A gateway bet is the kind of bet offered to entice people to gamble or to return to gambling. That first euphoric moment of winning is what people remember and it is what drives them on to achieve another win. Of course the betting after that is stacked against them.

ZG: 6

With problem gambling very much under discussion at the moment, this word could gain frequency.

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You may think that this is the study of the visitations of ghosts — but you’d be wrong. Hauntology is the study of significant ideas and memories that haunt us as individuals or as societies, in particular our dead futures. So why does a future die and become a ghost?

ZG: 4

Readers of Derrida will know it but the rest of us are very probably oblivious to the presence of the ghosts of our dead futures.

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines tanky as ‘A nickname for a member of the British Communist Party supporting hardline Soviet policies, spec. that of military intervention’. But it did develop to mean the traditional left who wanted to pursue Marxist policies and engage in class warfare, and who chose to ignore the new identity politics entirely.

ZG: 4

A possible political smear word for the future.

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To quiet quit is to decide where the boundaries are in your work/life balance and adjust your working habits accordingly to do what is required of you but no more. You gradually change your behaviour so that you cut down the load. If the work is not complete by the time the day is finished, then you do not take it home with you.

ZG: 6

More and more people are considering the problem of what to do about work overload.

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This is a style of comedy that features lines from the comedian designed to elicit affirmative approval from the audience on some social issue, lines which have little comedic value. Tina Fey commented that you could just as well put up a sign in front of the audience and get that response.

ZG: 5

Stand-up comedy is a thriving genre so this critical term is a useful one to have.

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In the bill that was introduced earlier this year by David Littleproud, the biodiversity credit scheme was available only to farmers. Tanya Plibersek wants to extend the scheme so that others can access it. So not just farmers but businesses and conservation groups. The new scheme will be called a nature credit scheme.

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In recent times flying foxes have come too close to human beings and other animals. And so we have had a succession of new viruses that have been passed on by the bats, such as Hendra virus and lyssavirus. Langya virus is the latest, a virus belonging to the newly identified Henipavirus genus comprising negative-stranded RNA .

ZG: 4

After the brief flurry of anxiety we have lost all interest in this one.

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Most people have, in the past, associated this with pregnancy or a hangover. Or lack of sleep or medications. But now it is a recognised condition of long Covid so that the term has moved from being a jokey colloquialism to an item of medical jargon.

ZG: 6

It is still early days in understanding long COVID and pinning down its symptoms but brain fog is something that all sufferers seems to exhibit.

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Grey corruption is the channelling of favours towards friends and relatives, which, while not illegal, does cross the bounds of propriety and possibly short-change the taxpayers. Grey corruption is a lowering of the high standards expected of the people who represent us in parliament.

ZG: 5

This has been much discussed for a short period of time and will no doubt be forgotten again.

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These are PFAs, per- and polyfluoroalkyls, which have a strong carbon-fluorine bond which can resist grease and water. The original forever chemicals were in Teflon but now there are thousands of non-stick, stain-repellant and water-proof products containing PFAs developed from the original.

ZG: 4

We seem not to have learnt our lesson about the danger of spreading dangerous chemicals throughout the environment.

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It. is evident now that about one third of the people who get COVID-19 will experience COVID rebound, that is, the recurrence of the presence of the virus in their systems to the extent that they test positive for it. Some of them have symptoms again, others do not.

ZG: 6

There is increasing awareness of the possibility of getting a COVID rebound and of the rather nasty consequences.

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This first came up for widespread discussion in the furore that surrounded the lab in Wuhan It was believed that gain-of-function research had been undertaken there, and that this may have lead to the development of the COVID-19 virus which may have then escaped the lab.

ZG: 4

It is only really because of the notional link between the Wuhan laboratory and the COVID-19 virus that this word has entered the public domain.

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This is a term that has been around for a while. It had a surge in popularity in the 1960s and again in 2013. It has made its way into education jargon and politics in Australia.

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The CSIRO has just published information on 139 new species in Australia which they have now classified. Among them is the babysitter ant which lives in a symbiotic relationship with the caterpillar of the bulloak jewel butterfly, a beautiful butterfly, the second rarest in Australia and in danger of extinction.

ZG: 3

It’s nice to have a story of happy symbiosis in the ant/butterfly world.

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Naarm is the Indigenous name (in two languages spoken by groups who are part of the Kulin Nation) for the area around Melbourne, and so it has been adopted generally as an alternative name for Melbourne.

ZG: 5

At the moment this is a Melbourne thing, but the licence to wear daggy clothes in the name of fashion is always appealing.

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If you see someone wearing earphones with a dreamy expression on their face, they could be experiencing the effects of a digital drug. Also called the binaural beat, the digital drug is an effect created by listening to two synthesised sounds of slightly different frequencies, one in each ear, the brain creating the illusion of a third sound which occurs initially as a regular beat.

ZG: 4

I look forward to experiencing this.

ZG: 7

Cures for stress and anxiety are much sought after at the moment so this latest trend will up the word frequency while reducing the sound frequency.

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This is an unmanned submersible used to transport drugs, spometimes called a narco-sub or an underwater drone. The person controlling it could be anywhere in the world but the drone will follow its set path to its destination.

ZG: 4

There is not much awareness of narco-drones in Australia yet but there could be in the future.

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We give names to things that matter to us. Occasionally names are created for things that ought to matter to us and wishcycling is one of these. It seems that it is a bad habit that too many of us have, to throw things in the recycling bin, not because we know that they are recyclables but because we hope they are, that being the most convenient solution for us.

ZG: 4

A word that is being foisted upon us to do us good. Will we listen?

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This is a blended word combining flop and blockbuster. It is therefore a film or TV program intended to be a big production and a big moneymaker which turns out to be a nothing.

ZG: 4

A useful word for a film and TV critic but perhaps not generally appealing.

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The new sense of soft life does not involve idleness. It was arrived at by contrast with a hard life, one of strain and trouble and stress. The choice to soft life means that you remove all causes of stress and anxiety but only so that you can pursue the things that you want to do and that you do with pleasure.

ZG:

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