I just ran across these terms in a book review: copyfighting, mocketing, and brandalism. Have any of you seen them before? In context, they deal with the subversion of anti-corporate activism. Are they now "real" words?
How do you define "real", and how do you define "word"? I would tend to say that someone using them means they are a "word", in one sense, but they are not English words until they have reached some critical mass.
I've never heard any of them, but I don't know what the subversion of anti-corporate activism might mean, either. Does this book review indicate that they are used in the book being reviewed, or give any indication of their meanings?
They sound like one person's coinages to me, which may eventually become generally accepted, or (more likely) fade away.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
How do you define "real", and how do you define "word"?
It's interesting how discussions here often come back to "what is a real word." I suspect that's one question we'll never answer to everyone's satisfaction.
Seems to me that the article about The Simpsons' being all about linguistics had some fancy terms for such coinages (to lazy to go look it up, as it's late). I think they are just clever inventions, to make the book review more fun to read.
Wordmatic
Posts: 1390 | Location: Near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Originally posted by wordmatic: Seems to me that the article about The Simpsons' being all about linguistics had some fancy terms for such coinages (too lazy to go look it up, as it's late). I think they are just clever inventions, to make the book review more fun to read.
Wordmatic
Posts: 1390 | Location: Near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
sniglets are words made up to fit a situation that are based more on humor than anything else. I'm sure a search would find many of them. When it is raining reallly hard, and you drive under an overpass that short pause in the racket of the rain is a "downpause". My brother calls all books of short topic that are good to leave in the bathroom "shitriture" (not sure how he spells it). Just what is a runceble spoon?
Originally posted by lop: Just what is a runceble spoon?
Hi and welcome, lop! Thanks for the fun expression, which I found in dictionary.com: "runcible: 1871, a nonsense word coined by Edward Lear; used especially in runcible spoon "spoon with three short tines like a fork," which first took the name 1926." Wiki adds this: "Lear's best-known poem, The Owl and the Pussycat, published in 1871, includes the passage
They dined on mince and slices of quince, which they ate with a runcible spoon."
Posts: 2605 | Location: As they say at 101.5FM: Not New York... Not Philadelphia... PROUD TO BE NEW JERSEY!
bethree is correct, but there's more to the story.
Lear created the word 'runcible', but nothing in his words or illustrations indicates that it refers to a spoon of this particular sort. In fact, he gave the word all sorts of meanings, mostly having nothing to do with spoons:
1871: Which they ate with a runcible spoon. 1872: caught Spotted Frogs for her dinner with a Runcible Spoon. 1877: his Aunt Jobiska's / Runcible Cat with crimson whiskers! 1888: He weareth a runcible hat. 1895: What a runcible goose you are! 1895: On this ancient runcible wall.
So why do we think of 'runcible' as a word to describe a spoon of that particular sort?
Apparently because in 1926 a learned magazine so asserted, out of the blue, with no support.This message has been edited. Last edited by: wordnerd,
Har, har, wordnerd, I love these quotations! So "runcible" is an all-purpose nonsense word! Lear shows himself to be, as ever, brilliantly runcible in the field of logofacture.
Posts: 2605 | Location: As they say at 101.5FM: Not New York... Not Philadelphia... PROUD TO BE NEW JERSEY!
[Edward Lear, to Evelyn Baring, Winter 1862. Quoted in J.-J. Lecercle's The Violence of Language, p.1.]
"This appears to be a hoax. There is nothing to wonder about, nothing to understand. The only thing is that a man of 50 should still indulge in such childish games. We are faced with an instance of pure linguistic chaos, where language has utterly dissolved.
"But has it? A linguist will not confess impotence that easily. Since this is undoubtedly a text, complete with punctuation, capital letters, and signature, the linguist can approach it with his analytical tools."
"Copyfighting" and "mocketing" apparently are still fighting for lexicographical legitimacy but "brandalism" has shown up in OneLook, specifically on the Word Spy site. It is also a recent entry in The OEDILF:
There are billboard-like signs sometimes seen In our libraries. What does this mean? This corporate vandalism, Referred to as brandalism, Must stop! Keep school hallways pristine!
This term reflects what I consider to be a disturbing trend in the U.S. (though I understand we are only the leaders in this practice) involving Big Business placing advertising in locations previously unsullied by commercialism. Schools and libraries, facing legendary shortages of funds, are common targets. I suspect that the fight is already lost and that it won't be long before a church sells out and changes its name to "Our Lady of the Perpetual Slurpee®."
(My thanks to the Wordcraft board for bringing this word to my attention.)
Since the economy is requiring that we all compete for the limited funds, perhaps it should not be surprising that libraries are talking more and more about marketing and branding. I would say, however, that brandalism is really more of an abuse of such practices, is it not? Not simply branding the company's image but then taking it to an extreme? I'm fairly certain my own library is doing that, but I could be wrong. I don't suppose I'll mind the logo burned into my bum after the pain subsides . . . .
******* "Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions. ~Dalai Lama
