Imagined Words

Introduction

This piece was inspired by a comment be Ema Salvi on my last piece that used a non-existent word as its title.

That got me thinking about words and a couple of books that are in my home library that you can see in the lead image, and here are some of the words you can find in there:

These are the books if you want your own copy:

These Words

As soon as an "imagined" word is said or put into print it becomes real. William Shakespeare gave us lots, and every year new ones are added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Words fall in and out of use, and often words are appropriated to give the user a feeling of control and superiority.

William Shakespeare is credited with the invention or introduction of over 1,700 words that are still used in English today

Many years ago when working at EE someone emailed me asking if I had received the wire-frame. I said no because I wasn't making a model. I then realised that he was referring to a document template, but I kept him waiting, as he was just being a pretentious wazzock.

The "Imaginary Words" book is essentially slightly changing dictionary words whereas the Douglas Adams book takes place names and gives them definitions, effectively creating funny new definitions.

This year we have hadd "ick" and "boop" added to the dictionary so what was once not a valid Scrabble entry, now is. They are just two of 3,200 words added this year

According to a recently conducted study by The Economist, most adult native speakers of the English language, who took their vocabulary test, have a range from 20,000 to 35,000 words. The average of native test-takers of the age of 8 was 10,000 words and 4-year-olds have already a considerable amount of 5,000 words.

So the 3,200 new words could almost give people a virtually new language.

Conclusion

Once a word is used it becomes real. Whether it is allowed for certain word games is a different matter, but once it is written, it is real.

Thank you so much for reading.

The music is "The Journey Of The Sorcerer" by The Eagles which was appropriated as the theme tune for "The Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy" from the book by Douglas Adams who co-wrote "The Deeper Meaning Of Liff".