My brother Ben, all-around word maven, blogs both at Language Log and at Visual Thesaurus, where he’s an executive producer. He also writes for places like Slate and the Boston Globe, where he just wrote about the word of summer–skadoosh, from the movie Kung-Fu Panda. (I tagged along with Ben for the arduous fieldwork for that piece, along with all our kids who enjoyed it mightily.)
Ben sometimes shows up at the Loom when the discussion veers towards the lexicography of science. So I thought we could help him out. Tomorrow (Friday) he’ll be on Wisconsin Public Radio at 6 pm EST to talk about the word(s) of summer. He wanted to know if there were any science words that are au courant. My nominee: geoengineering. Your thoughts? Post them here.
In any case, tune in tomorrow.
(PS–Honestly, it’s pure coincidence that I was on the same show the other day, which is now archived online.)
July 10th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
I like Micro Black Hole. There’s been a lot of talk about the LHC around the office and this always comes up.
July 10th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
This is a personal and professional bias, but how about biostatistics?
(Crossing my fingers and hoping I got the html right. We really need a preview feature here.)
July 10th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Nope
July 10th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
EastwoodDC: I fixed it for you.
July 10th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Talking today to some colleagues about how we hear the buzzword “systems biology”, but that everyone seems to use it differently.
But isn’t the word of summer for you, Carl, Escherichia?