The word of the day at Urban Dictionary for today is blogorrhea:

1. To write a blog entry just for the sake of posting an entry, not because you have done anything interesting today.

2. A blog characterized by excessive commenting on irrelevant facts. We say that the blogger suffers from uncontrollable verbal discharge or blogorrhea.

retrosexual \ret.roh.SEK.shoo.ul\ noun

A man with an undeveloped aesthetic sense who spends as little time and money as possible on his appearance and lifestyle. Also: retro-sexual or retrosexuality n.

I found this word on Word Spy, a site devoted to the sleuthing of new words and phrases, after they've appeared several times in public forums. I've heard the term metrosexual so many times, that I hadn't given much thought to what the opposite would be called.

I think it's comical to refer to a man that doesn't know the difference between eggplant and purple and couldn't care less as retrosexual. The definition implies that a retrosexual is anyone who isn't a metrosexual, but I get an even stronger image. Rather an Archie Bunker type who would look down on the kind of man who uses hair gel and gets manicures.

This word immediately conjures a character image for me. Someone resistent to the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy movement. A man proud of his football jersey and jeans, and who wouldn't deign to consume anything other than pizza and beer.

I probably tend to write modern men with maybe the slightest leaning toward metrosexuality (my husband is a metrosexual and goes to the spa twice as much as I do). But, the word retrosexual gives me inspiration to try the opposite, it's always fun to see how that type clashes with the modern woman.

That's right. The word defining 2004 to Webster's Dictionary is blog.

Blog n A Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.

I can understand how it earned such a prestigious honor. Blogs have become much more common place in the past year, and they're not just for Internet geeks and teenagers any more. They've become a key source of news distribution and political debate. And to think two years ago I didn't even know what a blog was.

The blog Herald purporting to deliver "more blog news more often" claims that Webster's dictionary definition of the word blog is out-of-date. Instead they offer the following:

“A Blog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, underpinned with a content delivery system which provides the ability to deliver content frequently and with little skill, which builds meaningful social connections or virtual communities on any and all subject matters.”

I'm not sure if that's a clearer, more understandable definition... but it certainly is longer.

verbicide (VUR-buh-syd) noun

1. The willful distortion or depreciation of the original meaning of a word.

2. A person who willfully distorts the meaning of a word.

[Latin verb(um) word -i- cide killer, killing.]

Killing words. That brings to mind a vivid image, doesn't it? That's why I like this word so much. You get an immediate sense of what it means: murdering words.

Not literally, of course. Often when I see the blood red ink my critique partners leave on my manuscripts I feel they might be committing verbicide. But clearly they're not, since verbicide means willfully distorting the meaning of words...

The way teenagers (and many adults) use the word "like" to pepper their sentences is no doubt a form of verbicide.

I suppose slang could be considered a form of verbicide. It sounds like fun to take old, boring words and infuse them with new life and meaning. When it's put that way, verbicide doesn't sound as much like a crime.

Here are some victims of verbicide through slang:

Props - instead of a means of support it now can mean respect or recognition. "I have to give her props for losing ten pounds."
Sick - refers to someone ill or someone possessing incredible talent. "That bass player is sick!"
Blaze - once just a raging fire now it can mean to leave quickly. "My favorite show is about to come on, I have to blaze."

\muh-GUF-in\ also MacGuffin

n: A device that helps propel the plot in a story but is of little importance in itself.

[Coined by film director Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980).]

"A McGuffin could be a person, an object, or an event that characters
of a story are interested in but that, intrinsically, is of little concern.
For example, in Hitchcock's movie North by Northwest, thugs are on the look out for a character named George Kaplan. Roger Thornhill, an ad executive, gets mistaken for Kaplan and so he is chased instead. Meanwhile Thornhill
himself tries to find Kaplan who doesn't even exist." --Wordsmith.org

I love words of the day. It's fun to put them in sentences then try working them into normal conversations. In this particular case, I'm not as interested in working the word McGuffin into conversation as trying to work the plot device into a future story.

I guess the McGuffin concept is not unlike the red herring concept, in which you want to force the reader to look off to the left while you send the story's true villain off to the right. With a McGuffin you can build a whole story around an object (jewels, secret documents, a package) that will ultimately have no significance other than to bring characters together or send them off on a wild goose chase.

I love it! It's one plot device I haven't tried yet. It won't fit into my work-in-progress, but I'm definitely going to keep it in mind for the future. I have an idea for an adventure novel next. That just screams for a McGuffin.

Leave it to Alfred Hitchcock to come up with all the great ideas.