Bling

Bling  (also bling-bling) is a term for expensive, ostentatious jewelry that came from the world of rap music. It evolved to mean not only that type of over-the-top jewelry but also clothing and other accessories such as cell phones or tooth caps.

The term has even been used to describe things like cars with the noun being used as an adjective, as in "That car is really blinged out." It has also devolved to sometime mean the free things given out at events, even if they are not of great value.

Linguistically, "bling" is an onomatopoeia, like buzz, meow, boing or cuckoo. Some might call it an ideophone which are words that evoke an idea in sound, movement, color, shape, or action.

Bling was meant to evoke the sound of light reflecting off something shiny, especially valuables like gold or diamonds.

Although the term came into wide usage in the late 1980s, we can go back twenty years earlier to some TV advertising, such as toothpaste maker Ultra Brite, that used a bling sound effect. In ads that said "Ultrabrite gives your mouth...[insert bling sound]...sex appeal" the sound might be accompanied by a sparkle effect on the actor's teeth.

The word "bling" was used by some comedians, such as Martin Lawrence. He parodied the "Ultrabrite smile" by and vocalized the sound effect as "bling-bling" and "bling-blauw."

The Silvertones song "Bling Bling Christmas" is sometimes noted as the earliest known usage of the term, but it was also used in rap by Dana Dane in "Nightmares" in 1987 referring to the sound effect used on cartoon shows along with gold coins, money, jewelry or gems. The term probably went more public with Cash Money Millionaires' song "Bling Bling" in 1999.

Fortnight

If you have heard the term "fortnight" used it probably meant a unit of time equaling 2 weeks as in 14 consecutive days.

The word suggest a fort as in fortress, but that is not the origin.

The word derives from Old English: fēowertyne niht, a term meaning "fourteen nights".

Some wages and salaries are paid on a fortnightly basis. In North America, it is more common to use the term "biweekly."

Neither of these terms should be confused with "semimonthly" which divides a year into exactly 24 periods instead of the 26 periods of fortnightly or biweekly.

In astronomy, a fortnight is half a synodic month, equivalent to the mean time between a full moon and a new moon (and vice versa). This is equal to 14.77 days. The synodic period is the amount of time that it takes for an object to reappear at the same point in relation to two or more other objects.

Warby Parker

Warby Parker is an American brand of prescription eyeglasses and sunglasses founded in 2010.
Warby Parker primarily sells eyewear online and through its New York City headquarters. It also maintains a limited number of showrooms in boutiques elsewhere in the United States. Warby Parker's "Home-Try-On program" allows customers to choose five frames from the website, which they receive to try on at home for five days, free of charge. Customers can also upload a photo and try on frames virtually

When someone joins Warby Parker as an employee, one of their gifts is a copy of Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums . That is because the name Warby Parker comes from two early Jack Kerouac characters: Warby Pepper and Zagg Parker.

The company's official corporate name is JAND Inc. and "Warby Parker" is the company's trade name.