#3- Why the Long Phrase? (MV)

(Shira says hello! She's also trying something she doesn't do very well with HTML, so can you mouse over and then click the little 'comic' text you see below? She will get the hang of this eventually...)

Hey, it's Shira. Undeniably, liquorice is a hard snack to follow. At this time, Quentin is probably occupied with eXtremely important Quentannic activities. I'll bare my grandiloquent heart and soul to you, and discuss just what goes into making words words.

So what is Manifest Vocabulary? The truth is, I just made up a cool phrase to define a phenomenon that already exists- the coining of neologisms. My lifestyle is eXtreme enough to require new and exciting phrases- I'm always just surviving explosions, leaping off of buildings, and kicking away tribal natives on my way to fantastic ancient treasures in sealed temples and/or crypts.

Neologism breaks down easily (new, word) so you know that is means any new word created to describe a concept or invention which no term currently in use can define. But when Quentin or I do it, we will be manifesting vocabulary. Hardcore vocabulary. Vocabulary the likes of which the world has never before experienced. You use a lot of neologisms all the time, especially if you go on the computer, or watch the telly, or use appliances. Look around you, and you will probably see at least five objects for which there were no words two centuries ago.

Manifested vocabulary comes most frequently in some of these forms:
Portmanteau/Blending- creating blog from web log. This is not to be confused with compunding, which gives us words like blogosphere.
Derivation- creating blogger by agglutination, the addition of suffixes.
Zero Derivation- creating the verb to blog in order to describe the action of blog posting.
Alteration of the Lemma- enough screwing around in speech or message boards can change the core word into something like blag.

I think we can get to backronyms, retronyms, and back-formation in a bit.

My favorite form of manifest vocabulary, however, is Word Theft. This is when we take a word from another language and twist it to fit our own insidious needs. This can occur through calques, loanwords, or hybrid words, which are special and scientifically engineered in super-secret underground labs. German in particular, with its extremely sexy philisophical nature, is a big victim of word purloinment. We get really long and unpronouncable words that existentialism majors like to use, such as Weltanschauung, and also words that find their way more easily into conversation, like kindergarten or sauerkraut. On the other hand, we calqued in the word pineapple from wallflower dialect Dutch, which just goes to show that there is no accounting for taste. (I think?)

My deity! I just can't stop talking! Before I crush everyone with the wall of words (perhaps it is too late), let's dish up today's piping hot Manifest Vocabulary.

nookish (adj) prn nʊkɪʃ. Nookish, not to be confused with bookish or nookie, describes the state of chips or crackers if you leave them out for a couple of hours and they lose all their crispy-crunchiness. It is as if they have become air soggy. As if, in fact, they have become nookish.

"Wait!" you cry out. "That was far too mundane for such an exotic lead-in!" Mundane the word may be, but it fills a slot previously vacant. If you ever leave corn chips open and come back in three hours or so, you now have the perfect thing to say!

Thanks for reading. That was quite an eyeful, wasn't it? Many apologies. Hope you enjoy and keep reading us! Shira shalom.