Muffin-top

It’s been my dream to coin a word that gets used by the general populace, and today my dream came true. This morning, I woke up to my wife calling my name excitedly. A local TV news channel, NY1, was describing an article in New York Daily News called “Muffin-top mayhem!” I coined that word, “muffin-top”, back in May of 2003, and I submitted it to pseudodictionary.com. Here is how I defined it:

muffin-top - 1. A person whose belly hangs over the top of their pants, like the way the top of a muffin hangs over the paper cup. 2. Excess belly fat that hangs over the pants.

e.g., 1. Good morning muffin-top! Would you like a donut for breakfast? 2. A: “Did you lose weight? I can’t see your muffin-top anymore.” B: “No, I just bought bigger jeans.”

Here is the confirmation I got from pseudodictionary.com:

From: info@pseudodictionary.com
Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2003 11:13 AM
To: dyske@kskdesign.com
Subject: Your word muffin-top has been approved!

DYSKE,

thank you for submitting muffin-top to our database! you can view your word by going to:
http://www.pseudodictionary.com/word.php?id=17595
you can now link to it by clicking the “link to word” or you can send it to a friend by clicking the “send to a friend” button under your word.

regards,
paul & garret
www.pseudodictionary.com

To prove the “Tipping Point” theory, would anyone be interested in funding a research to trace the word from the writer of the Daily News article back to me? It could be interesting to see how that particular “meme” was propagated.