Slang Word-Coiners

[James A. Landau]

Perhaps H. L. Mencken, who coined among others "ecdysiast" and a portmanteau of "boob" and "bourgeois" that I won't even try to spell.

I think we should exclude Nikita Khrushchev, who added "troika" (in the sense of "triumvirate") to English, and incidentally pulled the remarkable stunt of virtually eliminating "triumvirate", as "troika" was never slang.

Gene Rhoddenberry, creator of Star Trek, for such expressions as "warp/warp speed" (used for an operating system from IBM), "phaser", "mind touch", "beam me down" (as in "beam me down, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here.") and "that does not compute".

Two other science fiction shows: "Mork and Mindy" contributed "Ork calling Mork" (I had a boss who liked to say to me "Earth calling Jim").  The Superman TV show's much-quoted opening speech ("Faster than a speeding bullet/More powerful than a locomotive...never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American Way") has contributed more cliches to English than has Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy.

It is odd that more television shows have not contributed to American English, slang or otherwise, but outside of the above science fiction shows, coinages from TV are surprisingly rare.  The only ones I can think of offhand are a few from "Lone Ranger" (itself originally a radio show) such as "what do you mean 'we', white man?" and some insults ("dingbat", "meathead", etc.) from "Archie Bunker" (I can't recall the formal title of that show) but I'm not sure these insults were original to the show.

(Note: "silver bullet" should not be attributed to "Lone Ranger", as it was inserted into English partly through the supernatural (silver weapons against vampires etc.) and partly through Paracelsus's "magic bullet".)

Then there is George Lucas whose "Star Wars" nonology contributed "may the Force be with you", "a galaxy far away", and of course "Star Wars" for what is officially but rarely known as the "Strategic Defense Initiative".

      - Jim Landau