Claim for origin of "Cruisazy"

[Grant Barrett]

I get these sorts of "Me me me! I did it!" messages all the time.
I've got some bent nickels here I'm going to hang on twine so I can
hand them out as Medals of Neologistic Excellence, because that's
about all such claims are worth.

Not only is it rarely worth getting into the who-said-it-first
rubbish, unless the coiner is already a person of note (and thus more
likely to be an efficient propagator of a new term), but these claims
are usually wrong. I had a woman a couple of weeks ago claim she
coined "cliterati" in 2000, when there's easy-to-find evidence it
dates to at least as early as 1988.

And then there's the "bundt pan" guy. How can you tell a grieving
family that their patriarch's one supposedly noteworthy
accomplishment amounts to showing up at the trademark office about a
half-century after the cake, pan, and name already existed? (Obits,
in fact, are a large source of wrong coinage attributions.)

Grant Barrett
gbarrett at worldnewyork.org
http://www.doubletongued.org/

On Jan 13, 2006, at 09:44, AAllan at AOL.COM wrote:

> The following communication arrived recently. I replied as follows
> below it. Note that I said "may" rather than "will," but if her
> claim is indeed true, we might want to add a short comment to that
> effect in our official announcement. - Allan