Wednesday 12 August 2009

Protologism


Humilified. Chillsome. These are my two favorites.


Neologism: A neologism (pronounced /niˈɒlədʒɪzəm/); from Greek νές (neo 'new' + logos 'word') is a newly coined word that may be in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language. Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event. According to Oxford English Dictionary the term neologism was first used in print in 1772. In psychiatry, the term neologism is used to describe the use of words that only have meaning to the person who uses them, independent of their common meaning. This is considered normal in children, but a symptom of thought disorder (indicative of a psychotic mental illness, such as schizophrenia) in adults.


Ah, well. Yes.


In other words:


Had a discussion this week with CD about the use of the word "down" to describe the event of his child sleeping. "Madeline went down," "I put Madeline down," etc.


Saw a man who looked like the lead singer from Coldplay while standing in line at a theatre in Times Square with JG and said "hey, is that Chris Play from Coldmartin ?"


Threw a fit when people appearing on HGTV shows about home-buying described a certain type of room as a "bump out" one too many times.




1 comment:

  1. αποκριτεσ τε ο δαωιδ λαλει - I would distrust that 'first citation' of 'neologism,' as it is roughly contemporaneous to the appearance of dictionaries, before which time, people generally didn't inquire into whether a word had been properly minted.

    As for the rest, I heartily encourage λογοσ-centric freedom.

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