Re: Wittgenstein and private language; was: revealing your status as a conlanger

Sally Caves scripsit:

> I don't know.  I once described a plunger as a "kleegle."  I was four, I was
> in the bathtub and I pointed to the toilet plunger and asked my mother
> "what's that kleegle over there?"  (already conlanging)   Mom still uses the
> word to mean an object you don't have a word for.  It's a private joke, a
> word only our family knows.  I suppose if I were a famous author and wrote
> about it, it could fall into public use.
There *are* in fact lots of words in public use for that purpose: gadget,
widget, gilkickie, e.g.  Geeks also have a set of proper names (though
not usually capitalized) for referring to complex things:  foo, bar, baz.

But "kleegle" is charming, provided it does not put you in mind of "Kleagle"
(the title of some KKK official or other).

--
Here lies the Christian,                        John Cowan
        judge, and poet Peter,                  http://www.reutershealth.com
Who broke the laws of God                       http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
        and man and metre.                      jcowan@reutershealth.com