Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success

Want to make your mark on the world? Coin a new word. Just follow the rules set down by Allan Metcalf in Predicting New Words and you'll be well on your way. Along the way, he discusses the origins of newish words and phrases like "notebook PC" and "weapons-grade" signifying anything of as well as tried and true ones like "OK" and "moonlighting," examining them and coming to conclusions about what makes a word gain universal acceptance. Predicting New Words is a fun read for those who are interested in words and their history (as well as their future). Metcalf's prose style is simple and easy to read and his transitions are smooth, making each dissection blend into the next. He goes into what is likely to make a word accepted and discusses how some words simply ache to be coined because they keep cropping up in separate instances over time by people who were unaware that anyone else had ever used the word before. In the back of the book is an appendix listing the Words of the Year as chosen by the American Dialect Society, along with descriptions as to what makes them special. Words like "Y2K," the "e-" prefix regarding the Internet, "9-11" as signifying the events of September 11, 2002; all of these have been chosen as Words of the Year for their prevalence and usefulness. Metcalf also proposes some words that are floating around now and puts them to the test using his "FUDGE factor" to decide whether they will be around in 40 years. All in all, Predicting New Words in an insightful and engrossing read, and I recommend it to anyone who gets a kick out of words.

If you feel yourself just one person in a sea of humanity who will be unremembered by future generations (and most of us are indeed going to be forgotten), and you'd like to claim just a little bit of immortality, you might coin a word that gets used by lots of people and then enters the dictionaries. That's what Paul Lewis did. He's a humorist and English professor, and his new word is one of the many reported in _Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success_ (Houghton Mifflin), an amusing new way to look at new words by Allan Metcalf. Every dictionary which lists Lewis's coinage "frankenfood" and goes to any detail on its etymology will have to list him as the inventor (author?) of the word. "Frankenfood," meaning genetically modified comestibles, is a clever, funny new word. It gets its point across clearly, and will probably be around as long as genetically modified food itself is. Score a big one for professor Lewis, but beware: he has subsequently tried coining other new words, some of them seemingly clever and useful, but none of them have caught on. Metcalf's book tries to show why some new words catch on and why some don't, and how to make predictions. Maybe his prediction system is quite good; we will have to wait a couple of generations to see what words stick or fall away as it predicts, but even so, this is a fascinating look at how words come into being.It is surprising that so many new words are created every day. You might even make a few yourself, like President Bush does; he comes up with words like "misunderestimate" rather frequently, but it isn't surprising that a lot of other people have come up with that one, all on their own, too. Often people perceive a need for a word and want to invent one to fill that need. This seldom works to make a lasting word. For a few decades we have been pondering replacements for "boyfriend" and "girlfriend," since older people are doing a lot of dating these days. It would be nice to have a word that meant "he or she" so that one wouldn't feel pressed to go for the ungendered but ungrammatical plural "they" as in "If anyone wishes to leave, they may do so now." As the millennium rolled over, we wondered if after leaving the nineties, we would be entering the "aughts" or "naughts" or "oh-ohs," but the decade still has no agreed-upon name, and maybe we will have to wait for the twenties for an easily namable decade. Words do not rush in to fill all gaps. But many of the new words here have surprising stories. "Scofflaw," though it sounds like something Shakespeare could have used, was invented in a contest in 1924. A member of the Anti-Saloon League offered a $200 prize for a word to mean "a lawless drinker, menace, scoffer, bad citizen, or whatnot." The word was widely publicized, and became immediately popular, although the original aim to deter such scofflaws seems to have failed. Flashy words don't tend to last as well as the unobtrusive ones; in this way, an evolv

Why do some coined words catch on and others not? Why do some catch on quickly and others burn out equally quickly? As someone who works with word puzzles, I was intrigued by these questions: we like to keep puzzle vocabulary up-to-date, but at the same time make sure that our entries are generally known so as not to frustrate the solver, not always an easy task. Metcalf presents a well-written, jargon-free analysis of his theories on this, including a historical perspective. I found it fascinating, and my copy has already started circulating amongst my coworkers.

I picked up this book after reading about it in the Atlantic Monthly's "Word Fugitives" column, I'd used Metcalf's last book, HOW WE TALK, in a school project a few years ago and I really like his writing style -- fun, funny, and wildly informative without a hint of dryness. He makes words fun! PREDICTING NEW WORDS did not disappoint -- it's full of interesting stories about the origins of popular words (who knew that "scofflaw" had such a quirky history?) and tells you how to predict on your own what words and phrases will last. A great read.

Allan Metcalf has done American culture a great service by writing this book! What a great joy to read. The book may bring back memories of words-gone-by, and is sure to entertain readers of any age. It should be required reading for all students... it would certainly make learning far more interesting and entertaining for students. I strongly encourage all public and academic libraries to buy at least two copies of this book. Bravo!