The challenge last time was to come up with a name for “the music you get while on hold on the phone” — a term like elevator music.
James L. Sherley, of Boston, took exception to the idea that the two kinds of music could be considered similar. “The purposes of elevator music and phone-hold music are quite different,” he contended. “Ambiance versus distraction from time theft, respectively. My suggestion is time-out music, to denote that the person who put you on hold has taken a time-out from helping you, has essentially put you on a punishing time-out, and the music is an attempt to distract you from the time that is being taken from you.”
The way James and most other readers perceived this challenge may have been skewed by the original correspondent’s remark that the on-hold music is sometimes “dreadful.” A few readers did come up with fairly neutral terms: John Michaels, of Peabody, proposed cell-evator music; Daniel R. Spirer, of the Berkshires, ringtunes; and Marjory Wunsch, of Cambridge, musicallwait. Rob Moore, of North Falmouth, reasoned: “Since we are often hearing the on-hold music because we are in line to be the next caller, we should call it queuesic, meaning queue music.”
But these good-natured souls were badly outnumbered by the haters. Ann Souto, of Portsmouth, N.H., denounced phone-hold music as earitating; Joyce Bohnen, of Newton, called it annoisance; Stuart Rose, of Lincoln, toneishment or immaural; Mitty Shaughnessy, of Dartmouth, dronetone; David Raines, of Lunenburg, malodies; and Avrum Mayman, of Canton, museache (by which, my spell-checker helpfully suggested, Avrum and I must really mean mustache). Marc McGarry, of Newton, explained that his word covered “both a call and feeling like the wait is interminable”: callimbo.
John Haneffant, of Boston, proposed: “How about torture chamber music?” Bob Smith, of Roslindale, came up with torture chamber musak, “otherwise known as lull-a-byes, which will eventually compel you to sleep or to hang up, or loopy-tunes, over and overtures.” Michael Bohnen, of Newton, thought phonezak might do.
Mark Wagner, of Dudley, whose suggestion was fauxtone, added: “In researching this vexing challenge, I learned that Americans will spend a ridiculous 900 million hours on hold collectively during a calendar year. That equates to 102,739 years! This year alone we’ve been waiting 102,739 years for customer service! Heavens to Murgatroyd.”
Steve Rivers, of Swansea, wrote: “Many people use Bluetooth, and some use earbuds while on the phone. My word suggestion is earbug. Most phone music is bad but can be catchy in its own weird way, leaving the tune in your head for several hours after your call is finished.”
Several hours, Steve? How about several days?
Steve’s word is comparable to earworm, one of whose meanings is “a song or melody that keeps repeating in one’s mind.” We borrowed this word in this sense circa 1982 from the German Ohrwurm. (Anciently, maggot, besides referring to the larva of a housefly, also had a meaning similar to earworm in this sense: a catchy dance tune.)
Earworm itself had joined our language about four centuries earlier, when it meant, the Oxford English Dictionary informed me, “an earwig. Now rare.” An earwig, of course, is usually a little brown bug, so called because it was thought — erroneously, you’ll be glad to know — to like to crawl into people’s ears.
Around 1670, plot twist! Earworm began to also mean “a person who seeks to influence others in secret; a person who whispers insidiously in people’s ears.” At that point, this was a meaning of earwig as well; the two words were synonyms.
If your head isn’t spinning by now, you haven’t been paying attention.
All the same, I like earbug, for its similarity to both earbud and earworm and because its cousin earworm’s history is so entertaining. Therefore, I’m awarding bragging rights to Steve Rivers for coming up with earbug. Nice work, Steve!
Now Chris Osborne, of Cambridge, wants “a better word than acquaintances for people you know but don’t consider friends.” He explained: “To me, acquaintances sounds a bit highbrow. And yet the word friends is ridiculously overused, particularly on Facebook. Who in the world has 3,000 friends?”
The people Chris has in mind are those one step closer to you than nodders. This is the coinage that won bragging rights in a 2022 challenge: “people you recognize … but have never spoken to.” In response to that challenge, Joel Angiolillo, of Weston, devised an 11-rung “friendship ladder,” going from soulmate to alien, and containing the sequence “acquaintance > nodder > stranger.”
Send your ideas for Chris’s word to me at Barbara.Wallraff@globe.com by noon on Friday, Jan. 9, and kindly tell me where you live. Responses may be edited. And please keep in mind that meanings in search of words are always welcome.