Creating A New Word/Category to Get It Just Right…
Contributing to our expanding vocabulary
Times-Herald, Malcolm Donahoo (great name)
http://www.timesheraldonline.com/opinion/ci_10389356
Here’s a meta-post demonstrating the way in which our vocabularies can grow and expand to help us categorize things (when existing options just don’t seem to cut it)…and then can potentially lead to new definitions, categories or mean insults in the mainstream.
To summarize, Donahoo apparently recently wrote a column (which suspiciously, I can’t seem to find) about Monica Lewinsky and struggled to find a word that could truly encapsulate and convey her Monica Lewinsky-ness…to find a category that could do her justice. In an ah-ha moment, he came up with “pudgemuffin” which he realized very quickly, was not in fact a word, but it was so perfectly fitting to him that he used it anyway, figuring one of the multi-layers of editors would scream at it. No one did so it went to press. And then, shockingly, no one responded…no comments, no hate emails, nothing. His conclusion was not that no one was reading (shocking), but that the new term/category fit so well, it just went unnoticed.
Just a fun 202 in the news…
NOTE – this is reflecting the author’s views only. Sorry if this offends anyone.