Neologism generator (Photo credit: Peter Forret)
Yesterday’s word was mundify: to cleanse, deterge (yes, that is a real word), purge or purify. In other words, what I need to do after watching the Jeremy Kyle or Jerry Springer shows.
Try as I might, I couldn’t fit today’s word into a reblog about household tips, so I have given it a post of its own:
NEOTERISM
Because I don’t like you coming here and not working, I’m going to give you a task.
If you’ve been around here a while, you may have noticed I play fast and loose with the English language, coining new words for convenience and then never using them again.
*
To be inept in the use of modern technology; one who is inept in the use of modern technology (specifically, her new mobile phone, eighteen months old, and of which she realised only recently, despite using it every day, that it was a touch screen).
“Technology has exceeded our humanity” (Photo credit: Toban B.)
Here is your task:
Tell me what word you have invented, with its definition and a sentence demonstrating its use.*
Good word!
What’s yours?
I love learning new words!!! Thanks
And do you make them up?
Tilly I wish you had wrote this a few days ago, would have been a perfect fit for my post with new words. http://keiththegreen.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/neophobe-or-neophile/
I love grammar, linguistics and words and language. I have not made up one word lately although I do add what ever word comes to mind when there is a song playing and I am at a loss for the right one. I take lots of crap for this from my family which generally leads to histrionic’s on my part.
I like this post, Tilly.
I have a dictionary set up over on my blog, for the words that I make up from time to time. In fact, it’s part of my 101 in 1001 challenge (number 6), which I’m not doing very well at. One of my favourites is ‘thentasy’.
“I remembered being absorbed in one of my many daydreams at the time, yet another thentasy of mine that wouldn’t come true”
we are more likely to make up an entire expression around here, than a single word: such as: is she were any dumber, you’d have to water her. which personally, I think is insulting to most plants.
hmmm…..would that be a “plantslur?”
I don’t know if I invent new words, I probably forgot any that i my have invented but I did exoand a word into an adjective. When I went skiing and I couldn’t find my newer ski pants, I had to squeeze myself into my 25 year old ski pants. I told my hubby that on that day I felt sausagy, sqozen into my ski pants of my yesteryears.
“Teenageitis” – a medical condition that makes a person to talk, behave, or dress like a teenager.
Phoo! This is easy. I invented this word months ago, and use it so much, all my friends and colleagues know what it means:
Intermittentnet What you get, instead of Internet, when you are a country mouse.
I would have posted this comment sooner, but was wrestling with my [-------------]Intermittentnet.
That’s a good one!
I thought I had made this up, but then I was being silly because it’s such an easy one I should have known Google would find other uses. Mostly though it seems to have been used as a blog title for a teen blog that I will never waste another second reading again. Ah hem. Well, it may not count but last week on Facebook I shared a post from the public radio show called “A Way With Words,” about making up our own words. My word was “wordsomeness,” that linguistic something which communicates meaning and makes a word a word. For my sentence, I’ll quote myself (three sentences actually): “What makes a word a word? Just ask Shakespeare who made them up when it suited him, long before he was famous. And saying, ‘It isn’t in the dictionary,’ doesn’t negate it’s wordsomeness.”
Oh, I like that one! I’ve never heard it before.
You remember mundulate, mundulating – whose origin was a typo on Harry’s blog, Not exactly my invention, though I did write a whole poem using it during the MPs expenses scandal. Politicians are mundulating again, squirming out of regulating the press, and making excuses for not doing what they should.
My own recent invention was “snain” for that horrid combination of snow and rain which has been blighting us recently.
I didn’t invent this word but I invented the definition for it: flangiprop–the stack of papers and books and stuff that gets piled on coffee tables and tables. That’s my definition for this made-up word.
You’ve had it for 18 months without realising it’s a touch screen?!! That’s completely daftalicious! (i.e. an action that has reached the height of pure brilliance due to its extreme silliness)
Oh, fabulous word!
And totally true – I just didn’t make the connection.
I don’t think I’ve made up any words. I just randomly insert German into English sentences whenever I come across things that English doesn’t have an adequate word for. One of my favourites is “egal”, which means “I don’t mind” or “never mind/it doesn’t matter” depending on the context. One four letter word for a concept that needs several words in English!
A lot of bilinguists do that. The Hub is the same with Afrikaans and English.