Re: New Words

Quoting JS Bangs <jaspax@...>:

> Abrigon Gusiq sikyal:
>
> > Saying words to impress or to set one self off from others.. Snooty if
> > you like..
>
> This doesn't work with truly new words. Only existing words that have high
> prestige.
That's not entirely true.

Having done some ethically questionable experimentation, I know first-hand
that, given the right situation and audience, you can invent a word on the spot
and have people impressed by your advanced vocabulary. The trick, usually, is
to invent something that sounds like a Latin/Greekly derived item of
scientific/technical terminology.

Simply patching such terms together from known morphemes is even more likely to
work, but you run the risk of "coining" a word that actually already exists.
That's happened to me a few times - mostly, the existing word even had the
intended meaning!

Now, it must be highly unlikely for a word so arosen to become established as
the normal term for anything, but given the numbers of overeducated geeks
milling around in the modern world, it wouldn't surprise me at all if it's
happened a few times.
                                                                  Andreas

PS What's even easier, and even less ethical, is conjuring up something out of
the blue and claim it's the Classical Khmer, or whatever, term for something.
With the right (wrong) sort of people, this too can impress, but here the
chance that the world catches on must presumably be neglible.