In Marist College's recent poll of the most annoying words, taking top prize was whatever. (Imagine whateeeverrr in a dismissive tone with a roll of the eyes.)

I seldom say whatever but have learned the sign language for it (signingsavvy.com), and when I am well and truly annoyed, I "think sign" it to myself. (You start with palms to chest and then flap them back and forth several times.) Wonderfully efficacious!

A father of teens tells me a new, even snottier version is the abbreviation whatev.

Another new term I discovered lately is brokavore, a pauper variation on the princely locavore, someone who dines well on locally produced foods for flavor and sustainability.

A brokavore who does so with little money might also be a dumpie, or downwardly mobile professional, the opposite of yuppie. A CSA sounds like an investment in which a dumpie lost her money, but stands for Community Supported Agriculture, exemplified by organic farmers who deliver fresh produce in season to regular customers.

Also in the food world, a vegangelical is a scrawny zealot who subsists on lemon grass and thinks you should, too. It's enough to make a fella throw a mantrum. (Thanks, Jon Gosselin, for contributing that one.)

From the Urban Dictionary (urbandictionary.com) comes the catchy caraoke, for belting out songs full-blast with the car radio -- especially satisfying with melodramatic oldies like Vikki Carr's "It Must Be Him" about a woman awaiting a phone call: "Let it please be him, oh dear God, it must be him or I shall die." I also like remembeer, for trying to remember a night lost to drinking. Just for giggles, try it with song or movie titles like "Try to Remembeer" or "Remembeer the Alamo."

Thanks to whatever monkey shines of those pilots were, the newly minted expression Northwest Nap means a sleep so profound that not even the Air Force can wake you.

Technology supplies a rich mine of new words like cyberchondriac and vook. You're one step ahead of me here: A cyberchondriac starts out googling "tingly fingers" and ends up diagnosing herself with MS. A vook blends book and video, although you have to admit "No more school/No more vooks/No more teachers' dirty looks" doesn't have the same ring. A vook is an e-book with embedded video and audio, so that a vook about the 1960s might have footage of JFK's fateful Dallas motorcade and audio from Bob Dylan. I'll go to my grave calling any substantial reading matter you can hold a book, just as my father called movies the moving picture show and the refrigerator the icebox.

I love the way data Valdez, for a huge accidental leak of private information, contains a mini history lesson with its reference to the 1989 Valdez oil spill. A robocall is a recorded telemarketing message. Imagine how crushed I was last fall when I thought Hillary was taking time from her frantic schedule to seek out little moi, but then realized what was up when she yakked right over me.

The recession is at least making us rich in the newly coined words of recessionese, like zombie banks (zero net worth but nonetheless insured), mini-Madoff (a scheme to bilk people on a modest scale), or being Bangalored (having your job outsourced to India).

A vook could be written about how the current epidemic came to be called the swine flu. And while I empathize with pork producers' efforts to corral the pigheaded media into calling it H1N1, journalists remain as independent as hogs on ice. Even the State Fair hog-calling champion isn't going to lure that little piggy back into the holding pen. Swine flu or H1N1? Whatev!

Christian, a former Dubuquer, is a Des Moines writer whose e-mail address is rebecca.christian@mchsi.com. She and Katherine Fischer authored, "That's Our Story and We're Sticking to It!" which is published by the TH and available through THonline.com.