The OED defines this noun as: “A person who has charge of or looks after a specified thing or operation, esp. in the course of employment. Without defining word esp.: = baby-minder.” There are many variants, in the realms of public relations, crime and sport, where it refers to a goalkeeper.

Indeed, one indication that minder has moved to NOOB status is this recent quote from a New York Times blog about (U.S.) college hockey: “Patterson had 44 saves on the weekend, Tigers’ net minder Josh Thorimbert had 73.”

There was also this from the Times capsule review of “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked”: “The furry guys and the Chipettes, the gal pals they acquired in an earlier installment of the franchise, find themselves shipwrecked along with their human minder, Dave (Jason Lee).”

In a similar human-on-animal way, there is a dog-walking company in Philadelphia called Monster Minders.

If further proof is needed, I offer the fact that minder recently figured in the popular TV series “Gossip Girl.” I confess I couldn’t udnerstand the references I found on the web, so I turned to my colleague Dawn Fallik, a “GG” aficionado, for explanation. She did not disappoint:

Blair was married to King Louis. She never really loved him, so she came back to New York while he headed to Monaco. But he send a royal minder to watch over her every move, so that he’d find out if Blair cheated on him, thereby annulling the marriage and costing Blair big money in dowry. Alas, it turns out the minder was secretly in love with the prince and did all she could to help Blair slut around. The minder is now back in Monaco.

A key figure in U.S. adoption of the phrase appears to be Seth Rogen, who said it first in the 2008 “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and then in “Knocked Up” (the clip below), after being told that he was looks like “Babe Ruth’s gay brother … Gabe Ruth.”

Rogen’s signal contribution may have been ending with the word “sir.” JakeinSD posted an Urban Dictionary definition of “Well played my friend” in January 2008–that is before the release of “40 Year-Old Virgin”:

a statement of extreme agreement/praise for a particular activity that one of your friends has engaged in. can also be used sarcastically to point out a flaw in logic or action (example. when something is not well played, but you say it was in a sarcastic tone).
dude 1: did you get that girls number last night?
dude 2: not only did i get her number, i boned her and didn’t call her.
dude 1: well played my friend!

Clearly, more research is needed.

My intrepid spotter Ellen Magenheim wrote me a couple of weeks ago:

I noticed this morning in the Times that the headline above the story about Jeremy Lin’s latest performance was “Lin Tops Himself” and it briefly took my breath away since my mind went first to the British meaning (i.e., commit suicide) rather than the American meaning. As I thought about it, I wondered if the International Herald Tribune had a different headline–which it did–and then went back to the digital version of the NYT to find that it didn’t have the “Tops Himself” version either. Do you think none of this variation means anything or do you think maybe it dawned on someone about the unfortunate transatlantic ambiguity?

Sure enough, the article she was referring to–about a New York Knicks basketball player who for a time was a U.S. sporting sensation–had in the online N.Y. Times the headline “Lin Puts Knicks Back on Track.” At the very bottom of the article, in small gray print, are these words:

Whenever I read the word randy (quoth the OED: “orig. Sc. and Eng. regional. Lustful; eager for sexual gratification; sexually aroused. [Now the usual sense.]”), my mind’s eye and ear  instantly visualize Austin Powers in full leer: “Feeling randy? Fancy a shag?” Then I start visualizing Brits “‘avin’ a laff” about all the Americans with names like Randy Newman, Randy Travis, and Randy Moss.

This has been happening more and more lately, most recently last night as I was reading a Jonah Lehrer article in the New Yorker in which he mused about the odd behavior of male Australian gray-crowned babblers: “Instead of acting like randy juveniles, seeking out mates and getting into territorial fights, they are content to remain at home.”

But it’s not just The New Yorker, as witness:

“In the Mood,” a new song and a strong indication of where New Edition is likely to go next, was a randy, simmering seduction anthem. (Newark Star Ledger, February 21, 2012)

Seth [the Justin Theroux character in the film “Wanderlust”] suggests a cross between Charles Manson and a randy hobbit. (Boston Herald, February 23, 2011)

The only conceivable response is:

“Yeah, baby.”

I first presented this “U”-phemism–first cited by the OED, appropriately, in a 1940 Nancy Mitford quote–as a Portland, Oregon, outlier, but I now believe it’s made the grade as a NOOB. The Google Ngram chart, below, shows a more than 50 percent increase in U.S. use between 200o and 2008:

Then there are these recent quotes:

I saw Another Happy Day, and thought you really brought it home playing the bitch ex stripper, coke-whore mom — nearly spitting nails with every word catapulted at your co-star, Ellen Barkin. That cat fight in the loo alone was worth the price of admission (“An Oscar-Themed Open Letter to Demi Moore,” Huffington Post, February 28, 2102)

SUSPECTED PEEPING TOM HITS CAMPUS LOO (Coast Report Online, Costa Mesa, Cal., February 21, 2012)

…it’s no longer the morning news that dad is reading on the loo, but rather a tablet computer. (Consumer Reports.org, February 17, 2012)

I can’t top that, so, like George Costanza and Mitt Romney, I will just say:

Gotta go!

No pun intended.

Daft, previously designated On the Radar, is edging perilously close to a proper NOOB. From a Richard Sandomir article about Magic Johnson and AIDS in today’s New York Times:

“Science caught up to the public optimism that made Johnson sound daft or in deep denial on the day of his announcement.”

Your thoughts?

I know Michael Sokolove. Michael Sokolove is a friend of mine. I have not served in the Senate with Michael Sokolove, but I have broken bread with him and played basketball with him and happen to know he hails from Lower Bucks County, Pennsylvania. And so I was surprised to read him say–in a Q and A  at the New York Times website regarding his excellent recent article about Oscar Pistorius:

One of the great things about sport is that it is in some ways primitive, or we want to imagine it is.

The surprising thing was that he said sport, a Britishism, rather than the American sports. (We do, however, refer to baseball as a sport and to a person asa good sport.)I asked him about it and he blamed it on his English son-in-law.

But Sokolove is not alone. Times columnist David Brooks, theorizing on the Jeremy Lin phenomenon, recently wrote:

The moral ethos of sport is in tension with the moral ethos of faith, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim. The moral universe of modern sport is oriented around victory and supremacy.

A headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer late last year read: “Money, not sport, the name of the game.” And a while back, Slate had this one: “Politics and sport: a dangerous mix.”

The next thing you know, we’ll be talking about maths.

@KenJennings of Jeopardy fame tweets:

What is going on where we are suddenly calling redheads “gingers”? People, we won the Revolutionary War, we don’t have to put up with this.

Hey, Ken, you may be the king of all trivia but you have to brush up your NOOBs: Ginger is the second most all-time most popular entry on this blog. (FYI, bits is first and wanker is third.) You and any other interested party can sort out what’s going on with ginger here.

Not One-Off Britishisms is one year and one day old, so happy belated birthday to me!

The very first post (on advert) has been followed by 142 more; there have been 686 comments and 79,492 page views. Massive attention has been paid, to which I say, “Cheers!” (a word that so far on these shores is seen only as a drinks salutation and e-mail closing, not as a substitute for thank you. Give it time).

Unaccountably, new NOOBs keep turning up, so I will carry on for a while. Talking of that, my next post will be on turn up (as a substitute for show up) and the one after that on talking of (speaking of).

The

Immediately. The OED cites a use as early as 1662; the subsequent examples given suggest that in roughly 1900, the predominant form changed from two words (straight away) to one (straightaway), though both versions are still found.

Since straightaway has a 100 percent precise and unobjectionable American equivalent, to wit, right away, its quite frequent use nowadays by U.S. writers is an excellent gauge of their unwavering fondness for NOOBs.

“I knew straightaway what had gone wrong—caps lock was depressed by accident—but instead of simply taking my lumps and re-entering my password, I vented: ‘Is there anything on the computer keyboard more annoying than the caps lock key?'” (Mathew X.J. Malady [“a writer and editor living in Manhattan”], Slate.com. February 1, 2012)

“A comedy about business consultants? Get them to a strip club straight away (‘House of Lies’ pilot, last month).(Neil Genzlinger, New York Times, February 4, 2012)