WORDSPEAK
Words that should exist
ANAND
LEWIS CARROLL, who wrote about Alice's romp through wonderland, coined the word "chortle" in his other work Through the Looking Glass (1872). The OED says that it was a combination of "chuckle" and "snort", and I have always imagined it to mean to laugh out a bit loudly, but in a kind and joyful way.
A Shakespeare scholar might have many more to add to the handful I can think of that the Bard of Avon introduced to English language: accommodation, assassination, dexterously, dislocate, indistinguishable, obscene, pedant, premeditated, reliance and submerged.
Source of new words
The vernacular provided Shakespeare with a mother lode of new words, and he used his imagination to build up his vocabulary. The Industrial Revolution was to provide another source, words that had technical or scientific origins. This process reached its height in the 20th Century, with new inventions like the automobile and the airplane. The two World Wars added new words that quickly entered common usage. The use of slang words and those from narcotics were favoured by the hip and the counter-culturniks. Several past "Wordspeak" columns were about The War Words, from Gulf War I and II. And information technology and the Internet seem to have some new word to offer virtually every time I have looked.
Then there are words that should exist — but don't. I'm sure we all have, at one time or another, wished that there was a word for this situation or that predicament or even some secret longing. I have come across some quirky creations that people desperate for suitable words have created to fill these holes in the language. Some of these words are breathtakingly appropriate, for they make you feel that you are the only person who can truly appreciate their meaning. This, of course, is an illogical feeling.
Dagwords
The Dag's Dictionary, compiled by Richard Glover with the help of many others, is one collection of over 300 such "dagwords". By their definition, a dagword is a word that fills a gap in the language. Glover is an Australian, and some of the words in his compilation will make sense only to readers in certain cultures and societies. Here is one that would be appreciated by all cricket-playing nations, including India. "Batbiter: A cricketer who, having swung at the ball and missed, takes a good hard look at his bat, as if the reason of failure must lie therein". I think there should be a similar dagword for tennis players who, having missed a swing, look at their rackets as if the ball had passed through one of those tiny holes in the stringing.
In North America and in several European countries, it is illegal to smoke inside public buildings. In India where such regulations hardly, if at all, exist, the following dagword might be a little difficult to understand. "Fuminates: The groups of smokers clustered around the entrance to an office building".
Other dagwords will be universally appreciated. "Haka-ventilate: To cool down a piece of food once it is in your mouth by panting, waving and making your eyes bulge. Dinstant: The time period between the traffic lights turning green, and the sound of the car horn beeping behind you. Eelation: The feeling of excitement when you turn on your home computer and discover you have twenty e-mails in your inbox. Eespondent: the disappointment that follows when you discover all twenty e-mails are spam, offering to enlarge a part of your anatomy".
When the other one is faster
Two among the words that give the illogical feeling described above. "Fridgebit: Food that contains no calories by virtue of being eaten straight from the fridge, while standing with the door of the fridge still open and the light spilling put. Hurriclean: The frenzied clean-up that occurs when you learn that you are having an important visitor at a short notice". I thought at once; how did someone find out?
A word that I think should exist, but doesn't, is a dagword for a line up (or queue) that always seems to move faster than the one you are stuck in. If readers have a suggestion about this word or any other word that they think should exist, but doesn't, I invite them to share it with me.
E-mail the author at anand@journalist.com
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