Atlantic Monthly: "Word Fugitives"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

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http://www.theatlantic.com/r/ka/88BGbKSE%3D%0A


On 2/8/06, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
> Anybody have a subscription to Atlantic Monthly? I'm intrigued by
> these opening paragraphs...
>
> -----
> http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200603/word-fugitives
> The Atlantic Monthly | March 2006
>
> Pursuits & Retreats
> Word Fugitives
> by Barbara Wallraff
>
> In October a reader in Kingston, Washington, requested a word for "the
> reflection of moonlight on water and the way it follows you as you are
> walking down the beach or a dock." Her congressman, Jay Inslee,
> promptly sent in four original coinages, including the
> more-than-serviceable term emoontional attachment. How's that for
> responsive representation?
>
> Other readers, including JESSE SHEIDLOWER, an editor of the Oxford
> English Dictionary, reported that the word requested already exists:
> moonglade. Sheidlower wrote, "It's very rare, and it tends to appear
> mostly in lists of words for things you didn't know there were words
> for. But it is used for real." Dan Schechter, of Los Alamitos,
> California, argued for a different word that he already knew. He
> wrote, "Mariners sometimes call the moving path of light leading to
> the moon the moonwake, because it looks like the white wash of a
> ship's wake."
> -----

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