Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

We are now at "F" and our Word for the wise © today involves a bit of sleight of hand in that the really interesting term begins with "h" instead of "f". So bear with us as we try to put this one over.

Faderade is the name given to the mix made with the popular American soft drink Gatorade and vodka so as to get young drinkers totally wasted. It's a homemade alcopop and the word conveys the idea of the passing out that comes after swallowing too much of the stuff. Adults do this all the time with Bacardi and Coke, of course, but no one thinks the mix or the behaviour weird.

Anyway, out of the same lexical mould that produced "Faderade" pours "haterade", a true word for our times in that it conveys the aggression of the dissatisfied, from the "yoof" in the streets to the tribes in Northern Ireland to the London bombers: "People be sippin this when they hatin cause they ain't got that pimp juice like u do."

Over at the Urban Dictionary "haterdade" is defined as: "noun; a fictional beverage, parodying the popular sports drink 'Gatorade', purportedly consumed by individuals who are jealous of others, supposedly fueling their ability to be jealous of, or 'hate on', others." As we know to our cost, the wells of Pakistan have been poisoned with haterade and the swamps of Iraq are filled with it so we've got a major drainage project ahead of us, and we don't need the likes of Naomi Klein pouring more of the stuff on us, either: "She be hatin' on people so much that she had to take haterade in order to continue."

Next week, it's "G" and one candidate is "garble", which is an example of what us word watchers call "the shift to opposite". You know, "fast" originally meant "fixed" but now means "rapidly", and the original Anglo-Saxon "wan" meant "dark" but now means "pale". So you be doin' your homework on "garble" now.