Cephalogenic

or, stuff that I dragged out of my head

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Location: Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada

Sunday, May 08, 2005

Old/New/Borrowed/Blue

I just read a wonderful, wonderful neologism on Gawker.com that I would like to share. But first, a couple of things.

First, just in case you don't know the word "neologism": it derives from three Greek roots, "neo-", "-logo-", and "-ism". The first means "new"; the second means "word"; and the third is a suffix denoting a noun (and generally denoting a state or a characteristic), so the whole means a new word. A neologism can be a wholly new invention (as "blurb" once was), a new word created from combining forms ("babeage"), or an old word given a new meaning (the popular "radical" of the nineties, so different from any usage of it that had come before).

Second, the suffix "-ery" is used to transform something into a noun; it may be a verb ("bakery"), it may be an adjective ("finery"), or it may be a noun that needs to be changed from the specific into the general ("jewellery").

With that out of the way: Gawker.com has presented me with the previously unheard but thoroughly useful noun "fuck-uppery". I may never get a chance to use it, but oh, how I love it.

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