May

OIC’s Greatest Hits: A Global Yea for Wordplay!

by Your friends at OIC on May 17, 2021

5 Signs that Wit and Whimsy Come in Many Languages

Where there’s a word, there’s a way lovers of language will have some fun with it. Idioms, puns, and culturally unique expressions are a part of languages around the globe. And, in this latest collection of OIC’s “Greatest Hits,” our bloggers display their brand of wordplay wizardry with astute observations and forays into that witty world of words.

Your friends at OIC Comments

Language & Culture/Wordplay/Worldwide Sites

Nov

You Can’t Just Make Up Words—Oh, Really?

by Joyce McGreevy on November 9, 2020

A woman reading the Oxford English Dictionary, a source of implicit language lessons on how to invent a word. (Image by lilbellule789 and PIxabay)

Spoiler alert: This page turner’s ending is all about the . . . zyzzyva!
lilbellule789/ Pixabay l

Language Lesson: How to Invent a Word

It’s become a sitcom trope: One character’s remark prompts another character to retort, “That’s not even a word!” or “You can’t just make up words!”

But according to the most widespread, time-honored language lore, people have been inventing words ever since the guttural grunts of one human first morphed into vocal patterns that made sense to other humans.

Let’s settle this with the world’s shortest language lesson, here.

Oh, I see: Making up words is precisely how language happens. When people invent a word, language grows and goes out into the world, keeping robust pace with ever-changing ideas and events until the time comes to pass the torch to other new language.

A woman binge-watching TV unknowingly embodies a language lesson—how you invent a word is influenced by other inventions, too. (Image by Kali9 and iStock)

As the words turn: The word TV (first known use: 1945) spawned TV dinner (1954),
sitcom (1962), dramedy (1978), channel surf (1988) and binge-watch (2003).
Kali9/ iStock

World of Words

According to Global Language Monitor, English speakers alone generate over 5,000 new words a year. While most “new” words of any era fall out of use—When’s the last time you heard someone say icebox, courting, or dungarees?—about 1,000 new words become so embedded in everyday use that they enter the ultimate word hall of fame—the dictionary.

A dictionary opened to the word dictionary show that people invent a new word or words about language itself. (Image by Pxhere)

Um, has anyone ever used a dictionary to look up the word dictionary?
Pxhere

Between Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary, 2020’s newbie words include social-distance, WFH (working from home), deprioritize, all-dressed, and a slew of medical terms. As in, “Now that we social-distance by WFH, we’ve deprioritized business casual, started wearing athleisure, and mostly live on all-dressed pizza.”

As you can see, some new words are old words that have been given new meanings. These new words not only demonstrate the evolution of language and reflect issues affecting our world today, they also annoy the heck out of purists.

To Verb or Not to Verb

For example, maybe you’ve heard someone rail against the practice of turning nouns into verbs, also known as “verbing.” Like when conference becomes conferencing. Someone may even have told you that this isn’t proper English.

Now if only that purist had been around 400 years ago, they could have delivered their complaints to a champion verber—Shakespeare. He transformed nouns like elbow and gossip into verbs, elbowing out old norms and setting purists gossiping.

An actor in period costume evokes the idea that when you invent a word you it becomes a kind of time capsule or historical language lesson. (Image by Pxhere)

What’s in a name? Richard Burton models Shakespearean jeggings (2009)
—oops, leg warmers (1915)—oops, pantyhose (1959)—oops, hose (1100s).
Pxhere

In fact, Shakespeare’s habit of anthimeria is one you probably share. Anthimeria is the use of one part of speech as another, such as when:

you bookmark a website (noun used as a verb)
you need a good night’s sleep (verb used a noun)
or, as one 60s pop song put it, “you keep samin’ when you oughta be changin'” (adjective used as a verb)

Samin’ is not what words do. You might even say, these words were made for walkin’, because language is constantly on the move, dancing to new tunes, topics, and events to communicate new meanings.

Looking Back-Word

As for where humans’ first words came from, sorry, I wasn’t there or I’d’ve made notes. But what I can tell you are some time-honored ways of making up words that we still use today:

1. Adding Suffixes and Prefixes. Undoubtedly, you already know that historically, many words materialized as humans began affixing adorable word parts onto plain old root words. The transformations were limitless!

Current examples: declutter, preexisting, unplug

2. Clipping. Another way we get new words is to give old words a haircut. That’s how public houses became pubs, pianofortes became pianos, fanatics became fans, and typographical errors became typos.

Current examples: celeb (celebrity), prom (promenade), blog (web log), stats (statistics)

A duck that can quack suggests an instant language lesson in how to invent a word—use onomatopoeia. (Image by Pxhere)

Creating words can be a quack up! Onomatopoeia is forming words that imitate sounds.
Pxhere

3. Blending. If you’ve ever read Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Jabberwocky,” the so-called nonsense words were actually blended words. Carroll called them portmanteau words, after a kind of suitcase that opened into two sections. So slithy actually “packed up” both slimy and lithe, and chortle combined chuckle and snort.

Throughout history, many blended words crossed into mainstream English, such as smog (smoke + fog), motel (motor + hotel), telethon (telephone + marathon), brunch (breakfast + lunch).

Current examples: Brexit (Britain + exit), pixel (picture + element), rom-com (romantic + comedy)

4. Compounding. Similar to blending, compounding coins one new expression from two old words. Backseat driver, bean counter, smiley face, tie dye, and mood ring have been with us since the days of disco inferno, leisure suits, and the floppy disk, but the Bard himself—an avid popularizer of compound words— would have reacted to them with bare-faced, addle-pated confusion.

Current examples: gig economy, dark web, screen time

A child’s hand taking an orange embodies an language lesson in how to invent a word—borrow from another language, like the Arabic for “orange”, naranj. (Image by JoshMB and Pixabay)

How to make new words? Borrow from another language—like orange,
from the Arabic word nāranj.
JoshMB/ Pixabay

5. Eponyms. What’s in a name? Words we use on a daily basis. OIC Moments readers know such famous examples as:

boycott from Irish land agent Charles C. Boycott
Fahrenheit, from physicist Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit
America, from Italian mapmaker Amerigo Vespucci

But did you know that words like diesel and nicotine are also eponyms? German engineer Rudolf Diesel gave his name to both the engine and the fuel that powered it, while sixteenth century diplomat Jean Nicot de Villemain apparently introduced tobacco to France. Even sideburns, guppy, shrapnel, mesmerize, and leotard are named for real people.

An eponym can be based on fiction. Consider paparazzi. In the 1960s Italian film La Dolce Vita, a photographer named Paparazzo works for gossip magazines. The word paparazzo was used because it sounds like the buzz of an annoying insect.

Where are the women, you may ask? Underrepresented. The most famous is Amelia Bloomer. No, she didn’t create bloomers, but her advocacy for women’s rights inspired the name of this alternative to the heavy dresses that restricted women’s movements.

Current examples: Jacuzzi, Darwinian, Tesla

A tornado symbolizes a surprising language lesson—people sometimes invent a word by mistake. (Image by Pxhere)

Word twist(er)? Mistakes can create new words. English speakers inverted o and r in
the Spanish word for “thunderstorm,” tronada, and then used this to describe
another kind of extreme weather—the tornado.
Pxhere

For-Word into the Future!

These are just a few language lessons in how to invent a word. As each new word emerges, the knowledge it carries adds to the lore—and often the allure—of language. You have my word.

Letter tiles evokea key language lesson—there is always the potential to invent a word. (Image by Pxhere)

What’s the next new word?
Pxhere

Comment on the post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Track the journey of OMG into the Oxford English Dictionary, here.

What words were “invented” during your birth year? Find out here!

Joyce McGreevy 2 Comments

Wordplay

Sep

Voilà! The Poetry of Untranslatable Words

by Meredith Mullins on September 28, 2020

Linguistic trivia says that the Inuits have 50 words for snow. But how, in languages,
do you find the one perfect word to describe something—le mot juste?
© Meredith Mullins

Wordplay with Meaning

We live in challenging times. We have had to become super-adaptable beings, asking ourselves every day how to cope with the multitude of new normals.

What changes emerge?

Have you, like most of the world, savored hyggelig and gezelligheid?

Have you searched for moments of beauty in komorebi, mångata, and psithurism?

Have you had the urge to commit to jijivisha and to integrate firgun and merak into life rhythms?

Wait a minute, you’re saying to yourself. What language are we speaking here? We’re not that adaptable. What do these cryptic words mean?

Has OIC Moments lapsed into a world of jabberwocky—wordplay with nonsense words that have no meaning? No . . . we are just taking a moment to appreciate the elegance of untranslatable words.

How many untranslatable words about reindeer are there in Finnish?
Read on for the best one.
© iStock/Artpilot

Tales of the Untranslatable

This “Oh, I see” moment is about words in different languages that have no direct translation in English.

Almost all of the 7000+ languages in the world have words that cannot be succinctly translated. They are such a perfect poetic reflection of the people and lifestyle of their own culture that it takes several English words to convey their meaning. More often than not, the translations fall short of the more insightful meaning that has evolved within the culture.

There’s No Place Like Home

Many of the untranslatable words describe feelings of home.

Hyggelig (Danish/Norwegian)

The Danish/Norwegian hyggelig conjures a picture of contentment and coziness. You feel warm just hearing the word.

It’s about friendship, comfort, security, good times, and all the important things in life. A translation of “nice” doesn’t begin to describe what this word means to these cultures, although the entymological similarity to the English word “hug” provides some hint to the underlying meaning.

The Dutch word gezelligheid and the German word gemütlichkeit also allude to this kind of comfortable feeling.

We could all use a little hyggelig in our life.
© iStock/Solovyova

Depaysement (French)

The French word depaysement means feeling apart from your world of origin. It can occur when you are in another country and you sense that you don’t quite belong. This unfamiliar feeling might cause a longing for your home country or general unease at being away.

As cultures integrate, most visitors find a way to connect—to avoid depaysement.
© Meredith Mullins

Hiraeth (Welsh)

The Welsh word hiraeth also refers to a longing for the homeland, but includes a sadness for anything that has been lost. It is a wistfulness for lost friends and a regret that the past is the past and cannot be relived. It could be translated into an interweaving of three words: yearning, nostalgia, and homesickness.

The wistful longing of hiraeth or saudade
© Meredith Mullins

Saudade (Portuguese)

Saudade in Portuguese is similar to hiraeth. It is a longing for something or someone that is lost. The love still burns strong for this missing link.

A Search for Beauty

Moving on from the words that linger on nostalgia and yearning, we find solace in the beauty and peace of nature.

In search of beauty . . . komorebi meets the challenge.
© iStock/Thekopmylife

Komorebi (Japanese)

The Japanese word komorebi invokes an image of sunlight filtering through trees. The translation includes “tree,” “escape,” and “light,” but what arrives in the imagination far exceeds the words. The scene that comes to mind includes rays of sunlight that take on a spiritual quality when finding their way through a silent forest.

Mångata (Swedish)

Mångata is a visual story. This Swedish word describes the reflection of the moon on water as it seems to create a shimmering path. Yakamoz in Turkish has a similar meaning. These cultures clearly have romantic reverence for the moon . . . and a single lyrical word to honor its magic.

A mangata that captures the beauty of the universe
© iStock/jakkapan21

Psithurism (Greek)

Why shouldn’t a language have a word for the sound of leaves rustling in the wind? The word psithurism is adapted from the ancient Greek word meaning “whisper” and offers yet another sensory path to connect with nature.

Waldeinsamkeit (German)

The German word waldeinsamkeit describes the feeling of being connected to nature when you’re alone in the woods. The literal translation includes “wald” which means forest, and “einsamkeit,” which means loneliness or solitude.

For Germans, the word is more than a description. It is a philosophy that focuses on finding the beauty of nature in a quiet setting and looking both outward and inward. Several poets, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, have used this word in their poetry.

Another German word, waldbaden, has a similar meaning. It translates to bathing in the forest—opening your senses while in the woods and letting nature flow over and in you.

Gökotta (Swedish)

This word inspires a life change that seems to bring happiness to those who embrace it (although you have to be a morning person). It means to rise at dawn to go outside and listen to the birds’ first songs of the day.

Gluggaveður (Icelandic)

Not all interaction with nature is so intimate and meditative. The word gluggaveður in Icelandic is a prime example of needing to have a front row, warm, indoor seat to observe nature. It translates to “windowweather.”

Sometimes the best way to enjoy the beauty of inclement weather is through the window,
a nod to gluggaveður in Icelandic.
© iStock/Sveti

More Practical Than Poetic

There are also untranslatable words that are practical, referring to the mundane tasks and challenges of daily life, especially the elements that are specific to the culture.

Tsundoku (Japanese)

The Japanese word tsundoku means to buy a book and leave it unread, piling it with the other unread books in your home. (How many of us need to add this word to our vocabulary?)

Schilderwald (German)

This word brings a smile as it means a maze or jungle of traffic signs—a street crowded with so many road signs that you can’t find your way out. The more literal translation is “a forest of signs.”

Gigil (Tagalog)

The Filipinos have a word that captures the irresistible urge to hug or pinch something cute.

Pana po’o (Hawaiian)

The Hawaiians have a special word to describe the act of scratching your head to try to remember something—pana po’o.

Poronkusema (Finnish)

Finland has introduced a unit of measure that all can understand. Poronkusema means the distance a reindeer can comfortably travel before taking a break.

Pisanzapra (Malaysian)

Malaysia uses some specific measures of time. The pinsanzapra equals the minutes needed to eat a banana.

The next time you have the irresistible urge to hug something cute,
there IS a word for it (in Tagalog)—gigil.
© iStock/BichoRaro

Life Resolutions

The wordplay that we find in untranslatable words tells us much about the cultures of the world. As we think about which of these words we would like to incorporate into our own life, we find out more about ourselves.

I have embraced all these words (yes, even reindeer distance). There are hundreds more worthy of study. But I add to the vocabulary three additional words that shouldn’t be missed.

The Hindi word jijivisha means a strong wish to live life intensely. Add to that the Serbian word merak and the Hebrew word firgun and there can be purpose in these challenging times.

Merak translates to happiness and a feeling of connection to the universe with the simplest of pleasures.

Firgun tells the story of unselfish joy for someone or something and a true generosity of spirit.

Words to live by.

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Meredith Mullins 8 Comments