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Thanks, Father Steve. I think they take a rather po-faced view, not giving enough credit to the taste and auditory impact of a coined word... but that's just me.
btw, you may want to put an l on the end of the link (html)
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Obrigado, Mav. URL detruncated. Here's the list to which the Japan Times was reacting/responding. http://www.m-w.com/info/favorite.htm
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Call me po-faced then, because I agree with their view, especially of the realy strained ones like phonecrastinate and the tediously pretentious lingweenie. I concur with their choices, but would also say that the ones I reject don't taste good, and their impact is the auditory equivalent of a damp squib. But then, I don't speak Wanglish.
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hah, yes, I very much agree about the strained efforts. :) But I flatly disagree that a neologism has to be shorter to be of value. That runs counter to much observable fact of language formation, and is just a typical prescriptivist bit of nonsense.
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>But I flatly disagree that a neologism has to be shorter to be of value.
Sorry, I missed them saying that. I'm with you on that one.
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Ginormous is a neologism? I can remember my father using it back when I was a mere slip of a lad, indeed he probably still does when the circumstances seem to call for it.
Bingley
Bingley
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Yes, I've been puzzling over that, Bing - it was common currency in Kent as a kid. It's the chattering effect of the web, I think!
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it was common currency in Kent
Just another indication of the lag between coining and first sighting in print.
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Valid point, Fong. Any idea if there is any earlier citation from any of the normal sources though?
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more like an example of over there vs. over here - it's in OED, shorter Oxford, Cambridge; first attested by OED in Partridge ('48) and Granville ('62) slang dict's. here're the "real" citations: 1970 A. REID Confessions of Hitch-hiker vi. 45 We went to a posh café...The prices were ginormous. 1976 Scotsman 20 Nov. 10/2 How about froggies filled with pot-pourri from small to gi-normous, as Just Us describe them. 1977 Economist 8 Oct. 98/3 The state company Egam, declared bust last spring,..is going to cost considerably more than the £500 billion..earmarked by the government last June, probably a ginormous £1,700 billion. 1986 Sunday Express (Colour Suppl.) 23 Mar. 70/3 Since Brands Hatch, doors have opened and it's possible to make gi-normous money.it's just a portmanteau word, of course: gigantic + enormous. (listed as such in Wikipedia's list of ~ words. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_portmanteaus)
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Thanks, tsuwm. I still can't particularly understand why it's lit the touchpaper recently but!
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