Learning agility

Ability to be agile in letting go of old rules and learning new ones.

This neologism really mirrors our times: "learning to unlearn" when everything is changing and at the fastest pace.

Leading companies, governmental entities, institutions and non-profits are adopting change management as an organizational competency. Successful people are nowadays those who are ready to unlearn outdated methods and to adopt and adapt to the new ones.

I found this neologism on the article: Is What You (Think You) Know Holding You Back? Adapting To An Accelerated World by Margie Warrell on Forbes.

I tweeted half of it to share with you what I enjoyed the most. If you don't have time to read the long article, just take a look at the tweets below.

Twitter provides 'selfies' of evolving language

Twitter and other social media are an immense resource that can offer linguists the opportunity to explore how our words and phrases are changing.

More and more researchers are beginning to work on projects consisting in analysing tweets to catch the next most popular word.

Why Twitter? 

Because its data is public and immediately available. A huge data consisting of around 340 million tweets sent every day, according to Twitter.

Twitter offers records of language mutating in real time and space. Many tweets provide location data and the time they were sent allowing thus to map out the way in which new words become popular and spread.

Because tweets tend to be rather informal, there are a lot of types of creative usages of words. Tweets appear similar to spontaneous speech, making them particularly valuable to the study of the spread of new words and expressions.

Sources: 

• Linguistic researchers begin hunt for the next 'selfie'
• Using social media to find English lexical blends, By P. Cook (PDF)

Word For That: the tip-of-the-tongue-eliminator

Words For That is a versatile site mirroring the versatile nature of language. It can be used in a number of different ways: A tip-of-the-tongue-eliminator, an informal reverse-dictionary, laugh at funny definitions or "scenarios".

Background
Words For That was created as platform for pointing out and having fun with well-known situations which have never earned a name of their own. These "scenarios" can be anything - a feeling, a circumstance, a type of person, a coincidence. Anything where you've thought, "there should be a word for that!" Visitors can vote on each Scenario based on how well it rings a bell, or makes them laugh, or whatever. The best Scenarios are those where everyone can say "I know exactly what you mean!"

Scenarios are submitted and voted on by the site visitors. For each of these Scenarios, "words" can be submitted. These Words can be anything as well - a single word, a phrase, a clever pun, or an etymological masterpiece. Whatever's submitted, however, is also up to the mercy of the voting masses. Only the best Words have a chance at being the new coined term!

Source: Word For That

Want to be amazing at neologisms seeking? Here’s how

The world of technology is shaping the English language, with innovative advances reflected in new terms. Of course the explosion of social media has accelerated the creation of new words as different cultures and languages interact.

Seeking neologisms is becoming harder and the risk of getting lost in information overload (or infoxication) is high! Wordphiles just need to develop strategies not to get lost.

Here some useful tips:

Twitter: Following someone on Twitter, it is possible to see a word at the moment of its coinage. Because tweets tend to be rather informal, there are a lot of types of creative usages of words. 57% of neologisms on Twitter come from blends.

Twitter is a newswire other than a social platform. Follow the social spotlights on Twitter and new words will pop-up! (See #Frankenstorm Sandy coverage, for example). To improve your search you can use the real-time social media search and visual discovery tools such as SeeSaw).

Don't know who to start following? Here my favourites Neologisms Twitstars:

@wordspy
@StanCarey
@bgzimmer
@wordnik
@Fritinancy
@Kerry_Maxi
@CambridgeWords

Google alert: In looking through the terms gathered for my blog since 2009, I noticed that journalists, twitterers, and bloggers are foreseeable. They have a tendency to flag words that are new to their vocabulary with such phrases as “known as” or “as they call it” or “known to fans as” or even “new word” and of course, “neologism”.  The trick is, don't put only “neologism” on Google alert but also “known as”, “coined the word” etc. (Read more about how to detect neologisms here: Institutionalization of a neologism).

Serendipitous reading: I have to admit that very often I jump into a new word just by accident. I’m just reading a news and voila’, a new word is smiling at me! Love comes when you don't expect it.

Starter tool box - here a list of the most reliable and popular blogs and websites on neologisms:

• Word Spy 
• Macmillan Dictionary BuzzWord
• About Words
• New Word alert (by Termcoord) 
• Worder Woman (it's me..) 

Many newspapers and magazines include lists of new words to accompany articles, and quite a few , including Wired, Time, Newsweek,  and the Guardian, even include new word sections as a regular feature.

By the way, consider that:

1) Most words are new to most people most of the time. There are plenty of people who are culturally left behind, for some of them the word “blog” is a novelty (coined in 1999). 

2) Websites are ephemeral. A special skill for neologisms seekers is to capture new words immediately, before websites archive their online content.

Sources:

Official Dictionary of Unofficial English, Grant Barrett
Word Spy, Paul McFedries
Using social media to find English lexical blends, P.Cook
Language lessons told through Twitter

I neologismi della recessione

La crisi economica degli ultimi anni ha dato vita a una lingua tutta propria, diffondendo divertenti neologismi finanziari che riflettono l'umor nero di chi deve affrontare i propri problemi economici.

Quando creiamo un nuovo termine, mettiamo in atto un meccanismo di difesa: cerchiamo di prendere il controllo della situazione circoscrivendo il problema e cristallizzandolo in un neologismo. Se poi ci ridiamo su tanto meglio! :)

Tendenze nell'ambito della creazione dei neologismi

Tendenze Nella Creazione Dei Neologismi

Selfie is the Word of the Year 2013

Infographic of Selfie

Selfie Etymology: No, a Drunken Australian Man Did Not Coin the Word Selfie

What's your word of the year for 2013?

The WOTY fever is starting again. Are we ready for the new Word Of The Year competition? I'm afraid that the Word Of The Year 2013 will be "Twerk" but I definitely prefer "Selfie".

Update - 11 November 2013: Fail, deficit, deadlock, stalemate - 2013’s most used words on the web.

The Global Language Monitor claims ‘404’ - internet code for an online error - as the top word, ‘toxic politics’ the top phrase and Pope Francis the top name in its annual global survey of the English language.

The rankings are based on how many times words, phrases and names were used online throughout the 1.8bn people in the English-speaking world across the last 12 months.

To qualify, the words must have been used at least 25.000 times across all types of media.

19 November 2013 - And the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year for 2013 is ‘selfie'! So, when I wrote this post my gut feeling gave me the right response! I'm a good Word detective..

4 December 2013: Merriam-Webster just announced that “science” had seen the greatest increase in lookups this year.

16 December 2013: Geek has been deemed the word of the year by the Collinsonline dictionary. Geek was chosen as a reminder of how an insult can be transformed into a badge of honour, according to Collins.



Sources: 

• blog.oxforddictionaries
• Global Language Monitor
• Merriam Webster
• Collins online dictionary

Infographic on neologisms

The process in which a new word becomes part of the accepted vocabulary of a community is known as institutionalisation. The reason why neologisms have become embedded in every-day vocabulary so quickly is because they swiftly pass through all the stages of this process. First, they are used more and more frequently as they are spread via social media and various applications. Second, their meaning does not need a lot of definition since the pictures or applications are usually self-explanatory. Ultimately these words start appearing in various forms within common texts.

I edited this quick-and-dirty infographic (using “Paint”) to provide an easy to understand explanation of how neologisms are created. I hope you enjoy it! A better quality is available on Pinterest.


Infographic on neologims.TIF

Approximeeting

 Arranging a rough time or place to meet, then sorting out details on the fly via mobile phone.

Source: 
Viewpoint: Why do tech neologisms make people angry?

The Cupertino Effect

What happens when a computer automatically "corrects" your spelling into something wrong or incomprehensible.

It's a sort of older cousin of the "Damn You, Autocorrect" error that infects even professionally edited text. 

Everybody experiences that stomach-dropping moment when you realise what you sent
wasn’t what you intended to send, and there are no takebacks. It was named by workers for the European Union who noticed that the word "cooperation" often showed up in finished documents as "Cupertino," the name of the California city in which Apple has its headquarters. 

Sources:

• Viewpoint: Why do tech neologisms make people angry?
• The Cupertino Effect: 11 Spell Check Errors that Made it to Press

Orthorexia

Orthorexia is a relatively new term for a disorder where a person becomes obsessed with the “perfect diet” and the cleanliness of food, eating on a highly regulated regime.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/03/24/orthorexia-taking-healthy-eating-to-whole-new-level/#ixzz2OpBL5a9w

My interview with Erin McKean

I had the pleasure to interview for TermCoord my favourite lexistar Erin McKean.

I have her quote on my blog, I’m enjoying Wordnik since its creation (when it had the colourful bricks falling down from the top of the home page), loved her TEDVideo and enjoying her articles and tweets! I Iike her enthusiasm and love for words and her disruptive approach to lexicography.

 

I dare to say that her answers represent a break from traditional lexicography by destroying the two milestones of lexicography: the definition and the authority of the dictionary.

The end of definition: Erin says “I think a good definition is like a good poem: beautiful and worthwhile in itself.”  We don’t need definitions anymore, they can even limit our understanding of the word: “when you limit your knowledge of a word to just the definition, you limit your understanding as well”. They were suitable for paper dictionaries, where the available space was limited: “Definitions are still helpful when space is limited”. Internet offers us unlimited space and the possibility to provide a variety of media to better convey the meaning of a word. And moreover, not all words need the same treatment: “Not every subject gets a poem, and not every word needs a definition”. For some of them we just need a glimpse; for some other words, we want to get more info: “For some words, people really want a precise definition – say, scientific and technical words. What exactly is a yottabyte? For some other words, people want to know how the word fits into English: what’s the relationship between “very,” “terribly”, “quite”, and “awfully”? But for some words, it’s just enough to know it exists, such as “awesomepants”.

But who decides how much info is needed? The user! Yes the user, the protagonist of e-dictionaries! That’s the most important message: e-lexicography is made mainly by the user: “What is useful is different for different people”. It’s up to the user to decide if to trust or not the source of a term, it’s up to the user to ask for more info, it’s up to the user to create a list of favourite words based on his/her needs and priorities: “if there is a well-reasoned, well-written comment from a Wordnik user on a word, you can go and check out that user’s profile page (if it’s public) and base your acceptance of that comment on your assessment of that user’s trustworthiness”, and most important: “I hope that we are encouraging people to develop their own critical thinking skills, which are essential for being a successful digital native.”

The end of authority of the dictionary: The dictionary doesn’t own the authority of a word, it is the source and the usage of the word that provide such an authority: “Wordnik has no authority other than the authority it inherits from the data it shows: if a word has a wonderful example from the Wall Street Journal, for instance, then the authority for the use of that word isn’t Wordnik, instead it’s the WSJ itself”.

A new era for lexicography has just begun, the e-lexicographers has just been freed by the time-consuming (and tiring processes) of definitions and validation. They should present data as “opinions and not as incontrovertible facts”. The e-lexicographers now can really love words in their natural environment and have no more to tame them, or capture them for inclusion in some kind of lexical zoo.

Enjoy the full interview!

Learn more on  Wordnik

 

The Dictionary is fidgetal

Most people today get their reference information via their computer, tablet, or phone and the message is clear: the future of the dictionary is digital.

Macmillan Dictionaries announced last Monday (5^th of November 2012) it will no longer appear as physical books and from next year it will be available only online.

According to its Editor-in-Chief Michael Rundell, this transition can only be a positive one: the internet is the ideal medium.  “The traditional book format is very limiting for any kind of reference work. Books are out of date as soon as they're printed, and the space constraints they impose often compromise our goals of clarity and completeness. There is so much more we can do for our users in digital media.”

Macmillan Dictionary Online provides an English dictionary and thesaurus, as well as a popular blog about topical issues, a weekly 'Buzzword' column on newly-emerging words, and the crowd-sourced 'Open Dictionary'. Macmillan Dictionary Online also hosts the annual 'Love English Awards' and nominations for the 2012 prizes will open in late November.

Fidgetal: blend of finger and digital. Referred to the use of the fingers to provide input above a mobile device.

(Like this neologism? want more? here they are!)

Institutionalization of a neologism

How does a new form innovated on the basis of word formation rules come to be conventionalized as part of the accepted vocabulary of a community?

This question is usually answered in terms of "Institutionalization", which is sometimes regarded as a precursor of lexicalization, sometimes identified with it.

The institutionalisation of a new term comprises the following stages:

1. Frequency: A neologism can start being used in an increasingly recurring way. We can notice that its use reaches a peak while the previous word form wanes. Abrupt frequency changes can occur. Stability of the extent of occurrence observed or an occurrence drop after a peak may point to the end of the institutionalisation course. Moreover, the relationship between the occurrence frequency of a word in certain texts – termed text frequency – and its full frequency – termed total frequency – should also be observed. The institutionalisation degree of a term can be shown by the ratio of the first frequency to the second one. 
2. Text type and variety of texts in general: If a term is found in different kinds of texts, this can lead us to infer the institutionalisation degree of said term. If a term is used nowhere but in certain social or geographical environments, its institutionalisation degree is likely to be limited. 
3. Intra-linguistic justification: When different writing formats (upper case, lower case, first letter uppercase, hyphen) are simultaneously present, they denote an ongoing institutionalisation course. A form which gradually stabilises in lieu of another indicates a standardisation process. 
4. Meaning: If an unknown word’s meaning is clarified through definitions, rephrasing, synonyms, opposites and so forth, this means that the term still has a low degree of institutionalisation. The context in which the new term is placed can also be an indicator for its degree of institutionalisation, e.g. an article which has the neologism as its title or topic. A doubtless increase in the degree of institutionalisation exists if the neologism doesn’t appear any longer in the article core (where further explanations are usually provided), but in its peripheral part. 
5. Word formation and productivity: A term or a fragment of it can become the starting point to contrive further neologisms. When this takes place, the initial term or its fragment can be regarded as being institutionalised. 

The above distinction marks referring to the institutionalisation course of a neologism have to be observed over a long time. In order to gain further information on the term origin and diffusion, gathering of information from several newspapers and journals, magazines, specialists’ magazines, web sites and dictionaries is required.

Neologisms originate through various formation mechanisms, i.e. suffixing, prefixing, compounding, new creation, metaphors, fixed phrases comprising two or more words. The various origin categories of neologisms cannot always be precisely discerned, though.

Sources:

Excerpt from my article on Englishfor: Jurno Neologism - 

Lexicalization and Language Change, by Laurel J. Briton

Lexical Change in Present-Day English: A Corpus-Based Study of the Motivation, Institutionalization, and Productivity of Creative Neologisms, Roswitha Fischer.

Recession makes us richer.. in words

The only one who is gaining benefits from the recession is the English language: as we are growing poorer, the English language is growing richer.

The latest trend in the most famous online dictionaries (Collins, Merriam-Webster , Cambridge, etc) is to stay current with language changes, word usage, slangs, jargons, and neologisms.

Each year the dictionaries add new words that have been accepted by the common parlance and competitions are being launched each year in order to find the word of the year.

The “word of the year” competition, abbreviated WOTY, is a competition for voting the most important word o in the public sphere during a specific year.

In the last five years, the list of new, officially recognized words by Merriam Webster’s WOTY include a number of terms that are a true product of our times.

• In 2008 the word was bailout, “a rescue from financial distress.”
• In 2009, staycation, “a vacation spent at home or nearby.”
• In 2010, austerity, “enforced or extreme economy.”
• In 2011, boomerang child, “a young adult who returns to live at his or her family home especially for financial reasons.”
• Finally, in 2012 underwater, “a mortgage loan for which more is owed than the worth of the property.”

This competition proves how words are our windows to the world. These five words are a reflection of our concerns and worries since the beginning of the “Great Recession”.

Recession language isn’t a new phenomenon. Thanks to the Great Depression we have terms like: dirt poor, and baloney (to mean ridiculous, not the mystery sandwich meat). Even the term "depression" has been attributed to Herbert Hoover, who is thought to have wanted to avoid using the more common, but more alarming terms "panic" or "crisis" to describe what subsequently became known as the Great Depression.

When we are creating a new catchword, we're controlling the situation for ourselves. We attempt to define and control and make sense of the world.

In particular, "clever words such as "staycation" help people approach grim realities - like not being able to afford a vacation -- through humor”, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

"When people start becoming playful with language, that's a coping mechanism," she said.

Source: Do you speak recession-ese?

Read other recession posts

Neologisms in the Digital Age

The Newspaper archive goes back to 1759, with 58.1 million newspaper pages. If only one in 100 of those pages had a neologism on it, it would be an entire other OED. That's 500,000 more words. Not even talking about magazines. Not talking about blogs.
Of course the explosion of social media over the last couple of decades has intensified and accelerated the creation of new words and phrases.

So where will language take us in the future? We just don’t know and it is absolutely impossible for us to guess.

Kerry Maxwell (BuzzWord author @MAcMillan) and Rita Temmerman (professor in applied linguistics (terminology) at Erasmushogeschool Brussels) will try to give us answers to the previous questions.

This will be the topic for the next conference organized by TermCoord (Terminology Coordination of the European Parliament): “Neologisms in the Digital Age”.

The unrivalled guide for word lovers

The Chambers Dictionary is the dictionary of choice for word lovers!

Whether you're an avid wordgamer or just enjoy revelling in the quirks and curiosities of the English language, The Chambers Dictionary is your ultimate companion. The Chambers Dictionary delves deep into all the glories of the English language, covering weird and wonderful words like spoffish, jobernowl, mullligrubs and humdudgeon, all the while ensuring it covers the latest developments in English.

The 12th edition of the Chambers Dictionary, offers also a compendium of insults – never has cursing been so creative!

Candle-waster: Someone who studies late.

Chawbacon: A country person.

Desk-jockey: A clerical worker.

Face-ache: An ugly or disagreeable person.

Hen-hussy: A man who meddles with women's affairs.

Humgruffin: A terrible person.

Ink-jerker: A professional author or journalist.

Propeller-head: An obsessively studious or technologically minded person.

Quidnunc: An inquisitive, gossiping person.

Rantipole: A wild, reckless person.

Slip-string: A rogue.

Two-pot screamer: A person who gets drunk on a comparatively small amount of alcohol (Australian).

Source:

The Chambers Dictionary

Guardian

We are all cisgendered!

It's a newish term for the default state of the world's population, those  whose sense of gender identity matches their sex at birth.

It was created to avoid the clunky "non-transgendered" and the pejorative "normal". "Cis-" is from Latin "cis", on this side of something, as opposed to "trans-", on the opposite side, which is from Latin "trans", across..

Source: Worldwidewords

Professor David Crystal on new communication technologies

Professor David Crystal, one of the world's leading linguistic experts, challenges the myth that new communication technologies are destroying language