What’s in a Word . . .
or . . .
What’s in a NEW Word!

Levidrome! And if you have never heard of that word before, there is an amazing reason why! Spoiler alert – the reason why is below!

Full Disclosure: I might mispronounce words, spell them wrong, use them wrong .. FREQUENTLY … but that does not make them new! Hahaha … NOPE!

So what does it take to CREATE a new word in English? Well, Shakespeare is considered the greatest Neologist, which is a word I did not know existed before this post – someone who creates new words! And John Milton is credited with over 630 coinages, including lovelorn, fragrance and pandemonium! So it would seem that appearing in literature is a strong indicator of how new words become part of our language.

Over 5400 English words are created every single year! But only about 1,000 make it into print or actual usage. There are generally 13 potential mechanisms for how a new word is created.

Neologism is the process of HOW a word becomes part of mainstream language, but not quite necessarily there, just yet! How ironic – a word describing words that … aren’t quite words yet!

And recently, with daily broadcasts from Dr. Bonnie about Covid-19 in BC, Nigel Howard (one of our very own UVic Instructors for ASL!) has become quite famous with how he signs and has his own ‘unique’ sign for keeping proper social/physical distancing!

This t-shirt is a salute to Nigel Howard, one of Dr. Bonnie Henry’s American Sign Language interpreters that accompanies her during her daily COVID-19 briefings to British Columbians.

So now you know about one of the newest words
that have entered our language
AND YOU CAN WEAR IT TOO!!!!!
(and yes, I bought one for myself!!!)

And now, Levidrome! If you think a new word just magically appears, well, sometimes it does for amazing reasons! And even more amazingly, how about right here in VICTORIA!

7 year old Levi at a local school in Victoria, came up with the word ‘Levidrome‘ that describes how one word spells ANOTHER word, BACKWARDS! An example is ‘pool‘ and ‘loop‘! Levi based it on the word ‘Palindrome’ which is when a word is spelled the same way, backwards and forwards, such as ‘kayak‘ or ‘madam‘.

At first, Oxford did not accept this new word based on common or natural use worldwide, but this changed soon afterwards! Soon there was national attention, even drawing the interest of William Shatner! Hey, if Captain Kirk thinks it is a word, then … make it so!