Lexicon ·
untyping
noun
- Stated meaning
- Deliberately dating someone outside your usual type.
- Operating meaning
- A change of supplier adopted as policy, so that the next failure is booked to the experiment and not to the buyer.
- Origin
- Reported by My Imperfect Life in May 2023, crediting a ring retailer, Angelic Diamonds, and the editor of DatingAdvice.com. Cambridge Dictionary entered it in July 2023.
- Antonyms
- groundhogging
Cambridge Dictionary (opens in a new window) entered the word in July 2023: “choosing to start a romantic relationship with someone who isn’t the type of person you normally find attractive.” The article it quoted, from My Imperfect Life (opens in a new window) that May, opened with “To hell with consistency,” and credited the finding to “engagement ring specialists Angelic Diamonds and Amber Brooks, editor-in-chief at DatingAdvice.com,” who had found that untyping “is one of the top 10 trends.”
The trend was reported on behalf of a jeweller. Its opposite, groundhogging, was reported on behalf of a dating app. One business is paid when a search ends and the other while it continues, and each attached its name to a pattern in how the search is run.
Under load, untyping adopts a change of supplier as policy. The type that failed is dropped as a specification, and its absence becomes the specification. The next match is chosen for not resembling the last, which is still a selection made by the last. A failure under the new policy is booked to the experiment and not to the buyer, and that is the policy’s main return.