Mash-up

I keep coming across the word mash-up, which seems to be ubiquitous these days. An article in yesterday's Guardian had the intriguing headline "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies 'mash-up' becomes unexpected bestseller". Mash-up means 'a fusion of disparate elements' and is usually used in relation to music. In Seth Grahame-Jones' book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the rather unlikely disparate elements are Regency romance and zombies, with Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters battling the living dead.

In an item in yesterday's Today programme on BBC Radio 4 (listen again here - the interview was at 08.39) Evan Davis said that mashup is now a single word. I've spelt it with a hyphen above as that is how it is spelt in the OED - by the way, it only went into the OED for the first time last month (March 2009), even though there is a citation for it from 1859. The two variants, mashup and mash-up, appear widely on the internet.

The usual pattern for new expressions made up from two existing words is for them to start off as two separate words and, indeed, the 1859 citation in the OED is: "He speaks a mash up of Indian, French, and Mexican." Then, as the expression becomes assimilated into the language it gains a hyphen, and finally it becomes one word. That has happened with online, offline, website, webpage, and, indeed, bestseller in the Guardian title. That is spelt as two words, best seller, in the 19th-century citations in the OED, it then became best-seller (still is in the OED) but now is following the trend to become one word.

Comments

[Stan]

Cut-up writing, which I was writing about today, is similar but more automatic, and unlike mash-ups tends to juxtapose content from different parts of the same source. I too prefer "mash-up" to be hyphenated, because I think the two forming words get lost in "mashup" - though there is a certain internal logic to the unhyphenated form!

I use the term mostly in a musical context. Some DJs have made ingenious mash-ups by combining any number of songs, from two to, well, I lose count! A lovely two-song mash-up is DJ Earworm's "Brazilian Diamonds", which combines Django Reinhardt with Paul Simon; an outstanding example of what I might call a mega-mash-up is "Raiding the 20th Century" by DJ Food and a cast of thousands.

Both are readily available online, but I couldn't embed the links and didn't want to clutter the comment with long URLs. Some of the music in "Raiding the 20th Century" might not appeal, but it changes regularly, and the recording becomes more interesting when the spoken commentary begins.

[Harrison Bergeron]

The import of your discussion brought to mind a different but IMHO somewhat similiar word anomaly I've been encountering involving the word 'smattering' which could be substituted for 'mash-up'in the phrase "He speaks a mash up of Indian, French, and Mexican." although it's somewhat obvious by your inference and context that it refers to a language mixture rather than the disjointed 'bits and pieces' implication of smattering.

For some unknown reason it's been transformed (with one 't' becoming an 'h' into a (non)word - 'smathering' which is entering the lexicon in usage similar to the term 'mash-up' i.e. a mixture of different items (although not necessarily disparate in nature).

The term mash-up isn't one that's made the transition to Canadian vocabulary yet despite the increasing availability of some of the more popular BBC TV programs.

[Virtual Linguist]

Thank you, both, for these interesting comments. I'll listen to those tracks you mention, Stan.

Smathering isn't used much over here. Does it mean 'mixture', in which case it is probably based on 'mash'? Or does it mean a small or a superficial amount of something, which suggests it comes from smattering? Or even, does it mean a large amount of something, in which case it could be based on smothering?

I'd say that a person who speaks a smattering of certain languages knows a few words in each language but doesn't confuse them and put them all together. A mash-up suggests words from different languages in one sentence. It's a very common practice with people who are fully bilingual, trilingual etc. Linguists would call it code-switching.

[Harrison Bergeron]

The Urban dictionary has an entry listing the word smathering but relates it (1) to another word - slathering, i.e. to spread thickly.

Yet if you use a Google search it's obvious that isn't the universal context of use.

It could simply be one of those words that's been corrupted by generations of phonetically driven literacy and poor vocabulary and language skills.

It has become such a problem that many of our Universities are making a mandatory course in language/grammar/writing skills a prerequisite prior to taking any other courses.

[Harrison Bergeron]

Mystery origin of mash-up solved.
Found a reference that points to it being part of computer geek vocabulary, although I've never encountered it:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mashup

Oddly enough I encountered the word mash-up a couple of days ago in a local paper in regards to the same film, which makes me suspect it's origins to be in computer graphics/media work.

[Virtual Linguist]

Great detective work, Harrison! Thanks.