What's The Science Word of Summer?

ByCarl Zimmer
July 10, 2008

My brother Ben, all-around word maven, blogs both at Language Log and at Visual Thesaurus, where he’s an executive producer. He also writes for places like Slate and the Boston Globe, where he just wrote about the word of summer–skadoosh, from the movie Kung-Fu Panda. (I tagged along with Ben for the arduous fieldwork for that piece, along with all our kids who enjoyed it mightily.)

Ben sometimes shows up at the Loom when the discussion veers towards the lexicography of science. So I thought we could help him out. Tomorrow (Friday) he’ll be on Wisconsin Public Radio at 6 pm EST to talk about the word(s) of summer. He wanted to know if there were any science words that are au courant. My nominee:  geoengineering. Your thoughts? Post them here.

In any case, tune in tomorrow.

(PS–Honestly, it’s pure coincidence that I was on the same show the other day, which is now archived online.)

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