Saturday 1 September 2018

trending now

Rather than exploring neologisms for their novelty, Weekly Word Watch, is taking a different tack and examining a few terms that have demonstrated some endurance and may have the traction to enter into common-parlance.
I imagine that this is a daunting task and would surely court disagreement no matter how conservative and seemingly safe the choices and not feedback that I’d relish confronting. I would have included bespoke in this group—a word that I thought sounded pretentious when it gained wider context—or perhaps zeitgeisty but I can’t say whether or not either of these words are employed anymore. One term that’s shown some staying power although it rings brand new to me included set-jetter: a play on jet-setter, it first appeared in print in 2007. Set-jetting describes the phenomenon of media (television set) driven travel, with tourists seeking out shooting locations featured in film (beginning with the Tolkienisation of New Zealand) and continuing with popular series and the advent of prestige television, often a mixed-blessing with deleterious effects for natives.