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Faldage asked me, in the "Tat" thread
where's your bar set for wordicity?
I'm always thinking about that, because some new words delight me, and some annoy me.
Roughly, I suppose, my criteria are these:
A new word should fill a gap. I like the word "diss" because it covers "dismiss" and "disparage". It's a nice, neat, short, aurally-appropriate verb.
A new word should be clearly defined. The user should be able to say what it means without resorting to the phrase "you know what I mean?".
I dislike the widespread application of jargon outside its appropriate field. I don't "make hard copy", I write things down. I will allow you to "access" a file on my computer, but you can only have access to my library. I really, really dislike the use of mechanical/computer jargon applied to human beings or other living things.
Other modifiers to the bar may occur to me, but those will do for a start.
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really dislike the use of mechanical/computer jargon applied to human beings
A medical doctor at the University of Washington, speaking of senile dementia, suggested that sufferers therefrom "have less access to RAM than they used to." This appears to violate TWO of Elizabeth's criteria. And it did sound to me like the doc was trying to be "hip" for his mostly younger audience of new physicians.
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Oh, yeah - I will cut a new word a lot of slack if it is witty, which doesn't necessarily mean funny. Something which snaps the synapses in unexpected ways is far likelier to make it as a new word with me than a lazy misuse of a current word.
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What provoked my question as to where your bar was set for wordicity was your question "Is facticity a word?". To me this doesn't say, "This is a word I don't like." It says, "Does this bunch of phonemes, nay, lexemes, qualify as a word?" But we've been down that road before.
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The decision about the question "Does this bunch of phonemes, nay, lexemes, qualify as a word?" is clearly not a democratic one, even less the affair of a commitee. It is more like the fate of a pebble carried along by a river: some are ground down to sand quickly, others end up well-rounded and smooth.
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the fate of a pebble carried along by a river: some are ground down to sand quickly, others end up well-rounded and smooth. Nice one, wsieber!
In one of my commonplace books I have a quote by Borges about language not being a rational invention, but one born of fantastic impulses. I'm pretty sure it came off of AWAD, so most of you will know it...
And I actually like the way "wordicity" sounds - it has a pleasing rhythm, rolls easily off the tongue. There must already be a word in English for "the state of being a word", don't you think? But if there isn't, "wordicity" would fill that gap well.
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Well now--this is an interesting term, Elizabeth! Since you didn't capitalize commonplace, I'm assuming we can give it the normal meaning; would you mind sharing what the contrasting category is? Extraordinary books, perhaps?
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that's a new one for me, Padre. thanks for the link, and the info.
formerly known as etaoin...
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I'm sure someone else on this board knows where the name "commonplace book" originated. I first heard of it on CBC when Bill Richardson started a "Commonplace book of the air" and invited listeners to phone in their entries.
A commonplace book is a book in which you write things that you find striking in your reading or conversations. A lot of what is in mine are witticisms, but I also have quotes from "Cold Mountain" and longish pieces on the nature of art, etc, things that I think "I love that, and I'd like to read it again without having to search thorugh the whole book for it" So instead I just search through books I've kept (on my third so far) and get sidetracked by other interesting things.
I make my own commonplace books, using whatever paper has grabbed my attention at the time. The one I'm currently using is covered with an off-white paper printed in burgundy with writing in, I believe, Thai. The paper was brought to me by a friend when she returned from a trip to SE Asia.
In an oxymoronic way, a commonplace book is actually quite extraordinary.
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