Need for speed

There’s been a bit of a hoo-ha about the Oxford Dictionaries naming “vape” as its word of the year for 2014.

It evidently refers to…something to do with e-cigarettes: the device itself and the vapor it causes. (Color me clueless, because I’ve not experienced this so far.)

I did find this “explanation” of the choice from Casper Grathwohl, president of the dictionaries division at OUP kind of cringeworthy: “I particularly love watching a word like ‘vape’ create linguistic knock-on effects, like hearing the word ‘tobacco’ now used to qualify ‘cigarette. But this year ‘vape’ also served as an insightful window onto how we define ourselves.”

Maybe onto how you define yourself, Casper. I don’t even know what you just said.

And anyhow, for me “vapes” will always refer to the moisture discharge that whooshes off the wings of an F-14 Tomcat as it’s breaking the sound barrier.

The little trendoid e-cig yappers got nothing against that.