Dawn of a new word order

The new Future Dictionary of America imagines how the language of tomorrow will be shaped by the society of today. But what of Britain's vocabulary? Our resident lexicographers offer their suggestions

anachrophobia [an-akra-fobi-ah] n. a violent intolerance towards time-travellers who have escaped the stresses and strains of life in the future and downshifted to the past. In 2030s Lincolnshire, there was a spate of attacks on owners of digital watches, most of which turned out to be cases of mistaken identity.

anachrophobia [an-akra-fobi-ah] n. a violent intolerance towards time-travellers who have escaped the stresses and strains of life in the future and downshifted to the past. In 2030s Lincolnshire, there was a spate of attacks on owners of digital watches, most of which turned out to be cases of mistaken identity.

apologhoea [apo-lo-gea] n. uncontrollable outpouring of apology (often specious), characteristic of early 21st-century world politics. See also: blerror ( n) a mistake made, allegedly, in good conscience, first attributed to British Prime Minister Tony Blair (1997-2005).

acupuncher [ak-yuu-pun-cha] n. one who alleviates the stress of physical or verbal taunts by striking out at the assailant.

alpha Mail [al-fa may-al] n. a person who is more paranoid and right wing than you thought possible, but who maintains an aura of Middle England common sense at all times.

astronot [ass-tra-not] n. space virgin, person who has yet to leave Earth's atmosphere.

attheendoftheday [aah-thuh-enuv-aday] adv. of a fundamental proposition; a term much favoured by sportspeople in post-match interviews. NB has no relationship to any actual 24-hour period, eg "What I'm saying is, when you get up at six in the morning to train, attheendoftheday, you've got to be focused on the job."

Blair-faced lie [Bleuuurgh-fayced-ly] n. an untruth that you admit to only inasmuch as you blame someone else for misinforming you.

Branson pickle [bran-son pik-ull] n. to be in a quandary about whether to take the train ( qv) or fly in an extra-orbital spaceship to your holiday home.

Brownian motion [brow-nee-yan mo-shun] n. the act of appearing in front of cameras with a shifty and surly demeanour.

colonic fatigue syndrome [kolon-ik fateeg sin-drum] n. overuse of warm-water enemas.

Deblunket [dee-blunk-it] vb. to dismiss a notion as liberal and ill-thought out; to replace rational thought with unspecified fear (see alpha Mail).

Desanitation [dasani-tayshun] n. the act of completely ignoring, denouncing and/or refusing to buy bottles of bogus mineral water marketed by a major soft-drinks multinational.

ESA - External State of America [ee-ess-ay] n. eastern Atlantic landmass, formerly known as United Kingdom.

Eurinal [yur-eye-nul] n. public convenience mainly employed for the disposal of useless foreign coins recently acquired in France, Italy etc.

foxhunting [foks-untin] n. finding fault with the news coverage of a global multinational media organisation.

Google [goo-gul] n, vb, adj, adv. an archaic word thought to be associated with a primitive version of the Transgalactic Omninet; a "search engine" that facilitated access to a "webpage" that offered fanciful textual information, flashing lights and pictures of naked celebrities, alongside inappropriate sponsorship.

hypertonsion [hi-per-tonshun] n. feeling of anxiety, social exclusion etc resulting from the (perhaps ill-advised) shaving of one's head.

Idi Emin [eedee-ehmeen] n. frightening, semi-mythical figure who haunted the art quarters of east London in the 2000s, expelling Asian immigrants, taking on ever-more-fanciful titles, practising cannibalism and embroidering the names of his 93 wives on to a canvas bivouac.

iGod [ay-god] n. a portable device (typically of 500-yottabyte capacity) that simulates the wisdom and /or awe-inspiring terror of an omnipotent deity. eg "I downloaded Buddhism on to my iGod last week and I've already reached a state of nirvana."

iJob [ay-job] n. optical liposuction for people with unfashionably fat eyes, popular in the 2010s. The extracted vitreous humour made an excellent teething gel for babies.

Jaggery-pokery [jag-ger-ree po-ker-ee] n. sexual misadventures indulged in by ageing lech who should really know better.

Kilroysilchosis [kil-roy-sil-ko-sis] n. mental disorder closely related to megalomania, which compels the sufferer to join and then attempt to take over a series of increasingly cranky and marginal organisations. Named after the apricot-coloured television presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk, and his progress from UKIP (2004-5) to Migration Watch (2005-7), the Aetherius Society (2008-12), the Young Ornithologists' Club (2013-19), Friends of Paul Darrow (2020-21) and the Conservative Party (2021-present).

lapdogging [lap-dog-ing] vb. the practice of meeting strangers for sex at isolated wi-fi hotspots in the Forest of Dean.

liplash [lip-lashh] n. injury sustained in high winds by over-judicious users of lip glosses (esp Lancôme Juicy Tubes). The victim's salon-perfect hair adhering to her glossy lips to the point of asphyxiation and public humiliation.

Lycrastinate [ly-crass-tinayt] vb. attempt to put off cosmetic surgery by wearing too-tight clothes.

Mail order [mayl-or-duh] n. colloquial term for the piece of legislation passed by Parliament in 2012, decreeing that for every Albanian granted asylum in the UK, two Daily Mail readers should be deported to Tirana. By 2020, Britain was a paradise of tolerance that made the illustrations in The Watchtower look like dirty realism. In Albania, sales of golfing slacks, orthopaedic pillows and PVC conservatories rocketed, reviving the flaccid economy.

Mandelson mirror [man-dul-son mirra] n. handheld computer for men, capable of storing up to 3,000 "personal best" anecdotes/business coups/sexual conquests and programmed to remind user hourly how handsome, funny and clever he is; it was hailed as a breakthrough labour-saving device by 21st-century women.

mooregage [maw-gayj] vb. to waste away your time watching conspiracy-theory documentaries.

moreality [maw-al-itee] n. economic principle based on ever-increasing consumption.

moreality clause [maw-al-itee clorz] n. the 2020 Parliamentary reform requiring tax to be paid on any household item proved to be in householder's possession for longer than 18 months.

never-never-lunch [neva-neva-lunch] n. a lunch date that is cancelled and deferred every few days, for an indefinite period of time. It evolved in the 2010s as a mutual agreement between people who didn't like each other very much but wanted to fill their blank diaries. But with the advent of a new generation of intelligent electronic personal organisers, it became possible for these negotiations to continue for years without either party knowing about it.

nerveless bacon [nerv-less bay-cun] n. meat from a species of pig bred to possess so few sensory organs that it can no longer be considered to be an animal. In 2041, British farmers lobbied successfully to have these blind, shapeless blubbery non-organisms reclassified as a form of German Friendship Cake - that stuff you grow in the dark of your airing cupboard and give away to neighbours you can't stand. This development confounded animal-rights activists, who broke into their barns and became frustrated when their occupants refused to run wild over the countryside. Mounting them on wheels and painting on little faces did little to excite public opinion.

omnisexual [om-nee-seks-yu-al] adj. the condition in which everyone and everything becomes sexualised. Origin: early 21st-century neologisms such as metrosexual, pomosexual, fauxmosexual and retrosexual.

prefabilitation [pree-fab-ili-tayshun] n. process of physical and spiritual healing, usually in fashionable clinic, for people forced to live in cheap and horrible building.

Prescott logic [press-cot lojik] n. a branch of higher mathematics in which conventional formal proofs are suspended.

propertea prices [prop-err-tee pry-sez] n. a 22nd-century obsession with the rise and fall of the value of loose-leaf first-flush darjeeling.

Question Mime [kwesh-teeyun myme] n. reinvention of 20th-century political show to accommodate the widely held belief that any actual words used by politicians are devoid of any meaning or value.

quiddicity [kwid-iss-sitee] n. a revolutionary form of fossil fuel which transformed the British economy in 2035, after a team at Oxford University discovered that bad writing produced the most heat - and that consequently, a copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire could warm an average family home for more than a fortnight. Charity shops and landfill sites disgorged their contents, and the elderly JK Rowling became the poster girl of the anti-nuclear lobby.

Readian reversal [ree-dyan reever-sal] n. the process by which cultural artefacts once regarded as utterly without merit are reappraised as timeless masterpieces. Named after the late Saturday Superstore presenter and stalker-magnet Mike Read, whose work - which includes a reworking of A Midsummer Night's Dream entitled Oh Puck! and Cliff the Musical - was customarily dismissed by 21st-century critics as "bilge" and "leaden dross", but subsequently placed at the heart of the English literary canon. Today, every schoolchild can recite the immortal couplets of Read's Oscar Wilde: "I'm going to stand my ground and fight/The things you two do just can't be right."

Rowling [rou-lyng] participle. to be comfortably well off, as in "Ever since she sold those BBC shares in 2019, they've been rowling in it."

self-abuse [self-abyoose] n. low, demotic vituperation directed at any pretentious associate who expresses himself in gratuitously sesquipedalian verbiage in the manner of Mr Will Self.

shamponics [sham-pohniks] n. a branch of theoretical chemistry which gained academic respectability in the 2020s, when it was discovered that far from being meaningless bafflegab dreamt up by overpaid marketing executives, the "science bit" in shampoo adverts actually meant something. Even the stuff about pro-vitamins, quaternium and nutrileum. The first incumbent of the Pantene Chair in Advanced Shamponics was Professor

Andie MacDowell.

skintact [skin-takked] n. sexual congress, typical of pre-allergenic era, involving skin-to-skin contact (illegal since Sexual Reform Bill of 2042 which made skintactual sex a statutory offence, except in Wales).

slackardly [slakk-ahh-dlee] adj. wilfully unattractive. See also: unstitched. ("I ran into Eleanor today and, my dear, she looked positively unstitched."); see also slackards ( n) minority faction opposed in principle to cosmetic surgery.

squaddyzon [skwaddee-zon] n. self-styled soldier; mendacious claim to be a member of the Black Watch regiment heading for Baghdad, in the hope of persuading girls to sleep with you out of sympathy.

testiculate [tes-tik-u-layt] vb ( intransitive). to wave your hands about in wild but vague manner because you suspect you are talking bollocks.

train [trayn] n ( obs). a mode of public transport introduced in the early 19th century which was largely phased out by the mid 21st century due to leaves on the line.

truth [troof] n ( obs). an archaic term indicating an essence of ultimate logic and concordance with observable facts, now used, paradoxically, in an opposite sense in such phrases as "the truth of the matter is", where the speaker wishes to equivocate or generalise to the point of meaninglessness.

Trusstafarian [truss-ta-fah-ree-an] n. any member of the cult of grammar and punctuation fundamentalists who enjoyed a brief period of popularity in the early 21st century, before the passing of the Greengrocer's Apostrophe's (Preservation) Act of 2011.

umbilicoid [um-bili-coyd] n. person conceived ex-vitro and born of woman in pre-cloning era.

umbilicoid [um-bili-coyd] adj ( archaic). inappropriate to modern world. (His proposal of free primary education was dismissed as hopelessly umbilicoid).

virtual meality [ver-tyoo-al mee-ali-tee] n. deleting and airbrushing every digital image of yourself until you believe that that really is how you look.

war on terriers [wor on tear ears] n. begun in 2124, after all other forms of opposition to the 54 United States of America had been eradicated, this sought to contain the population of small yappy dogs.

Widdecomeback [widee-cum-bak] n. unexpected, counter-intuitive process by which reviled political monster becomes much-loved pillar of good sense by dyeing her hair and writing agony column.

x-dial [ekks-dy-al] n. mobile phone incorporating breathalyser which automatically bars calls to former lovers when user's blood-alcohol level is raised.

yummy mummy [yuh-mee muh-mee] n. advances in genetic modification in the 22nd century enabled the growing of extra body parts - with optional strawberry flavour and vitamin enhancements - that provided a ready source of nutrition for hungry toddlers.

youtopia [utoh-pee-ah] n. an ideal state of being in which neighbours, fellow passengers and all other external irritations are eradicated by means of noise-cancelling headphones, video-glasses and/or flotation tanks.

Zarina [zah-ree-nah] n. former aficionado of designer clothing who has realised that a good copy is even better than the real thing. See also, false economy.

Zooillogical [zoo-ee-loji-kal] adj. of young males; to look for sex and lifestyle advice in cheap magazines that feature sex and lifestyles that only occur in cheap magazines.

Compiled by E Jane Dickson, Carl Reader, Matthew Sweet, John Walsh, Mark Wilson

'The Future Dictionary of America', edited by Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss, is published by Hamish Hamilton, priced £14.99. Available from Independent Books Direct on 08700 798 897 for £13.99 including p&p