Logologists everywhere welcome the appearance of a new dictionary, particularly if it fills a niche not occupied by ones already on the market

Francis, Darryl

English

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ot (see Hand-York City) common 1acDonald gobble, Itar of the leading lady ;when asked Loved) . rd, a term :ion ( see How one: II A I smother md in a pri­11" s. Hoo). ies where ::l.uty of the iTal to his ;0 this word , King Aha­1 the doorway nings. One ~ proper re­or, 11 What ,ning is gi­notice given on a .much ERRILY, row your ..vords of 39 A GECAOE OF NEOLOGISMS DARRYL FRANCIS Hounslow, Middle s ex, England Logologi sts everywhere welcome the appearance of a new diction­ary, particularly if it fills a niche not occupied by ones already on the market. Such a dictionary appeared in the late .summer of 1973: A Dictionary of New English, edited by Clarence L. Barnhart, Sol Stein­metz ,and Robert K. Barnhart. Published simultaneously in Great Brit­ain (Longman) for 3.60 pounds sterling and in the United States (Barn­hart / Harper & Row) for $ 12.50, this dictionary covers words, init­ials, phrases, abbreviations, acronyms and meanings that have corne into the vocabulary of the English language during the period 1963 to 1972. The new words and phrase s were collected from the reading of more than half a billion words of text from American, British and Can­adian sources (newspapers, magazines and books). The 5000 or so entrie s in the dictionary were selected from over a million quotations, a collection exceeded only by those used in the preparation of Webster's Third Edition and the Oxford English Dictionary. The beginning date of 1963 11 marks the termination of the record of new English, except for sporadic examples, now available to the general public II - - presumably a reference to Webster l s Third which represented an enormous ad­vance on all previous records of the English language when it was com­pleted in 1961 (we can1 t explain the two-year difference between 1961 and 1963). The dictionary's compilers claim that II by checking the largest and most reliable standard English dictionaries to ascertain that none of the entrie s in the sele1ction (in A Dictionary of New Eng­lish) had appeared in them before, we were able to substantiate the judgment that these words and meanings were' new! II • From what we have seen of the dictionary, this implication -- that there is no over­lap between the contents of this dictionary and standard English-lan­guage dictionaries available in 1963 -- is probably true. Although there are many familiar-looking words in the dictionary, their mean­ings are unrecorded in pre- 1963 dictionaries. What do the words in this dictionary look like? Prefixes that are particularly productive of new formations are ASTRO-, BIO- and ELECTRO- as illustrated by ASTROBUG, ASTRODOG, ASTROMONK and ASTRONAUTESS; BIODETERlORATION, BlOETHICS, BIOHAZ.. ARD and BIOSATELLITE; ELECTRODELIC, ELECTROFILTER, EL­ECTROGASDYNAMIC and ELECTROMUSIC. Not only scientifically­flavored prefixes generate new words; MINI- has spawned MINI­CRUISE, MINIMOVIE. MINITANKER and MlNITRACTOR. Similarly, SUB- has given rise to SUBCOMPACT, SUBLANGUAGE, SUBPRO­FESSIONAL and SUBTEXT. 40 Suffixes, too, give birth to many new items. Two particularly no­table ones are -ESQUE and -MANSIDP. The former has spawned a whole passel of new words such as DISNEYESQUE, GERSHWINESQUE, MCLUHANESQUE and ROBOTESGUE. The latter appears in MARX­MANSHIP, QUOTEMANSHIP, STOCKMANSHIP and WINEMA NSHIP. The dictionary includes numerous political and semipolitical words. There l s AGNEWISM, CUBANOLOGIST, GUEVARIST, MAOIZE and NIXONOMICS. There I s also CHICANO, HARDHATTISM, NADERISM, NEOFEMINIST, WASPDOM and WOMEN 1S -LIBBER. The Vietnam war helped give birth to many new words, words such as CAMBODIANIZE, GUNSHIP, HELIBORNE, MEDEVAC, VIETNIK and ZAP. The preoc­cupation 'vith the environment during the late sixtie s and early seven­ties has been accompanied by a growth of related words; the dictionary tells us about ANTIPOLLUTIONIST, ECOCATASTROPHE, ECOCIDE, ECOCRISIS and ENVIRON-POLITICS. Science gives us several names for recently-created elements. There are HAHNIUM, KURCHA TOVIUM and RUTHERFORDIUM, not to mention ELEMENT 104 and ELEMENT 105. Other scientific tel:ms include ANTIQUARK, FIBEROPTIC, INTELSAT, LUNOKHOD, POLY­WATER, SKYLAB and STARQUAKE. Many of the new words convey ideas that require several words to express; because of this, they are centipede-like conglomerations of familiar word elements. A quick flick through the dictionary reveals the following ten lengthy spec imens: ANTIENTERT AINMENT MEGAHALLUCINOGEN BOURGEOISIFICATION MIC ROEARTHQU AKE CONTAINERSHIPPING NEUROPHARMACOLOGICAL COUNTERDEMONSTRATOR PSYCHEDELICATESSEN INTERGENERATIONAL UNDERCHA RA CTERIZATION An intere sting tendency of the new English, as evidenced by the dictionary, is the use of many words as verbs which the reader is more familiar with as nouns. All of the following words are accom­panied by impeccable citations for their use as verbs: BOOGALOO, DATA-BANK, DISCOTHEQUE, FRITZ, JET-HOP, MICKEY-MOUSE. MIRV and UNCLE-TOM. So far we have not felt it necessary to define any of the words that we have selected from the dictionary. All are reasonably familiar or, at worst, are composed of familiar parts, from which the meaning of the whole can usually be gleaned. However, there are many words in the dictionary which have no obvious relationship to already-existing words. Some examples, with meanings given in parenthe se s, are: BI (sexually involved with both sexes) , GOCK (a foul, nasty sub­stance) , GROK (to corrununicate meaningfully) , JOR (part of a Hindu musical form), MBIRA (a musical instrument), NGWEE (the mone­tary unit of Zambia since 1969) , QANAT (an under ground tunnel) , QIANA (a. s as somethin UNK-UNKS s tate farm 0 Not only or terms -­give some i< BAG JO: HOT PA HOMO A KINKY I URBAN MEN'S: OP-EDJ GRANT FUTURE LAZY D In its ex ary seems t the. element! of LAWREN included in ' item for inc: Webster ' s 1 though its dE GY never In the editors ( and UFOLO< OND as am; of New Eng!: METER, Nl There de logological i ENGLISH, a England. T] dictionary, • as the name ROTAVATO was mention nine-letter F graphers of nate over thl derives fron GRAMMATII dictionary. from Time 1 Vacation. ~:icularly no­pawned a IWINESQUE, in MARX­v1ANSillP. litical words. OIZE and NADERISM, Vietnam war BODIANIZE, The preoc­arly seven­he dictionary ECOCIDE, lements. DIUM, not mtific tel:ms .rOD, POLY­'al words to erations of ,lry reveals [CAL r TION ed by the ~ader is re accom­)GALOO, ~Y-MOUSE, words that familiar or, meaning of ny words in ly-existing les, are: :ty sub-t of a Hindu : the mone­tunnel) , 41 QIANA (a. synthetic fabric related to nylon). REJASING (reusing junk as something else, a near-acronym), RURP (a type of iron peg) , UNK-UNKS (a series of unknowns) and ZVENO (an experimentalI state farm of Soviet Rus sia) . Not only doe s the dictionary li st words, but it also li sts phrases or terms - - some familiar ,ather s strange. A score of the se should give some idea of the dictionary' s coverage~ BAG JOB SILENT MAJORITARlAN HOT PANTS WANKEL ENGINE HO MO AME RICANU S PEACE SYMBOL KINKY BOOT LIMOUSINE LIBERAL URBAN SPRAWL JESUS FREAK MEN'S LIB RO-RO SHIP OP-ED PAGE METER MAID GRAN TU RISMO BROWN POWER FUTURE SHOCK GAME PLAN LAZY DOG TRACK RECORD In its exclusion (rather than inclusion) of many words I the diction­ary seems to be remis s. We have already mentioned some names for the elements with atomic numbers 104 and 105, but no mention is made of LAWRENCru M, the element with atomic number 103. This was not included in Webster l s Third, and we would have thought it was a fitting item for including in the dictionary. LASER, another non-entry in Webster's Third, didn l t make A Dietiqnar¥ of New English either, al­though its derivative forms LASABLE and LASE are both in. UFOLO­GY never made Webster 1 s back in 1961 and is similarly overlooked by the editors of this dictionary, although its derivatives UFOLOGICAL and UFOLOGIST are li sted. Webster r s Third didn' t list NANOSEC­OND as a main entry, and we can see no good reason for A Dictionary of New English doing likewise, especially when it includes NANO­METER, NANOVOLT and NANOWATT. There don't seem to be many items in the dictionary of obvious logological interest. We note the fourteen-letter tautonxm ENGLISH ENGLISH, a synonym for BRITISH BRITISH, English as it is spoken in England. The second-order reduplication MAXI-TAX! appears in the dictionary, as does the four-Z word BIZZAZZ. ROTOVATOR is given as the name of a power-driven tool, the older (and palindromic) name ROTAVATOR being mentioned only in the etymology. ROTAVATOR was mentioned in the May 1973 Word Ways as one of the tiny band of nine -letter palindrome s; it would be most disappointing if the lexico­graphers of this world allowed the spelling ROTOVATOR to predomi­nate over the more etymologivally correct ROTAVATOR (the word derives from the term 11 rotary cultivator"). The adjective PAN­GRAMMATIC and the source noun PANGRAM are both included in the dictionary. Intere stingly, the citation given for the former was taken from Time Magazine I s review of Dmitri Borgmann 1 s Language on Vacation. 42 All in all, this is a very welcome dictionary, containing a multitude of items that no other dictionary has yet seen fit to publish. Our main criticism of "the dictionary is that it contains only a little more than 5000 entries in its 512 pages -- a much larger number would have been more welcome. A comparison of the dictionary's contents with our own personal file of neologisms reveals a plethora of terms that could have been included. Still, perhaps the editors felt that they ought to wait a few more years before giving some of these specimens full­hearted acceptance into the formally recorded English language. We finish up with ten more words from the new English: SMOGOUT UNISEX YOIJTHQUAKE FINLANDIZATION POLYOMlNO BANGZONE PENTOMINO MONOK1NI HOMOSEX ENDSVlLLE PSEUDONYMS, NICKNAMES, SOBRlQUETS, PEN NAMES Readers of Word Ways intere sted in onomastic s will welcome the appearance of the Handbook of Pseudonyms and Per sonal Nicknames (Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, N. J.) compiled by Harold S. Sharp and published in two volumes in 1972. Basic­ally, it consists of two (interleaved) alphabetical lists of 25,000 nicknames anq. 15,000 surnarpe s: each nickname has associated with it the names of all persons, living and dead, who have borne it; each surname has associated with it all the nicknames by which that person is (or was) known. Sometimes both the nickname and the surname are well-known (Richard M. Nixon - Tricky Dick); sometimes the surname is well-known but the ntckname is not (Edgar Allan Poe - The Wizard of Word Music); sometimes neither the surname nor the nickname are common knowledge (James Reeside - The Prince of Mail Confractor s). A hasty scan of the contents suggests that The Father Of .•• is the commonest sobriquet; there are approximately 350 different fathers represented, but only 16 mothers (Wornen l s Lib take note) • A SPELl RAMONA J. Spelling :E world. To hE ography, a m been devised. The following us which wor. The fir st two cisely in a we one sees imm with II E" , wb the letters E11 must begin wi English in sal applicabill standing and 't. B. Birk and C states that 11 'W rectly accordi To observ. one which just CIES, the var] The fir st diph1 ( it is pronoun( it is written t I fore, it should the rule so glt examination. p~ared in prin1 pre sent a stud, To begin w the jingle are 1 a long II El', al like a long 11 A' 

A Decade of Neologisms

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A Decade of Neologisms

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