The Fake Word

If Lewis Carroll can make up “vorpal,” “brillig,” and “uffish,” then I can make up words like… (image via wikimedia)

I accidentally created a fake word a few days ago.  It happened because of my new boss, a younger Ivy League guy who likes to talk a lot and think of new acronyms for old ideas.   Anyway, after a meeting, I was ticked off and quietly muttered to a co-worker who (I hope) agrees with me:

“This new guy is way too damnbitious.”

I had meant to say “too damn ambitious” but I ran the words together.  It was an accident.

“You came up with a new word,” my co-worker said.  “If he fires you for complaining, at least you have that.”

I don’t like new words, especially if they’re fake.  The English language has enough words, so many that we don’t need many fake ones.  Last year, I used the fake word “nit-prickety” in a blog post about The Great Gatsby .  “Nit-prickety” is a combination of being nit-picky and a prick.  I don’t like being either, but sometimes I feel like I’m both, and that’s how I felt when I was writing about The Great Gatsby.  It wasn’t F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fault; it was mine.  Anyway, I liked the sound of “nit-prickety” the first time I used it, but I haven’t used it since.

After my verbal slip-up a few days ago, I couldn’t believe that I would be the first person to say or think of “dambitious,” so I checked online and found several versions of dambition/damnbitious already in use.  I was a little disappointed because there was a part of me that was proud to have created something new, even if it was a fake word.

It makes sense that somebody else thought of it first because I’m usually a few years behind the trends.  I started watching Game of Thrones last summer after season 4 was already done.  I started using Twitter a few months before that.  I didn’t start blogging until four years ago.  I’ll probably start making YouTube videos in a couple years when it won’t matter anymore.  I still rent DVDs.  The way things are going, I won’t start streaming movies for another five years.

I’m glad I found out ahead of time that I wasn’t the first person to think of “dambitious.”  As litigious as people are nowadays, somebody else would have accused me of stealing the word and sued me.  I would have felt guilty, even if I hadn’t officially “stolen” the word.  I could understand the creator of “damnbitious” for being protective.  It’s nearly impossible to think of original stuff anymore.  A lot of people have original thoughts, but now with the internet we can easily find out if somebody else had that same original thought before we did.

I haven’t found proof that anybody else has used “nit-prickety” yet.  Maybe that one is original.  Or maybe it’s so stupid that the millions of people who thought of it first didn’t want to claim it.  I’d hate to be the guy who claims the bad idea that millions others have thought of first but discarded.  That’s embarrassing.

Sometimes fake words can have a good purpose.  Lewis Carroll used a lot of fake words, especially in “Jabborwocky.”  When I was in high school, the fake words confused us students so much that we were certain Lewis Carroll had been high when he wrote Jabberwocky.  Those fake words like “vorpal” or “brillig” are useful because they confuse kids, and kids should be confused as much as possible.  It keeps them from thinking that they know everything.

A few weeks ago when my daughter rolled her eyes at me like I was an idiot, I just said, “You don’t even know what ‘vorpal’ means.”  That shut her up (and made her keep her eyes in one place).

Even if I don’t like most fake words, I appreciate new words for old concepts that English doesn’t have a word for yet.  For example, the Japanese language has the word “tsundoku” which means the act of buying books and not finishing them, letting them pile up until they take up the whole house.  Maybe English should have a word for that.  But why create a new word in English when the Japanese already have one?  The English language can simply adopt the word.  For example: “I just tsondokued the guest room in my house.”

Yeah, that sounds like a fake word (and kind of vulgar), but that’s never stopped a word from becoming part of the lexicon before.   Right now, nobody knows what “tsondoku” means, but we bibliophiles love knowing novelty words, especially words that apply to us.  We can proudly declare ourselves as “tsundokus,” and nobody will know what we mean at first.  It can be our smug code word until it becomes so popular that it is used widely in English.  Then, in a few generations, “tsundoku” (or some form of it) will be so familiar that English speakers will forget that the word even originated in Japan.

Stealing a word from another language is much better than making up unnecessary fake words.    Now that I’ve stolen a word from another language and created a couple fake words, it’s time for me to think of an acronym for my boss.  If I’m lucky, it will spell out a real word and not a fake one.  Acronyms that spell out fake words are the worst.

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But enough about me!  Have you ever accidentally (or intentionally) created a fake word?   What other concepts does English NOT have a word for?  Have you ever created an acronym?  What trends are you behind on?  When your kid talks back, what’s your best comeback line?