Arnold Zwicky's Blog

From Jon Lighter on ADS-L this morning cited, “This is Obamageddon!  It’s Barackalypse now!”

This is a report of Rush Limbaugh’s frothing on his radio show on the 8th, quoted on Fox and Friends yesterday:

Obamageddon. That’s what we have witnessed since Friday. Obamageddon. Barackalypse Now. The only silver lining I can find is that as far as 2012 goes, Obama’s a Debt Man Walking.

-mageddon and -pocalyse again, now available as related libfixes.

Some background. Back in 2008 there were the heavy snows, prompting cries of snowmageddon and snowpocalypse (and more) — portmansnow words. Then came the closing of I-405 in Los Angeles a little while back, yielding the words Carmageddon and Carpocalypse (and more; see here). Then last month the fierce heat waves, and yes, heatmageddon and heatpocalypse (and more).

In the NYT (by Erik Eckholm, on-line on July 22):

Heat … Wave? Bubble? Dome? Seeking an Apt Name as the Hot Days Pile Up

“Everybody talks about the weather, but I guess TV meteorologists have to do it more cleverly,” said Jay Trobec, a weatherman at KELO-TV in Sioux Falls, S.D., as he sought to explain why the phrase “heat dome” is suddenly being heard and seen everywhere.

“I could call it Heatmageddon, but we just had Carmageddon,” he added, referring to last weekend’s freeway closing in Los Angeles.

Heat dome — the condition tormenting the middle and eastern parts of the country this week — is not a standard scientific label, but it has been used sporadically over the years to describe sprawling high-pressure systems in the mid- to upper atmosphere that push warming air to the surface and hold it there.

A fair number of other hits from the same period, plus of course some for heatpocalypse, like this one:

Victims of Heatpocalypse 2011 Are Fighting Back with Refreshing Hipster Herbal Summer Cocktails (link)

Heatpocalypse has a separate life as an extravagant synonym for global warming, as in this cartoon:

Back in January we had dead bids falling from the sky in various places. Yes:

Birdpocalypse Strikes Near Home: Over 100 Dead Birds Found Near Geyserville (link)

Birdmageddon-Signs of the times (link)

There’s more, much more, too much to try to keep track of. For a sampling, see Mark Peters’s 2009 column “Wordgeddon”, focusing on –mageddon and –pocalypse.

Not just Wordgeddon. There’s Wordmageddon, too — the death of the book:

Hell, it’s the Bookpocalypse! It’s Wordmageddon! We shall be crushed, our books shall be driven from the land, and you shall hear the lamentations of our women. (link)

And then Wordpocalypse, a blog by

CHRIS ROCK: COPYWRITER FOR NEARLY 20 YEARS. WRITER FOR MUCH LONGER. (link)

Disaster is all around us: a constant parade of mageddons and pocalypses, usually traveling together.

This entry was posted on August 10, 2011 at 9:16 am and is filed under Libfixes, Linguistics in the comics, Morphology, Portmanteaus. 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.