By Barbara Wallraff
Despite the various hundreds of thousands of dictionary phrases at our disposal, our language could be dismayingly insufficient. what number instances have you ever hunted for a be aware that implies simply what you will want it to yet did not locate something appropriate wherever? so much folks, it seems, lead lives rife with studies, humans, and issues that experience no names.
At least, they lacked names in the past. note Fugitives involves the rescue, offering countless numbers of encouraged phrases coined or redefined to fulfill daily wishes. for example, would it not be convenient to have a observe for the temporary confusion humans adventure after they pay attention a mobile phone ringing and beauty no matter if it is theirs? (How approximately fauxcellarm, phonundrum, or pandephonium ?)
Or what a few observe for offspring who're adults? (Try unchildren or offsprung .) Or a be aware for the irrational worry if you find yourself throwing a celebration that nobody will appear? (That can be guestlessness, empty-fest syndrome, or fete-alism.)
This brain- and vocabulary-expanding ebook grew out -- approach out -- of Barbara Wallraff's well known column in The Atlantic per thirty days . Brimming with impossible to resist diversions and dad quizzes; illuminated by means of contributions and statement from authors, linguists, and best language specialists; and enlivened by means of pleas for aid from humans whose phrases haven't begun to be came across, note Fugitives will captivate and encourage somebody who ever struggles to explain the realm that she or he, or they, or thon ( thon ? see web page 141) lives in.
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Additional info for Word Fugitives: In Pursuit of Wanted Words
Example text
The cosmic joke was on me: the question turns out to be one that people keep asking and asking. Still, none of the various coinages has caught on. Even now I get mail asking for a word to be coined to meet this need. ” —Michael J. ). For instance, fauxincidence, coincivince, coincidon’t, duperstition, and wishful linking. But in this case an especially large number of people are convinced that the word sought already exists. Clement J. ” The Skeptic’s Dictionary, by Robert Todd Carroll, bears Colucci out (“Apophenia is the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena”).
Offered up a nice variation on the theme: phthrobia. ” He went on to explain: “That current editions of the standard reference works appear to have passed it over is unfortunate, as it brings with it an interesting history. Although folk etymology embraces an obvious derivation, it is of course to the classical Greek, and especially that of Homer, that we should turn for a full understanding. While Liddell & Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon offers us the Attic, it is clearly to the Homeric that we should turn (A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, Cunliffe R.
It was coined by John Ficarra in the March 1981 issue of Mad magazine. Orthopolitiphobia is a fear of political correctness. According to private correspondence from the professional wordsmith Charles Harrington Elster, this is a coinage of his. Psychophobia is either a fear of being attacked in the shower or fear of the mind, according to There’s a Word for It. ” lmlmllmlmllml 44 lmlmllmlmllml Seen-o-phobia is the compulsion to close the door when using the bathroom, even when no one else is home.