"Pajamahadeen": A Word Is Born

Tech is giving us a whole bunch of new words that are becoming fixtures and entering dictionaries (major, dead-tree dictionaries, at that). One such word is “blog,” which did not exist before December 1997.

The last few days have seen the advent of a new word that has the potential to become a fixture: “pajamahadeen.”

It isn’t yet listed in any dictionaries. Not even Google has it indexed at the moment, though that will swiftly change. The term is spreading through the blogosphere.

“Whence cometh ‘pajamahadeen’?” you may be wondering if you haven’t been reading blogs following the unfolding CBS phony memo scandal.

It appears to have been coined by Jim Geraghty of Kerry Spot. Here’s why:

A few days ago on FOX News, former CBS News executive V.P. Jonathan Klein spoke dismissively of the bloggers who were absolutely slaying the credibility of CBS’s phony memo story. Specifically, he said:

You couldn’t have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at ’60 Minutes’] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.

Indignant bloggers, very few of whom admit to wearing pajamas, had endless fun with this. In the end, they adopted pajamas as the official uniform of bloggers and images like this one started showing up on blogs:

So much for the “pajama” part of “pajamahadeen.” Whence the “-hadeen” part?

As you may surmise, it’s from the Arabic word “mujahedeen,” which is sometimes translated “fighters” or “strugglers.” Those translations, though, are whitewashes of what the term really means. “Mujahedeen” is the plural of “mujahed.” Arabic words (like Hebrew and Aramaic words) tend to be built around three consonants with various prefixes, suffixes, and vowels applied. The prefix “mu-” is often used to form words referring to a person who is or does something, and the three consonant root of “mujahed” is J-H-D.

Know what other Arabic word that has passed into English currency has the root J-H-D?

That’s right: “jihad.”

In the most literal sense, “jihad” means “struggle,” but because it has been used (since the time of Muhammad) to refer to the duty Muslims (note the “mu-” prefix; same deal) have to struggle for Islam–often by force of arms–it has come to have the principal meaning “holy war.”

Thus if we were to give a translation of “mujahedeen” that captures the resonance it has for the Muslim community, it would be “jihadists” or “holy warriors.”

So: “pajamahadeen” = “pajama” + “mujahedeen,” the pajama-clad holy warriors of the blogosphere.

This probably would be rendered less colorfully in a future dictionary entry. Perhaps: “Webloggers who aggressively analyze and attack their opponents’ arguments.”

If you want to see a picture of the pajamahadeen in action, check out this cartoon (click to enlarge):

The original source of this is IMAO.us, which also features a digitally enhanced “special edition” of the cartoon, a la George Lucas.

BTW, if you look around IMAO.us, be sure to bear in mind Rulz 6 and 7.

(Now if I could just convince fellow bloggers to use my coinage “popularity crash” for what happens when too much traffic comes to a web site and makes it inaccessible; e.g., due to a Drudge story linking it.)