Our new vocabulary

al-Qaida - Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

American Taliban - Californian John Walker Lindh, who got 20 years in prison for supporting the Taliban.

Anthrax - An infectious disease sent through the mail as a powder, killing five.

Bioterrorism - Biological warfare, a more urgent concern.

Box cutters - A household tool that became the hijackers' weapon.

Burqa - Taliban-required cover-up symbolized the oppression of women.

Cipro - An antibiotic used to treat anthrax.

Collateral damage - Military jargon for unintended targets, including innocent people.

Debris surge - The onslaught of all that was the World Trade Center towers as they collapsed.

Dirty bomb - Radioactive material delivered via a conventional weapon.

Evil-doers - President Bush's term for terrorists.

Fatwa - A legal statement in Islam.

FDNY - Fire Department of New York, which became synonymous with "heroes" and soon graced T-shirts.

Ground Zero - Site of the World Trade Center towers; formerly used to describe the site of a nuclear attack.

Homeland security - Preparation for a new kind of attack: terrorism on U.S. soil.

Indefinite detention - Where terrorism suspects find themselves.

Jihad - A struggle and, for the terrorists, a holy war.

Kabul - The capital of Afghanistan, which previously would have stumped most game show contestants.

"Let's roll" - Words spoken by Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer that have become a national rallying cry.

Military grade - The designer label for anthrax made it even scarier.

Military tribunals - The Pentagon's controversial plan for trying terrorism suspects.

9/11 - More than a phone number, it's now a date that will live in infamy.

Profiling - From facial to ethnic, this became a security measure and a civil rights question.

Quran - Also known as the Koran, the sacred book of Islam, whose teachings about the afterlife were said to have influenced the terrorists.

Red, orange, yellow, blue and green - The government's color-coded terror alert system.

Shoe bomb - The way one man purportedly tried to blow up a jet, leading to greater scrutiny of shoes at airports.

Wanding - Air travel more often includes a once-over with a metal detector.

So Sept. 10 - Out of date, out of style, out of it. Irrelevant.

Theoterrorism - Faith and war merged.

Undisclosed location - A term that tended to refer to the whereabouts of the vice president.

United We Stand - Became the watchwords, with "God Bless America," from coast to coast.

Weaponize - A new verb to attach to the new attacks.

Zero-sum game - The losses that mounted on both sides.

Sources: Bee staff and Gannett News Service