No Commentum

Language guy Mark Peters writes in the Boston Globe about "-mentum," the political suffix du jour, especially in reference to Barack Obama:

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.

Earlier coinages have included Joementum (during the momentum-challenged 2004 Joe Lieberman presidential campaign) and Met-mentum, seen in New York in 2000.

Peters speculates that no-mentum, used as candidates drop out of the race,"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."

There's also faux-mentum, as in "nothing going on after all."

Thinking about -mentum got my name-mentum going. How about...

D'oh!mentum: Homer Simpson can't stop doing one stupid thing after another.

Eskimomentum: Global warming accelerates; Aleuts and Inuits step up their protests.

MoMAmentum: Museum fundraising exceeds goals!

Pianissimomentum: It's growing, but very, very quietly.

Mentosmentum: Ten million people want to see an eruption caused by dropping a lot of candy into a lot of Coke.

Yo-mentum: Use of a a gender-neutral pronoun first heard in Baltimore catches on nationwide.

Hey, it's monumentumous!

Comments

[Orange]

Is he on crack? "O-mentum" doesn't evoke Oprah—it evokes the omentum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_omentum), the great blob of peritoneal tissue that occupies some of the space around our abdominal organs.

A few years ago, I thought of omentum when "Joementum" was bandied about. The "O-mentum," though—oy!

[Tim Hicks]

Some years ago an American League baseball team bragged that it was entering the playoffs with an extra player: Mo Mentum.