Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Overheard in a local restaurant last week, one Silicon Valley guy to another, about a third: “He’s a total deal whore” — meaning that he’s totally into doing business deals.

This is a instance of the snowclonelet composite X whore, roughly ‘one who craves X (or something to do with X) extravagantly’. Most examples, including this one, are non-subsective: an X whore is not a whore; a deal whore is a whore for deals, but not actually a whore.

Lots of instances of deal whore, for instance:

Tricks of a Deal Whore: Hotels (link) [about finding the best hotel deal in San Francisco]

Exchange here:
[1] Shop online, buy local! Don’t be a deal whore!
[2] What exactly is a deal whore?
[3] A deal whore is a guy that would rather spend 10hrs scouring the web to save $5 over what his local shop/business just quoted him.

I’m a deal whore… Give me something good and I’ll make it happen. (link)

More examples of X whore:

crack whore: huge number of hits, not all of them with actual reference to crack cocaine. Some are just generalized insults (though there are also plenty of references to whores on crack, that is, women who finance their crack habit through prostitution). There’s even a “Crack Whore” t-shirt (for women) – with the expression reappropriated defiantly. The generalized insult:

Lisa Wu Hartwell from “Real Housewives of Atlanta” tells TMZ she did leave a threatening voicemail for her rival co-star– but only because Kim Zolciak called her a “crack whore” and insulted her children. (link)

attention whore: from Wiktionary (12/18/08):

Someone who craves attention and is not above soliciting it via deliberately meaningless or provocative tactics.

quote whore:

Who are the quote whores? They are unscrupulous little maggots who wiggle across the junkets and free screenings of America and come up with the most hyperbole-laden praise to ensure their place amongst the by-lines of film ads and commercials. You see, a true quote whore doesn’t write anything but this brand of copy. (link)

blog whore (several senses):

So the blog whore problem is about people who write and say, “Please feature my product in your blog.” “Please mention my survey in your blog.” Please, please, please. On the one hand, I’m flattered, on the other, I feel like … well, you get it by now. (link)

As businesses begin to realise the benefits of blogging, many companies will be looking for corporate blog whores in the future.
… Would you become a corporate blog whore, if one of these companies offered you a huge salary to write for them, even if it meant giving up your own blog? Or would you use your own blog to promote a large company, in return for financial reward? (link)

compliment whore:

I have discovered that I am a compliment whore. I used to get several a day, when there was more than ten people on line here, and now I’m jonesing for compliments. I still get them, but much fewer and I can’t gush over them like I used to.

gamer score whore, achievement whore [in gaming]:

Unlike a GSW, an AW is more obsessed with completing the games they do own than their total gamerscore. (link)

media whore (many, many hits):

several senses in Urban Dictionary

in Wiktionary:

media whore (plural media whores)

(derogatory) A person who attempts to transfer or transfers from one entertainment industry to another based only on prior popularity and not necessarily legitimate talent.

Lindsay Lohan is considered to be a media whore by many young people because she used her popularity in the television industry to leverage a career in the music industry.

(derogatory) A person who craves media attention; someone who will apparently do anything to remain in the media spotlight.

Media Whores Online, also known as mediawhoresonline.com or The Horse or often just MWO, was a liberal American political webzine that operated as a media watchdog. (link)

Finally, some figurative sexual uses of X whore: cock whore ‘person (male or female) who craves hard cock’ (many hits); some hits for the more specific suck whore, fuck whore, ass whore (several senses).

X whore seems to be a particularly versatile snowclonelet. Am I a snowclonelet whore?

 

 

This entry was posted on December 21, 2010 at 10:05 am and is filed under Compounds, Snowclones. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.