Anecdotage
By far one of the most appealing aspects of English is its playfulness, its willingness to welcome in new words near daily. I’m forever flummoxed by the latest street slang, and grateful for my in-house teenybopper interpreter.
The words sandwich, dwindle, slump, bellhop, spurious, quiz, jeopardy, crestfallen and mob were all once lowly, and often vilified slang words.
– Howard Richler, A Bawdy Language
While some of us may lament what’s happened to the word hopefully, and rage against the debatable impactfulness of some neologisms, most new words fill a void and testify to the great democracy of this language.
And it’s fascinating to monitor their path; some newly coined words will live on for centuries while most fall quickly into disuse – and are usually mocked before dying.
Generally, by the time the slang of a closed group or a gang makes its way into the mainstream, the gang is no longer using it (having already made up new words to keep their talk secret).
Those who continue to resist can take heart that the great Jonathan Swift too raged in vain against the neologisms gazette, brunette and symphony in his time – although embracing and coining more than one (including the short-lived splacknuck).
Guiding us in cringe and praise, the American Dialect Society monitors new catchwords, and every year elects a winner (as well as providing some fine links.)
Among this year’s nominees are:
Walking pinata: a person subject to relentless criticism – dialarhoea: inadvertent dialling of a cell phone in a pocket or handbag – virtuecrat: person both politically correct and morally righteous – black tide: large-scale oil pollution at sea – neuticles: fake testicles for neutered pets and… grid butt: marks left on the buttocks by fishnet pantyhose .
Unable to work fo’ shizzle into my vocabulary, I’m awfully glad to be living in France where you can still say cool and not lose face.
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Comment
- People get fake testicles for their neutered pets? So common is it that it has its own word. I am speechless.
— Alicia Oct 10, 11:34am # - Earlier in the year, the daughter was using “schiznitz” as in, “those boots are the schiznitz…” I’m not sure what new version we’re up to now. I quit counting after version four…
— roggey Oct 10, 12:25pm # - Dude, I’m so far behind, I’m still using “dude”.
— cmb Oct 10, 7:25pm # - I had no idea most of those words were at one time slang. They’re so… normal.
The new ones are pants.
— mangoduck Oct 10, 10:38pm # - “Proactive.” God, I hate that one.
— peggy Oct 12, 1:17am # - The new ones are pants.
And yet before too long they too will seem so… normal. Why doesn’t anyone ever get this (unless they have it pounded into them in linguistics class)? It’s not the words that are “pants” – you just don’t like what you’re not used to! It’s exactly like “that stuff the kids listen to these days, they call that music?” Try to achieve at least a smidgen of perspective, people.
And, Gail, there’s nothing wrong with “hopefully,” and nothing has “happened” to it that hadn’t long ago “happened” to “sadly,” “happily,” and many others that nobody objects to. They’re called “sentence adverbs”; in the words of the good Kenneth G. Wilson, “They are economical constructions, replacing longer phrasal and clausal structures such as It is amusing to note that…, and this efficiency itself may explain some purists’ objection to certain sentence adverbs: to some, efficiency apparently smacks of haste and compromise.”
http://www.bartleby.com/68/90/5390.html
And he says of “hopefully”: “hopefully is in fact Standard.”
http://www.bartleby.com/68/33/3033.html
Hopefully, this is now clear to everyone.
— language hat Oct 12, 2:51pm # - Hopefully, this is now clear to everyone.
Well put, Captain Hat. Jarringly out of pitch given the thrust of the post (‘most new words fill a void and testify to the great democracy of this language’), but well put nonetheless, I guess.
Anyways.
— Dean Allen Oct 12, 6:00pm # - “you just don’t like what you’re not used to!”
I’m well aware of that. But why shame people for thinking something new and unusual to be just that? It is now your duty to travel back in time and correct everyone that criticized slang that is still in use today. Good luck :]
And, I realized minutes after commenting that the entirety of language probably originates from slang, so who am I to complain. As humans we can’t resist for one second the urge to name shite, an annoying habit at times, thus whatever identifying sounds and gestures tickled our fancy became the foundation for everything after.
I’m sure Gail has either already thought of this, or is going to shoot me down faster than greased pig spit.
— mangoduck Oct 12, 6:01pm # - Not trying to shame people, just get them to think. If I sound a tad irritable, it’s because I’ve been fighting this fight for over thirty years now. But sometimes it works: your thought process is visible in the course of your comment! And I like your way with words (not to mention your moniker).
Dean: Not sure what you mean by “jarringly out of pitch.” I thought I was right at concert A.
— language hat Oct 13, 5:01pm # - In case nobody’s tried it yet, www.neuticles.com does exist and it is just that. It’s been around for several years. Reasonably priced, too.
— Su Oct 13, 6:25pm # - Not sure what you mean by “jarringly out of pitch.” I thought I was right at concert A.
Alrighty then. Replying to a post that celebrates the incorporation of linguistic mutation into the lexical flow with a lot of wait, wait, linguistic mutations are our friends teeth-sucking rings way out of pitch.
I hope this is clear now, etc.
— Dean Allen Oct 13, 8:31pm # - “Reasonably priced, too.”
How would one determine the reasonable price for a neuticle?
— kerry Oct 14, 4:37am # - i work in hi-tech. where english goes to die. where software is “parameterized” and “federated.” i’ve had to use them, but i still don’t know what they mean.
— dlt Oct 14, 9:58am # - Dean: Loosen your panties, OK? I was responding in the first place to mangoduck’s complaint about new usages (“The new ones are pants”); my second paragraph was a perfectly civil response to Gail’s “While some of us may lament what’s happened to the word hopefully…” There’s nothing wrong with “hopefully,” and I was helpfully pointing that out. If Gail found something wrong with my pitch, she’s perfectly capable of saying so herself. What are you, her knight in shining armor? Or just another tooth-sucker?
— language hat Oct 14, 12:23pm # - My irony seems to have been lost. Using slang (pants) to mock other slang…
— mangoduck Oct 14, 5:41pm # - Oh. Hat, the hey I’m just a straight shooter so lighten up line is the last thing you need right now. I’ll remind you:
1. you misunderstood the post.
2. you took this misreading as your cue to squeeze off a lot of tired old nothing wrong with ‘hopefully’ blather.
We were there; we had to sit through it.
And hey, I assure you, if you lived with Gail you’d hope to be her knight in shining armour every god damned day.
— Dean Allen Oct 14, 7:43pm # - Fo’ pantz.
— Oct 15, 1:39pm # - perhaps many neologisms fill a void and testify to the democracy of this language, but somehow faced with the likes of “impactfulness” I just have to wonder.
was there really a void waiting to be filled with this monstrocity? or is someone just trying to sound important without bothering to investigate some already established and perfectly adequate methods of expressing the idea they hoped to convey with this neologism.
a question: is this neologism more widespread than the confines of Coca Cola marketing team from where I first heard about this word?
call me gramps but the word sure looks awkward and sounds awful to me. I guess it’s just plain old-fashoined to hope for a little elegance in our language these days.
a rejoinder to the l hat: – I think that it is that some of the words are just pants. even with perspective they are pants – ‘pants’ being a subjective impression one has about ‘some thing’.
remember, a lot of things I’m used to I really don’t like and consider pants, while a lot of stuff that I’m not used to I find I really like and consider top. go figure the gramps
— mike l. Oct 16, 6:09pm # - Mike: Don’t get me wrong; I’m not immune to the preference for what I grew up with, and I hate some of the newer usages as much as anyone. It’s just that I don’t confuse my own preference with an objective valuation of the phenomena. If counterfactual “may have” replaces “might have” (one of my pet peeves), the language will work just as well, and younger generations will not be able to understand why people like me got so worked up about it. Hey, I hate the fact that the PanAm building is now the MetLife building, too, but I don’t expect anyone to consider that a moral judgment.
Dean: I apologize; I didn’t realize you were her significant other. Obviously I would have phrased my objection differently had I done so. I still feel you were attacking me for no good reason, but I would do the same if I felt someone were dissing my wife. Pax?
— language hat Oct 19, 5:42pm # - Despite my reputation for using words such as “bahjoingedy” or “skreeking” to describe quirks and failings of my automobile, I nearly come unhinged when i hear “orientated”.
— jocelyn Oct 21, 2:32pm # - l Hat: I’m totally with you on the idea that my preference has little or no relation to any sense of a real or imagined objectivity. I certainly don’t confuse my preference with any such thing. it’s just that given a choice of who is correct, I’m obviously going to win out. at least until I am willing to admit that I might be wrong, that there might be equally valid but opposing opinion or I realise just how embarrassingly wrong my position is in the face of a larger scheme of things.
certainly the addition of various neologisms won’t cause the collapse of language or communication. rather, it will, if nothing else, provide the opportunity for the likes myself to concurrently bemoan the desecration of our language, while at the same time taking part in the ‘desecration’ (explaining that it is merely the evolution of a fluid and living language) as the whim takes me and dependant upon whom I’m having a discussion with. surely there is no greater joy than taking the opposing side in a discussion with someone who is convinced of their ideas on the use of language.
jocelyn: i rather like ‘skreeking’. further i’m with you all the way on the ‘orientated’. hello, the word is ‘orient’ not ‘orientate’! orientated means something entirely different than what most people intend when using the word. (okay so I only just found this out a second ago, but hey my gut feeling was correct!) i believe it is up there with the annoying addition of ‘wise’ to far too many words as in ‘career-wise’, ‘temperature-wise’ and the like.
and now that i’m descending into a ranting hell on language use, can people just start saying ‘you’re welcome’ when someone thanks them (most notable on tv at the end of an interview)? you don’t have to thank someone back all the time. try ‘my pleasure’, ‘you’re more than welcome’, ‘it was nothing’
oh jeez, I’m going off the rails, i’ll stop.
‘no, thank you’
— mike l. Oct 26, 3:48pm #
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