Today I learned how the world got a new word! Blame it on bad typing.
Susan Greenfield, a neuroscientist who will be giving the Linus Pauling Memorial Lecture in Portland Thursday, spoke first to about 100 Oregon Mensans at the group’s “Regional Gathering” in Vancouver, Wash. The R.G., as they call it, is a social event for this Top 2% IQ crowd. But they also seek out other brainy people to tell them about interesting stuff.
Baroness Greenfield ended her very engaging and thought-provoking speech by admitting that she inadvertently coined the word “yaka-wow” two weeks ago. It’s also spelled “yackawow” sometimes.
Yaka-wow was what The Times of London used on April 15th, in a feature article about Greenfield’s gender discrimination complaint against the University of Oxford, which laid her off in January. [Weblinks are below.]
In an interview, Greenfield intended for the reporter to hear her say that computer games might be creating a generation of kids who grow up only able to say “yuck!” and “wow!” a lot. But that’s not what the transcriber of the taped interview heard. (Doesn’t the newspaper have copy editors any more?)
What The Times of London published:
“She is concerned that those who live only in the present, online, don’t allow their malleable brains to develop properly. ‘It’s not going to destroy the planet but is it going to be a planet worth living in if you have a load of breezy people who go around saying yaka-wow. Is that the society we want?’ ”
The result was viral. It only took 24 hours for the Web to record the use of yaka-wow more than 75,000 times! A week later, The Times even published a definition for it.
Remember, you heard it from Weird & Wonderful in PDX first!
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The mea culpa by the newspaper: Click here
The original Times article: Click here
Sounds like Greenfield’s lecture was really good!
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