Vocal fry

Vocal fry, or glottalization, is a low, staccato vibration during speech, produced by a slow fluttering of the vocal  chords: listen here  http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/vocalfryshort.mp3

According to Science Now:

"A curious vocal pattern has crept into the speech of young adult women who speak American English: low, creaky vibrations, also called vocal fry. Pop singers, such as Britney Spears, slip vocal fry into their music as a way to reach low notes and add style. Now, a new study of young women in New York state shows that the same guttural vibration—once considered a speech disorder—has become a language fad.


Since the 1960s, vocal fry has been recognized as the lowest of the three vocal registers, which also include falsetto and modal—the usual speaking register."


Here's a full blown example: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/

Riffle & Faro

The standard way to mix a deck of playing cards—the one used everywhere from casinos to rec rooms—is what is known as a riffle (or "dovetail") shuffle.


(you have to shuffle seven times before a deck becomes truly scrambled.)


A perfect (or "faro") shuffle, meanwhile, wherein the deck is split precisely in half and the two halves are zippered together in perfect alternation, isn't random at all. In fact, it's completely predictable. Eight perfect shuffles will return a 52-card deck to its original order, with every card cycling back to its starting position.


More here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204826704577074501731476934.html?mod=WSJ_Books_LS_Books_8

Hachiroku

The new Toyota sports car is called  Hachiroku, which means '86'.  To be introduced stateside in 2012m, we don't think it'll be called '86' here which is a bar slang for an undesirable customer,or one that must be evicted from the premises.


"This continues Toyota's sports car bloodline," Mr. Toyoda told reporters after driving a Hachiroku around the Fuji Speedway race track. "The 86 incorporates a sense of driving pleasure that we call 'doki-doki' or 'waku-waku,'" the Japanese for "heart-pounding" or "euphoric."

descriptivist vs prescriptivist

"academic linguists and other "descriptivist" grammarians dismiss the notion of grammatical "correctness" and insist that "rules" are wholly determined by usage."

chuppah

chuppah is a canopy under which a Jewish couple stand during their wedding ceremony.

Inaccrochable

Back in the 1920s Gertrude Stein was advising young Ernest Hemingway telling him that "You mustn't write anything that is inaccrochable".  (inaccrochable: a French expression meaning that his stories and his language were too raw, too revealing, too exposed for a refined society.)

Meanwhile

Richard Preston  was asked by the late Michael Crichton relatives to complete his unfinished novel titled Micro.


"Ms. Jordan (Michael Crichton assistant) line-edited the book to make sure the voice was consistent. At her suggestion, Mr. Preston dropped the word, "meanwhile," which Mr. Crichton hated."

flecheiros

"Mr. Possuelo's mission penetrated the vast Javari Valley Indigenous Land, 33,000 square miles of dense forest in the Upper Amazon where aerial reconnaissance showed at least 18 uncontacted tribes. Very little is understood about these people, including what ethnic groups they belong to and what languages they speak. One mysterious band is known by neighboring Indians as the flecheiros, Portuguese for "arrow people," for their rumored mastery of that weapon and their supposed ferocity."

El Buen Fin

"El Buen Fin, which translates as "the good weekend," will stretch over four days, starting Friday and ending Monday, which is a local holiday that commemorates the Mexican revolution. Retailers plan to offer discounts of as much as 70% on a variety of goods, from home appliances to automobiles, while also extending store hours."

enantiodromia

"Ask Mr. (Bill) Miller what he did for a living and he would tell you, "We think about thinking." A discussion with him might cover astrophysics and ant colonies, meteorology and baseball, the science of poker playing, and "enantiodromia," or the restoration of balance."

nomenclaturism

"nomenclaturism"  is the notion that words have a one-to-one relationship to the things they purport to name. 

(From today's WSJ review of Is That a Fish in Your Ear? by David Bellos.)

"Nakusa" or "Nakushi"

In the news today  more than 200 Indian girls whose names mean "unwanted" in Hindi chose new names Saturday for a fresh start in life. "Nakusa" or "Nakushi," mean "unwanted" in Hindi.

Ofrendas

Ofrendas are elaborately decorated shrines to the dead erected in homes, shops and offices during the Day of the Dead festival in early November Mexico.

Edra Blixseth

Edra Blixseth is the former co-owner of the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, Montana, who went from being a paper billionaire to filing for Chapter 7 bankrupcy - liquidation - in three years.

Alibi

'alibi' literally means 'elsewhere' I learned today.

Operation Tomodachi

So was called the relief mission by the US military following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan this year.  "tomodachi = "friend".

Chingaletta

I'm borrowing this word from another blog of mine which is getting  occasional hits on it from search engines:


"I often use "Chingaletta", which a Mexican forman I used to work for would use to call anything he couldn't name at the time. It wasn't until about 6 years ago when I found out the true meaning of "chingaletta" It means "F#$%ing thing". Usage: "Hand me that chingaletta over there" "

Wabi-sabi

From a Wall Street Journal's article today about artist Tom Sewell's home he built in Maui:

"The result: a rustic Japanese-influenced style created to embrace the concept of wabi-sabi, or finding beauty in imperfection.

Goodbye Cassette Player

Also in this morning's Wall Street Journal, this item:

The Oxford English Dictionary says it is removing the term "cassette player" from its Concise dictionary.

Countertenor

Words.  In all  my readings of newspapers magazines, web pages, flyers, I often encounter new words English and as often as not foreign which I find interesting, stimulating, worth remembering.   In English they are usually rare, obscure terms, in foreign languages, they describe objects or events unknown in the English speaking world.  I write these terms down on the backs of envelopes, on margins of newspapers and scraps of paper, to keep for future categorization and use, and then I lose them.  So it goes.

Yesterday I finally got an idea to start keeping track of these discoveries by writing them down in a blog.  I had no candidate words and no name for the blog when I opened the Wall Street Journal this morning and read an interview with a German opera singer named Andreas Schull, who sings countertenor.

Countertenor is  "singing music originally written for castrated men more than two centuries ago".


Says Mr Scholl:

 "The complete human would be someone who integrates both male and female elements, and a countertenor does that. That's what I like, that the countertenor can be a figure of identification for men and women—because challenges to humanity are not exclusively male or female."