Florida flambe

English

Alternative forms

• Florida flambé

Noun

Florida flambe (plural Florida flambes)

1. (derogatory) Burning (catching fire) during execution by electric chair. [from the late 1990s]
   • 1997 April 5, Leonard Pitts, “Fiery execution shows lie of ‘humane’ death penalty”, in The Free Lance-Star, page A15:

     Medina was killed, then cooked, becoming the second inmate in seven years to suffer the Florida flambe.

   • 1997 June 6, Elizabeth Jarnagin, “Pro-life consistency means opposing death penalty”, in Amarillo Globe-News‎^[1]:

     There's a nice new death chamber in Terre Haute, Ind., just waiting for ya. No Florida flambe there. A slight boo-boo occurred not long ago when Florida fired up "Old Sparky" to execute a criminal. The guy's face mask flared up. Most grisly. A Florida district attorney glibly said the moral of the mishap was not to commit crime in Florida if you don't want the same treatment.

   • 2005 August 19, Cha, “Ms. Harris's "felon purge"”, in democraticunderground.com‎^[2]:

     This is why harris should go down in Florida Flambe.

See also

• Appendix:American Dialect Society most outrageous words of the year

References

• Most Outrageous Word of the Year, American Dialect Society
• Florida Flambé, at Medical dictionary, medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com
• Wayne Glowka, Brenda K. Lester (1998) “Among the New Words”, in American Speech‎^[3], volume 73, number 2, pages 197-214
• Richler, Howard (1999) A Bawdy Language: How a Second-Rate Language Slept Its Way to the Top, Stoddart, page 11
• Metcalf, Allan A. (2002) Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success, Houghton Mifflin Books, page 191
• Steinmetz, Saul (2010) There's a Word for It: The Explosion of the American Language Since 1900, Harmony Books, page 203