English Isn't This Colorful

Back in the dark ages of the 60s I was a student of German. One of the craziest things about German that made it both fun and frustrating was its ability to build long compound words to describe many different things. Well, I heard and read in the news earlier this week that the publishers of the Langenscheidt dictionaries so indispensable to so many of us took a poll to find the #1 "youth word" of the year. It is Gammelfleischparty or "spoiled meat party."

The word gammelfleisch itself made it big in the past year when people found out that meat packers had been regularly supplying some restaurants with past-due products - spoiled meat. So, in the smarminess of young people everywhere, they began to use gammelfleischparty as their way of describing a gathering of people over 30. (Just when we thought it was safe to trust people over under 30.)

If you are interested the two runner-up words were:

Bildschirmbraeune or "screen tan" — referring to the complexion of someone who spends too much time at a computer.

And unterhopft, meaning "underhopped," or in need of a beer.