Blogtrek

Review of Words book

I purchased a book recently called Predicting new words. It is about words that have been invented such as spin, meaning way of presenting something, and weapons-grade, meaning of superior quality. I found it quite interesting and I heartily recommend the book. He not only gives us many new words but he also predicts the chances of their success. His factors are:

1. Frequency of use

2. Unobtrusiveness

3. Diversity

4. Generation of other forms and meanings

5. Endurance of the concept.

OK, let's take a non-word from my Non-Words page. Try rurale, for instance. This means uncouth, crude, or ill-mannered, and is the opposite of urbane. Here is my ratings of it: Frequency, 0; Unobtrusiveness, 2; Diversity, 0; Generation of other forms, 1; Endurance of the concept, 2. It gets the two zeroes because no one has used them much except me; that is a problem with most of the words on my Non-Word page. It fits into language like a glove: "… behaving like a bunch of rurale brutes…", getting the 2 for unobtrusiveness. It has only one other form (ruralely), but the concept of well-mannered versus ill-mannered was around when I was a child and will continue, as I see it, well into the future. Total score is 5. If I start using it a lot, it will gain in Frequency and Diversity, and it then would have a good chance of entering the language. It main positive attribute is its Unobtrusiveness.

Mr. Metcalf, the book's author, rates atmosFear 0, and weapons-grade9. Thus atmosFear is going to get nowhere, while weapons-grade is likely to become part of the language. I agree with him on atmosFear, because in speech that does not sound different from "atmosphere",and on the page the F makes it look ugly. I agree with what Mr. Metcalf says about weapons-grade as well, that it has a good chance to enter our vocabulary, but I think it is ominous that this will happen. The word is violent; it implies that to be excellent you have to show some willingness to hurt people or things. So I hope it doesn't enter the vocabulary. I feel the same about blockbuster, which was named after a weapon capable of destroying an entire city block. But I think it is a good book anyway and I hope you have fun trying to predict which of my non-words will make it into the language.