Forget about Peak Oil, here’s the real looming crisis: we’re running out of new words. Do you realize how hard it is, in our hyperactive age, to come up with a word that hasn’t already been invented for some purpose or another? Surely we’ve all had the experience of mistyping a word into Google and nevertheless hitting a handful of results. So as a little experiment, I made up some strings of letters that sounded like they could be words, checked in the dictionary that none of them actually exists as a conventional English word, and asked Google to go look for them. Here’s how many hits I got.
- antrith (865)
- splicky (230)
- queigh (43)
- nurdle (885)
- tobnet (53)
“Splicky” is a pretty sweet-sounding word, actually; I’ll have to start dropping it into conversation. Admittedly, most non-words appear on Google as abbreviations or computer terms or simple nonsense, and furthermore it’s not that hard to invent random strings that don’t get any hits. Still, I’m worried. If Shakespeare were alive today, I’m pretty sure he’d feel that Google was cramping his style, coinage-wise.
flumnik!
Isn’t a nurdle that little round piece of dark meat that comes of easily on a turkey on the bottom of the carcass?
If it’s not called that it should be.
Elliot
Sorry should have been “comes off easily.”
Elliot
You’re not trying hard enough.
I just typed in the word “bushissmart” into google and got zero results.
i present to you, The Meaning of Liff for your infinite pleasure
This is even stranger: http://www.quenchert.com
Wow. Your procrastination techniques are way more splicky than mine.
Your problem is that you are restricting yourself to English phonemes. As soon as you allow clicks, or maybe a voiced velar fricative, you’re back in business.
queigh is your greatest creation.
My mom once claimed (this claim is definitely unsubstantiated) that the term “nerd” comes from “nerdle”, and that a nerdle is a glob of toothpaste stuck to the sink. When I saw your word “nurdle” above, I decided to google “nerdle” and “toothpaste”. Apparently a “nerdle” is the amount of toothpaste you’re supposed to use, although whether that’s a pea-sized dollop or the length of the toothbrush is subject to debate.
Well, given the propensity of the English language to borrow and adapt words from other tongues, I don’t think we are in imminent danger.
Nurdle is pretty close to nerdle, alternately nurtle, which may explain why it generated so many hits on google. As we all know, a nerdle is a nerd that resembles a turtle, due to an over-sized backpack.
Makes Scrabble easier.
Don’t Ad Agency people get paid large amounts for inventing realistic sounding fake words that can then be trademarked?
Anyway, the solution is obvious. Add more letters!
For an easy solution and a more euphonious phonetic language, adopt the Icelandic alphabet. Bonus: it works on your Mac.
If in doubt, go back to your roots and a) compound words, it works for 200 million Germanic speakers and, b) you can never go wrong adding an “-ur” to your nouns for extra string parameters.
Hm, that is an interesting question – how many long a word do we have to go to before the permitted number of “english phonetic” combinations of letters exceeds the number of possible models in the String Theory Landscape?
Non-trivial, since vowel padding is required, which of course points out another solution…
Damn: “stringur” gives 46 hits on Google,
BUT “cosmicur” has NO hits on Google.
There you go, one on the house.
queigh is your greatest creation
cool word…but what do we want it to mean?
queigh(v.): To weigh heavily on one’s conscience, causing much queasiness.
Eg.: He spent many sleepless nights, queighed by the thought of having voted for Bush, voluntarily, the second time around. 🙂
Ãœbersplificatig!
English is easily embiggened.
I agree–it’s a perfectly cromulent language.
Hmm. Where I grew up, nurdle was an alternative name for shove ha’penny, the most tedious pub game ever played.
queigh (v): To ponder the validity of a word before playing it in Scrabble: e.g “I queighed abit”, “Queigh me a wiver” “He always seems to queigh a lot”
Absolutely not related to topic, but back in December we were promised another “Unsolicited advice” feature on choosing grad schools. I do not want to be too demanding, but I was really interested in that. Could you maybe bless us with it in the not too far-off future, please? Thanks in advance.
John, we will definitely be telling you which graduate school to choose. But be patient — admissions committees haven’t even met yet! It would be splicky to post prematurely.
Jim Maxwell, a leading radio cricket commentator in Australia, uses the word ‘nurdle’ to describe a particular type of cricket shot. I don’t think this usage was invented by him, but I can’t remember who coined it.
“Jim Maxwell, a leading radio cricket commentator in Australia, uses the word ‘nurdle’ to describe a particular type of cricket shot. I don’t think this usage was invented by him, but I can’t remember who coined it. ”
Was he the guy [bloke?] who said, “The Commonwealth Games will be the biggest sporting event since 9/11.” ?
I certainly didn’t hear him say it, and it sounds unlike him.
#16 – “English is easily embiggened.”
#17 – “I agree—it’s a perfectly cromulent language.”
I think these descriptions are in play only if the situation can be described as a “crisitunity.” 🙂
Nurdle is in the OED. Its usage dates from 1985. It is a cricket term meaning to work the ball gently away or to accumulate runs slowly by working the ball gently away.
My favorite word in the OED is smolet, because they have the word and its usage, but cannot find a definition.