FASHION Magazine

Word: .xxx

Meaning: the new domain name dot-suffix intended for porn websites

Usage: “.xxx domain names help users find porn, but can they also help block porn?” — the Huffington Post, being its usual middle America–baiting self

Word: Abstractionitis

Meaning: A highly viral linguistic affliction that prevents one from speaking in a manner any real human can  reasonably understand.

Usage: “I know some folks who use Abstractionitis & Meaningless Expressions to the point of distraction & ridiculousness. #TheyDontKnowWhoTheyAre” —some rando on Twitter

Word: Dude-topia

Meaning: A no-girls-allowed treehouse, or something? I don’t know, because I have a vagina.

Usage: “Until we can realize a female-free utopia—a “dude-topia,” if you will—we can only dream of a man-only world.” — from a blog post on vintage men’s magazine covers that I highly recommend you see to believe

Word: Idiopathic

Meaning: A condition or disease arising (seemingly) spontaneously from an unknown cause.

Usage: “Idiopathic, from the Latin meaning we’re idiots ’cause we can’t figure out what’s causing it.” — Hugh Laurie as Dr. House

Word: Mancession

Definition: “An economic instance in which the unemployment rate is substantially higher among men than it is among women. The term was coined during the financial crisis of 2008–2009, during which men bore the brunt of the job losses in the United States, at rates close to 50 percent higher than those of women.” — Investopedia (this is a thing that exists! Money is funny)

Word: H8terz

Meaning: “It was once a word used to describe those who hate others for irrational reasons, for the sake of hate itself. Today, the word is mainly used by those who are hated on, even though they may be hated for perfectly rational reasons.” — Urban Dictionary

Usage: “Haters gonna hate.” Um, where did this come from? I thought it was Ice-T, but it’s not, and so my next alphabetical guess—and the one I’ll stick with—is the “internet.”

Word: Book musical

Meaning: A musical in which the songs and dances are fully integrated into a well-made story, with serious dramatic goals, kinda like a book. Often, book musicals are actually based on books.

Usage: “The Book of Mormon… ardently embraces the all-American art form of the inspirational book musical.” — the New York Times

Word: Iconoclasm

Meaning: The deliberate destruction of icons and symbols with a political intent (usually), or the beliefs and actions of an iconoclast (someone who overthrows the establishment).

Usage: “Rothko’s ‘iconoclasm’, in other words, his shattering of the recognisable conventions of imaging, becomes, in execution, unacceptably coercive.” — The Guardian, 2001

Word: Republicants

Usage: “Goddess help us if any of these Republican maniacs become US President #Republicants“ — @BruceLaBruce

Definition: According to the ever-reliable Urban Dictionary, “A group of stuck-up prudish rednecks who believe in a world where the rich get richer and everyone else is just in the way.” According to me, “Politicians I can’t believe are also human beings.”

Word: Transcendentalism

Meaning: A mid-19th century literary and philosophical movement pioneered by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller and so on.

Usage: “Is New England transcendentalism identical with the philosophy of the German thinkers Kant, Fichte, and Jacobi? If not, why does it employ their terminology? Or is transcendentalism a “Saturnalia or excess of faith?” — Harold Bloom in How to Write about Ralph Waldo Emerson

Word: Neo-Housewife

Meaning: A new breed of woman whose housewifeliness is basically independent from marriage, chores, and domesticity, and instead revolves around dieting, gossiping, and shopping while drunk.

Usage: “Yet across the various spinoffs, the real housewives reliably engage in all kinds of confusing, contradictory, neo-housewife behavior: they proudly show off their incompetence in the kitchen (as when Adrienne Maloof of Beverly Hills washes a chicken with hand soap) or their lack of interest in sex (as when her neighbor Lisa Vanderpump jokes about treating sex as a twice-annual gift to her husband) or their limited patience.” — from this past weekend’s New York Times Magazine

Word: Goz

Meaning: Ryan Gosling. Did you actually just ask me that?

Usage: “Perhaps it was too obvious and People magazine decided they wanted to be edgy by not choosing the Almighty Goz, but the Internet is angry” — Toronto Life

You should know it because: The words we need to use the most—like please, like thanks, like you, like me, like like-—are all one-syllable’d. At this point I think we can all agree: Ryan “Hey Girl” Gosling needs to be one of those words. Hence, Goz.