WERE YOU DISAPPOINTED by the end of Mittmentum? Or pleased by the rise of O-mentum?
If these words sound familiar, then you've probably been immersed in election-oriented blogs, where a language trend has exploded in recent months: the use of -mentum as a suffix.
Though a few older examples can be found - (New York) Met-mentum in 2000, and a joking personification of momentum as Moe-mentum back in 1976 - Joe Lieberman's use of Joementum in 2004 sowed the seeds for the current trend. That use got a lot of press, and coupled with Lieberman's failed presidential campaign, solidified -mentum as meaning a particularly political success that may be dubious. A word like Hill-mentum can describe an authentic electoral force or (as another variation has it) a type of faux-mentum.
Though the trend itself is robust, most individual coinages are unlikely to last, unless the namesakes of Biden-mentum, Huckamentum, Hunter-mentum, and Rudy-mentum run for president again. However, no-mentum -which has been frequently used as the campaign weeds out all but a few - may be a word with a future, since it could be applied to so many subjects besides politics. And a new, less catchy, addition to the -mentum lexicon emerged recently when no-mentum gained a semi-synonym: mutnemom, or reverse momentum, which Slate blogger Mickey Kaus coined to describe Hillary Clinton's sudden deceleration.
Perhaps it bodes well for Barack Obama that his momentum has so many names: Barack-mentum, Mo-bama-mentum, Obama-mentum, Obama-rama-mentum, Oba-mentum, and O-mentum have all been used. O-mentum is a particularly delicious word: it rhymes with momentum, while bringing to mind Oprah, Obama's most famous supporter.
Language change is unpredictable, but -mentum is a good candidate to join the established political vocabulary, a la -gate. This suffix seems custom-made for a country where politics is treated as more of a horse race than a competition of ideas, and it doesn't hurt that the explosion of blogs has created so much writing where creativity, snarkiness, and neologizing are the norm. That's a lot of word-mentum.
Mark Peters writes a language column for Babble (babble.com). His book, "Yada Yada Doh! 111 Television Words That Made the Leap From the Screen to Society," is forthcoming from Marion Street Press.
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