Friday roundup: Damp Squid and Adam Smith

Spotted this week:

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1. A widely reported story on the 10 most irritating expressions in English. It's another book tie-in, the book in question being Damp Squid (pictured) by Jeremy Butterfield.

There's a related quick quiz on the OUP blog and it's also worth checking out the Underwire coverage (thanks, Harry) simply for all the comments.

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2. An even more widely reported story concerning Adam Smith, a reporter for the Birmingham Mail (that's Birmingham in England!). While in Miami, Smith got drunk celebrating Barack Obama's election victory and was filmed:

• jokingly admitting to cutting and pasting from the BBC website – while filing copy
  

• swearing at the camera

• resigning from his job to set up his own magazine

• referring to himself as 'Steve Zacharanda' (I'm not sure why... he may have had a reason)

We've all had nights like that.


UPDATE 18:30 - Yes, I know it's not a Friday. But it certainly feels like one...

OUP Word of the Year: credit crunch

Oxford University Press emailed The Engine Room this morning to inform us that the OUP UK Word of the Year – "as chosen by Countdown's Susie Dent" – is 'credit crunch'.

You can see Susie pictured here on the front cover of her new book, Words of the Year, which is published by OUP. I suspect some kind of tie-in.

Anyway, I can understand the arguments for 'credit crunch' as word of the year: it's highly topical, in common use, nicely alliterative, and so on.

But there's one very strong argument against: 'credit crunch' isn't a word, as most people understand the term – it's a phrase. A noun phrase, to be more specific.

I suppose that 'OUP Word or Noun Phrase of the Year' doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

(It's probably worth mentioning here that I went for a very appealing job at OUP a few years ago and, shockingly, didn't get it. Not that I'm bitter at all.)


So what would be your word or noun phrase of the year?