Every year about 900 new words, or neologisms, enter the English language. The
process by which a word becomes established is fairly clear: first, people
in positions of influence must use it. One way of joining the club of those
you look up to is to adopt their language. That is why you hear so many
white youths speaking not just the vocabulary of young Afro-Caribbeans, but
also copying the pronunciation and intonation.
Then comes a tipping point, when so many people use a neologism that it
spreads like wildfire. The media are crucial to spreading new words quickly.
Once a word has been in existence for some time, and is used by different
sources, it enters the dictionary and the language. The criteria for entry
are not fixed; it’s more of a hunch that a word is going to be around for a
while.
You can almost map the major areas of human activity and endeavour over the
past century by the number of words they have produced. For example, in the
first decade of the 20th century the new fields of motoring, aviation, film
and radio were rich sources. In the 1960s the advent of computers, the space
race and youth culture produced a new vocabulary. In the 1980s the financial
world influenced language (eg, yuppy, a young upwardly mobile professional).
It’s a bit harder to pin down the sources of today’s words, but the internet
and technology are proving productive.
Once words are created, they never entirely fade away. Should they fall out of
favour they are always ripe for potential revival. They might be left out of
smaller dictionaries but they will always be in the complete Oxford
English Dictionary for posterity.
In English, there are five basic ways in which new words come to be.
1. Joining an existing pair of words to make a compound, or adding a
suffix or prefix. An example of the first is “dirty dancing”. In the 1950s
the suffix “nik” was borrowed from Russian and added to “beat” to make
beatnik. It was seen as a hip suffix at the time, perhaps because lots of
Eastern European immigrants to America brought their language with them.
Also under this heading come “blended” words, made by concertinaing words
together. Motel (a blend of “motor” and “hotel”) and brunch (“breakfast” and
“lunch”) are two examples. They are older than you might think; brunch came
into use at the end of the 19th century. It probably originated in Victorian
wordplay, which was popular. For example, Lewis Carroll enjoyed making
blends, which he called portmanteau words, such as mimsy (“miserable” and
“flimsy”). It’s not in use today because its meaning is not obvious enough
to make it useful. Modern blends include Chunnel and pulsar (“pulsating
star”).
2. Take an existing word and use it in a new way or give it a different
meaning. This includes “conversion”, where, for example, a noun is used as a
verb (eg, to doorstep someone) or an adjective is turned into a noun
(Thatcher’s “wets”). Purists get rather upset at conversion but that’s
pointless because it has always happened and will continue to happen.
Shakespeare did this and he had a rather good literary pedigree.
3. Shorten an existing word. The most obvious thing is to knock a bit
off the end, such as using “hood” to mean hoodlum, or “porn” instead of
pornography. If this contraction is used widely enough, it becomes a word in
its own right. Acronyms can also be included here, such as Nato (North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation) and Aids (acquired immune deficiency
syndrome).
4. Pinch a word from a foreign language. English is a sponge of a
language. For example, mutton, beef and pork all come from French – before
that, we didn’t have specific words for the cooked versions of sheep, cow
and pig. Sometimes this borrowing comes about because a country is
particularly proficient at something. For example, France was strong on
aviation and gave us fuselage, hangar and aerodrome. Other aviation words
stem from analogies to sea travel – “airliner” and “piloting”, for example
5. Coinage, or making new words up. Often these began as proprietary
names, such as Spam or Nylon. James Joyce invented “quark”, which has been
adopted as the name of a subatomic particle. My favourite made-up word is
googol, which means 1 with 100 zeros after it. The mathematician Edward
Kasner solicited ideas from children as to what such a large number should
be called, and his nephew came up with it. Google is said to be a corruption
of googol.
Should we be sniffy about using new words? No. I am far more exercised by
grammatical matters. I find it regrettable that people no longer see the
distinction between “may have been” and “might have been”. There’s no excuse
for that at all.
— John Ayto is a lexicographer and author of The Oxford Dictionary of
Modern Slang and A Century of New Words. He was talking to Anjana Ahuja
Neologisms to delight and annoy – but please don’t go postal
BLOGOSPHERE the environment in which the writers of blogs (weblogs –
websites on which people report the minutiae of their everyday existence and
thought processes) and their readers operate
— eg, The blogosphere has been buzzing with theories as to who shot the
Hell’s Angel.
CAVOLO NERO an Italian variety of brassica with long, narrow, very dark
green leaves, which became a foodie favourite in the early years of the 21st
century. In Italian its name means “black kale”.
— eg, Cavolo nero is good sautéed in olive oil with a little chopped
garlic.
EMBED to embed journalists is to attach them with fully accredited
status to a military unit during a conflict
— eg, There were fears that embedded reporters might get only the
information the military authorities wanted them to have.
FLASH MOB a large group of people who, by private arrangement, suddenly
gather at a particular place and perform an arbitrary action. The first such
event is said to have been at Macy’s department store in New York in 2003,
when about 100 people suddenly arrived all wanting to buy the same rug.
PODCAST A file of digital audio or video material that can be
downloaded on to an iPod or other MP3 player (or on to a computer). The term
was coined in 2004 by Ben Hammersley
— eg, You can download a video podcast of the BBC’s early-morning news
and watch it on the bus to work.
ROAD MAP a first-stage, outline plan for a course of action to be
pursued, especially in international diplomacy.
— eg, The president promises a road map to peace in the Middle East.
SARS a serious and potentially fatal infection of the respiratory
system, caused by a virus (the acronym stands for “severe acute respiratory
syndrome”)
— eg, Fears of a Sars pandemic gripped the world in 2003.
TOMBSTONING: jumping from a great height (eg, a cliff) into the sea as
an act of bravado; an ''extreme sport'' that seems to have begun in the West
Country. Afficionados prefer the less emotive term ''coasteering''.
— eg The recent craze for tombstoning has resulted in several deaths and
serious injuries.
SHOPBOT a software device that searches the internet for products that
might be of interest to users (eg, because of a low price) and bring them to
their attention (“bot” is short for “robot”).
— eg, Shopbots don’t necessarily tell you all you need to know before
deciding whether to buy a product.
VOLUNTOURISM foreign travel with the aim of engaging in voluntary work,
especially giving humanitarian assistance in places in need of it.
— eg, Indonesia and Thailand saw an influx of voluntourists after the
tsunami of 2004.
BIOPIRACY the appropriation of a valuable biological resource without
recompense to the country or people from whom it was taken.
— eg, The taking of rubber-tree seeds from Brazil in the 1870s to
establish large and profitable rubber plantations in Malaya has been
characterised retrospectively as biopiracy.
CHINDIA the combination of China and India as an economic force in the
world. The term is said to have been coined by the Indian economist Jairam
Ramesh.
— eg, In coming decades, Chindia will pose a significant threat to the
world’s established economic and political pecking order.
DOOSRA in cricket, a leg-break bowled with an off-break action. The
off-spinner’s equivalent of the googly, it was developed in the Indian
subcontinent, and its name means literally “second” or “other” in Hindi.
— eg, Freddie Flintoff was bemused, befuddled and bowled by
Muralitharan’s doosra.
HIP an acronym based on “home information pack”, a portfolio of
information about a house for sale, including search results and an
energy-efficiency rating, which must be provided by the vendor.
— eg, After September 10, sellers of three-bedroom houses will have to
have a HIP.
WI-FI high-speed wireless transmission of data over a short range,
enabling reception and downloading without the need for cables. The word is
a combination of “hi-fi” with the “wi-” of “wireless”.
— eg, If you’ve got a wi-fi-equipped laptop you can do your e-mailing in
the garden.
POSTAL Someone who “goes postal” flies into a rage. The expression
originated in America in the early 1990s when several incidents were
reported of employees of the US Postal Service shooting at colleagues.
— eg, If my dad finds out he’ll go totally postal.
STUCKIST a member of a 21st-century group of British painters who
champion the cause of figurative art against the modern trend of conceptual
art. The name comes from a taunt aimed by Tracey Emin at, then her
boyfriend, the artist Billy Childish, that he and his paintings were “stuck”
(presumably in the mud).
— eg, According to the first Stuckist manifesto, “artists who don’t
paint aren’t artists”.
NIQAB a piece of cloth covering the face (with the exception of the
eyes), worn by some Muslim women as part of the hijab (head and body
covering prescribed by Islamic law). The Arabic word has become familiar in
English over the past few years.
SUB-PRIME a euphemism for something of low quality, designed to
disguise it as merely a little below the best; applied specifically to
mortgages granted to borrowers with poor credit ratings. An even more
weaselly synonym is “near-prime”.
— eg, Markets have been battered by the repercussions of defaults on US
sub-prime home loans.
EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION a 21st-century euphemism for the forcible
transportation of terror suspects by the CIA from one country to another one
where the use of torture is less likely to excite comment.
— eg, Concern has been expressed over “extraordinary rendition” flights
landing at UK airports.
TERROIR a recently naturalised French term of wine-making art, with no
exact equivalent in English: it connotes the ineffable mix of soil,
microclimate, altitude and exposure unique to a locality, which gives the
wine produced there its particular characteristics.
— eg, In New World wine, grape variety is all-important, but for
European growers it is terroir that counts.
HOODIE a young person who wears a hooded top (also called a “hoodie”)
and is regarded as posing a threat to the established order
— eg, Hug a hoodie!
L8R the abbreviated code of texting, “later”.
— eg, C U L8R
