- celetoid
- n.A person, particularly one with little or no talent, who is briefly famous.Example Citations:A celetoid is only allowed so much time in the spotlight. Of course, just when you think your life as a celetoid has passed, you end up writing an article about your experience six years later, or you sing a song for a friend at a wedding.—Richie Wilcox, " My Life as a Celetoid: Reflections on Canadian Idol: http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/u78084281v490246/fulltext.pdf" (PDF), Canadian Theatre Review, January 29, 2010The advent of reality television has created a subdivision in the halls of fame where ordinary people, innocent of any performance skills or without any particular achievement, may acquire celebrity of a fleeting kind. But such "celetoids" must be distinguished from celebrities proper who make a career out of performing themselves.—Barry King, " Stardom, Celebrity, and the Money Form: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_velvet_light_trap/v065/65.king.html," The Velvet Light Trap, March 22, 2010Earliest Citation:I propose celetoid as the term for any form of compressed, concentrated, attributed celebrity. I distinguish celetoids from celebrities because, generally, the latter enjoy a more durable career with the public. ...Examples include lottery winners, one-hit wonders, stalkers, whistle-blowers, sports' arena streakers, have-a-go-heroes, mistresses of public figures and the various other social types who command media attention one day, and are forgotten the next.—Chris Rojek, Celebrity: http://books.google.com/books?id=jJ0QdF0WSIwC&pg=PA20&dq=celetoid, Reaktion Books, September 21, 2001Notes:The etymology of this term is obscure, and the coiner, the sociologist Chris Rojek, doesn't explain its derivation. My guess is that it combines the word celebrity with the suffix -oid, meaning "having the form of; resembling," with the extra t tossed in for pronounceability and to echo existing words such as factoid and planetoid.Related Words: Categories:-toid is diminutive too I think, so it's also a little condescending.Kurt: Agreed.
New words. 2013.
