Posted on 11/14/2012 12:02:48 PM PST by Berlin_Freeper
LONDON (AP) — Britain's media are in a meltdown and its government is gaffe-prone, so Oxford Dictionaries has chosen an apt Word of the Year: "omnishambles."
Oxford University Press on Tuesday crowned the word — defined as "a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations" — its top term of 2012.
Each year Oxford University Press tracks how the English language is changing and chooses a word that best reflects the mood of the year. The publisher typically chooses separate British and American winners. This year's American champion is "gif," short for graphics interchange format, a common format for images on the Internet.
The editors said gif was being recognized for making the crucial transition from noun to verb, "to gif": to create a gif file of an image or video sequence, especially relating to an event. And, inevitably, to share it online.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Sounds like "Obamanation" to me...
“obamashambles.”
“an administration that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations”
I would go so far as to say that this would could be applied to a majority of the leaders in today’s world.
Obama has been criminally incompetent.
omnishambles - “a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations”
obamashambles - “a situation that has been purposely mismanaged to advance an unrelated agenda, characterized by a string of deaths, suffering, bankruptcy and failures”
Linki no worki.
Over in yurrup, they often use the term 'carambolage' for such events and I occasionally use that word but I usually just say 'clusterf**k' when need be.
Interesting. It must work where you are. Where I am Google displays this:
503. That’s an error.
The service you requested is not available at this time.
Service error -27. That’s all we know.
Well, if that’s what “to gif” means, then FR has been giffing all over the place without knowing that is what it was called.
But omnishambles is as good a word as any for the condition of Washington, D.C.
Highly appropriate, and perfectly descriptive of what America has become, and will continue to become, over the next four years.
Omnishambles is taken from an absolutely brilliant BBC political comedy called ‘The Thick of It’.
This being Britain, we often find ourselves drawing on comedy to explain our experiences in the real world.
I watch lots more Brit TV than the dreck we get over here, esp. documentaries.
Just found 'Thick' on usenet and hope to be having a sample or two tomorrow .. cheers !
Be warned, its brilliant, BUT the main character (played fantastically by Scottish actor Peter Capaldi) swears in every sentence.
He gets away with it because the character is clearly based on Tony Blair’s notorious bully of a right hand man, Alastair Campbell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alastair_Campbell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thick_of_It
bfl
Thanks for that ! :-)
I’ve been known to let a few choice ones fly on occasion too (see above ;-), so no worries .. lol
Managed to d/l the series overnight , and am looking forward to getting ‘stuck in’.
Please let me know how you find it. I personally can’t recommend it enough. But would be interested to find out how it translates over the pond! Especially with some of the references
Warm regards
Mitch
Somehow my company name was left out of the definition... ;-)
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