Listen to Professor Crystal....

wuss

'He's a wuss.' 'She's a wuss.' It means ineffectual person, indecisive, weak. It's from the United States; it came in in the 1980s. To be honest, I didn't think it would last, but it's still here. It has a very unclear etymology. It may be from 'wussy' - that is from pussy wussy, you know, the pussy cat. It's a kind of talking down about a cat. Or it might be a blend of 'wimp' - that is an ineffectual person - plus 'pussy': wimp/pussy, wussy, wuss. 'Stop being a wuss!' - that's the usage you hear a lot these days. Anyway, whatever the etymology, a politician was said to be 'a liberal wuss' - that is a coward. And there are even Wuss Awards now. I saw on the web the other day, 'Who was the biggest Wuss of 2005?' - with a capital W - this is obviously something very attractive to be. The word seems to be developing. It's become a verb - 'Stop wussing!' 'Ah! He's wussing around!' And I've even seen a new noun, wusser, wussers - 'We're all wussers now!' 'We've all become a complete pack of complete wussers,' says somebody on a website.

Wysiwyg

Wysiwyg. But it's not spelt as it sounds. Wysiwyg. It's an acronym meaning 'what you see is what you get'. It came in in the early 1980s in computing. It meant that what you see on the screen is what you get in the output. For example, you type something on the screen and when you print it out, it looks just like it's on the screen. Wysiwyg. It was especially found in desktop publishing. So it's a technical term then? Well, yes, but the phase actually isn't. And that's the thing I want to draw your attention to - the phrase was never technical. It actually started in the United States, in a television show, in the early 1970s; it was called 'Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In'. An actor there called Flip Wilson appeared as a cross-dressing character called Geraldine and as he came on, he would say, 'what you see is what you get!' And I've heard it used since in all sorts of circumstances. I've heard it used in restaurants referring to the food - 'what you see is what you get'. And in a tourist brochure referring to beautiful scenery - 'come to this country and what you see is what you get' - that is, the tourist guide will give you everything you expect. And it got its accolade, I think, this phrase, when Britney Spears had a song which included it - 'because I can promise U baby what you see is what U get' - the word 'you' was spelt with just a capital letter 'U'

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