New word of the month
by Kerry Maxwell

chewable liquor noun [U] American English
strong alcoholic drink which has been made into a soft, edible form

'A South Korean brewer has come up with an alternative way for people to enjoy their favorite tipple - chewable liquor.'
(Reuters, 14th January 2002)

'Chewable Liquor. Yep, no watery mess, just chewy alcoholic goodness in a convenient purse pack. …'
(www.flowerhead.com, 12th January 2002)

In January 2002, there was a flurry of interest in the concept of 'edible alcohol' amongst online news services across the United States, when Reuters released an article discussing the idea of chewable liquor. It reported that the Kooksoondang Brewery Co. in South Korea had developed a gelatine form of its popular Paeksaejoo rice wine. The company was reportedly 'looking for new ways to consume traditional liquor' and was conducting a serious of consumer surveys pending a possible marketing of the product.

The term liquor is predominantly used in American English to refer to what in British English would usually be called alcohol or spirits. Of course we're already familiar with the many other examples of vocabulary items which are exclusive to American English, such as diaper (UK nappy), eggplant (UK aubergine), cellphone (UK mobile phone) and garbage can (UK dustbin), etc. Following the American English theme of this month's issue, I thought it would be interesting to look at some examples of neologisms, which, like chewable liquor, are based on vocabulary items from American rather than British English.

The term zipperhead (noun [C]), has been in existence since the late 80s as a means of referring to a stupid person or a person with a 'closed' mind. Zipper is the American formulation of the British English zip, or zip fastener. Like many more recent neologisms, zipperhead emerged from the world of computing jargon, and is said to have originated from IBM. It is an informal, rather derogatory term mainly used by young people.

Sneakers are the American equivalent of what British English would refer to as training shoes or trainers. In the mid-90s a new verb sneakerize [T], was coined in the US, with a derived noun sneakerization [U]. Sneakerization is an informal term used in business and marketing contexts to refer to the sudden increase in choices available for a particular product. The use of sneaker as a basis for these new words relates to the idea of the overwhelming amount of choice someone is presented with when they enter a sports' shoe retailer and are confronted with great walls of shoes and shoe types. The term is also used in the context of strategies to market products which are of limited quality but fashionable, as the recent quote below explains:

'This touched off a nuclear arms race among razor companies, vying to outdo each other by adding "high-tech" features that made the product more expensive, but not necessarily better. This tactic is called "sneakerization," in honor of the sneaker industry, which now has people paying upward of $200 a pair for increasingly weird-looking footwear …'
(Dave Barry, newsday.com, 14th July 2003)

Sneakers is also featured in a very recent adjective. Sneakers-up was coined in 2001 to informally describe the demise of a company, especially an Internet based (dot-com) company. The adjective is a play on the informal idiom go/turn belly-up. If a company goes belly-up, it loses all of its money. Sneakers-up is used in exactly the same way to refer to a company becoming bankrupt, e.g.:

'Fifty-three more dot-com companies went sneakers-up last month, making a grand total of 555 casualties of the new economy since the April 2000 bubble pop.'
(Government Computer News, 16th July 2001)

The use of sneakers in the idiom is intended to underline the relative youth of those founding many of the newly launched and quickly collapsed dot-com companies.

American English uses the word cookie for what is usually referred to in British English as a biscuit. A cookie jar is a container for holding cookies and forms the basis of an idiom: to be caught with your hand in the cookie jar is to be caught while you are doing something dishonest. The term cookie jar accounting was coined in the late 90s in US business contexts. It refers to the practice of storing up profits from good years, thereby creating a reserve which can be used to increase profits in bad years, e.g.:

'Microsoft has agreed to stop using a "cookie jar" accounting practice that allegedly misstated the software maker's income by millions of dollars …'
(Reuters, 3rd June 2002)

The slang term for the American dollar, buck, has existed since the 1850s. The term muckraker, coined by President Roosevelt in 1906, is used in both American and British English to refer to someone who deliberately researches and publishes stories which damage the reputations of famous people. In the mid-80s a blend of these two words: buckraker (noun [C]), was coined in the United States. A buckraker is a journalist who uses the information and connections they have gleaned to earn money outside of the scope of their normal job. This practice is referred to as buckraking noun [U] (compare: muckraking).

The use of blends is a common process in the formation of neologisms, as we have observed in the August issue. As the example above illustrates, new blends can feature components from both sides of the Atlantic. A further and final example is buttlegging (noun [U]). This is a blend of the terms butt, US slang for cigarette, and bootlegging (illegal making and distribution of goods, often alcohol or recorded media). Buttlegging has therefore been used colloquially in recent years in the US to refer to the illegal smuggling of cigarettes. A buttlegger (noun [C]) is someone who engages in this practice.

For more information about new and topical words and phrases, read Kerry's Word of the Week articles on the MED Resource Site.