Inaugalypse: A neologism, compounded from inauguration and apocalypse, to describe the blizzard of events surrounding the inauguration Tuesday of the 44th U.S. president, Barack Obama.
I first encountered Inaugalypse in a Twitter post by Ana Marie Cox, who today becomes Air America Media's first national correspondent based in Washington, DC. Listen for her Inaugalypse coverage on your local Air America radio station.
So far, a search for Inaugalypse reveals only seven matches, several of them linking to Ms. Cox. A few, however, link to two other DC bloggers: Ahlan wa Cheerio and Fizzawrites. This post will probably become number eight, unless someone beats me to it.
-alypse is a moderately productive morpheme, yielding (partial list) Iraqalypse, HipHopalypse, quarterbackalypse, clusterfuckalypse, a-shlock-alypse, and epoch-alypse. There's also Apocalypso (the title of an album and a novel) and Apocalypstick, which shows up in a book title (The Palin Prophecies: Apocalypstick Now!), in a song title, and in the name of a smart, well-written (and, alas, defunct) blog about beauty and makeup, Apocalypstick Now.
Other inauga- combinations have included Inaugapalooza (used only, as far as I can tell, in connection with the weeklong celebration in 2007 of the inauguration of Emporia State University's president) and Inaugarama (possibly coined by the authors of the Democratic Diva blog).
Wow, word of the week! (I found this through trackback links). It's probably a case of two people coming up with the same idea independently, but I feel a little surge of pride that my blog post is two days before Ana Marie Cox's tweet.
And for the record, the inaugalypse wasn't as apocalyptic as I thought it would be - but it was stunning to be in the crowd of 2 million people.
Posted by: Tkb | January 21, 2009 at 05:38 PM
@Tkb: Thanks for dropping by. I loved reading your account of the Inauguration, and especially appreciated the Reagan subversion in the title (http://is.gd/gQyg , for readers who want to check it out).
Posted by: Nancy Friedman | January 22, 2009 at 08:55 AM
Great to see your mention of The Palin Prophecies: Apocalypstick Now!, which I published at KenArnoldBooks (www.kenarnoldbooks.com). And take a look at www.buzzaroonie.com, a new site for authors and books. But you'll perhaps like the word, "buzzaroonie," "aroonie" being an Australian suffix that oddly enough turns up on at least one Charle Parker recording. Coolaroonie...
Posted by: Kenneth Arnold | January 28, 2009 at 06:24 PM