Word of the Week: Flap and Zap

Flap and zap: Slang term for corrective eye surgery that uses a laser to reshape the cornea. In laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis (LASIK), a thin flap of surface tissue is lifted out of the way to allow the cornea to be reshaped ("zapped") with a laser. 

I discovered flap and zap in the quarterly journal American Speech, where it's listed in "Among the New Words," a regular feature contributed by the lexicographer Grant Barrett. (You can also find Grant at Wordnik, Double-Tongued Dictionary, and the radio program A Way With Words. For the Winter 2009 issue Barrett compiled 17 pages of rhyming compounds of the form noun-and-noun or verb-and-verb. He explained:

When trying to make some sense of the large quantity of new words it is possible to record here, it becomes necessary to slice and dice the database, rank and yank its citations, and then see what trends occur.*

The earliest published citation Barrett records for flap and zap is from a July 18, 1994, article in the Charlotte Observer; the LASIK procedure had been introduced about two years earlier, but according to the Observer reporter, flap and zap was already used "commonly" to describe it.

Robert H. Rubman, MD, an eye surgeon in New York City, maintains a website with the domain name FlapAndZap.com.

Other rhyming compounds covered by Barrett in American Speech include cherries and blueberries, chew and screw, chuck and duck, cuff and stuff, and drag and brag.

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* Read Double-Tongued Dictionary citations for sliced and diced and rank and yank. "Slice and dice" is also a move in World of Warcraft (WOW).

Image from Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou (1929), considered to be the first Surrealist film.

Comments

[Diana Landau]

Medico slang! Reminds me of the anaesthesiologist who lived across the street from us in SF. The vanity plate on his first car read "NOCMOUT" and the one on his second "WAKMUP."