Buzz Words of 2010 Explained

As the year fades away, British newspaper, , interprets some of 2010's new buzzwords. Here is a sample that applies to us all. For the remainder, you might have to be a UK voter to understand the context. Read more here:

Assange – The act of dressing self-indulgence up as piety, eg "don't tell me you only stayed in the pub to look after your mate. That's a load of assange and you know it!"

Austerity – Sanctimonious meanness.

Bigot – Person whose determination to have a point of view interrupts your busy campaigning schedule.

Blowout preventer – Device on deepwater oil rigs that, confusingly, doesn't prevent blowouts

Bondage – The sado-masochistic relationship between financial markets and European economies.

Cable – Any communication that is supposed to be private but ends up embarrassingly public.

Kindle – A device that enables you to not read books you have bought without feeling guilty, since you can't see them lying around unopened.

iPad – A very big phone that doesn't make phone calls.

Obama – A unit of time defined by the period that elapses between first experiencing the hope that things will change and then realising that they won't.

Progressive – A decorative word with no specific meaning, applied to government policies to make them sound nicer; artificial sweetener used to disguise the taste of disgusting medicine.

QE2 – quantitative easing: the sequel, starring US federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, in which the heroes of QE1 get together for another rollercoaster adventure in monetary policy.

Vuvuzela – An instrument of torture for inflicting irritation on a scale only slightly below that produced by watching the England squad's performance at the World Cup in South Africa.

Wiki – A prefix applied to mundane objects or actions to give them a veneer of hi-tech subversive credibility.