Words Spied

Word Spy The Word Lover’s Guide to New Words

For your neological pleasure this week: selfie kiosks and the Sony hack; Prince George and Jorge Luis Borges; new-word rules and grammar rules; Douglas Adams, Steven Pinker, and much more. Words Spied Here are a few words and phrases that I saw last week and saved just for you: clackled adj. Wrapped and tangled in bedclothes.[Sesquiotica] George effect n. The increase in sales of a particular item of clothing after it has been seen being worn by Prince George, the son of Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton. [The Telegraph] hide and ride v. To avoid fees by parking outside of a train station's paid parking lot, particularly in a way that makes it look as though it is normal for the car to be parked in the chosen location. [Minneapolis Star Tribune] iceberg home n. A house that has most of its square footage underground. [Curbed] jogging buddy n. A person who is paid to accompany another person on a run. [Want China Times] reversification n. The process by which a word comes to mean the opposite of its original sense. [The New York Times] selfie kiosk n. A booth that enables a person to capture a selfie. [Tribeca Trib] Also: selfie frame (although the text in the photo shown here expands (unhelpfully, IMHO) the definition of selfie to mean, "A photo of oneself" (that is, not just "a photo one takes of oneself"): Word of the Week sonyhack n. Umbrella term for the breach of Sony's computer network and the ongoing fallout, including the cancellation of the movie The Interview. [Chicago Now] This is mostly seen as the hashtag #sonyhack, particularly on Twitter. Cruft* of the Week chewtrition n. The nutritional benefits that accrue through chewing food. (chew + nutrition). [Yahoo! Finance] Bonus cruft from the same article: fressurize v. To process a food product with high pressure as a way of increasing its shelf life (fresh + pressurize). * "Poorly built, possibly over-complex; generally unpleasant" —The Jargon File. How We React to New Words In his book The Salmon of Doubt, Douglas Adams writes, "I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.” We can adapt these rules to describe our reactions to new words: Any word that is in the language when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the language works. Any word or phrase that's coined between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you'll probably use it all your life. Any word or phrase coined after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things. Quick Links Grant Barrett: Top buzzwords and phrases of 2014 Words of the Year 2014: Fritinancy Edition Steven Pinker: 10 'grammar rules' it's OK to break (sometimes) Dumbwatches, Pinch-to-Zoom, and Glanceability: New Words via Technology Close Quote I suppose a nation evolves the words it needs. This observation…amounts to saying that language is not, as we are led to suppose by the dictionary, the invention of academicians or philologists. Rather, it has been evolved through time, through a long time, by peasants, by fishermen, by hunters, by riders. It did not come from the libraries; it came from the fields, from the sea, from rivers, from night, from the dawn. —Jorge Luis Borges, The Craft of Verse

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