“You’ve heard of Chicago Midway, and you’ve heard of O’Hare, but have you ever considered a flight out of MidAmerica Airport? Probably not, because it currently offers just two flights per week. And they only go to Florida. WOMP.”
What is this “WOMP” thing?
The only thing I can find on Google is that it’s an onomatopoeic word meaning “a low, bass thump”. How that fits in your context above I have no idea.
Without reading the article, by guess is that it’s supposed to be like the “Womp womp womp wohHhHh” sound effect that happens on cheesy shows when something happens that is unfortunate or a let-down .
“Waste Of Money, People”
Google phrases “MidAmerica Airport” “waste of money”
Thanks for the replies. Mostly all I could find were the same results that Ben came up with, and to a lesser extent what Sirchronique suggests (such Google answers tended to be inarticulate garbles, so I can only hope I interpreted them correctly). I couldn’t credit either because the “thump” theory made no sense in any context I was familiar with, and as to the other: If I’m supposed to derive four sounds out of one just because it’s there, it fails. Period. Last I checked, we don’t have any universally recognisable convention for rendering the following in print:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMpXAknykeg
Kevin’s suggestion makes sense. The problem is that if it’s correct, the result still fails as well, because the writer (I really want to insert quotemarks there) is assuming that the readership will be on board for the very latest acronym, and if I’m not current, apparently I don’t matter. Which I must admit in the case of HuffPost hardly offends me at all. But in the end it is nevertheless shabby journalism. If, by one definition, the thrust of journalism is to inform the widest audience, the writer has done the opposite in compartmentalising it. I can only assume that the intended audience swims in the jargon of Facebook and/or Twitter.
In all fairness, I recognise and honor the difference between newswriting (a somewhat stringent discipline, at least in former times) and the editorial (an exercise in opinion with stylistic wiggle-room). I would place said article in the latter category, but not at all squarely, and therein lies my difficulty.
From a style standpoint, I would say, that it’s poor form to use an initialism without first spelling it out, at least in such an article.
Womp only makes sense when paired with a rat; as in a womprat.
Maybe we need to recognise a new journalistic category: the blogitorial.
I think some online writers take pride in in stumping the reader with the occasional non-standard acronym.
This is fishy. If I wrote for a news agency but wasn’t all that concerned with being understood…I mean, how does that work? How is it that I could even keep my job, blurting out random cryptic gas in my assignments? Are we that dystopian already?
Internet style. It’s kinda like watching people take selfies, isn’t it. Maybe I’ll just have to get used to it. shudder
Oh, I SO-O-O-O-O agree (SNH). And if you don’t know what that means, DBA. YGTI.
SNH: Must be “Sarcasm Noted Here”. Has to be. But…really, who the #@&% actually talks like that?
DBA: Out of at least 58 possible results, I hazard “Don’t Bother Asking”. Gimme a cookie.
YGTI: No, I’m clueless.
OTOH, AFAIK YMMV. GIYF. TAFN.
Nobody really talks like that. At least I hope not. I admit that I’m still nonplussed by your original question. I have no idea what they could mean, and you’re right that it makes no sense for someone whose profession is supposed to be communication to fail to communicate on such a scale.
Thank you for your understanding and support. You never know, but the two of us could stir up a rising backlash that saves the world of letters from such an undignified, fleabitten state.
Ayup. Communicating badly and then acting smug when you’re misunderstood is not cleverness.
http://www.xkcd.com/169/
Oh, how I’ve wanted to do just that.
Now, lest the physician be called upon to heal himself, I admit I freely use a short selection of internet acronyms around here, in email, in text messages, and in PMs. But the ones I do use are well-worn standards by now, and in such writings I’m not being paid to represent whoever hired me.
So there.
Call me grouchy, but cleverness should be the least of a journalist’s goals. The author of the above article wasn’t even clever; she was merely glib.
“The fifth panel also applies to postmodernists.” Thank goodness the pub is poststructural rather than postmodern. As it is, it’s 'armless enough.
Oh, good grief.
Yes. Just yes.
That is ungood.
Yet there is hope.
Don’t ask me, I just liked sounding like Gandalf.