SPEAK ANY ENGLISH? "-gate" and "-palooza"

A new column by SANDY BOTTOMS ON LANGUAGE

Keeping a handle on our quickly eroding language is becoming tougher by the day. Each generation creates its fun new interpretations of old words and phrases, and today I'd like to explore a few terms that were coined in our time, and our parent's time.

"-palooza"

In our generation, we have an unlikely suffix that has found its way into almost everything. We have "Garage-apalooza", "Paula-Palooza", "Savings-Palooza" and more. The word has come to mean "Festival" and has replaced the ever-popular suffix "-fest." "Farm-Fest", "Strawberry-Fest", these have given way to many different Paloozas. The world will someday be just one big Palooza.

The word appears in old films and has a turn-of-the-century ring to it. It's a Ragtime word. A Roaring 20's kind of word. In the early 1990's when Jane's Addiction front man Perry Farrell launched the Lollapalooza music festival, he was out to give Generation X and Y their very own Woodstock. What he also gave us was a term that would infiltrate our modern language like a virus.

Other similar festival suffixes, such as "Fest" and "-stock" have caught on, but are seriously outdated and do not have the same ring as "Palooza". The "-stock" suffix also suffers from a deep connection to drug culture. "Palooza" has somehow escaped this same connotation, even though drugs were as prevalent at Lollapalooza as Woodstock or any other music "Fest". It comes down to the zippy ring, the way it rolls off your tongue. A home appliance warehouse is going to attract more attention with "Clearance-Palooza!" than they will with "Clearance-Stock".

"-gate"

Our parents' generation gave us their own special word. The Watergate Hotel robbery left another in a series of black marks on the Nixon Presidency. And since then the word has come to mean anything to do with White House scandal. This type of scandal is not just an everyday type of scandal. It is reserved for scandals of epic proportions. You might recall its use in such cataclysmic events as "Monicagate", "Hilarygate", and other Gates. The recent "Troopergate" scandal in Alaska only became a Gate when Sarah Palin became the Republican choice for Vice President. This began as a state-level issue, but now that it has risen to national headlines, it becomes a full-blown Presidential Gate.

It is not for use around the office or home. A Gate strictly belongs to higher echelons of government, at the Federal level. The recent oust of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick could have been dubbed "Textgate" or "Kwamegate". But the event, as huge as it was, did not achieve Gate status. A Gate is on the level of Greek Tragedy. Medea suffered through her own "I must kill my children-gate". Oedipus had his own "I slept with my mother, I had better pluck out my eyes-gate". The scale of the word is epic. You will not see it used in everyday situations like "Mr. Coffee-gate" or "Xerox-gate" in yoru workplace. It will never happen.

Crucial emails could be lost or uncovered at the White House, and this would become "E-gate". A major scandal could erupt involving one of the presidential hopeful's children, and this would warrant full-blown Gate status. They could even be caught doing drugs at a music festival, and this would be called "Palooza-gate".

What these two terms share is a sense of scale and pizazz. Unfortunately they have been overworn and in the coming years, even the grandiose "gate" could become an everyday classroom word. Children could be coming home telling their parents about "Pencil Sharpener-gate". The word still carries some weight, but as the years go on, it could lose its sting. "Palooza" has already dimmed and we can see its impending extinction.

Lollapalooza belonged to us. As the brutal Reagan/Bush years were ending, music was changing into something angrier, more personal, more immediate and somewhat revolutionary. Music had a voice and a new identity, and the Lollapalooza festivals brought together members of a generation (those who could afford the tickets) who had been isolated from that kind of contact throughout the 80's. The word is an of-the-people word. It belongs to us, so no wonder, as we get older, we want to recapture the magic of our youth. We want to inject our new lives with the spirit of Grunge. We are emerging as professionals and consumers, and yet our world has not lost the chaos and sense of danger that gave rebirth to the word in the first place. So it is no wonder that we as we drive along, we see nothing but "Life Insurance-palooza" and "Credit-palooza". We still look for something to belong to.