New words – 6 January 2020

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spite house noun [C]
/ˈspaɪt.haʊs/
a house that has been built or altered in order to annoy its owner’s neighbours, such as painting it a very bright colour or building an extension that blocks the neighbour’s view

In the UK, the most recent spite house to make the papers was the Kensington home of … a property developer who painted candy stripes on the three-storey façade of her house in 2015. She denied that the stripes were to spite neighbours who objected to her plans to demolish the £4.75m property, which she used “for storage”.
[theguardian.com, 8 September 2019]

super-home noun [C]
UK /ˈsuː.pə.həʊm/ US /ˈsuː.pɚ.hoʊm/
a house that uses very little energy because it has good insulation and has been built using renewable technologies

An eco-friendly “super-home” in Birmingham which has helped its owners to slash their energy bills by a whopping 85 per cent will open to the public this weekend … Featuring cavity, internal wall and loft and floor insulation, the couple’s home has been designed to stay cool in summer and warm in winter, helping them to cut their energy bills substantially.
[bvt.org.uk [no date]]

corkitecture noun [U]
UK /ˈkɔː.kɪ.tek.tʃəʳ/ US /ˈkɔːr.kə.tek.tʃɚ/
the use of cork as a building material

Shortlisted for the 2019 Stirling prize, the annual award for the best building in Britain, Cork House by Matthew Barnett Howland, Dido Milne and Oliver Wilton takes corkitecture to another level by employing it as a total building material. Cork House is just that: a house constructed from solid blocks of expanded cork, like gingerbread or vegan Lego.
[The Observer, 28 July 2019]

About new words

4 thoughts on “New words – 6 January 2020

    1. The two words exist, as do so many others, which used in combination communicate clearly intended meaning. Is “combination word” to be made a word? I think not. It is simply unnecessary. “Spite house” hopefully will not remain in common usage on any wide scale and is unnecessary.

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