Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success

by Allan Metcalf Professor

Overview

Have you ever aspired to gain linguistic immortality by making up a word? Many people — such famous writers as Jonathan Swift, Lewis Carroll, and Dr. Seuss, along with many lesser-knowns — have coined new words that have endured. But most of the new words people put forward fail to find favor. Why are some new words adopted, while others are ignored? Allan Metcalf explores this question in his fascinating look at new-word creation.
In surveying past coinages and proposed new words, Metcalf discerns lessons for linguistic longevity. He shows us, for instance, why the humorist Gelett Burgess succeeded in contributing the words blurb and bromide to the language but failed to win anyone over to bleesh or diabob. Metcalf examines terms invented to describe political causes and social phenomena (silent majority, Gen-X), terms coined in books (edge city, Catch-22), brand names and words derived from them (aspirin, Ping-Pong), and words that derive from misunderstandings (cherry, kudo). He develops a scale for predicting the success of newly coined words and uses it to foretell which emerging words will outlast the twenty-first century. In this highly original work, Metcalf shows us how to spin syllabic straw into linguistic gold.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780618130085
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	07/14/2004
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	4.62(w) x 7.94(h) x (d)

About the Author

Allan Metcalf is a professor of English at MacMurray College, executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, and author of books on language and writing. His books on language include AMERICA IN SO MANY WORDS (with David K. Barnhart), THE WORLD IN SO MANY WORDS, HOW WE TALK: AMERICAN REGIONAL ENGLISH TODAY, PREDICTING NEW WORDS, and PRESIDENTIAL VOICES. His books on writing include RESEARCH TO THE POINT and ESSENTIALS OF WRITING TO THE POINT. He lives in Jacksonville, Illinois.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	v
	A Note on Sources	xii
	Acknowledgments	xiv
1	The Mystery of Success	1
2	How to Be a Loser	15
3	Winning Creations	43
4	The Myth of Gaps	63
5	Exceptions That Test the Rule	78
6	Natural Birth and Rebirth	97
7	Forget the Joke and Fly Under the Radar	129
8	The FUDGE Factors	149
9	The Crystal Ball	167
10	A Word of Your Own	185
Appendix	American Dialect Society Words of the Year	188
	Index	195

Editorial Reviews

"Has something for everyone . . . jam-packed with treats for word lovers." Booklist, ALA

"Just plain fun." Kirkus Reviews —

From the Publisher

Language authority Metcalf (The World in So Many Words, 1999, etc.) entices readers into the quirky, sometimes mysterious process by which brand-new words and phrases emerge to define the times in which we live.

Technology’s march crushes as many words as it anoints, observes Metcalf (English/MacMurray Coll.). "Chad," for instance, even though it has recently spawned "hanging" and "pregnant" variants, will not outlive the punch card. The author’s main premise is that he has developed a formula that, applied to existing neologisms, will let us make an educated guess as to whether they will stick around or not. The FUDGE scale (Frequency of use, Unobtrusiveness, Diversity of users, Generation of other forms, Endurance) is mildly persuasive, but Metcalf’s text is not mission-critical stuff; it’s just plain fun. For example, the origin of the now universally accepted "okay" is traced to a wacky but thankfully short-lived fad among 19th-century writers and editors to use garbled acronyms as a kind of satiric commentary: hence, "all correct" becomes O.K. in the same vein that N.S.M.G. stands for "‘nuff said ’mong gentlemen." Even more amusing are fraudulent scholarly attempts to pass "okay" off as derivative of foreignisms ranging from French to Finnish and even Scots dialect ("Och aye," or, "oh, yes"). More serious is the way event-driven phrases latch on as historical shorthand: "9/11," for instance, recasts "Ground Zero," a nearly forgotten technical reference to the point of a nuclear detonation, into a site of unspeakable horror. Also notable is the growing impact of computer analysis on word origins. Shakespeare, for example, is credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with inventingmore than 1,000 English words since legitimized by common usage; recent scanning of earlier texts reveals, however, that the Bard may often have taken preexisting but little-used words and put them solidly on the map within the memorable contexts of his works.

Farewell soccer moms, hello women of cover.

Author tour

Kirkus Reviews