Hypermiling

Bernie Goldbach in Clonmel | Screenshot from Automotive Insider

FROM THE OXFORD American Dictionary prepares comes the 2008 Word of the Year hypermiling. You're a hypermiler if you keep the tires on your car properly inflated to maximize your mileage. If you removed the roof rack from your vehicle to streamline your car you're also on the shortlist. Some hypermiling driving techniques can drive Irish drivers demented. I know I can squeeze an extra 10 miles out of the yellow warning light on our fuel gauge by hypermiling. It means shutting down the engine at red lights, keeping the car's vacuum gauge between 30 and 50 mpg and rarely overtaking. 

Keeping in the spirit of the movement, other finalists include:

• frugalista - person who leads a frugal lifestyle, but stays fashionable and healthy by swapping clothes, buying second-hand, growing their own produce.
• moofer - a mobile out of office worker - ie. someone who works away from a fixed workplace, via Blackberry/laptop/wi-fi. If you're good at this, we should go moofing together. 
• topless meeting - a meeting in which the participants are barred from using their laptops, Blackberries, or mobile phones.
• toxic debt - mainly sub-prime debts that are now proving so disastrous to banks. They were parceled up and sent around the global financial system like toxic waste, hence the allusion.

---

Bernie Goldbach saves definitions.