On learning that Uber, the mobile-app-based car service, dinged her half-a-point on a previous ride, the playwright Delia Ephron, sister of the late Nora Ephron, began to obsess.
It wasn’t so much that her “passenger score” had slipped to 4.5 on a 5-point scale, but rather that she was being rated at all. In all likelihood, the small demerit will not be enough for Uber to write-off the prolific author the next time she calls on them to shuttle her from one end of Manhattan to the other. But it might urge her—and the rest of us—to be less fussy in the future.
Welcome to the reputation economy, a burgeoning phenomena that has emerged from the ever-expanding sharing economy. It is also one in a steady stream of popular neologisms creeping into our daily vernacular.
From the Greek neo, meaning “new” and logos, meaning “word,” neologisms are newly minted words, phrases or idioms that have not been mainstreamed into the English language, yet are well on their way.
Neologisms, not only keep us in step with creative evolutions in language, they also help
writers reflect the zeitgeist of the time.
And if real estate is your writing specialty, you’re in luck. One such term that appears to be getting more and more play these days is hostile architecture, and it alludes to designing buildings or public spaces in ways that aim to limit undesirable behaviors. With sloping concrete surfaces that discourage sleeping and skateboarding, London’s Camden benches are a prime example of this design style as are metal spikes in doorways aimed at keeping the homeless and the marginalized away.
Hostile architecture, however, is also proliferating in the United States. In lower Manhattan, for example, the Strand Bookstore has installed overnight pavement sprinklers to deter the local homeless population from convening beneath its ubiquitous red awning.
But not all forms of hostile or defensive architecture are structural. In downtown San Francisco, large outdoor speakers blast a cacophony of chainsaw and motorcycle sounds to prevent folks from sleeping on the steps of the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.
Droniquette is yet another neologism gaining prominence especially now that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has given Amazon the go-ahead to test out drones for commercial purposes. This latest move by the FAA comes on the heels of its decision last summer to issue drone permits to Tucson-based Tierra Antigua Realty, which will use the unmanned aircraft to “enhance academic community awareness and augment real estate listing videos,” according to a statement by the FAA.
To be sure, droniquette, or good etiquette when flying a drone device, will get more air time in the days and months ahead as the FAA firms up its rules around drones.
And while drones are gaining momentum, scores of millennials, who graduated college during the height of the recession only to see their launches fizzle, are perpetuating neologisms of their own. These include “workie,” someone working without pay; “showrooming,” vetting a product in a brick and mortar store, then purchasing online; and “tweleb,” noting someone with more than 1,000 Twitter flowers, to name a few.
Millennials also make up a huge part of the reputation economy, a neologism, referring to the purchase and sale of services based on client or vendor reputation, determined by consumer ratings of a business or vice versa—which means Delia Ephron can go on Yelp and ding Uber.