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Topic: Suggestion For A Name For This Decade: The "Oneties"
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drgoodword
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3214
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posted 09 November 2003 05:20 AM
We're four years into this new decade, and we still don't have a commonly used name for it. This is a problem.In the previous century, with the massive increase in popular media and shared cultural consciousness (no matter how lofty your intellectual tastes, you know exactly what is meant by the term "voted off the Island," even if you never lowered yourself to watch the associated reality tv show), we developed the habit of measuring and defining our pop cultural cycles by decade. So the phrase "the fifties" instantly evokes unique images and sounds, clothing styles and car designs, and the same can be said for most of the decades of the twentieth century. The broadest unit of popular cultural time is the decade. And every decade needs a name. But the name for the first decade of the twenty-first century is eluding us, because we are under the spell of a quirky naming paradigm that has established a pattern fitting only the latter eight decades of any given century, courtesy of the numerical plural suffix "ties." So you have your twenties, your thirties, your forties, your fifties, your sixties (if you remember them), your seventies, your eighties and your nineties, but when you rollover the century and start fresh, what have you got? The aughties?...the zeds?...the naughties (as a number of more salacious would-be decade namers have suggested)? None of these seem right. In fact, nothing will seem right until we pick a name and we all start using it, because the interval 0-9 doesn't have a neat, one-word dictionary term like 70-79 does, and nothing was established as common usage in the previous century, perhaps because the decade as a unit of cultural time wasn't all that meaningful a hundred years ago. So we need a name that follows the established pattern--that ends in "ties"--and that seems to be a natural part of decade numbering. Here's my suggestion: oneties. Sure, it's not a real word (for now), and it sounds a little funny (though not as funny as naughties), but it fits the two criteria I've suggested. Take a look at this new decade name "in order," and I think you'll see it's not such a bad choice (I've also taken the liberty here of re-naming the next decade in order to maintain a uniform decadal nomenclature): oneties tenties twenties thirties forties fifties sixties seventies eighties nineties ...and back to the oneties. Hey, I'm not saying it's perfect. But if four years of this decade have already gone by and the novelists, poets, journalists and other masters of the word that capture and define our language haven't yet come up with a name that's stuck for the first decade of a new century, then why not give "oneties" a chance? By the time you've read this far, you'll probably find that "oneties" sounds almost right.
From: Toronto | Registered: Oct 2002
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skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478
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posted 09 November 2003 12:50 PM
But there's no "one" in most of the "oneties." Why not the "oh!s"? As in "Oh!" Or even the "Uh oh!s." I am already often saying things like, "Back in oh-one/oh-two," etc. We could, of course, call ourselves the pre-teens.
From: gone | Registered: May 2001
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beluga2
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3838
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posted 10 November 2003 04:53 AM
For better or worse, I seem to have settled on "Double-Ohs." (Or, written, "00's").Either that or just The Decade With No Name. How 'bout "The Dubya Decade"? "The Shrubian Era"? If Richard Perle had his way, we'd all be forced to call it "The First 10% of the New American Century". [insert vomit smiley]
From: vancouvergrad, BCSSR | Registered: Mar 2003
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Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469
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posted 10 November 2003 04:43 PM
10. "The Dry Run"9. "The 'My Bad' Decade" 8. "The 10 Years of Living Dangerously" 7. "The New, Improved, Longer-lasting, Minty, Tartar Control Family-Sized Decade (tm)" 6. "The 10 Years Before We Got Hovercars and Video Phones" 5. "The Good Old Days, When Movies Were Only $15" <-- spoken by codgers in 2065 4. "The Millenial Hangover" 3. "Y2K + N, where 0<N<9" 2. "The Little Decade That Could" 1. "The Genetically Modified Salad Days"
From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002
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No Yards
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4169
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posted 12 November 2003 09:19 PM
The Terrorist-ties??The 9-11-ties?? The war years? The age of the decline of the American empire? [ 12 November 2003: Message edited by: No Yards ]
From: Defending traditional marriage since June 28, 2005 | Registered: Jun 2003
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