Thursday, November 17, 2005

Neologo-palooza

Another productive, reparsed morpheme. First came Lollapalooza, about which our dubiously reliable friend Wikipedia has this to say:
Farrell conceived of the Lollapalooza festival in 1990 as a farewell tour for Jane's Addiction. The name Lollapalooza means "something outstanding or unusual"; Farrell heard the word in a Three Stooges short film and liked the sound.
Ok, sure, whatever. With increasing frequency, the -palooza bit has been broken off and applied in other contexts. The meaning seems to be along the lines of "festival of ...", often meant with an ironic twist.

  • Penant Palooza (Web site)
  • Salsa-Palooza (Web site)
  • Wrestle Palooza (Web site)
  • Potty Palooza (a traveling potty to advertise Charmin. Nice.)
  • "After April's repairapalooza, when I could actually hear the dollars whizzing out of my bank account, this left me comparatively giddy." (Blog entry)
  • (Insert about 100 more here)

I suspect that the particle is popular also for the simple reason that it's fun to say and funny to hear.

1 comment:

Rick said...

A particularly elegant -palooza appeared this year on Josh Marshall's talkingpointsmemo.com political blog: bamboozlepalooza, for Bush's effort to promote his Social Security plan. Tricky to pronounce, but of course it is meant to be read, and the double -ooz- is nifty!