Dracula Sneeze

Martha, besides the word of the decade, it’s also time to collect nominations for the word of the year for 2009.

And I’ve got a long list of them here, and a couple of these are just kind of leaping out at me as good contenders.

What do you think about Dracula sneeze?

I love Dracula sneeze. I would really like to popularize that one.

Here in California, they’re actually recommending that. Officials talk about this.

This is instead of putting your hand over your face when you sneeze, you put your arm over your face. That way you’re not spreading the germs later that land on your hand, right?

And then you say, blah.

Yeah, yeah, because it’s just like the Count holding his cape up to his face.

Yeah, I love that. Kind of hiding on the spot.

One that I particularly like just because it’s kind of ironic, although it’s not really new to this year, is Government Motors. And this is a nickname for General Motors because it took so much government money during the automotive bailout.

So it’s a joke.

Yeah, it sure is.

Yeah.

And then what do you know about Unbium? Or is it unumbium? Ambien? Is that when you stop taking ambien? I don’t know.

It’s different from unobtainium.

No, unumbium is a newly found element. They have a list of generic element names that they kind of hold in reserve.

Oh, really?

Yeah, so they already know what they’re temporarily going to call the next newly found element, and this is it.

They haven’t come up with a permanent name yet, but the abbreviation is capital U, lowercase u, b, u-u-b.

Really? No kidding.

So they named them like hurricanes, only more esoterically.

If you’ve got a Word of the Year or a Word of the Decade candidate, let us know. We’ll talk about them on a future show.

You can send them to words@waywordradio.org or send them to us on Twitter at the username Wayword, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.