Cash for clunkers

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Here’s an update on some of the new words you might be reading, but not understanding, in the American press.

Grief tourism is an expression that refers to people, especially government officials, making visits to places where something terrible has happened, such as a place where a bomb has killed many people. The term is used disparagingly because these visits are usually highly orchestrated and accompanied by the incessant clicking and whirring of cameras. Cynics wonder how genuine the expression of remorse can be if the whole thing is staged and seems more geared toward publicity than remembrance.

Another kind of tourism is lipo-tourism, which is when people travel abroad for inexpensive cosmetic surgery such as liposuction, when body fat is vacuumed away.

New phrase: Cash for clunkers was the term given to a US federal government programme that allowed owners of old fuel-inefficient automobiles to get cash when they traded them in for new cars.

The American economy continues to require new language. A quick rinse, for example, is a bankruptcy that happens in a very short time. Such a specific expression is required because usually bankruptcies are long, drawn-out affairs, requiring much legal wrangling in courts.

An even more successful new term is cash for clunkers, sometimes capitalised as Cash for Clunkers, even though it is an unofficial name. This programme is a way for the government to help the automobile industry, which has been suffering from poor sales.

This is how the programme works. The federal government has compiled a list of some highly fuel-inefficient automobiles. If you trade in your old fuel-inefficient automobile – meaning, if you go to a car dealer and ask them give you some money for your old car in the form of a discount on a brand-new car – then the government will add to that discount in order to help you buy a new car. This means that more cars are sold that consume less gasoline and pollute the air less. The programme has been very successful, so the term for the programme is very successful, too.

Another term related to full efficiency is grassoline, which is a kind of gasoline manufactured from plants and other biological material to be indistinguishable from petroleum-based gasoline.

A teaming period is a part of a teacher’s workday which is set aside for meeting with other teachers to talk about the performance of individual students. This kind of collaboration between teachers is to ensure that they can all work together to help students who need more help, or a different kind of help. Although I imagine the students will feel that getting the same kind of help from all their teachers seems a bit like a pile-on (when a bunch of people jump on top of another person and hold him down, as you might find in a rugby match).

Gayby is a curious term. It refers to the children of homosexual parents. The word is made by a combination of gay, meaning homosexual, and the last syllable of baby. It’s not a term you’re likely to hear or read in serious contexts. I’ve mostly seen it used within such families, often by the children themselves. It’s a shorthand way of explaining a complex idea.

In American football, the idea of dinosaur training has caught on over the last 10 years or so. This is a kind of exercise and workout regiment that involves moving, lifting, and pushing heavy weight, in trying to get the body to generate big surges of energy, as opposed to training for speed or endurance.

Americans recently went through a transition to digital television and two terms have been much bandied about (used constantly). One is rain fade, when a digital signal is interrupted by bad weather. Another is analog nightlight, when an old frequency is still broadcasting, but only to tell people to tune their televisions to the new digital signal.

Here’s an old term that may still need some explanation: rif is a verb that means “to lay off, fire, or make someone redundant. In other words, it means to tell someone that they no longer have a job. “Rif” is a verb form of the acronym RIF, which means “reduction in force.” It’s a classic bit of jargon – some might call it “weasely” because it hides the very basic fact that someone’s life has been substantially changed for the worse.