By Juli Weiner, Vanity Fair
For your edification, a look back at the phrases, nouns, and neologisms that have, for better or for worse, shaped the week's national discourse.
Carnival [kar-nih-vul], noun: The company responsible for one publicly awful cruise and countless equally bad--in a quieter way--other cruises.
Meteorites [meet-e-or-ites], noun: Refugees from a fussy asteroid that dropped in, uninvited, more impolitely on Siberia today.
Miraval [meer-uh-vol], noun: The name of Brad Pitt and Angelia Jolie's French château and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's new rosé.
Swagger [swag-ger], noun: The best dog at this year's Westminster Dog Show.
Banana Joe [ba-nan-uh jo], noun: Another dog at this year's Westminster Dog Show.
Tiny-Water-Gate [ty-nee wah-tur gayt], noun: The nom de scandal of Marco Rubio's awkward grasp for a travel-sized Poland Spring bottle during his response to the State of the Union.
State of the Union [stayt ov thuh youn-yun], noun: Some other thing that happened right before Marco Rubio infamously had a sip of water.
Fashion Week [fash-uhn week], noun: The biannual(-ish), pan-city, peripatetic festival of new collections, street-style photography, and over-ambitious R.S.V.P.-ing, the New York iteration of which just concluded.
Chuck Hagel [chuck hey-gul], noun: President Obama's selection for secretary of defense, whose confirmation process has been hijacked and impeded by Senate Best-Friends Committee co-chairs John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
Bikini pictures [bih-kee-nee pick-shures], noun: An unfair, probably unavoidable consequence of being Kate Middleton while pregnant.