n. A store dedicated to the creation, preparation, and/or sale of bagels.

Baked goods, categorically, are sold in bakeries. Of course, baked goods are also sold in various other environs, but specialty shops have their own name. Bagels, king of the boiled good family, also have specialty shops, perhaps more abundant in most towns than bakeries are. Currently, these are clumsily known as "bagel stores." That is all changing. I don't go to bagel stores anymore. I go to bagelries. I suggest you do the same.

n. Abbreviated form of the word "girlfriend", adopted after it was noticed that many English-speakers became winded after pronouncing the entire word.

A team of ergonomicists worked for over a year and concluded that, if the last five letters of the word were deleted, only the sick or infirm would have difficulty reaching the end of the word without becoming winded. They also reasoned that the sick or infirm would be better off without the added strain of girlfriends.

Why wasn't "girlfriend" simply replaced with the abbreviation GF? Abbreviations are friendly and fun...like "Mr. And Mrs. C" from the beloved Happy Days television series or "M and P" (Mom and Pop) from Anthony Burgess' heartwarming novel about coming of age, A Clockwork Orange. The word "Girlf" sounds uncannily like the noise a boxer makes if he is punched in the solar-plexus while belching.

With the word "Boyf," "Girlf" has filled a void in the category of "cool words that end in 'f'". A welcome addition in the wake of 2001, when the OED dispatched lingual-engineers to infiltrate hipster groups and seed words such as "Ruff", "Coif" and "Serif". The project met with little success.

n. Official Abb./Slang: Buzzword referring to "Anti-Social Behavior Order" imposed on misbehaving members of British communities. Pronounced "AZZ-bo."

An "ASBO" or "Anti-Social Behavior Order" is a form of good-behavior bond doled out to violent youths and truanting schoolchildren to curtail their anti-social activities in place of the authorities being able to lock them up for the night, or indefinitely.

The "more respectable" members of British society (wallowing in their fear of the chattering, noisy, littering, loud-music-playing, and attack-dog-keeping people with whom they share their local communities) would happily "lock them up and throw away the key" if given the chance. "If only the rest of us had a say," people remark in the letters pages of right-leaning newspapers, "then we could nip the problems of society in the bud and restore some Respect. Just like the good old days."

The self-proclaimed "law-abiding" members of UK society dream of bringing back National Service and conscripting all the horrible, work-shy, aggressive layabouts into the army. After all, it did them no harm in the 1950s. Public flogging for drunkards, abusive neighbors, graffiti kids, and people who play loud dance music at 2 a.m., sounds reasonable to them. But for now, there is the ASBO which restricts some people's freedom to annoy other people. This makes the nicer members of society happy. The UK government issues ASBOs to show how tough they are on crime and "the culture of disrespect."

But, the ASBO is becoming a symbol of pride; a medal to be worn as a badge of honor by those belligerent enough to earn one. The ASBO may halt bad behavior, but it enhances credibility. The ASBO is a punishment, but also a gift to those who revel in it.

Society has yet to realize this fact.

v. From the noun poster. To humiliate or defeat one's opponent in such dramatic and complete fashion that they will likely be seen on the bottom corner of some future poster, the asterisk to one's own amazing achievement. Primarily used in reference to basketball and the National Basketball Association.

There are newer words than "Posterize," but few that have so quickly climbed from slang nonsense to complete respectability and common usage. Why this should be is not entirely clear.

"Posterize" focuses not so much on the game being played as the individuals involved. The poster will never capture good team defense and rarely highlights a crisp pass. It is the sound bite equivalent of sports marketing. "Posterize" is a word invented not to describe a play but to describe a humiliation. Its rise seems indicative of the recent individualistic bent of the NBA. Michael Jordan and his brilliance gave everyone the wrong idea about what basketball should be. Every team now needs a superstar and preferably one with enough magnificence in the tank that he can dunk over some poor sap, so he can posterize some erstwhile defender.

Vince Carter does a lot of posterizing but he's a loser. He plays for losing teams and dogs it when things go badly for him. "Posterize" has the potential to make the leap to the pejorative. The poster itself is a juvenile thing. A poster is not a championship. It's a meaningless snapshot. It is one man's accomplishment over one other man. "Way to posterize that other team. You had three break away dunks and shot 3-for-18 the rest of the night. Awesome."

The NBA's last two champions have been teams with T's, comprised of basketball players of such soundness that the biggest star among them is nicknamed the Big Fundamental. I hope this indicates some memory loss about Michael Jordan's ability to play one-on-five and a return to team basketball. I hope it means that when old, white sportswriters begin dragging "Posterize" into the pages of the Boston Globe it indicates nothing more than a loss of credibility for such a selfish word.

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