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BANG FOR THE BITE
Becoming well-versed in the language of the Biter will not only impress fellow cocktail partygoers, but also keep you better informed as you spread the green gospel.
COCKTAIL FACT
Past American Dialect Society Words of the Year: Not! (as in "just kidding," 1992); Y2K (1999); chad (2000), metrosexual (2003); truthiness (2005).
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Can someone tell you're a Biter just by your vocab?
The Bite
Sure can, sweetie. There are lots of words we Biters use that aren't so common. Here are the ones newbie Biters and friends of Biters oughta know, baby-love.The Benefits
- Biodynamic: organic crop cultivation that emphasizes the interrelationship of soil, plants, and animals.
Example: Even though it was produced in tandem with the lunar phases, the biodynamic wine Jen drank still gave her a moon-sized hangover.
- Carbon footprint: the amount of greenhouse gases emitted through the combustion of fossil fuels due to human activities.
Example: Sara's recent weekend in Puerto Rico was dreamy, but the CO2 emitted by the plane didn't help decrease her carbon footprint or the number of her global warming-related nightmares.
- Cradle-to-cradle: an efficient, waste-free production technique - all materials are recycled, reused, or composted.
Example: Hilary's new cradle-to-cradle office chair was made from sustainable materials that can be recycled when death do them part or after she gets fired (whichever comes first).
- Greenwash: to pretend you're green when you're not in order to impress potential customers or friends.
Example: The Biter Team found that the oil company's ads - featuring a baby deer nuzzling an oil barrel - bordered on greenwashing.
- Light-green: making incremental, not drastic, life changes to help the planet.
Example: Biters who drive their hybrid SUV to the organic wine bar live a light-green lifestyle - the fact that the wine was imported from Italy...not so much.
- Locavore: someone who prefers eating locally produced food.
Example: As a locavore, Kay likes getting sauced on beer made in her neighbor's basement.
- Sustainable: capable of continued production with no long-term effect on the environment.
Example: The desks (that occasionally collapse because we assembled them ourselves) in the Biter offices are made of wood from sustainable forests that aren't cut down faster than they're replanted.
- Xeriscape: landscaping that incorporates drought-resistant plants and doesn't require much watering.
- Example: Since Toshio's parents xeriscaped their yard - taking out the lawn and planting Southern California climate-appropriate shrubs - they've relegated the Slip 'n Slide to the garage.
Personally Speaking
-Wanna Try?
-Jun 16,2008
Sponsor
One of my friends has a vocabulary that makes my head spin. When I first met him, the obscure words he tossed around (like pulchritude and deleterious) made me suspicious. Is he using them correctly? Can he define them? Sometimes I'd ask for a definition, other times I'd repeat the word in my head until I found a scrap piece of paper or got to a dictionary. Yep, he was always using them correctly.
I'm kinda obsessed with definitions. Merriam-Webster is bookmarked on my browser and I refer to it at least 10 times a day. OK, it's more like 20...or more. But I'm in the industry of words, and I just happen to possess a sick fascination with language. Looking up terms I already know helps get me out of ruts. It's also probably a form of procrastination that I feel good about. Sometimes I find little gems that make me smile. The word "rut" got me today. I digress.
So, I was boring this vocab-savvy friend of mine with talk about my day and how writing heads and decks about the same topic over and over again was leaving me adverb challenged. He responded with, "What's a deck?" Ah, I'd stumped Mr. Vocabulary with my publishing jargon. I explained that a deck is a great place to have a beer on a sunny day, and it's also the text that sits between a headline and the text of a story.
Lingo is a funny thing. The time-saving shorthand lets one easily get down to the nitty-gritty of something and sort of makes you a part of a clique. I'm wondering if people in journalism are the cool kids or the geeks. Most of us wear glasses and read a lot. Guess I'm answering my own question.
- Managing Editor Diane...off to put on some plaid pants...
Biter Comments...
PHOTO ALBUMS
Posted by: rebecca | June 16, 2008 at 01:03 PM