Neologisms:
On the "isn't a word" thread, Sasha points out:
What irks me is how people just make up neologisms rather than use the good traditional words that are perfectly available. Plus, rather than learn proper English, they mangle the language in ways that "simplify" grammar and spelling, and this is drifting into the written language too. They don't even recognize good grammar and spelling and traditional words if they see them written on the page!
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.
Related Posts (on one page):
Fulle few too many drincce, hie luccen for fyht. [...]
(Semi-)seriously, could you try something with a hacek, an ongarek, or one of those little-circle-over-the-vowel doohickies? I write for a little classical-music review e-zine that stopped trying to use those puppies a few years ago because some browsers weren't supporting them, but I think we should try again.
:þ
I just came up with a new pair: "infotachya" and "infobradya," for people who are way too far ahead on "new" knowledge, and people who are just way behind (and getting worse).
Bonus points for nonstandard use of the prefixes as suffixes...
Fortunately, this person was eaten up by Grendel.
See: http://www.groundwoodbooks.com/gw_titles.cfm?pub_id=336
P.S. Am I right that the quotation involves a garden and apples?
The quote from Beowulf basically means: "Yo! We heard the glory of the Spear-Dane clan-kings in old times, how those nobles worked courage."
"Fremedon" is a past tense of the verb "fremman," mean "to do," "to perform"; and "ellen" means "courage," "valor."
Hence the well-known quote from Beowulf: "Wyrd oft nereð unfægne eorl, þonne his ellen deah." "Fate often saves an undoomed man, when his courage is good." Because some of us are doomed from the start; but the fate of others is still up in the air -- so we're undoomed -- and we can be redeemed by showing courage.
Love the Old English.
But a good example from modern times: "Deplane." "Disembark" is a perfectly good word.
So is "debark."
Or they are stupid.
The first is actually curable, but the latter is not.
But take your pick. You can have both, too!
Ignoranus (n): A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
Foreploy (v): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
Giraffiti (n): Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Those are examples of portmanteau rather than true neologisms.
Every word is essentially a neologism. And some of the words that very much stand out in recent human history are clearly of recent origin: radar, sonar, black holes, lasers, memes, genocide. Not to mention pretty much any dominant brand name: kleenex, google, etc. And of course, how can we discuss this topic without mentioning, "blog"?
"Orientate" was common British usage at least by the end of the 80s, when I was in London. The copy of the Bloomsbury Good Word Guide I bought while there (pub. 1988) says re "orient or orientate?" that both are acceptable, with the former standard in American English and the latter more frequent in British English. For my part, I never heard "orient" while in London; it was always "orientate."
Perhaps it's just crossed the pond?
Only fools insist that all new forms are abuses, but it hardly follows that everyone who opposes any particular change is a fuddy-duddy. (Curiously, the people who seem to get the most irate over usage are those who insist on following Fowler's proposal that the relative pronoun "which" not be used to introduce restrictive clauses, a proposal which [see!] has never in fact been standard English usage, as Fowler himself conceded. These people are complaining not about a new use, but about failure to adopt a particular new use.)
But when have you ever heard a little man in a white suit run yelling, "Mr. Roark, Disembark! Disembark!"
James Nicoll
Alan Gunn: I will agree with you that, in principle, some changes may be for the worse. But why on earth would you give "Would you like to have lunch with he and I?" as an example of something that's worse than the traditional form? Tell me a single thing that's wrong with that.
Well, even today few people would say "would you like to have lunch with he?" or "would you like to have lunch with I?". So "would you like to have lunch with he and I?" is a tad inconsistent. The idea, I guess, is that one uses the objective form for objects of prepositions, and this was the norm even for people without graduate degrees until maybe twenty years ago. I don't think the change occurred because people decided that "with he and I" was an improvement, I think it started because people didn't want to bother thinking about when to say "he and I" and when to say "him and me." If so, the newer usage is a relic of ignorance and laziness. (A popular theory is that people say "he and I" even when it's ungrammatical because they think it's more "refined"; I have my doubts, but it's hard to know for sure.)
But if you're just talking about the inconsistency of saying "with him," "with me," and "with he and I," that's another matter. Language Log had a nice post on this a while ago, but they have so many posts that I can't find it anymore. Anyway, if you find inconsistency always a change for the worse, then so be it; but I would find it hard to complain if this became standard. I understand how people might complain about certain words losing their precise meanings in ways that make it more difficult to convey a nuance of meaning, but this is definitely not one of those cases.
My complaint isn't just about inconsistency, though, as English is full of inconsistencies, some of which are charming (e.g., burning something down is much the same as burning something up). I think my main objection to "with he and I" is that it's use by people who are certainly smart enough to learn simple rules of grammar is a symptom of things I don't much like: laziness, indifference to the aesthetics of language, the inability of elementary schools to teach much of anything these days. But that's just me.
I'm glad English has both the words "disinterested" and "uninterested". They convey different things. Example of use: Advice should generally be sought from someone who is disintereted in an outcome but one might hope they are not uninterested in the issue.
If "uninterested" once held both meanings, adding a word to covey the different ideas is a good thing.
Happen and transpire also have different nuances. When used in the sense of "happen", transpire suggests an event or series of events that occurred over a period of time. In contrast, something can "happen" quickly.
As to fullsome and complete. . . who uses fulsome to mean complete?