Erin McKean makes NY Times; I don't

[Thomas Paikeday]

Sorry all. I just discovered I can't even spell my name! The correct URL
should be:
www3.sympatico.ca/t.paikeday/index.htm

Apologies to anyone who tried my misspelled URL. If an excuse helps, I
recently lost some vision in my left eye after a botched cataract
surgery at the hospital in Brampton, Ont. (pop. 302,000).

TMP.

Thomas Paikeday wrote:
>
> 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...