Mad Men was a slang term coined in the 1950s by advertisers working on Madison Avenue to refer to themselves.

The drug usage of many rock musicians has also influenced the lexicon, most notably with the word 'psychedelic,' which was once only descriptive of hallucinogenic drugs, particularly LSD. The meaning was soon extended in slang to include things that produce an effect held to be similar to the sensation of an acid trip, which could be said of much of the strange music being produced at the height of the drug's popularity. The press frequently coins new genre terms that involve drug slang; recent examples include 'skunk-funk' which makes reference to a pungent type of strong marijuana, and 'smack-rock' which incorporates a slang term for heroin. 'Stoner rock' is apparently made by and for heavy users of cannabis, since 'stoned' usually means 'intoxicated with marijuana.' Rock jargon draws on a variety of other taboo subjects. Deriving from the disagreeable topic of dirt is 'funk,' which is a back-formation from the adjective 'funky,' meaning 'musty and smelly.' 'Grunge,' a distorted and disaffected style of rock, borrowed its name from a term of disparagement for something repugnant or unpleasant, possibly referring to the unkempt appearance of its musicians. 'Scuzz-funk' includes what is probably a colloquial clipping of 'disgusting,' whereas 'infectious' carries an overtone of disease even when used in a metaphorical sense. A goth- and glam-influenced style of indie was nicknamed 'new grave'; this is a pun on 'new wave,' an early 1980s genre, but obviously also plays on the morbidity of its exponents. The 'blues' derives from a colloquial name for depression, and the music in its early forms was always mournful and expressive of sadness; the contemporary coining 'sulk-rock' also makes reference to this. A lot of emphasis is placed in indie music on 'selling out,' which is a very nebulous idea but basically means sacrificing principles and integrity for the promise of fame or wealth; the phrase has be used in the sense of 'political betrayal' since 1862. Sometimes a word with a taboo derivation is meliorated when it is borrowed into jargon. This happened with 'gonzo,' which comes from the Italian for 'foolish' or the Spanish for 'goose,' but has lost its derogatory sense to mean merely 'bizarre' or 'exaggerated.' 'On the road,' a prepositional phrase which is used neutrally to describe a band on tour, does have pregnant uses related to vagrancy. 'Kraut,' a shortening of 'sauerkraut,' is used offensively in everyday slang to mean 'a German, especially a German soldier,' but in indie jargon it is used without any disparagement in compounds such as 'Kraut-rock.' This is probably due to the positive cross-cultural influence of German bands such as Can and Kraftwerk in the 1970s. Morphology Compounding, Blending and Reduplication Indie jargon lends itself particularly to word formation by compounding, as new trends within genres can be labelled by adding a descriptive word to the head word. Thus there are almost limitless compounds based on 'rock,' such as 'doom rock,' 'glam rock,' 'prog rock,' 'pub-rock' and so on. Other common head words include 'funk,' 'punk' and 'pop'; the model of 'heavy metal' is also very productive, spawning 'death metal,' 'sports metal,' and 'thrash metal.' The habits of musicians and fans are also prone to compounding: gig-goers may 'crowd-surf,' 'head-bang' or 'slamdance' in the 'moshpit,' while the guitarist (or 'axemeister') may be admired for his 'fretwork,' the 'frontman' might be a 'limelight-hogger,' the 'setlist' may be 'ear-splitting,' 'downbeat' or 'up-tempo,' and the band will retire to their 'tourbus' for the 'aftershow party.' As becomes obvious, the specialisation of many of the activities associated with rock music requires the vocabulary used to talk about them to become more specific over time, and forming compounds is the most effective way to achieve this.

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