new paragraph and starts with the heading History and Usage Here you will find a description of the circumstances under which the headword entered the language and came into popular use In many cases this section also contains information about compounds and derived forms of the headword (as well as some other related terms), all listed in bold type, together with their definitions and histories As elsewhere in the entry, cross-references to other headwords have been converted to hypertext links Illustrative quotations This final section of the entry begins a new paragraph and is indented approximately character spaces from the left margin of the previous text line These illustrative quotations are arranged in a single chronological sequence, even when they contain examples of a number of different forms The illustrative quotations in this book not include the earliest printed example in the Oxford Dictionaries word-file (as would be the case, for example, in the Oxford English Dictionary); instead, information about the date of the earliest quotations is given in the history and usage section of the entry and the illustrative quotations aim to give a representative sample of recent quotations from a range of sources The sources quoted in this book represent English as a world language, including quotations from the UK, the US, Australia, Canada, India, South Africa, and other English-speaking countries They are taken for the most part from works of fiction, newspapers, and popular magazines (avoiding wherever possible the more technical or academic sources in favour of the more popular and accessible) There are nearly two thousand quotations altogether, taken from five hundred different sources HOWTO.2 Cross-reference entries Because this book is designed to provide more information than the standard dictionary and to give an expansive account of the recent history of certain words and concepts, there is some grouping together of related pieces of information in a single article This means that, in addition to the full entry, there is a need for cross-reference entries leading the reader from the normal alphabetical place of a word or phrase to the full entry in which it is discussed Cross-reference entries are single-line entries containing only the headword (with a superior number if identical to some other headword), a subject area or areas to give some topical orientation, the word "see," and the headword under which the information can be found For example: ESA see environmentally A cross-reference entry is given only if there is a significant distance between the alphabetical places of the cross-referenced headword and the full entry in which it is mentioned Thus the compounds and derived forms of a full headword are not given their own cross-reference entries because these would immediately follow the full entry; the same is true of the words which start with one of the common initial elements (such as eco- or Euro-) which have their own full entries listing many different formations in which they are used On the other hand, the forms grouped together by their final element (for example, words ending in -friendly or -gate) are all entered as cross-reference entries in their normal alphabetical places HOWTO.3 Alphabetical order The full and cross-reference entries in this book are arranged in a single alphabetical sequence in letter-by-letter alphabetical order (that is, ignoring spaces, hyphens, and other punctuation which occurs within them) The following headwords, taken from the letter E, illustrate the point: E° Eý e° earcon eco ecoecobabble ecological ecu E-free EFTPOS enterprise culture enterprise zone E number HOWTO.4 Pronunciation Symbols Pronunciation symbols which follow the headword in printed copy have been excluded from this soft-copy edition In-line pronunciation symbols have been replaced with / / HOWTO.5 Subject Areas The subject areas in parentheses at the end of the headword section of each entry indicate the broad subject field to which the headword relates The subject areas used are: Drugs words to with drug use and abuse Environment words to with conservation, the environment, and green politics Business World words to with work, commerce, finance, and marketing Health and Fitness words to with conventional and complementary medicine, personal fitness, exercise, and diet Lifestyle and Leisure words to with homes and interiors, fashion, the media, entertainment, food and drink, and leisure activities in general Music words to with music of all kinds (combined with Youth Culture in entries concerned with pop and rock music) Politics words to with political events and issues at home and abroad People and Society words to with social groupings and words for people with particular characteristics; social issues, education, and welfare Science and Technology words to with any branch of science in the public eye; technical jargon that has entered the popular vocabulary War and Weaponry words to with the arms race or armed conflicts that have been in the news Youth Culture words which have entered the general vocabulary through their use among young people CONTENTS Table of Contents Title Page TITLE Edition Notice Notices EDITION NOTICES Preface PREFACE Acknowledgements PREFACE.1 How to Use this Dictionary HOWTO Full entries HOWTO.1 Cross-reference entries HOWTO.2 Alphabetical order HOWTO.3 Pronunciation Symbols HOWTO.4 Subject Areas HOWTO.5 Table of Contents CONTENTS A 1.0 AAA 1.1 abled 1.2 ace 1.3 Adam 1.4 aerobics 1.5 affinity card 1.6 ageism 1.7 AI 1.8 Alar 1.9 angel dust 1.10 Aqua Libra 1.11 arb 1.12 asset 1.13 ATB 1.14 audio-animatronics aware 1.16 Azeri 1.17 1.15 B 2.0 babble 2.1 beat box 2.2 bhangra 2.3 bicycle moto-cross 2.4 black economy 2.5 BMX 2.6 boardsailing 2.7 brat pack 2.8 BSE 2.9 B two (B2) bomber 2.10 bubblehead 2.11 bypass 2.12 C 3.0 cable television 3.1 defense computer network to its knees for a day, experts say the threat of computer worms and viruses is greater than ever Boston Globe 30 Oct 1989, p 29 About 180 companies in the U.S market offer services and software to stymie worms and viruses, which can alter or destroy data in a corporation's information systems American Banker Aug 1990, p 10 23.6 wrinklie wrinklie noun Also written wrinkly (People and Society) In young people's slang: a middle-aged or old person (younger than a crumblie) Etymology: Formed by treating the adjective wrinkly as a noun; the metaphor homes in on wrinkles as one of the visible signs of advancing age History and Usage: A word of much the same vintage and history as crumblie, now well known to the older generation to which it refers Mayotte, who is leading the way as the wrinklies strike back, has an uncomplicated theory as to why the teenagers are performing so well 'There has been a lot of talk about big rackets and stuff I think the truth is that training is better and there's a lot of money to be made, so there's a lot of people interested in tennis these days.' Guardian July 1989, p 14 23.7 WYSIWYG WYSIWYG acronym Also written wysiwyg or (erroneously) wysiwig (Science and Technology) Short for what you see is what you get, a slogan applied to computer systems in which what appears on the screen exactly mirrors the eventual output Etymology: The initial letters of What You See Is What You Get History and Usage: A feature of advanced high-resolution VDU displays, WYSIWYG first appeared on the mass computing scene in the early eighties and became increasingly important as the desk-top publishing boom gained momentum in the middle of the decade True Wysiwig would show bold, extended and italic characters on the screen and the only way that will happen is with a very high resolution display (which in turn will normally require a graphics card) Daily Telegraph Oct 1990, p 27 24.0 X 24.1 XTC XTC see Ecstasy 25.0 Y 25.1 yah yah noun Also written ya (People and Society) A Sloane Ranger or yuppie; someone who says 'yah' instead of 'yes' Etymology: Formed by converting their characteristic pronunciation of yah ('yes') into a noun This mannerism had apparently been noted as long ago as 1887 in a student newspaper History and Usage: Despite the fact that yah has evidently been a well-known affected pronunciation of yes for some time, the word was not used to characterize a social type until the early eighties By the early nineties most people probably associated loud and repetitive use of yah more with the brash executive or yuppie type than with the upper classes Pursuing my researches into the social make-up of the university [of St Andrews] with daughter and friends, I am reminded that the rich set are known as the Ya's, derived from their loud affirmations Sunday Telegraph 17 July 1983, p yappie noun (People and Society) Either a young affluent parent or a young aspiring professional Etymology: A variation on the theme of yuppie, using the initial letters of Young Affluent Parent or Young Aspiring Professional for the'root' History and Usage: Like guppie, this is really a stunt word, jumping on the bandwagon of yuppie but in a rather ad hoc fashion The word yappie has been used by journalists in a variety of contexts and meanings including 'a talkative yuppie', 'a yuppie dog-owner', 'young Asian-American professional', and 'young athletic participant' but it is the two meanings given in the definition above that at present hold the majority The word seems unlikely to survive in the language unless it becomes established in one of these two meanings The yappies are the creation of the Henley Centre, the research organisation which plots changes in social and spending trends They are the young professional people who were possibly yuppies in the 1980s When children come on the scene yappies spend most of their time in the more prosaic roles of 'parent' and 'provider' Financial Times 19 Apr 1990, section 1, p Yardie noun and adjective (Drugs) (People and Society) In British slang: noun: A member of any of a number of Jamaican or West Indian gangs (see posse) which engage in organized crime throughout the world, especially in connection with illicit drug-trafficking In the plural, Yardies: these gangs as a whole or the criminal subculture that they represent adjective: Of or belonging to the Yardies Etymology: The name is derived from the Jamaican English word yard (or yaad) which originally meant 'a house or home' and came to be used by Jamaicans living outside Jamaica for the home country The suffix -ie is common in nicknames for people from a particular place: compare Aussie or Ozzie for an Australian History and Usage: Although probably active in the UK for some time, the Yardies only began to feature in the news towards the end of the eighties, when they were associated with the spread of drug-related crime in the UK in much the same way as the drug posses were in the US The Yard was responding to claims that a Caribbean gang ironically called The Yardies has moved into London's Brixton area and is now setting up its own network of pushers to sell the so-called champagne-drug Today July 1986, p The Yardies is a loose association of violent criminals, most of whom originated in Kingston, Jamaica and whose principal interest is the trafficking and sale of cocaine In Britain they are perceived as a new phenomenon In America, however, their counterparts, the 'posses', are said to have been responsible for up to 800 drug-related murders since 1984 Daily Telegraph 13 Oct 1988, p 13 Many of the Shower who escaped the raid have fled abroad, some of them perhaps heading for Britain to join their 'yardie' colleagues But more young Jamaican recruits will soon leave the tranquillity of the Caribbean for the mean streets of Washington DC Sunday Telegraph 27 Nov 1988, p 10 25.2 yo yo interjection (Youth Culture) Among young people (especially in the US): an exclamation used in greeting or to express excitement etc., and associated particularly with rap and hip hop culture; hey! Etymology: Yo has been used as an exclamation to attract attention (especially when warning of some danger) since the fifteenth century, and is familiar to many in the sailor's yo-ho-ho; the present use is a re-adoption of the old word in a new context by a limited group of people, who use it as a cult expression History and Usage: Yo started in Black street slang in the US, probably during the late seventies, and was popularized through the spread of rap and hip hop to White youth culture during the eighties By the end of the eighties it had become a fashionable greeting among youngsters in the UK as well as the US; a fashion which was reinforced, perhaps, by its use in the popular television series The Simpsons and in a number of films featuring Sylvester Stallone During the holiday, wherever he roamed in his Watts neighborhood, congratulations rained down 'Yo, Hagan! Nice job, man!' Sports Illustrated 25 Dec 1989, p 45 Yo, man, quit lookin' at 'em! You got detec written all over you Village Voice (New York) 30 Jan 1990, p 35 The Guardian Angels applauded him with a meaty sound Great fists, many gloved, bashed into each other 'Yo,' they shouted, rather than anything English Independent 16 May 1990, p 25.3 yuppie yuppie noun and adjective Also written Yuppie or yuppy (People and Society) noun: A young urban (or upwardly mobile) professional; a humorous name for a member of a socio-economic group made up of professional people working in cities adjective: Of or characteristic of a yuppie or yuppies in general; of a kind that would appeal to a yuppie Etymology: Formed from the initial letters of Young Urban Professional (or Young Upwardly mobile Professional) and the suffix -ie History and Usage: Yuppie was probably the most important buzzword of the mid eighties, an extraordinarily successful coinage which somehow succeeded in summing up a whole social group, its lifestyle and aspirations, in a single word In an article on the writer John Irving in 1982, the American critic Joseph Epstein described them as People who are undecided about growing up: they are college-educated, getting on and even getting up in the world, but with a bit of the hippie-dippie counterculture clinging to them still yuppies, they have been called, the YUP standing for young urban professionals At first (in 1982-4) yuppie competed with the form yumpie (which included the m of upwardly-mobile), but this form was perhaps too close to the verb yomp, with its military route-march associations, to succeed A measure of the popularity of yuppie was the speed with which it generated derivatives: the nouns yuppiedom, yuppieism, and yuppi(e)ness all appeared within two years of the coinage of yuppie, closely followed by the adjective yuppyish By the middle of the decade there was also an awareness of the way in which yuppie culture pervaded and changed its surroundings, a process known as yuppification (with an associated verb, yuppify, and adjective yuppified) Perhaps more telling even than the derivatives were all the variations on the theme of yuppie that journalists turned out in the second half of the decade, including yuffie (young urban failure), yummie (young upwardly-mobile mommy), and those listed under buppie, guppie, woopie, and yappie The second half of the eighties saw the rise in popularity of New Age culture and of a more environmentally aware lifestyle which made the yuppie approach seem already a little outdated, but it was by then so familiar that it could safely be abbreviated to yup without fear of misunderstanding Even the abbreviated form acquired derivatives: the language of yups was Yuppese or Yupspeak, a young female yup was a yuppette (compare hackette), their preferred type of car was a yupmobile, and so on Yuppies have come in for some revisionist thinking lately The yup backlash is such that many people will no longer speak the 'Y word' and others are spurning pesto for pot pies Adweek 17 June 1985 Who are the yuppies? Gee acknowledges that young urban professionals 'who once thought nothing of jumping in the old Bimmer [BMW] and heading down to the local gourmet grocer for some Brie' are keeping a lower profile, fearing they may be called 'too yup' Los Angeles Times May 1986, section 4, p Their 'bashers' (shacks) will be forcibly removed by police to make way for developers who want to 'yuppify' the Charing Cross area Observer 16 Aug 1987, p What Dickens is describing, I suddenly realised, is yuppification The trendies were moving in Independent 17 Sept 1987, p 18 'The yupskies are coming!' said Mr Baker in Leningrad yesterday after being impressed by the new breed of young upwardly-mobile Soviet entrepreneurs Daily Telegraph Oct 1988, p 32 There is a risk of forced selling breaking out in the yuppier sections of London's housing market Arena Autumn/Winter 1988, p 99 Married yuppette Kathy is knee deep into her affair with Tom Independent 16 May 1989, p 29 How will the eighties be labelled? The Yuppie decade? The Thatcher miracle/disaster? The years when pop and rock got a conscience? The dawning of the breakdown of communism? Guardian 22 Nov 1989, p 43 You didn't think yuppies liked poetry Don't be vulgar and simplistic, dear Val Antonia Byatt Possession (1990), p 417 These sound like thoroughly well-organised chaps who would take to the executive life like yuppies to bottles of Perrier water Punch 20 Apr 1990, p yuppie flu noun (Health and Fitness) A colloquial nickname for myalgic encephalomyelitis (see ME) Etymology: So named because it attacks high achievers (yuppie types), and mimics or follows an attack of flu History and Usage: A popular nickname which reflects the scepticism of doctors and public alike about this illness until quite recently: see the entry for ME Graham told Mr Patrick Cuff, the coroner, that his mother had suffered for several years from ME myalgic encephalomyelitis, known as Yuppie Flu Daily Telegraph Feb 1990, p For many years, it has been called 'yuppie flu', because most of the estimated to million who suffer from the disorder are affluent professional women from 25 to 45 Chicago Tribune (North Sports Final edition) 19 Nov 1990, p 26.0 Z 26.1 zap zap intransitive or transitive verb (Lifestyle and Leisure) In media slang, to move quickly through the commercial break on a recorded videotape, either by using the fast-forward facility or by switching through live channels Also, to avoid the commercials in live television by using the remote control device to switch through other channels until they are over Etymology: Zap began as an onomatopoeic word in comic strips for the sound of a ray gun, bullet, laser, etc.; as a verb it has meant either 'to kill' or 'to move quickly and vigorously' since the sixties The sense defined here is essentially a specialized application of the second of these two branches of meaning, but when applied to live television it is influenced by the first branch the remote control device is used like a ray gun, and the effectiveness of the advertisements is destroyed if people zap through other channels while they are on History and Usage: This sense of zap arose in the mid eighties, when many television sets became available with remote control (in other words, they became zappable) and there were the first signs of a boom in domestic video The action noun zapping arose at about the same time; at first, a zapper was a person who did this, but by the end of the decade it had also become a standard name for the remote control device itself For the ITV companies there is the additional problem of 'zapping' to contend with the habitual use of the fast-forward button to bypass the commercial breaks in recorded material Listener Feb 1984, p 14 The television remote controller or 'thingy' which Christopher Croft (letter, 18 January) is at a loss to name, is the enabling device for the practice of 'zapping', whereby Channel News and Wogan can be viewed simultaneously In our household the thingy is called 'Frank', after the eponymous rock star, Frank Zappa Independent 19 Jan 1989, p 27 The decade was also marked by gizmos that accelerated our daily lives: food was nukable; TVs, zappable; mail, faxable Life Fall 1989, p 13 The remote control is small and handy It's almost identical to Tatung's Astra-box zapper What Satellite July 1990, p 120 26.2 zero zero adjective (Politics) In the names of disarmament proposals: zero option, a proposal made in the early eighties for the US to cancel plans to deploy longer-range theatre nuclear weapons in Europe if Soviet longer-range weapons were also withdrawn; zero zero option (or double zero option or simply double zero), a proposal made by the Soviet Union for the withdrawal from Europe of all NATO and Soviet shorter- and longer-range nuclear weapons (made a reality in 1987 under the terms of the INF treaty); triple zero option (or simply triple zero), a proposal to include short-range tactical weapons as well Etymology: All based on the idea of zero as representing 'nothing', although, strictly speaking, none of the proposals would away with all weapons History and Usage: The original zero option dates from the beginning of the eighties, when some European countries felt very uneasy about the build-up of theatre nuclear weapons on both sides of the Iron Curtain; the term was revived in relation to the control of these longer-range INF weapons in the mid eighties Double zero was a Soviet proposal of 1986-7, made at a time when the cold war was visibly thawing under Mr Gorbachev's administration in the Soviet Union; it was essentially put into practice (for Europe at least) by the INF treaty There remains some pressure to move on to the global double zero, which would extend the provisions to weapons held outside Europe Triple zero involves even shorter-range weapons, which some European countries still see as a worrying threat If Pershing II and Cruise are to be negotiated away under the zero-zero option, and if Polaris is truly obsolescent then the Labour Party 'unilateral' policy seems to differ very little in substance from that of the Alliance New Scientist 16 Apr 1987, p 49 If we said yes to zero option, we said yes, yes to double zero option, and who knows, there may be a triple zero option involved in tactical neutral weapons MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour 22 Apr 1987 The further offer was formalised in Moscow last March, when Mr Gorbachev proposed to Mr George Schultz that all SRINF category weapons be removed from Europe Because the LRINF proposal had been called the 'zero option', the joint scheme has come to be called the 'double zero' 'Double zero' is, nonetheless, an inexact term, because 'single zero' would leave the superpowers with 100 missiles each, as long as they were held in Asiatic Russia and the continental United States respectively Daily Telegraph 21 May 1987, p 16 Eduard Shevardnadze emphasised that in the Soviet Union the fact is appreciated that Spain was among the first West European States which supported the double zero for Europe and then also the global double zero BBC Summary of World Broadcasts 22 Jan 1988, p SU/A7 26.3 Zidovudine Zidovudine noun Also written zidovudine (Health and Fitness) The approved name of the anti-viral drug AZT, used in the management of Aids Etymology: The first part, zido-, and the ending, -dine, are taken from the chemical name azidodeoxythymidine, but it is not clear why the syllable -vu- was added History and Usage: The name Zidovudine has been in use since 1987, but the drug remains popularly known as AZT (see the comments at AZT) Zidovudine itself is sometimes abbreviated to ZDV Acyclovir is already in use, in combination with Zidovudine (formerly AZT), for Aids patients Guardian July 1989, p Every week I watch AIDS patients deteriorate and waste away despite Zidovudine (ZDV) therapy Nature 14 June 1990, p 574 ZIFT acronym Also written Zift (Health and Fitness) (Science and Technology) Short for zygote intra-fallopian transfer, a technique for helping infertile couples to conceive, in which a zygote (a fertilized egg which has been allowed to begin developing into an embryo) is re-implanted into one of the woman's Fallopian tubes after fertilization with her partner's sperm outside the body Etymology: The initial letters of Zygote Intra-Fallopian Transfer In scientific terms, a zygote is a cell formed by the union of two gametes (see GIFT) History and Usage: The technique was developed during the second half of the eighties as a further refinement of GIFT, offering greater certainty of establishing a pregnancy However, unlike GIFT, it takes fertilization outside the body once again, and is therefore open to the same ethical or religious objections as IVF A new variation, zygote intrafallopian transfer (ZIFT), may further improve GIFT's odds The egg is fertilized in a petri dish, and the embryo is placed in the fallopian tube about 18 hours later ZIFT has been tried on fewer than 50 couples, so it is too soon to measure its success US News & World Report Apr 1989, p 75 On this occasion, I was being treated with a variation of Gift, called Zift (Zygote intrafallopian transfer), in which the eggs and sperm are mixed outside the body and then replaced in the tube Independent 15 Jan 1991, p 17 26.4 zouave zouave adjective and noun (Lifestyle and Leisure) adjective: Of trousers for women: cut wide at the top, with folds of material at the hips, and tapered into a narrow ankle noun: (In the plural zouaves) women's trousers of this design Etymology: Named after the Algerian Zouave regiment of the French army, who wore a uniform with trousers of this shape (known as peg-top trousers) in the middle of the nineteenth century History and Usage: This is an example of an old word which has been revived in modern fashion and applied in a slightly different context In the late nineteenth century there was a fashion for garments of various kinds (particularly women's short jackets and men's peg-top trousers) which copied the uniform of the Zouave regiment and were known as Zouave jacket, Zouave trousers, etc When wide-topped, draped trousers became a fashion item for women in the 1980s, the word was reapplied to them, and this time round also came to be used as a noun in its own right First came the ankle-length Zouaves, looking a bit like baggies gone berserk, worn under two layers of fitted, belted coats with full skirts, Russian peasant hats with tassels and ankle-high boots Then came the shorter Zouaves, like knee-length bloomers Washington Post 22 Apr 1981, section B, p Zouave pants with elasticated waist and two pockets Grattan Direct Catalogue Spring-Summer 1989, p 218 zouk noun (Music) (Youth Culture) An exuberant style of popular music originating in Guadeloupe in the French Antilles and combining ethnic and Western elements Etymology: Reputedly a borrowing from Guadeloupean creole zouk, a verb meaning 'to party', possibly influenced by US slang juke or jook 'to have a good time' History and Usage: Zouk was developed by Guadeloupean musicians in Paris at the end of the seventies as a deliberate attempt to construct a distinctive Antillean style of popular music which could hold its own against Western pop It was also designed to compete with disco music, especially in Paris, where its main proponents (a group named Kassav) have been popularizing it during the eighties It was only towards the end of the decade that zouk started to get exposure in the UK and the US Zouk is often used attributively, especially in zouk music, and occasionally forms the basis for derivatives such as zoukish His latest, 'Kilimandjaro' (AR1000) nosedives into held-back zoukish rhythms that never let go, wimpy vocals and over the top arrangements Blues & Soul Feb 1987, p 27 Tonight, the first ever zouk on British soil kicks off this year's Camden Festival International Arts programme Zouk, especially Kassav, is the pulse of Paris streets and the soundtrack for her nightclubs Guardian 24 Mar 1987, p 11 26.5 Zuppie Zuppie (People and Society) see woopie 26.6 zygote intra-fallopian transfer zygote intra-fallopian transfer (Health and Fitness) (Science and Technology) see ZIFT ... which have been in the news during the past decade; rather than simply defining these words (as dictionaries of new words have tended to in the past), it also explains their derivation and the events... referring back to acupuncture but without taking into account the original meaning of acu- History and Usage: Acupressure has been practised in Japan as shiatsu and in China as G-Jo (''first aid'')... treated in the Oxford Dictionary of New Words not all fall into this category, for the reasons outlined above Approximately one-quarter of the main headwords here were included in the new words