Pain in the English

Forum for the gray areas of the English language

Word for Showing Off Your MacBook at Cafe — Mac off

June 29th, 2009 by dyske

Have you noticed that, at trendy cafes, more than half of the laptop computers you see are the new MacBooks? (Well, at least in New York City.) I don’t mean any MacBook; I’m talking about the latest MacBook (“the brick”). In fact, I believe seeing the older versions of MacBooks is rarer than seeing PC laptops.

If these people are deciding to work at cafes for practical reasons, then the laptop demographic should be much more diverse, with a lot more PCs and older versions of MacBook, but this is not what I see. The demographic is heavily skewed towards the latest models of MacBook. So, I would have to conclude that the reason why these MacBook owners come out to cafes is because they want to show off their brand new MacBooks.

It would makes sense, therefore, to coin a term for showing off your MacBook at a cafe. I’ve struggled with this for a while, and this morning, I decided that it should be “Mac off”.

“Hey, honey. I’m gonna go Mac off at the Starbucks for a few hours, OK?”

“At a cafe in Williamsburg, I saw about a dozen people sitting in a row Mac’ing off.”

“I bought the new MacBook Pro last week, but I haven’t Mac’ed off yet.”

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3 Responses to “Word for Showing Off Your MacBook at Cafe — Mac off”

  1. Frank Luo says:

    Yes, I can see that!

    “Where were you all day?”
    “Mac’ing off on the couch at the net cafe.”
    “You Mac off on the couch? I prefer Mac’ing off at the bar stools at the window so I can watch the people go by as I Mac off.”

    Current score: 0
  2. mantha stoirmeil says:

    Bit of a male ring to that. . .can it go softer? like:
    “Shameless Maclirt, she is!”
    “Ah, yer jealous is what — where’s the harm in a lass Maclirting in a Starbucks?”

    Current score: 0
  3. Chris B says:

    “Mac off” – now that’s funny.
    How do you add -ing and -ed to those kinds of verbs by the way? “Mac-ing off”, “mac’ing off” or “macking off”?

    Current score: 0

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