Language Clippings

University of Michigan's Anne Curzan gives a great mini-lecture about slang words formed by clipping and how these words have the potential to become a standard part of the lexicon.

Word Up Weekly - Noncondimental

I am amazed that one of my sons does not like condiments. To me, there are times when the condiment is the best part of the meal and the food is simply a condiment-delivery utensil.

At any rate, I woke up in the middle of the night recently and a word I had never heard formed in my head (I am weird like that). It seemed to be the perfect word to describe my son's affliction. The next day I googled the word to see if it had ever been used* and, if so, how it is officially defined...

There were plenty of results in the link headlines; however, when clicked upon none of them actually included definitions for the word with the prefix. Most returned a definition for the noun condiment and some added the adjective condimental, but alas, NO noncondimental. The word noncommital has its own dictionary entry, so why not noncondimental.

Add a prefix and create a word.

noncondimental
adj.
(of a person or a person's behavior) Refusing to use any items intended to enhance the flavor of food.

*Although I never found an official definition, it should be noted that I did find the word used in an online Catholic Encyclopedia.

Linguistics: Entertaining and Informative Mini-Lectures

I hope you enjoy these two mini-lectures with Professor Anne Curzan from the University of Michigan.

Part 1, The Word on Language and Grammar, talks about word formation, highlighting the "-ize" suffix and some of its odd results.

Part 2, The Word on Language and Grammar, gives an overview of the phonological phenomenon of metathesis, highlighting the asterisk/asteriks difference.


PART 1



PART 2


Both lectures are from the University of Michigan's LSA Wire.

Branding With Portmanteaus

According to the brand name and tagline in this advertisement -
camel toe + camouflage = the original visual privacy undergarment.

Creative portmanteau for sure, though I am still not sure why anyone would choose to wear such tight-fitting clothes in public.

A post on Fritinancy brought this brand name to my attention.

A Portmanteau That Really Fits the Bill

What a fun portmanteau word; however, according to Australian-Wildlife.com, there is no other type of platypus so the term "duck-billed" platypus is redundant.

Another linguistically interesting fact from Australian-Wildlife.com is that "there is no agreed term for the plural of platypus, with platypus, platypoda and platypuses all being used."

More Portmanteau Foods - Chalsa

Just spotted this ad on my Yahoo homepage. Next time I have some portmanteau fruits, I just may have to have a side of chalsa in which to dip them. I do love portmanteaus.

Word Formation - An Ill-Formed Word in Newsweek

There is an article in the October 26th issue of Newsweek about a tablet computer that is supposedly in the works at Apple. The article titled "The Hype is Right" contains a hyphenated compound word that I have to believe was created by the article's writer, Daniel Lyons, because a google search returns no results. While I am all for using affixes and compounding to form new words, the newly formed word as it appears in the sentence below (excerpted from the article) makes little sense semantically.

"Just as with the company's iPhone a few years ago, blogs have been buzzing about the still-unveiled iTablet for months, featuring pictures of what the iTablet might look like, arguments over the features that the iTablet will have, leaks from partners that Apple has supposedly approached to develop content for the iTablet—you get the idea."

My guess is that the writer was attempting to put a new twist on the phrase "yet to be unveiled" based on the following adverbial definition of the word "yet" found on merriam-webster.com and the fact that "yet" and "still" are synonyms.

yet 2 a (1) : up to now : so far hasn't —often used to imply the negative of a following infinitive.

However, without the infinitive "to be", it is not semantically clear that the verb "unveiled" should be interpreted in the negative in the compound "still-unveiled".

Confusing if you ask me. What do you think?