Video Verbiage

In last week's issue of The New Yorker, Lexicographer H. L. Mencken* took a long look at the developing language of television. Like other barbaric dialects, Mencken found, it includes many borrowings from earlier cultures (theater, movies, radio); and TV's own coinages, as reported by Variety and assorted philologers, seemed to consist largely of the obvious, like ike for iconoscope. Other samples of current video verbiage given by Mencken:

Bounce. Irregular changes in the brightness of a picture.

Busy. A picture showing too much scenic detail.

Dish. A microwave reflector.

Gaffoon. A sound-effects man.

Garbage can. A microwave-relay transmitter.

Grease pusher. A make-up man.

Hot. Said of a strongly lighted background.

Snap. Sharp contrast between black & white.

Snow. Black or white spots on screen.

Tear (rhymes with bear). Image disturbance so violent that the picture seems to fly apart.

Vaudeo. Televised vaudeville.

Mencken noted the industrywide confusion concerning a name for TV fans. He was unimpressed by televiewer, viewer, looker and looker-in. Mencken's contribution: "I suggest trying gawk."

*Three weeks ago, following a "small stroke," 68-year-old H. L. Mencken was admitted to Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital. Last week the hospital reported "slow improvement."

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