A Mr. John Shakespeare [I know! Isn't that perfect?] had a question for me, and kindly gave his permission for me to share my answer with all of you.

I just read your interesting and amusing piece, Neologizing 101, in the NY Times. [I did not ask him to say this. —Ed.] Neologizing is the invention of a word; invention seems (to me, at least) to imply copyright. So my questions are: How does one prove invention of a new word? And, how does one copyright that invention, and make royalties (ie; /moolah/) from it?

I realize I'm not the first person to ask you such questions. I've been having a lot of trouble finding the answers on the net, though. So, I would be very grateful of any hints you could throw my way.

Respectfully,

John Shakespeare

First off: IANAL (I am not a lawyer), trademark or otherwise. Real lawyers should feel free to weigh in, that's what blog comments are for.

The short answer, though, is that a word is not copyrightable; you can register a
word as a trademark, connected to a product or service, but you can't copyright it.

This is, I think, because a copyright is a very limited right, and not an absolute property right. Copyrights came about to encourage authors to write by allowing them a limited monopoly over their work; as you can well imagine, that doesn't quite work for words. A word, once created, belongs to the language, not to you. You must share it for it to be effective as a word. (And most neologizers need no encouragement to share, whether monetary or any other sort!)

And even though a word is invented, you can't patent it -- again, because the point of a new word is to get it into use, not to restrict its use. Patents are less about granting a right for YOU to use something and more about keeping OTHER people from using it -- which doesn't make sense for words: "Here's my new word, sorry, you can't speak, read, or write it." Words have no value when kept apart from the language as a whole. More practically, there is no mechanism for charging a fee for the use of any particular word. (How on earth could you? Even if you could do it for print & broadcast media, you couldn't do it for casual speech ... )

Trademarks are the association of a word with a particular product, so as to protect the consumer (who wants to know that their Bon Ami powder is, in fact, Bon Ami, and not some other thing). They are not a license to control the use of a word in all situations. The fact that we have Apple Computers and Apple Records and Apple Tours doesn't mean we are suddenly barred from calling the fruit an apple, too. And you can Google things and get spam in your inbox and Roomba your living room ... trademark owners don't like the use of their trademarks as verbs but they cannot FORBID it.

It's better to look at your new word creation as a gift you give back to the language as a whole, rather than as a land-grab you can monetize. The English language has (ostensibly) been good to you; why not give something back?

[Have a question for the Dictionary Evangelist? There's an email link up there on the right ...]

Labels: copyright, legalities, neologism, patents, trademarks

Many thanks to Judah, who just sent me this link to the webcomic Bathos, which includes the new words "Oxfording" and "resoneged". Go. Click.

I suppose it's worth mentioning that for YEARS I had and wore a t-shirt that said "I never should have used the word bathos", huh? It's a long story, but no, I don't have any connection with the folks behind this comic (other than having thoroughly enjoyed it).

Labels: comics, neologism, OED

Don't get me wrong -- I loved the *idea* of Twitter, I just didn't think a constant stream of messages such as

12:02 "Reading New Scientist"
12:11 "Still reading New Scientist"
12:45 "In front of computer, reading the Internet"

would be interesting. To me, or to anyone else.

But (and there's always a 'but'), Twitter is perfect for a task that I've been having trouble managing: immediate new-word filing. If I'm at my desk, sure, I can append any new-to-me words I find in my reading to a file. And if I'm out and about, I can make a note on my Treo, or in my Moleskine. But they aren't all in the Same Place, and so consolidation has to happen. (Note: I am not so good -- actually, frakkin' terrible -- at consolidation, of any sort.)

Twitter lets me post a WOTD (word-of-the-day) from anywhere, and then it is nicely stored ALL IN ONE PLACE. The limit of 140 characters per 'tweet' keeps me from rambling on and on. And it's semi-public (you can follow my messages if you like, I'm emckean on Twitter) which allows for the possibility of feedback.



If you really want a reliable, highly structured WOTD -- my Twitter feed is not for you. (What you want is Double-Tongued Dictionary.) But if you just want to ride shotgun while I read, go ahead and add me to your "follow" list.

If *you* want to do the same thing with the words you notice, go ahead and use the tag "wotd:" -- Twitter has a 'track' function, so if you prefix your messages with this tag, I'll be able to follow your new words easily. Fun, no? (BTW, Twitter is free.)

I'll try to keep my Twitter feed just for the WOTDs -- although a few rollerskating or "seeing-cool-music" tweets might make it through. Just a warning.

Labels: neologism, twitter, wotd

I often talk about how some words seem to hover in the ether (or aether, if you prefer) and will themselves into being, often by jumping into multiple brains near-simultaneously. And now I have a great example of this phenomenon, which I can share with you.

I just (and by 'just', I mean 'in the past several weeks') got a lovely email from Anthony Durity, in response to my TED talk, and letting me know a word he invented, ygology. Ygology, is, of course, the study of palindromes.

Now, I thought, that's a cool word. Let's Google it. So I did, and found some competing coinage claims.

Which, frankly, only makes sense. Knowing what a palindrome is, and knowing the suffix -ology, ygology was inevitable. It had to be born; English almost demanded it.

It's probably possible (with some taking of depositions) to determine exactly who first used ygology, and when, and in response to what ... but why bother? We have the word, which is the important thing, after all. I think coining claims should be like Nobels; nobody minds if two or three people win one together.

The illustration above is an ambigram, a kind of visual palindrome, done by John Langdon. Check out his website!

Labels: coining, neologism

As I know all of you know, an eponym is a word that comes from somebody's name. Braille from Louis Braille, silhouette from Étienne de Silhouette, etc., so on and so forth.

Leah sent me a link some time ago to a new eponym from Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (also known as The Yarn Harlot): kinnearing, after the actor Greg Kinnear, whom she ran into at the airport. Kinnearing is taking surreptitious pictures of someone (possibly someone famous) without being obvious about it, or, in fact, without even looking through the camera's viewfinder. But you should really go read her post about it.

I realized I often kinnear (with my cameraphone) people on the subway or in the airport who are reading books by people I have met, which happens more than you might think. Then I send the pictures to the author, you know, just in case they have some paranoid idea that no one is actually reading their books. For instance, this woman is reading Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames:



And this person is reading The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (although I can't remember if I sent him this photo or not, I guess I'll just send him the link to this post):



I know, I know, it's a weird practice, but as a dictionary editor the chances are slim (or, more likely, none) that I will ever see someone randomly using a book I worked on in the subway ... if you ever see that happen, kinnear away!

Labels: neologism

Check out the article here.

They list examples of 'unwords' such as ex-door neighbor "someone who used to be your neighbor but moved away" and dark-thirty "a half-hour after sunset."

Of course, as with most newspaper articles about neologisms, they are starting from the idea is that these neologisms aren't "real" words. Balderdash! They're words just as soon as people start using them as words (instead of as quasi-jokes).

Google shows me at least a few natural uses of ex-door neighbor (that is, uses that aren't just the word and its definition) and my family has been using a variant of dark-thirty for years: we use oh-dark-thirty, which is any ungodly hour of the morning, e.g., "My flight's at six, so I'll be leaving for the airport at oh-dark-thirty." (It seems to be a USMC term, which makes sense as my grandfather was a Marine ... albeit an unconventional one.)

Go ahead and submit your neologisms to them (the email address to do so is in the article) ... here's hoping they get some good examples and can help spread them. The only bad neologism is the unexamined neologism, in my (admittedly biased) opinion.

Of course, I'm reserving judgment on their term baby bear, "when something is just right," as in "You hungry, man? Nah, I'm baby bear." That one seems just a bit too twee for the example context given ... although I'm enjoying thinking of, say, the guys on Entourage trying to use it.

Thanks very much to Amy for the link!

Labels: neologism

I'm late posting this (it's been out for WEEKS), but hey, I was out of the country, first literally, and then metaphorically (while I tried to catch up).

But: remember the New Word Open Mic? A podcast is now available!

You can find it here, at Charles Hodgson's Podictionary site, or here, at KPBS, from A Way With Words. (Please go here to help in the quest to find that show a new home ...)

I have to admit: I haven't listened to it yet, because I am not especially fond of listening to myself (I already know what I said! Also: do I really sound like that? I'm a little more ... basso profundo ... in my head). But generally, the response has been positive. So go check it out!

Labels: neologism, podcasts

So, continuing my streak as the luckiest lexicographer in the free world, I spent last weekend at FooCamp. (Yeah, THAT FooCamp. I said I was lucky.) And because I figured it would be fun, I signed up to give a wordmaking session -- you can see it in the picture above, right there at 2 p.m. -- picture is by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid.

I know, I know, it's a bit over-the-top to call making new words "hacking English," but you have to draw your analogies where you can. You'd be surprised at the number of techie folks who won't hesitate to open a case clearly marked "DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE" but shy away from inventing a word. In my view, English is just another system, and systems are made to be explored, analyzed, and, yes, exploited and overclocked and hacked. Your language is just like your computer -- it's yours to use as you wish, and the only limit is whether or not, in the end, it works like you wanted it to. (And "works" for English means "am I expressing myself as I wish, and so that people can understand me?") And remember: English has no DRM -- derivative works are encouraged.

After going over some basic principles (which boiled down to 'make new words because it's fun, and here's some models for you to use') we started going over some examples. Because it was a short session, most of these words were made elsewhere and imported to FooCamp.

Some of the words we talked about are below. A few things: I forgot to ask people to write their names on their submitted words, and so folks were going to claim -- or renounce -- credit in the comments. Also, I haven't done any serious research on any of these, so it's entirely possible that genius struck in several places at the same time. (Hey, it worked for the calculus!)

burgle 'a small, bothersome insect or bug' [not related to burgle meaning 'to steal']

continuous partial attention 'an attention strategy motivated by a desire not to miss anything.' [This is kind of a cheat because Linda Stone, the coiner, knows I'm already watching this one!]

coprocranial 'shithead' [Although this form seems more adjectival, so it might be better as 'shitheadedness'. Coined by Nat Torkington.]

ecomaniacal 'crazy about money'. [Coined by Scott Berkun, except that everyone in the session was *sure* it meant 'crazy about the environment.']

frieNDA 'the practice of honoring the confidentiality of information provided by friends as if a non-disclosure agreement had been signed'. [Not sure who put up this one, but Gareth Branwyn helpfully pointed out that it had been in his WIRED Jargon Watch column of 8.11, submitted to him by Paul Boutin.]

guruing 'going around'. [From George Arriola, who lifted it from Japanese. It seems to have a more iterative feel than English 'going around' -- sort of 'going around (and around, and around)'.]

Googlegänger 'the other person who shows up in Google search results when people search for you'. [from Karl Fogel.]

goosh 'an euphemistic expletive to be used around children'. [We can always use more of those, right?]

herniac attack 'a panic attack that is centered in your abdomen, often exacerbated by caffeine and deadlines'. [On the model of 'heart attack'; from Andrea Dunlap.]

jot (also, superjot) 'joyously hot', or as a verb 'to take joy in one's own hotness, and relish it'. [From Andrea Dunlap, and Arwen and Meara O'Reilly. I can absolutely see this word being used on Go Fug Yourself, can't you?]

ludevescant 'evocative of a game; describing the feeling that someone is perhaps toying with you'. [From Latin ludus, 'game'.]

malignation 'the state of being maligned'.

mucknut [This is a word in search of a definition. Gareth Branwyn dreamed it one night. I don't think it's related to mukna 'tuskless male elephant'. Unless that was also in Gareth's dream.]

nagerate 'exploring or navigating with a small child; i.e., without fixed goals'. [A family word of the O'Reilly's -- so I promised I'd link to Paul Dickson's wonderful Family Words.]

spatiosemantic 'at the intersection of location and meaning: the spatiosemantic web'. [From Peter Morville.]

swassy 'trying to look good while sweating profusely'. [Hard to do ...]

teeping 'feeling the newness of being in love; a new love'.

triggernometry 'the mathematical calculation that leads heads of nations to start wars'.

Many, many thanks to all who came to my session -- the only downside of FooCamp is that it really drives home the tragedy of not being able to be in ten places at once, so it was especially nice to see so many people interested in making new words when they could have been hearing any number of truly awesome talks.

I'm still working on a big "HOWTO: recreational neologisms" post, but while you're waiting, why don't you hop over to the OUP blog, where there's a new column by Ben Zimmer? He's going to be writing about all the cool things the OUP lexicographers are learning from the Oxford English Corpus ... Ben's a great blogger over at Language Log, so you definitely want to make room in your rss feed for his new gig. (And Grant Barrett has made it easier, by setting up a language-columnists-only pipe from the OUP blog, here.)

Labels: fooCamp2007, neologism

Do you have a new word you've invented? Do you think it's got a chance of being in a dictionary someday?

Come to the New Word Open Mic on Saturday, June 16th, from 4:30 to 5:45 in Breasted Hall, at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in Hyde Park.

Present your word to a panel of dictionary editors and neologism experts who will tell you, American-Idol style, just how much (or little) of a chance your word has of making it into a dictionary.

Email for a guaranteed time slot to present your new word, or just show up and sign up onsite.

The winner of the best new word, as judged by the panel, will receive a brand-new dictionary. The winner of the best new word, as judged by the audience, will also receive a prize.

The New Word Open Mic is part of the Dictionary Society of North America's sixteenth biennial meeting, about which more information can be found here.

Directions to the Oriental Institute are here.

[Image courtesy mrhappy on Flickr.]

Labels: dsna_conference, neologism

from Married to the Sea

This morning, as part of the GEL 2007 conference, I led nearly sixty new recruits to neologism through the harrowing mental and physical challenge of creating new words (the physical part was sitting in the uncomfortable conference room chairs for nearly three hours).

After some introduction to how words become English words (mainly, for those words that haven't "always" been English: by being stolen from other languages, or by being created, Frankensteinianly, as mashups of other words or word parts) the attendees were freed to create their own words.

We reviewed everyone's creations, and the entire group then voted for their favorite new word of the session (and for two runners-up). The creator of the favorite word will receive a copy of the New Oxford American Dictionary, and the runners-up will get some other book TBD (but probably copies of Totally Weird and Wonderful Words, since I happen to know the author).

The winning word? It was crappyjack 'any kind of empty, snacky junk food', created by Karen Watts. The two runners-up were drunch 'to consume alcoholic beverages with like-minded individuals between the hours of 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Sunday', coined by Lizzy Klein, and mispronoonce 'a jocular way of saying 'mispronounce', to be used in the first person after a particularly embarrassing mispronunciation: Oh, gosh, I mispronoonced that, didn't I?' which was coined by Nick Baum.

Please keep in mind that I didn't have folks look these words up in dictionaries, search for them online, or otherwise try to verify in any systematic way that these words did not already exist (not that there's any good way to prove that a word doesn't already exist, anyhow). So there is a possibility that more than a few of these words have already been coined by other people. If this bothers you greatly, feel free to credit any previous coiner in the comments. Here's the list:



adolesic acting like a teenager, or neurally impaired [Margot Slade]
allopetal tending or moving elsewhere [Jim Hoekema]
antemeridinalacaffeinationalistic behavior of a person lacking pre-morning coffee [Al Chang]
archeoandrous possessing the male parts of the ancients [Anonymous] (we didn't know whether this meant 'being hung like a Greek statue' or actually having a dessicated organ in a box—EMM)
biobaric something that puts pressure on someone's life [Sam Parker]
blogdrama (no definition given; I think we can figure it out) [Toni Pashley]
bouncicity the joy of bouncing; the velocity of a bounce; the possibility of a bounce without the bounce being executed or the bounce being executed in the future [Henning Rübsam]
calligenic do-gooding [Nancy Galles]
chronocide (also chronocidal) a wasteful means of spending time [Cynthia Collins]
confuseday any of day of the week that feels like a Tuesday (esp. when not Tuesday) [Joshua Keay]
coprorole of or relating to a shitty job or corporate position [Dan Faricy]
creative licensing giving people permission to make things up [Theresa Quintanilla]
cyanandrogogy Blue Man Group training [Owen Roberts]
cybrification the increase in reliance on electronic forms of communication and information [Kara Cruoglio]
dancical/dancicality an individual who shows talent or promise as a ancer; a situation or music that inspires dancing; different from 'danceable' in that only makes it okay to dance, but does not inspire [Henning Rübsam]
demovis a vision for a product or service that is based entirely on the needs of the people for whom it is intended [David Cortwright]
digicandy self-indulgent electronic gadgets [Anonymous]
domainization buying multiple domain names to claim a monopoly [June Sung]
eduxperience making learning a good experience [Robert Fox]
electrography the style of writing used in electronic media [Tammy Gur]
evandrocitrafaction to squeeze my lemon until the juice runs down my leg [Matt Gardner]
fearregardless the irrational fear that lexicographers have against making heavily used non-standard words like 'irregardless' standard [David Sarda]
feedivore subsisting entirely on RSS feeds [Toni Pashley]
gastrotastic (of a food or restaurant) great [Jen Wilcox]
geleuphrenic when many minds work together or fit so as to create an interesting and stimulating communal experience [Victoria Dalmas]
googlicious appearing at the top of search results; most highly searched; something optimized for search [Scott Goldstein]
gravitent having qualities or properties that attract others [Chad Hessoun]
groovimonious agreeable in a manner that is in harmony with the circumstances [Lisa Morgan]
Heeb-hop Jewish hip-hop; Jewish people influenced by hip-hop culture [Scott Goldstein]
innoficiate purposefully engaging in a creative process [Jeff Neidorfler]
intracalonogist someone who studies inner beauty [Julie Kravetz]
jobadoo a task or chore [Gaylene Meyer]
Krzyzewskian something that makes no sense to the uninitiated [David Sarda]
ladher hermaphrodite [Nancy Galles]
lapi (from labiopia) a really bad kisser [Rachel Fisher]
linguaplasty act of making language prettier [Beth-Ellen Keyes]
logomotion words in action [Nancy Galles]
macaca moment very brief career-ending or career-damaging speech that is recorded and spread through electronic media [Mark Chackerian] (This word was actually in the running for the American Dialect Society's word of the year last year)
melanocracy an evil form of government [Lisa Morgan]
meology the study of narcissism by a narcissist [Beth Temple]
micromortific orgasmic; very fun or pleasurable (this word is close to a calque; the French for orgasm being la petit mort 'the little death'—EMM) [Brett Lider]
microneuropia when you think everyone is dumber than you are [Matt Gardner]
negatory (exclamation) nope, never, not on your life [Karen Watts]
neolographer someone who makes new words (the word for this is usually 'neologist' but hey, always room for one more—EMM) [Yih Leh Huang]
parentship money for education provided by the parents (on model of scholarship) [Margot Slade]
Pinglish combination of Persian and English [Kelly Shephard]
pseudox one who leads others astray [Erroll Rhodes]
rackology the study of boobs [Paul Smethers]
schmuckometer device for gauging how much of an asshole someone is [Beth-Ellen Keyes]
sclerobrow frozen forehead from over-botoxing [Marie Tahir]
seize-a-breeze inhale deeply [Diane Smethers]
smunchy soft, melty and crunchy [TJ Sarda]
snick an obnoxiously self-satisfied person, a know-it-all [Karen Watts]
somnophagy sleepeating [Erroll Rhodes]
spensitize make aware of financial consequences [Anonymous]
stuckified to be trapped in a meeting waiting for someone who's late and can't be contacted [Mike Katz]
surrealience to have an experience that seems surreal; as if it were in a movie, or if someone created it for you [Courtney Lind]
teledating maintaining a long-distance relationship with the help of telecommunications equipment [Dan Entin]
ubiquitinpotaqueous the state of water in which it is everywhere, and yet there is not a drop of it to drink [David Yee]
VAteched causing indiscriminate psychic or physical damage to people in a constrained place [Anonymous]
xylodox a wooden leader [Erroll Rhodes]

If any of these words strikes your fancy, go ahead and use them! That's what they're here for. I know I will use at least a couple ... I certainly have motive, all I need now is opportunity.

[I promised to put up some of the technical terms I used today; that will go up tomorrow or Sunday; also, if I misspelled your name please email me & I'll fix it.]

Thanks again to all who came out this morning!

Labels: conferences, lexical_change, neologism