Posts Tagged ‘neologisms’

In this charming book, Tony Thorne presents linguistic curiosities—buzzwords, jargon and slang—for their formal inventiveness and wit, and for the new attitudes and concepts they embody. Here are some of our favourite entries:

Adhocracy: improvised decision making

Al desko: eating at your workstation

Caving: leading a reclusive existence at home

Dashboard dining: eating while inside a car

Decruitment: laying off employees

Deskfast: breakfast eaten at your workstation

Jitterati: those rendered nervous or insecure by involvement with electronic communications

Open kimono philosophy: a policy of transparency

Puckered-ups: sycophants

Worklessness: unemployment, redundancy

Shoot the puppy: to do the unthinkable, take extreme action and/or terminate an unacceptable situation

We love language – it’s a living thing that constantly changes. Here are some neologisms (new words) we found recently:

Deskfast
A breakfast eaten at your desk.

Word of mouse
Communication via computer-based means, such as email, chat rooms or newsgroups.

Adminisphere
The layers in an organization’s hierarchy that sit above the rank and file.

These new words will reflect something of today’s cultural context to future historians, just as the words we inherit carry traces of their own history.

For those of you who are curious about where English comes from, here is a very brief and overly simplified history of the English language. Apologies to any linguists out there.

The earliest version of English was Anglo-Saxon, a proto-Germanic language. Although only about 5,000 Anglo-Saxon words survive in Modern English, they are the words we most commonly use.

Anglo-Saxon: water, hair, blood, mother, and the verbs to be, to have and to go

English developed by borrowing words from cultures it came in contact with. For instance,

In the 9th century, England was invaded three times by the Vikings (Norse), and they left some colourful words we continue to use today:

Norse: anger, ill, ransack, slaughter, knife

In 1066, the Normans invaded England, and subsequently French became the official language – certainly among the elite at court. Roughly half the words in Modern English are borrowed from French.

French: government, sermon, judge, crime, physician, fashion, literature, music

After that, Greek and Latin became the traditional languages of high culture and ‘classical’ education. English adopted many Latin and Greek words, and many of them form our medical and legal vocabulary.

Latin: annual, minimum, malice, malady, vocal, export, pedestrian, ignite

Greek: archeology, biography, aerobic, bureaucrat, monopoly, stethoscope

Where will tomorrow’s words come from?