NEW WORDS

Ski Press editorials by Jules Older

Birth of a Word 

By Jules Older

I ski, I write and speak and edit skiing, but I never go to ski shows. Until the ’02 Boston show. 

I went and spent a lot of my time there standing in the Ski Press booth handing out copies of the magazine.

A small but significant number of show-goers wouldn't take it. Free, and still wouldn't take it.

Because it wasn't Snowboard Press. I came away from the show determined to implement something we at Ski Press had already been talking about – upping our snowboard coverage. Everybody at Ski Press headquarters agreed.

But I knew something was still missing. We — not just we at Ski Press, but we in the snowsport world — needed an overarching, all-inclusive word to describe what we do on snow. 

The word had to be simple and stand-alone, not a compound word like skiboarding or a phrase like board riding.

So, on a press trip in February ’03 to Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia, I asked a ragtag gang of fellow hacks and flacks to help me come up with something new. 

It’s a long ride from Charlestown airport to Snowshoe (see story, page X), and that gave us a lot of time for wordplay. Here's a very partial list of what we came up with:

For the next few days we tried ‘em out. Although we each had our favorites, only one word stuck. In a very short time, skibbing had eclipsed all other contenders.

And for the rest of the trip, we — snowboarders, alpine skiers, telemarkers, cross-countrarians — skibbed together, sharing the smile that comes from knowing you were present at the start of something new.

What We Need here is a New Word

By Jules Older

We need -- and I mean need -- a word that describes what we do, not what we once did.

Once upon a time, we skied. Then, as equipment improved and lifts began hauling us up mountains, some of us skied downhill and others skied cross-country. Enter the Alpine-Nordic split.

Then, telemarking made its unexpected comeback, and we further divided.

Next, we (briefly) snurfed, a trend that pretty much ended the night Jake Burton Carpenter snuck onto the slopes of Stratton Mountain carrying a snowboard.

Then came terrain parks, and we spent as much time in air as on snow.

So, today we cross-country, tele, alpine, board and Misty Flip.

Who knows what’s next: monoskiing, sitskiing, teleboarding, recumbent riding? The future is notoriously hard to predict.

But what's abundantly clear in the present is that we no longer just ski. Even if you're not one of the ever-growing number who sometimes alpine, sometimes tele, sometimes board, sometimes play in the park, odds are that if you're on the hill with more than three or four buddies, at least one will be on something different than what's beneath your feet.

What those underfoot objects have in common is that they combine low friction; elongated, relatively flat design; are a largely gravity-driven-but-requiring-human-involvement means of locomotion; they're employed on snow, used most often in mountain descents, and engaged (with certain few exceptions) with the operator in a relatively upright position.

Trouble is, that’s a tiny, wee bit of a mouthful. So is the now-ubiquitous phrase, “skiing and snowboarding.”

Skiing and snowboarding. Entire forests of mature pine trees have been leveled by that long and dead-awkward phrase.

No mo. New word time.

Forward, brothers and sisters, we don’t go skiing and snowboarding. Starting now, we skib.

Skib. As in, “Hey, snow’s falling — wanna go skibbing?”

“Yo, dewd, we like skibbed under the rope and got our tickets pulled.”

As in, “Martha and I were enjoying a very pleasant Merlot for lunch, and then we skibbed down to the Village for a bit of shopping.”

As in, “Welcome to Mt. Spectacular, the Family Skib Resort.”

As in, “Listen up, buddy. The skib patrol is here for your protection. That’s why I'm pulling your ticket.”

See? It works. Short, sweet, inclusive, and it works.

It’s probably just a matter of time before we start calling the magazine you're reading now, Skib Press.

Skibbers ready? Three, two, one…

From this moment forward, brothers and sisters, we don’t go skiing and snowboarding.

Vermont Public Radio Commentary, post-September 11, 2001

I've had my moment of fame.

It was Christmas Eve, 1981. I taught at a medical school near the bottom of the South Island of New Zealand. Which is to say, near the bottom of the world.

On Christmas Eve, 1981, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article I wrote. I called it, Falling in Boinng Again.

The article was about infatuation and love, and how to deal with them in family therapy. In the course of the article, I came up with a new word: Boinng. Two N’s: b-o-i-n-n-g.



Photo by Effin Older

Largely because of my new word (and because it was Christmas Eve, when nothing much happens), newspapers all over the world picked up the article. I started hearing from folks in North America, Australasia, the Philippines — all over.

Then, 15 minutes later, reporters found another new topic, and I was once again an obscure academic at the bottom of the world. But it was great fun while it lasted.

A dozen years later, I was teaching Writing for Real at UVM’s Adult Education program. One sunny day, I said to the students, “OK, we need a new word. Prose literature is divided between fiction and non-fiction. And there's a lot more non-fiction out there than there is fiction. To me it makes no sense to define the bulk of the world’s literature as something it isn't. Instead of non-fiction, come up with a better name.”

That night, a 65-year-old student did just that. At the next class, he announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, we now have fiction and… faction.”

I've been using faction ever since.

Two new words. And now we need another one. I became aware of the need as I watched the destruction of the World Trade Centers and listened to all the commentary on radio and TV. I realized that no one was expressing quite what I was feeling when they said, “We pray for you.” Or, “I pray they’ll be all right.” Or, “We pray the nation will make wise choices in days to come.”

Many of them meant just what they said; I suspect others were missing the right word to convey their feelings. Here's what I mean.

“Pray” is a fine, short, clear word that means “to speak to God, a deity or a saint.” There are other definitions, but “pray” conveys belief in a higher being capable of changing things, capable of… answering prayers.

For a lot of people, when they say “pray,” they mean just that. “God, please help us. Please show us the way.”

But there are other folks —and I'm one of them — who also wish for comfort in time of need, for wisdom in time of crisis, but who don’t turn to gods or deities or saints to provide it. We want to express empathy and sympathy without invoking a higher being.

And though I've fumbled and stuttered through this time of grief, I haven't found a way to express how I feel. Hope is too vague; commiserate is too weak.

So we need a new word, a new verb. And so far, I haven't been able to come up with one. But I will keep you posted. If you think of it first, please keep me posted.

This is Jules Older in Albany, Vermont, the Soul of the Kingdom.