The Story of English in 100 Words (37 page)

Prefixes and suffixes continue to make their presence felt in word coinages of the new millennium. We find
ecogloom
(‘depression about environmental progress’) and
bargainous
(‘relatively cheap’),
overthink
(‘think about something too much’) and
underbudget
(‘underestimate costs’),
catastrophise
(‘present a situation as worse than it is’) and
therapise
(‘provide therapy’). As technology allows us to investigate smaller and smaller entities, previously obscure prefixes such as
nano-
have become widespread. It is, according to some commentators, a
nano-age
, with a
nanocosm
containing
nanomachines
using
nanomaterials
on a
nanoscale
, and investigated by
nanoscientists
. Virtually any word, it seems, is going to be prefixed by
nano-
sooner or later.

Nano-
has left
micro-
a long way behind, though
micro-
did receive a boost with the advent of
micromessaging
. The posting of very short entries on a blog came to be called
microblogging
, and when Twitter arrived in 2006, with its 140-character message limitation, it was soon being described as a
microblogging site
. There are
microbooks, micromovies, micromusicals
and (
§92
)
microapps
now. Speaking as a lexical cool-hunter (a 1990s’ marketing term: ‘a monitor of cultural trends’), I wouldn’t write it off yet.

Twittersphere

future directions? (21st century)

It’s remarkable how a single sound can be taken to heart and used as a source of fresh word formation. In 2010, around 600 new words were listed in
Twittonary
, one of the online dictionaries collecting terms invented in connection with Twitter. That’s an
amazing total, given that this web site had then been in existence for only five years.

Most of the words are the result of people exploiting the playful possibilities in the name, especially those suggested by the unusual (in English) phonetic properties of the initial consonant cluster
tw-
. Two-thirds of the entries play with that cluster. Some replace an initial consonant, as in
twictionary
and
tweologism
. Some pretend to be a speech defect, replacing a
tr-
word, as in
twendy
and
twaffic
. Some add the cluster to the beginning of another word, as in
twidentity theft
and
twaddiction
. Blends are also very common, as in
twitterhea, twitterati, twitterholic, celebritweet
– and, summarising its entire world,
twittersphere
.

Most of these creations are likely to have a short linguistic life. Just a few will be long-term additions to the language – or, at least, for as long as Twitter exists. We can see this from what happened to an earlier internet phenomenon – blogging. In the early 2000s, the word
blog
(an abbreviation of
web log
, an individual’s online diary or commentary) also generated a great deal of wordplay, but some of the coinages that were popular then are hardly ever seen these days.

The same word-building processes are found in the
blogosphere
as we find in the
twittersphere
. There’s the same sort of substitution of clusters (
blargon
, ‘blog jargon’) and syllables (
blogathy
, ‘blog apathy’) and a similar range of blends (
blogorrhea, blogerati,
blogoholic, celebriblog
). The unique phonetic properties of the core term are also exploited: internal rhyme is seen in
bloggerel
,
lexiblography
and
blogstipation
(the sad state of affairs when a blogger can’t think of anything to say).

Rather more technical are such blends as
blog-roll
and
blogware
,
photoblog
and
moblog
(‘posts sent by mobile phone’), or
blawg
(‘law blog’) and
vlog
(‘video blog’), and such compounds as
blog client
and
blog archive
. These are the terms which seem to have achieved a long-term place in the language – though again, this will be the case for only as long as the technology exists. Important too are well-established words which have been given a new sense in the context of blogging, such as
gadget, post, preview, archive
and
template
.

As for Twitter, if you had asked me as recently as 2005 whether I thought there was anything interesting about the consonant cluster
tw
, I would have said ‘nothing at all’. If you had suggested that one day it would be the basis for coining hundreds of new words, I would have said you were mad. Moral: word buffs should never try to predict the future.

1. Runic letters, © Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery. NWHCM: 1939.77.N59f:A
2

2. Sir Terry Pratchet at Peach Pie Street, © Tim Mossford/UNP
18

3. Kilroy was here
32

4. The Venerable Bede sits writing in his study, from
The Life and Miracles of St Cuthbert
40

5.
Just Visiting
, corner of the Monopoly board
60

6.
In the Wee Small Hours
, Frank Sinatra album sleeve, 1955
71

7. Yorkshire Penny Bank Building, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, © Mark Sunderland Photography,
photographersdirect.com
84

8. A child’s hornbook, The British Library
100

9. US scholars toasting Ben Johnson on the 200th anniversary of Johnson’s
Dictionary
. Photo by Walter Sanders/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
127

10.
The Oxford Gazette
, November 1665
135

11. Cover image from
Chicken Licken
, Ladybird Easy Reading series
146

12. Cover images from
Harry Potter and the Philopher’s Stone
, published in the UK by Bloomsbury; and
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
,
published in the USA by Scholastic, written by J. K. Rowling
152

13. An early advertisement by Bell Telephones
164

14.
Lukaut long bulmakau
, a Tok Pisin sign from Papua New Guinea © Michael Pennay
179

15. ‘Betty Rules OK’ 1 June 1977: Residents of the Aintree Estate, Fulham, London, express their sentiments in a celebration of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Photo by Central Press/Getty Images
184

16. Poster showing Karel
Č
apek’s Robot, Library of Congress
200

17. Belinda Blurb, with thanks to Stan Carey
214

18.
Let’s Stalk Strine
, book jacket from 1965
218

19.
‘Gotcha’, Sun
front page, 4 May 1982
228

20. Emoticons, Western and Eastern variations
243

ain’t
158

alphabet
98

Alzheimer’s
219

Americanism
151

and
8

app
237

arse
45

bagonise
233

billion
129

bloody
120

blurb
213

bodgery
112

bone-house
33

bridegroom
43

brock
35

brunch
173

chattels
52

cherry-picking
239

chillax
251

cuckoo
64

cunt
65

dame
54

debt
105

dialect
109

dilly-dally
145

dinkum
176

disinterested
139

DNA
193

doable
93

doobry
211

doublespeak
207

dragsman
166

dude
171

edit
154

egg
78

English
38

escalator
197

fopdoodle
125

gaggle
91

garage
195

gazette
134

gotcha
227

grammar
73

grand
222

hello
163

information(s)
89

ink-horn
107

jail
59

jazz
245

lakh
123

lea
5

loaf
10

LOL
241

lunch
169

matrix
95

mead
20

mega
225

merry
23

mipela
178

money
82

muggle
248

music
85

OK
183

ology
186

out
13

PC
230

polite
142

pork
50

potato
102

rep
149

riddle
26

robot
199

roe
1

royal
80

schmooze
181

shibboleth
119

skirt
57

skunk
116

species
156

speech-craft
191

street
16

Strine
216

sudoku
247

swain
48

taffeta
87

take away
62

tea
137

trek
160

Twittersphere
254

UFO
203

undeaf
113

unfriend
253

valentine
76

Watergate
205

webzine
235

wee
70

what
29

wicked
68

y’all
189

yogurt
132