Erin McKean makes NY Times; I don't

[Thomas Paikeday]

Thanks, Barry. I just looked it up and it reads good. Kudos to Erin.

Without being a spoilsport (just pushing my User's® Webster!), to take
the first example from "On Language," if I were a lay English user (w/o
Linguistics 101) "dying to have a new word that means 'overly eager to
speak,'" I  would be tempted to start with a stem with the "eager"
connection already estd. in English. (I can think of only "beaver" right
now, but "beaver" doesn't lend itself to stem-based word formation).
Perhaps try a hybrid like "itchivocal" (so itchivocal he took over the
whole meeting)?

I would avoid "acer-" by all means because it is connected in the
English user's mind with "acerbic," "acrid," "acrimony," etc. (The Latin
itself means "sharp, bitter"). "Acerbic," as probably the most
frequently occurring of the lot, is commonly found in the company of
"(an acerbic) critic, style, writer; (acerbic) comments, humor, wit"
etc.

Thus the hypothetical neologism "acerdictous" would suggest
"sharp-tongued" rather than "overly eager to speak."

TOM PAIKEDAY
www3.sympatico.ca/t.paikday/index.htm

Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>
>    Erin McKean's "Neologizing 101" is in the New York Times Magazine, taking
> William Safire's place this Sunday.  Check it out.
>    THE BANANA SCULPTOR, THE PURPLE LADY, AND THE ALL-NIGHT SWIMMER, a book
> that's been out for about five months now, is finally reviewed in this
> Sunday's New York Times Book Review.  In most all of the reviews of the book,
> I've been mentioned.  Certainly, the local people profiled in the book have
> been mentioned by their local newspapers.  About a dozen people were
> mentioned in this review, including the all-important Midwestern marble lady.
>    Conspicuously absent from the review is any mention of the guy who solved
> "the Big Apple" and "the Great White Way" in the New York Public Library.
> Me.
>    Oh well, at least our Erin made the New York Times...