Word of the Week: Tick-Tock

Tick-tock: Journalism jargon for a story that recounts events in chronological order, as if accompanied by the soundtrack of a ticking clock.

From my Twitter feed:

An Oklahoma way of life: A tick-tock by @jswatz and me on racing time with a tornado. nyti.ms/11etBTl

— Dan Barry (@DanBarryNYT) May 24, 2013

Word Spy’s Paul McFedries credits the late William Safire with the first mention in print of this usage of “tick-tock.” Safire included it in his book The New Language of Politics: an Anecdotal Dictionary of Catchwords, Slogans, and Political Usage. McFedries gives the book’s publication date as 1972, but Wikipedia and Safire’s New York Times obituary—he died in 2009—give it as 1968.

Here’s Safire’s definition of “tick-tock”:

TICK-TOCK journalists argot for story listing chronology leading up to a major announcement or event. ... A tick-tock (the metaphor, obviously, of a clock moving toward a fateful hour) is often written with boldface dates indicating significant meetings or preliminary events, and is more reportorial than a “think piece” or "thumbsucker”…

See the Word Spy entry for a list of other journalism jargon, including muffin choker, charticle (a Fritinancy word of the week in 2009), and Danny Boy.

Comments

[Ben Zimmer]

I don't believe "tick-tock" appeared in the 1968 first edition of The New Language of Politics. (After the 1972 edition, it was published as Safire's Political Dictionary in 1978, 1993, and 2008.) Safire also defined "tick-tock" in a 1973 Times column.

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50615F83A59137A93C4A91782D85F478785F9

[Nancy Friedman]

Thanks for that clarification, Ben. And thanks for the link to the Safire column, which was mostly about another excellent bit of journalese: MEGO ("my eyes glaze over").

For other readers: Ben Zimmer was William Safire's successor as the NYT's "On Language" column. Ben is now executive director of the Visual Thesaurus and language columnist for the Boston Globe.