Letters and Blogs

Talk of tough times

Amid the "great recession", there is growing talk by linguists, or more specifically those who monitor neologisms, of new lingo for the tough economic times.

The recession it seems, has been prodigiously procreative - at least when it comes to the emergence of new words. An obvious example of recession-speak is "Obamanomics", - a reaction to Reaganomics - which refers to US President Barack Obama's belief in bottom-up prosperity in place of late president Ronald Reagan's trickle-down economics.