From: Blunderov (squooker@mweb.co.za)
Date: Fri Oct 17 2003 - 02:14:08 MDT
[Blunderov]
Please excuse the cross-post. Firstly 'butt call' is too good to miss
IMHO. Secondly perhaps someone can suggest a better host for the
Word-Spy mailing list - I have no wish to see them disappear. (Also the
'Words About Words' section seems specifically relevant in a memetic
sense.)
Best Regards
<snip>
butt call n.
An unintended phone call placed by sitting on one's cell phone.
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Example Citation
---------------------------------
Have you ever picked up your telephone only to hear noise on the other
end? Or maybe you heard bits of conversation or singing over some
static?
If you were lucky, you recognized the voice of someone you knew. That's
when you realized what had happened: Your friend had accidentally
pressed the redial or speed-dial button on their cellular phone, which
then placed a call to you.
Maybe the phone bumped up against something in a purse or briefcase, or
rubbed up against a seat belt. Or maybe the phone fell on the floor.
Maybe the person just sat on their phone--which explains why some
industry insiders call inadvertent dialing "butt calls." --David
Coursey, "Butt calls: Let's put an end to 'em," ZDNet AnchorDesk,
October 8, 2003
Example Citation #2
---------------------------------
My embarrassment was not diminished when I found out what the California
Highway Patrol calls such inadvertent 911 calls, most of which come from
cell phones with a one-button 911 calling feature.
"We call what you did a 'butt call,'" CHP telecommunications supervisor
Bill Harry told me -- a term derived from the act of dialing a cell
phone by sitting on it.
And how big a problem, I asked Bill, are "butt calls"?
"Huge," he said.
In California, almost all 911 calls from cellular phones go to the CHP,
while landline 911 calls go to local dispatchers. In Orange County, the
CHP communications center in Irvine gets about 900,000 911 calls a year
-- and believe it or not, roughly 40 percent of those calls are mistakes
and misdials by people fumbling with their cell phones. Forty percent!
--Gordon Dillow, "Cell users should get hip to 911 'butt calls',"
Orange County Register, October 2, 2003
Earliest Citation
---------------------------------
About 55% of calls these days to Nashville's 911 center are made on
cell phones. ...
Often, calls are inadvertent, such as when people sit on their cell
phones - known in the business as "butt calls." Many phones will
automatically dial 911 if the "1" or "9" is held down.
"You get to listen to someone's radio sometimes as they drive across the
country," Brown said. "The majority of our 911 calls are accidents."
--Anne Paine, "Better response time at 911 center hailed," The
Tennessean, June 14, 2003
See Also
---------------------------------
drunk dial:
http://www.wordspy.com/words/drunkdial.asp
stage-phoning:
http://www.wordspy.com/words/stage-phoning.asp
talk-off:
http://www.wordspy.com/words/talk-off.asp
Subject Category
---------------------------------
Technology - Cell Phones:
http://www.wordspy.com/index/Technology-CellPhones.asp
Words About Words
---------------------------------
If a poem is not forgotten as soon as the circumstances of its origin,
it begins at once to evolve an existence of its own, in minds and lives,
and then even in words, that its singular maker could never have
imagined.
--W. S. Merwin, American poet and translator, _Foreword to a
translation of Dante's Purgatorio_, 2000
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