New Words, Sniglets, and Words-That-Aren't

According to this article from CNN online, the latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary has officially added about 100 new words to the English lexicon. This isn't surprising, because languages in general (and English in particular) are very good about making new words and adapting existing ones to meet new linguistic requirements. Nevertheless, it's always interesting to look at what societal changes are reflected in the new words.

My favorite of the new words is mondegreen - a word which describes words which are mistaken for other words. It's very useful with song lyrics, which often end up as mondegreens; the classic example is, "there's a bathroom on the right," from the Creedence Clearwater Revival lyric, "there's a bad moon on the rise." The word mondegreen, in fact, comes from the corruption of the Scottish folk lyric "laid him on the green," which has turned into "Lady Mondegreen." There's a book title that's a mondegreen, too: according to an interview I read years ago, John D. MacDonald's book The Green Ripper got it's title from his young daughter's attempt to say Grim Reaper.

Other new words include soju (the devastatingly potent Korean vodka), dirty bomb (too bad we need that one), webinar, and netroots (referring to grassroots political activists who communicate online, especially in blogs).

These new words should not be confused with sniglets - words which ought to appear in the dictionary, but don't. Examples of these include arachnidiot (noun) - a person, who, having wandered into a spider web, begins gyrating and flailing about wildly; and, sarchasm (also a noun) - the gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it (Mike will find that word useful).

Oddly enough, I learned the other day that one of my favorite words isn't, in fact, a word at all. According to YourDictionary.com, bloviate isn't a real word. This is a crushing blow to me, because I have always found bloviate (to speak or write verbosely or windily) to be a marvelous word to describe all the pompous political gas generated here in Washington and elsewhere. Real word or not, I'll keep using it...it's just too good to leave behind.

So here's your assignment, class - go forth and use some of these new words. And if you come up with a good new sniglet, e-mail it to me. If I like it enough, you'll get credit here.

And that's no bloviation.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo