Words in the news

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Jan 31, 2008 7:57 AM, Michael Quinion <wordseditor at worldwidewords.org> wrote:
>
> There's an interesting article about online neologisms in New Scientist
> today, only available online to subscribers, but a report based on it also
> appears in today's Daily Telegraph:
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml;jsessionid=HI0EEJ0TYGUYRQFIQMGCFGGAVCBQUIV0?xml=/earth/2008/01/30/sciword130.xml
>
> which mentions Grant Barrett, Ben Zimmer and Mark Peters.

Non-subscribers can find a link to the PDF version of the New
Scientist article in my recent Language Log post:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005360.html

The article also mentions Barry Popik -- not on the topic of online
neologisms, but on the use of newly digitized resources for antedating
purposes. His research on food terms such as "hot dog", "nacho", and
"chop suey" is discussed. It was in fact my suggestion to the reporter
to include Barry's work in the article, since (recent dust-ups
notwithstanding) I thought it was important to recognize Barry's
stellar contributions to the field.

--Ben Zimmer

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