Every so often I run across commenters, on this blog and on others, complaining that something "isn't a word" -- thus, for instance, a few minutes ago a commenter posted, in response to a post that mentioned "copyeditors,"
Uh... "copyeditor" isn't a word.
Uh, check here (which commenter Steve P. promptly did, and promptly posted about). Likewise, a blogger who was unhappy with InstaPundit's reference to "beclowning" asked, "Why are people making up words?" (He later retracted the question; thanks to Tim Blair for the tip.) See also this apparent attempt to deny the wordosity of "childlike."
I don't want to get in to the prescriptivist/descriptivist debate here; for now, can I simply ask that, if people want to claim that something "isn't a word" -- not just is an ugly word, but isn't a word at all -- or that someone is "making up words," they just do a bit of checking? I can understand how someone can miss "beclown," which doesn't show up in onelook, though it's in the less easily available Oxford English Dictionary. But a onelook.com query or a dictionary.com query will quickly find "copyeditor." It just helps to do a little fact-checking lest you -- well, you know.
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I'm sad to see that it apparently hasn't. It's even more awkward in text than it is in person.
Indeed!
:-)
Seriously, as the author of the "isn't a word" post, I expect copy editors to lean toward the formal and traditional, especially when flogging their services to academmics.
P.S. to anon: My "uh" wasn't Beavisian. I never watch that show. I actually say "uh". I'm not proud of it and would never use it in serious writing, but I do say it. Its use here was meant to convey a bit of light-hearted irony in an all-text medium. As the Buttheadians no doubt say, dude, lightenup!
uh ... starting a statement with "uh" predates Beavis and Butthead by at least several decades.
Well, we would be individuals more likely to be employed as copy editors for the OED, for one.
"Well, yes, but..."
"Then it's a word. Now stop bothering me."
(Yes, that's my definition of "word", and yes, that's what I have actually told people who complain.)
The misuses:
stating "per se" when one really means precisely or exactly
stating "i.e." when one means "for example"
stating "apropros" when one means appopriate.
Petty, I know. But these terms are so often misused. And I guess it bothers me so much b/c people use them often just to sound smart (esp. apropros), which is one of the many reasons why people hate lawyers in the first place.
There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can't.
http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/jabber/jabberwocky.html
I support the general sentiment that made up words are much less annoying than misused words. The one that kills me is the use of "begs the question" to mean "raises the question". At least a made up word can embiggen your vocabulary.
Check this Tuesday Lyric
Whaz 'Zat by Shawn Phillips
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Remember in Westlaw, search:
copy-editor
to get all forms.
In LEXIS, search:
copy editor or copyeditor
to get all forms.
"Relevance," on the other hand, the OED only has starting in 1733 (also in a Scottish law report!).
Now the OED doesn't know everything (as I've posted on a few occasions). And it does say that "relevance" is now in more common usage than "relevancy." Nonetheless, it's not like "relevancy" is some made up pretentious neologism.
See also the musical 1776: "Vote yes, vote yes, vote for independency!" -- a word actually seen in the letters of John Adams and in various sources in the 19th century.
Adeez: Apropos does indeed have a meaning close to "appropriate." Or, as the OED puts it: "B. adj. To the point or purpose; having direct reference to the matter in hand; pertinent, opportune, 'happy.'" For instance, see Disraeli (1826): "Is there not a passage in Spix apropos to this?"
I'll gladly use "trickeration", which I looks like an intensified form, like "Botheration!"
Of course, I also distinguish between "a scam" and "the scam-ola".
From such cromulent detritus of popular culture is language made. W.S. provided the Warner Brothers' cartoons, or "Simpsons", of his day...
. . . and when I saw "beclown", I also immediately remembered seeing "beshit" somewhere, and having latched on to it and used it since. I have this vague recollection of a sentence ending " . . . and he was in a trice beshit!", which sounds like Chaucer, or Rabelais, but is apparently neither. . . Barth maybe?
relevance/relevancy: My OED accepts both, but seems to prefer "relevancy," since it defines "relevance" as "relevancy," then expands on the latter of the two, noting that the latter is used in legal contexts. So is there some authority to support "relevance" over "relevancy"?
not a word: Rather than come up with a new word, there are some who simply take existing words and insist like Humpty Dumpty on assigning new meanings to them and maintain that those new meanings are correct.
But say people are on a continuum, where they only act that way 20% of the time or are only 20% likely to act that way. And suppose you think the craziness of such people is also on a continuum. So, for instance, if you act this way 20% of the time, you're only 20% crazy. Then you can say "To the extent you act this way, you're crazy," and it really means something different.
If you've read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, he talks about how people who criticize inconsequential details are really just proving that they don't have anything substantial to discuss. And honestly, whose time is worth so little that they care about a possible space between copy and editor?
I think utilized is the most over-used word in the language. Rarely necessary, yet omnipresent. I think many people use the word to make themselves sound more sophisticated--ironically, it has the opposite effect.
Incentivize is another word that is rarely appropriate. I understand it might be something of a term of art in Economics, but in ordinary writing, it just makes the author seem like a douchebag.
In fact, just the other day, when I tried to use perfectly good English, to wit: "Hwæt! Wé Gárdena in géardagum þéodcyninga þrym gefrúnon, hú ðá æþelingas ellen fremedon" -- no one knew what I was talking about!
Damn kids.
God bless. It's been years since I taught Beowulf. And it's not boring.
sanction. This word has two diametrically opposite meanings. To "sanction" something or someone may mean either to approve or to disapprove and maybe punish.
Are there other words with diametrically opposite meanings so that it is necessary to hear/read them in context in order to know the intended meaning? What words?
colorable. Black's defines "colorable" as "that which is in appearance only, and not in reality, hence counterfeit, feigned, having the appearance of truth." That doesn't sound good, does it? But of "colorable claim," Black's notes that "(i)n bankruptcy law, a claim made by one holding the property as an agent or bailee of the bankrupt; a claim in which as a matter of law, there is no adverseness." "Colorable" is not the equivalent of "bogus" or "counterfeit" there and doesn't sound necessarily bad. Whenever I have heard a lawyer speak of a "colorable" claim, though, it has been to say in effect that there is neither a slam-dunk winner, nor a handsdown loser here, but rather a claim that is not so self-evidently lacking in merit that it should never be pursued, one that could turn out in the end to be a winner.
How do others understand/use "colorable"?
That's my point. Lawyers often use "to the extent that" when they really just mean "if" As you note, "to the estent that" has a specific use and is not synonomous with "If." Lawyers seem to just like the way it sounds and use it as a replacement for "If."
I didn't mean to suggest that it was, though I can see how my comment might have given that impression. I still dislike that form of the word intensely, though. I'm also in agreement with Jake and gravytop about the dilution of "beg the question."
Quite correct. Two phrases that will make me cringe:
"Flaunt the law."
"Tow the line".
Some other malapropisms have already been mentioned.
However, I am not always OK with neologisms, no matter how clear the meaning. If it describes something really new, then new words are needed. If the new word is not only easy to understand, but more brief and eloquent than anything already in the language, that's great; if "beclown" and "beshit" hadn't already existed, I hope someone would have invented them. OTOH, unneeded multi-syllabic synonyms for common words, and pretentiously overelaborated words make me suspect one is trying to cover up a lack of worthwhile content.
Finally, if you invent a new form of a word just because you lack the flexibility to use a different sentence structure to fit the existing forms ("incentivize"), you'd better do it sparingly. (So what's the difference between "beclown" and "incentivize", that one strikes me as perfect while the other roils my intestines? Number of syllables or that only "incentivize" usually comes out in clumsy business-speak that sounds as if one started talking before one worked out the end of the sentence?)