Neologisms: language upcycling through the ages
Image: Adam Niescioruk via Unsplash
By now many of us will be physically back at work in some capacity, perhaps with ‘hybrid’ or ‘remote’ work days thrown in to acknowledge the pandemic-induced WFH arrangements of the past 2 years. No more sipping quarantinis in lockdown, it’s back to it ‘worklife 2.?’ (I’ve lost count).
That’s not all that’s changed for language aficionados. The introduction to this article includes no fewer than 6 neologisms that have sprung into being since COVID-19 began. (These are words or acronyms – either new or recycled – with a fresh meaning that fits the times.)
Unsurprisingly, neologisms are often the by-product of a cultural or technological shift. In the case of the pandemic, reactionary linguistic terms spawned rapidly to cope with an intensifying global crisis. They were then hardwired into our collective COVID-19 reality through incessant repetition, and just as quickly as they found life, a process of semantic bleaching occurred.
New lexical sparklers momentarily amused us, then dull with repetition or circumstance, or disappear completely. For example, it’s unlikely we’ll return to eating al desko in the office any time soon, which was once ‘a thing’. Linguistically speaking, we’re always on rinse repeat as our ‘new norms’ lose their sheen and the words working overtime to describe them gradually lose their colour.
Some neologisms do stay the course and are absorbed into dictionaries, while others also blur definition. Take brand names such as Aspirin, Band-aid or Google which, over time, have expanded their meaning to signify the broader, generic product (a phenomenon with its own term: generonym). The trademark Google is also a neologism for the number googol (1.0 x 10 to the power of 100).
As neologisms phase in and out of fashion, let’s not forget the enduring classics. Shakespeare was a prolific neologist credited with coining 1500 to 2000 new words, depending on which authority you believe. ‘Twitter’ is ascribed to poet Geoffery Chaucer as an onomatopoeic word since reframed for a 21st-century soapbox, while author Jonathan Swift first coined the word ‘yahoo’ in Gulliver’s travels.
What would our revered writers make of today’s interpretations?