TASK: Read; translate the highlighted words, phrases, sentences.

Hand in the home

task (you write: the original word/phrase etc. – translation).

idea debt
n. Imagining, planning, or thinking about a project
instead of doing it.
Other Forms
idea debtor n.

Examples
2016
Idea debt is something that I, without knowing it, have been in for years. The
realization came after reading a blog post by a comic artist named Tracy Butler
about having many ideas with tons of lore and planning, but with little to no
execution of those ideas into a tangible product.
—aroman8, “I’m in Idea Debtor’s Prison,” Writing for Designers, February 11, 2016

2016
Idea Debt is when you spend too much time picturing what a project is going to be
like, too much time thinking about how awesome it will be to have this thing done
and in the world, too much time imagining how cool you will look, how in demand
you’ll be, how much money you’ll make. And way too little time actually making the
thing.
—Jessica Abel, “Imagining Your Future Projects Is Holding You Back,” Observer,
February 3, 2016

2016
Pounding away at that idea debt this year.
—Chrissy Delk, “Pounding away…,” Twitter, January 30, 2016

2015 (earliest)
I try not to to look at what I’m going to do as this amazing great grand thing. I’m not
just fulfilling some old promise that I made a long time ago. Now I’m actually solving
problems in the moment, and that’s so much more exciting than than trying to fill
years of what I like to call my “idea debt.” That’s when you have this dream of this
awesome thing for years.
—Kazu Kibuishi, “Episode 7: Dark Forest,” Out on the Wire, December 6, 2015

Notes
Here’s an earlier citation, although in this case the author is using “idea debt” as the
mental equivalent of a “sunk cost”:
Imagine you have a great idea. An idea you believe will change the world for the
better. What do you do? The answer probably depends on your background. 

A programmer will probably start coding right away. A businessperson would start
writing a business plan, addressing every little detail of the business.

What both have in common is that investment into the original idea starts
immediately. Increasing idea debt by the hour. Because of the increasing idea debt,
you are determined to make your efforts work no matter what.
—Bas Hennephof, “Becoming relevant,” Many Small Steps, July 14, 2015

In the following even earlier usage, the writer seems to be using “idea debt” to refer
to the process of continuing to work on something after all your ideas are spent:
I recently read a Harvard Business Review article about the daily routines of
geniuses — minimal distractions in their workspace, daily walks at the same time,
progress accountability metrics, stopping when you’re on a roll instead of when
you’re completely stuck. This last one hit hard. I had to read it a few times for it to
really sink in. You shouldn’t “drain the reservoir,” as Arthur Miller put it. I like to think
of it as “idea debt.”
—Paul Sternberg, “Process, Genius, Madness,” I Think We Should Talk, May 21,
2014

zero-tasking
n. Deliberately doing nothing.
Also Seen As
zero tasking · zerotasking

Other Forms
zero-task v. · zero-tasker n.

Etymology
cf. multi-tasking

Examples
2013
What is zero-tasking? It means being, not doing. It means taking those 60 minutes
and just doing nothing. Simply rest, relax, de-stress and de-load (the opposite of
overload). It means just breathing—in and out, over and over—and marveling at the
fact that you can breathe, that you are alive, that you are here.
—Nancy Christie, “Today is Zero-Tasking Day—Did you zero-task?,” Make a
Change Blog, November 3, 2013

2013
This reporter saw Jan Hill at Wal-Mart last week. She was proudly wearing a shirt
that said “zero-tasking” — the absolute opposite from the multi-tasking she’s done
the last two decades as the Burlington Public School secretary.Mind the play on
words: zero-tasking / multi-tasking
—Yvonne Miller, “Jan Hill trades in multi-tasking for biking and grandkids’
activities,” The Alva Review-Courier, July 17, 2013

2004 (earliest)
—Mick Stevens, “Zerotasking” (cartoon caption), The New Yorker, June 7, 2004

Notes
 Condé Nast
This Sunday — and indeed every year on the day when Daylight Savings Time
ends and we turn the clocks back an hour — we celebrate “Zero-
Tasking Day.” Invented by the writer Nancy Christie in 2006, Zero-Tasking Day is
when we’re supposed to use the extra hour not to perform more chores or check
more feeds or see more people, but instead to relax and simply do nothing. Of
course, in a recent experiment where some people got to choose between sitting
and doing nothing and giving themselves electric shocks, two-thirds of men and a
quarter of women chose the electric shocks. These were video-game-addled, thrill-
seeking youngsters, right? Ah, you wish. No, according to the study’s authors,
“even older people did not show any particular fondness for being alone thinking.”
And these were people being asked to do nothing for between six and 15 minutes.
Who knows what they’d do to themselves if you asked them to be alone with their
thoughts for a whole hour! Maybe all this just proves that now we need Zero-
Tasking Day more than ever.

wordrobe
n. The words and phrases that comprise a person’s
vocabulary.
Etymology
word + wardrobe

Examples
2012
wordrobe — a blend of “word” and “wardrobe”, this term refers to one’s personal
lexicon.
—Ruth Wajynrb, “New fronts in war of the words,” Sydney Morning Herald,
February 18, 2012

1997
wordrobe: A person’s lingo.

EXAMPLE: Shermie is a skater—as if you couldn’t tell by his wordrobe.

Where heard: I made it up and I thought it was clever, so I hope everyone will use it
now.
—“Webster’s by Websters,” Harper’s Magazine, April 1, 1997

1996 (earliest)
Maybe the Neologic Nellies can solve the problem. These are the people who go
about coining words and waiting for them to become part of the language; when
they don’t, the Neologic Nellies send them to me and wonder what’s wrong with the
rest of the world.

Wordrobe, for example, coined by June Gundersen of Brooklyn in 1984, meaning

“the vocabulary with which we cloak our emotions.”
—William Safire, “On Language: The Coinage Game,” The new York Times, March
31, 1996

Notes
Wordrobe is a blend of word and wardrobe, “a person’s stock of wearing apparel.”
The latter also means “a room in which wearing apparel is kept,” and in that sense
it comes from the Old French word garderobe(garder, “to keep” + robe). The
word robe goes back to the Vulgar Latin rauba, “clothes taken away as booty,”
which also morphed into the word rob, “to steal.” The source of all these words is
the Indo-European rootreup-, “to snatch,” from which we also get rip, “to tear,”
which dovetails nicely with the modern phrase “rip off.” Perhaps, then, we can bring
things full circle by “tailoring” a new addition to our wordrobe: wordrip, “to
plagiarize.”

do-it-herselfer
n. A woman who performs some or all of her home’s
repair, maintenance, and construction jobs.
Other Forms
do-it-herself adj.

Etymology
cf. do-it-yourselfer

Examples
2001
On their first anniversary, LeShaun Williams’s husband gave her a cordless drill.
For Christmas, he bought her a circular saw. For her birthday in June, she got a
RotoZip, a power tool designed to spin through tile, laminate, wood and drywall. 

He knows what makes her happy: tearing into the house. Williams is one of a
growing number of dedicateddo-it-herselfers. Women now tackle repair and
remodeling projects in half of American households, according to information from
RotoZip, a Wisconsin-based manufacturer. (By the way, in case you hadn’t noticed,
Ace Hardware has changed its motto from “The Helpful Hardware Man” to the
“Helpful Hardware Folks.”)
—Patricia Dane Rogers, “The Thrill of the Drill,” The Washington Post, September
20, 2001

1989 (earliest)
It’s Oscar night tomorrow and the big draw isn’t about who’s winning what. Admit it,
you watch to see who’s wearing what…Here’s a sneak preview of the Academy
Award finery, courtesy of Women’s Wear Daily:…Accidental Tourist’s Geena Davis,
up for Best Supporting Actress, is a do-it-herselfer who designed her own gown and
had someone else execute the design.
—Rita Zekas, “A sneak look at who’ll be wearing what to the Oscars,” The Toronto
Star, March 28, 1989

Notes
A recent flurry of media stories about do-it-herselfers seems to have been caused
by the September release of a book called Dare to Repair: A Do-It-Herself Guide to
Fixing (Almost) Anything in the Home, by Julie Sussman and Stephanie Glakas-
Tenet. (Interestingly, Ms. Glakas-Tenet is the wife of George Tenet, the director of
the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.) Headline writers are always playing wth
words, but there’s something about the topic of the do-it-herselfer (also called
a handywoman) that brings the punsters out of the woodwork(ing). Here’s a
sampling from the various do-it-herselfer citations that I found:

“Doing Their Nails With a Hammer,” The New York Times, October 27, 2002

“Do-it-herselfer gives it her awl,” Fort Wayne News Sentinel, October 23, 2002

“Power tools: Women are learning the drill,” The Dallas Morning News, August 3,
1995

“More woman hammer out own niche in world of tools,” The Dayton Daily News,
June 30, 1995

URBAN DICTIONARY:

Icicle Fingers 
When your fingers are so cold texting is almost impossible.

Guy: Hyey hoe are yiu doing? 

Guy 2: What? 
Guy: Sorry man I got icicle fingers