How long will it durate?

Just as I noted in a flyer for a forthcoming summit of ours (luckily a flyer not yet imposed on the general public) the word "duraction", I also saw a vehement letter column in the Financial Times about made-up words. In the latter case much of it related to Lucy Kellaway's criticism of turning nouns into verbs. While I sympathize with Lucy's viewpoint here (particularly when a new word is invented while a perfectly adequate old word exists) I also love the dynamism of language. And the Internet (and Internet forums in particular) have been great at creating new words that are, well, just fun. Who can dislike the words "downswong" (a long bad run at poker), "win monies" (to have a profitable run) and "teh"?

Masters of new word invention were the Simpsons writers. "Accelertrix" for accelerator and "craptacular" for something spectacularly bad are two that stick in my mind. "Choctastic" is probably not a Simpson's original. "Embiggens" (a perfectly cromulent word) reminds me of "akkrivitz", a word invented in another TV series (one with Kirstie Alley) by a marketing man who just didn't want to use the word "accrete" twice. Then there is the fantabulous "Malparkage", a word that needs no definition and which should surely enter the language.

Fantabulosa, mind, comes from Round The Horne, with a ream (if you will pardon the reference) of new words appearing under the guise of homosexual Soho slang. Since most people wouldn't have had a clue what was bona bona and what was fake bona, the whole lot gradually accrivitated into a new dialect.

____________