It seems that whenever someone says that they are coining a word, it fails to become a word. I don't understand why Y2K isn't a word; it just designates the year and not a computer problem. Is seems everyone is avoiding saying the year (00) except in print or calling it with century included. "Here, sir, are the statistics from 00, and those are the numbers from 99." What do AWAD talk subscribers say? Y2K was a good example of a word being coined and I doubt it could be traced to one person. Unfortunately, "Y2K" seems to have become synonymous with "Y2K computer date problem/disaster" and not 2000. My point is that I don't think that anyone just decides to coin a word and then find it in usage. Or is that just what "coin a word" means? What's the difference between coining a word and neologisms (word salad)? There appears to be an unspoken dynamic of language at work for a word to come into usage, be it the ease of its use, its singularity, its hip quotient, or its shared secrecy or jargon.
