Blogging politics, culture, sociology and life from Brisvegas
Lexicographer supreme Erin McKean, whose wonderful work has been discussed on LP previously, argues in the Boston Globe that, in the words of Boing Boing, English is a user-modifiable technology. We should forget “I’m not sure if this is a real word”, she urges:
In short, if it seems wordish, use it. No apologies necessary.
“Wordish”, by the way, is a real word. You can read the rest of McKean’s fabulous column here.
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Like a good conversation, I found that article very enjoyababble.
One of my sons came up with the word “pretaliatory” to describe the Howard Doctrine of international relations (as in: “We’ll launch a pretaliatory strike”). We’ve been trying, without much success, to get it into general use ever since
As McKean says, the only test of a word whould be its cromulence.
Possibly spelling comes into it.
Wordish.
Doesn’t make ‘medalling’ any less annoying.
The morphing of nouns into verbs is an unstoppable juggernaut of annoyance Mindy, but then you look back and realise that’s where we got some pretty handy ones. “Medalling”… meh… nothing especially handy about having it around. But there are far worse. For utter redundancy, how’s ‘to action’? Umm… you mean ‘to do’?
Yes, you see ‘action’ is the NOUN we use to circumscribe the class of things people ‘do’. GAH!!!
Yes, I too have given in to the practice of cromulencification. I think it all started the day I asked my GP’s receptionist about something or other that the GP hadn’t made clear and the receptionist replied ‘I don’t know; Doctor didn’t stiplify.’ Fortunately it took me a moment to process this magnificent portmanteauisation of ’stipulate’ and ’specify’ so I did not (as I would certainly otherwise have done) disgrace myself by being so elitish as to LOL and I additioned ’stiplify’ to my vocabulary, usage-wise, forthwith.
Encromulate (v.)
To bolster the wordishness of an utterance by stiplifying how it may be applicated.
See: Lipsniger.
nonce words, for using n + once
Careful, laura. Nonce is prison slang.
*looks around nervously*
My wordishness has been embiggened marvellificently.
Aye macreadly basskanascant. And most combustubousilitious as well.
Mein Gott. For someone who lives off words, McKean don’t seem to care about them.
What’s smart or legitimate about ‘Boys don’t like talking about relationshippy things?’ Is its dumbness cute?
‘Boys don’t like talking about relationships’ is direct, saves a real word, and avoids a Frankenstein word.
I think the push for plain language has gone too far when we substitute “Work Fair Australia” for something as substantial as the “Australian Industrial Relations Commission”. Why couldn’t the boffins have come up with something new like “Australian Workplacery”?
NicM – in that case I think the bad grammar is the real problem. ‘Work Fair Australia’ is a noun, and adjective and a proper noun, with no clear semantic relationship between them of any kind. So it’s hardly ‘plain language’.
The best thing about that article (IMHO) was it opened my eyes to the existence of the interrobang – ie this thing ‽
My life was empty without it.
on Work Fair Australia -
Fair’s a noun too, as in a rustic carnival with geeks and freaks and sideshows and drunken morris dancing around a maypole.
It’s also unclear whether they mean ‘fair’ as in fair go (probable) or ‘fair’ as in opposite of foul (the sense active in Advance Australia Fair).
It’s the sort of usefully vague & suggestive (& catchy) telegraphic language used in advertising. I agree with fdb, it’s almost the opposite of plain language.
nonce is just not prison slang but actual slang. fondled by a nonce?
I’ll go back now to my encodification.
Graeme @ 16, your rephrasing of the statement substantially changes its meaning – the difference is between ‘relationships themselves’ and ‘things pertaining to or redolent of relationships’
Is it the dumbness of coinages like ‘relationshippy’ that you object to, or the general principle of words being coinable by Frankensteinian processes?
“Is it the dumbness of coinages like ‘relationshippy’ that you object to, or the general principle of words being coinable by Frankensteinian processes?”
If the latter, be prepared to admit you are merely a linguoconservative. And to be consistent, be prepared also to throw out half your vocab.
Here’s another one to ponder, though it’s not very new. I think I first saw it in “Private Eye” magazine [London].
*to pilgerise*
‘But his detractors despise him so much they even coined a verb – “to pilgerise” – in his honour: “to present information in a sensationalist manner to reach a foregone conclusion” ‘
- Independent, book review, circa 2006
Oh, I like ‘pilgerise’! ‘To fisk’ is much more roundabouty, n’est-ce pas?
I suppose something that had been pilgerised would be positively begging to be fisked.
Actually you could pilgerise your fisking, too.
I’ve always thought the word ‘ambigulous’ is a pretty good coinage, btw.
Yes, I like ‘ambigulous’ too.
I’m also very fond of insinuendo, which strikes me as having the same kind of value-addification as stiplify.
The wikipedians call these words ‘protologisms’ – prototype + neologism – a word and concept that’s interesting to contemplate.
“The wikipedians call these words ‘protologisms’…”
Well at least that isn’t too wikipedestrian of them. It’s got a tantaliking hint of vous-doo to it.
But what about a species of word called ‘neotypes’?
I guess it would depend on who the father is.
It’s all reliant on contextuability. Know your audience and target your language appropriately. I’ve always hated the prescriptivist approach that lexicofascists use to inferiorise perfectly understandable English speakers. Fantastic article! Best bit was finding out that ‘cromulence’ is now DEFINITELY a word – it said so in the paper.
oh ta, and I must say I laughed along with “Pavlov’s Cat”, once I realised it wasn’t to do with Russian ballet desserts.
There are also favourite family words, e.g. the adorable child says “hostipal”, so thereafter it’s always ‘hostipal’ within that clan. There’s not much more “in” than a family ‘in-joke’. 3 year old daughter pointed to the hall where she had had an immunisation shot and said ” ‘jeckin house” which we guessed was “injection house”. Straight into the family lore.
cheerio
NickM @ 17: re. “Work Fair Australia”. I have a hypothesis about organisations that change their names to “Buzz Word Australia”. This change indicates that any ability to perform a useful function has now been compromised due to an internal coup by Spin Doctors and similar Laundrocrats. I rejoiced when the National Film and Sound Archive autorecovered, after its mercifully brief second life as “ScreenSound Australia”.
The uninflected, ungrammatical morphology and monosyllabic nature of “Work Fair” etc reminds me to a degree of Chinese, but also of the ugly contractions spawned in millions by the totalitarian regimes of Central and Eastern Old Europe: Comintern, Stasi, Gestapo etc. Maybe the creators of this jargon are frustrated wannabe Maoists or Goebblers?
Graeme @16: Isn’t “relationshippy” a Whedonism, and hence a Learned Reference?
Mindy @6: If an unwise choice of verbed noun or other neologism turn out to be homophonic, then punishment can be administered: “If it hadn’t been for those medalling kids, Oz would have come first in the league table”
When a parent forces a child to eat its dinner, is that pasta la vista, baby?
Laundrocrats: tee hee !!
Mercurius, if the forcing continues it’s pasta ma~ana, pasta el noche, pasta ma~ana, ….