Get your new words while they’re hot (warm, anyway)

Watch the English language evolve! Here are some of this site’s neologisms—original, borrowed and even commissioned—from my posts over the past year or two. The numbers refer to how many hits each gets on Google as of right now.

* Cymbalalalazophobia (fashioned to order by Dr Anthony Alcock, coiner of words for our age extraordinaire). 0 hits (a big surprise) 

* Iktsuarpok (with thanks to the Inuit and to Adam Jacot de  Boinod for collecting this specimen). 7,570 hits

 

 

* To cabbage (v. trans.) David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest). n/a (turns out there are other “cabbage” verbs, but I can’t find references to Wallace’s usage) 

* Hobologoism/ hobologoist (coined by yours truly, I am proud to report). 10 (they all lead to my site, mind you; but just wait till next year, eh?)

* Hi-so (from current Thai slang by way of English hi*gh so*ciety). 752,000,000 (but most instances refer to other things)

* iField (with apologies to Apple). 1,470,000 (subtract references to towns named Ifield)

* Vuvuzela (from S. Africa, quickly spread around the world on a tide of footie fever, but faded as fast from the popular mind). 11,600,000 (9,320,000 for “vuvuzela 2011,” so maybe it isn’t fading as fast as all that)

* Democrazy (used in newspaper interview by former Thai Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij, at a time, last year, when local demos had indeed gone patently crazy).  755,000 (the word is everywhere, and, just like its half-cognate, applied to all manner of things)

* Apocalyptic cosmophobia (me, looking forward to 2012). 3 (all my site)

* Beepification/ beepify (Leary’s coinage). 5 (only one of them referring to Leary; the expression has had multiple geneses)

* Absent presence (an expression for our times, coined a few years ago and likely to enjoy increasing currency over the years to come). 89,100,000

So that’s it for now, with help from a scholarly friend, the South Africans, Inuit, and Thais, a writer or two, and a relic Boomer channelling from 50 years ahead. Stay tuned for more news of  changes to the language, not to mention recommended changes.

The ghost portrait of David Foster Wallace brooding at the top of the page won’t go away.  I fear he’s holding me in some way responsible for something.