Word on the street Smartphone Shuffle

What it means: The inelegant slow-step that happens when you stop walking like a normal pedestrian, and instead adopt the shuffling gait of a zombie or an inmate in the corridor of a mental facility. The reason? You’re too busy tweeting, updating your Facebook profile or checking your emails to concentrate on basic perambulation.

Lost in the latest app, you fail to notice you are about to step onto a busy intersection or – in the case of one unfortunate woman who is now splashed all over YouTube – straight into a shopping mall fountain. Not so smart, eh? In New York, the problem has gotten so bad that smartphone users have replaced tourists as the No 1 public nuisance, blocking paths and clogging up thoroughfares while they text their friends. New York State senator Karl Kruger has proposed a ban on people using smartphones and other handheld devices while crossing the street, after a man distracted by his Mp3 player was
killed by a truck. How to say it: "Omigod, Sinéad's been admitted to casualty. She was doing the smartphone shuffle and walked right in front of the Luas."