March 26, 2007
MALAPROPISM OF THE DAY
The subhed to this story in the free commuter daily AMNewYork about the death of Anna Nicole Smith reads "A Florida medical examiner said there was no evidence that the celebutante had taken large amounts of prescription medication." Now I don't want to be like one of those sniffy old matrons jealously guarding membership to society's social register with stringent standards of breeding and wealth, but I will have to take issue with the use of the portmanteau "celebutante" in this case. As I understand it, a celebutante is a young woman who parlays her inherited wealth, beauty, and social standing into celebrity status. Paris Hilton would be the gold standard of celebutantes.
Anna Nicole Smith was a 39-year-old woman who parlayed her poor Texas upbringing, with stints as a jeans model, topless dancer, and unlikely bride of a semi-mummified centi-millionaire, into a career as a drug-addled wreck who careened through life, on camera and off, to the amusement of the general public. And then in the span of about three weeks she gave birth to a baby, lost a son to a drug overdose, and then overdosed herself: a perfect tabloid trifecta, with bonus points for instigating an endless media/legal circus from beyond the grave.
I don't think celebutante is the word someone wanted to use here.
NB: Occasionally, Lexiphane.com likes to publish attempts at neologism in its pages. I'll take this opportunity to coin the following:
celibutante, noun
SEL-i-byu-tahnt
etymology: celibate + debutante, celibacy + celebutante
def: A young woman known as much for her general celebrity as for an outspoken sexual demureness.
"One-time celibutante Britney Spears has worked assiduously to attain the status of Showbiz Slattern over the past five years, going as far as romping in the bushes with another patient during her stint in rehab."
Posted by Lexiphane at March 26, 2007 11:13 AM
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