Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Celebu-word-palooza!. The prominence of celebu- is more than an unholy union of tabloidism and wordplay; it's the subject of academic study. David West Brown, a lecturer at the University of Michigan, tackled the phenomenon this fall in the linguistics journal American Speech. His paper, “Paris Hilton, Brenda Frazier, Blogs, and the Proliferation of celebu-“, looks at how the fertile, funny, and vicious blogosphere nurtured a prefix that follows celebs around like a purse-sized pooch—though with considerably less loyalty and love.