Heck Of A Guy

Pleb To Pomak

Quarterly updates are part of the preparations for The OED’s Third Edition. Updates proceed in alphabetical order, providing a rough guide to the progress being made. The September 2006 update focuses on the revision of the words from pleb to Pomak. In addition to notifying the public that this section has been revised word by word, this update, as did its predecessors, lists the words added to the previous listing.

The words added to this range are, as one has come to expect, quite fine. I’m particularly happy for the proponents of pleurotomariid and Plymothian who, one imagines, had to put forth considerable effort to win support for their nominees. The profusion of poly-prefixed terms (I love polyamorous, albeit not exclusively) is a plus-minus sort of thing. It does seem to me, however, that the OED folks frittered away their leverage by not requiring that the plug-and-play process actually work before it was added to their word list.

The Outliers

The real action, however, is under the coyly provocative heading, “Out-of-sequence new entries.”

Some terms are making the list long after their best playing years. It seems somehow unfair that the notation for the initial entry of certain past-their-prime words may require the “archaic” modifier. Aerobicize, for example, is still employed frequently enough but its usage peaked, surely, years ago. And belly-up is so last dot com bubble collapse. Perhaps the belated addition of some words is analogous to the awarding of a Lifetime Achievement Award to performers who should have received but never managed to win a Grammy.

My chief concern, nonetheless, is for bippy, as in, one supposes, Dick Martin’s fallback phrase on Laugh-In, “You bet your sweet bippy.”

That supposition is unconfirmed because those sly dogs at the OED do not provide definitions with the list of new words. As it turns out, despite its pervasive use and popularization in that catchphrase on Laugh-In, which went off the air in 1973, there is dissention about what, exactly, constitutes a bippy.

The Urban Dictionary, for example, describes a bippy as either ” An extremely shallow vain and/or vapid girl, covered with much makeup, … ” or a ” girlfriend who is cute, and small, and cuddly-often with small feet and hands, and likes to giggle and have sex.” The Wikipedia entry for bippie reads, “from Laugh-In, comical term for ‘ass’ ‘You bet your sweet bippie.’ Also spelled ‘bippy.’ ” Other references indicate the term is intentionally undefined.

Consequently, the mystery of “You bet your sweet bippy,” (i.e., how a phrase can provide the one to whom it is directed confidence that some condition or set of conditions is certain by assuring that individual that it is safe to wager his or her bippy¹ that it is so, without knowing what, exactly, he or she would be putting up as stakes) persists, pending enlightenment from the OED, Third Edition.

Other additions that, for one reason or another, especially appeal to me include

• beer pong
• celebutante
• de-pants²
• fancy-pants³
• gross-out⁴
• hard-assed⁵
• looky-loo⁶
• mosey
• run-and-gun
• scooch
• tuneage

The OED Quarterly Update for September 2006 can be found at

OED Update: New edition: pleb to Pomak


Footnotes

1. It seems particularly pertinent that the bippy at stake belongs not to the enunciator of the ostensibly reassuring phrase but its target ~back~
2. I am assuming the reference is to the forcible, typically unsolicited removal of pants rather than an attempt to emulate a Chicago dialect but you never know about dat sort of thing ~back~
3. Relationship to “de-pants” is unclear ~back~
4. Relationship to “de-pants” is unclear ~back~
5. Relationship to “de-pants” is unclear – OK, it’s too easy; I’ll quit ~back~
6. Please note that I am, at this very moment, resisting temptation ~back~

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