‘Mc-’: prefix inspired by the McDonald’s restaurant chain
USA, early 1980s—depreciative—suggests values epitomised by the McDonald’s restaurant chain, such as low quality, blandness, standardisation, superficiality
Read MoreTag: neologisms
refutation of received ideas on the origin of ‘bikini’
not originally coined because of the connotation of explosiveness, but because of the connotations of pleasure, beauty and tininess
Read Moreorigin of the catchphrase ‘Alas! my poor brother’
from an advertisement for the concentrated beef extract Bovril, showing a bullock lamenting over a jar of the product
Read Morethe emergence of the political term ‘whataboutism’ in 1978
The Guardian, UK, 23 May 1978—used by one Lionel Bloch to designate—and denounce—the rhetoric employed by the advocates of the communist regimes
Read Morethe coinage of an Irish political term: ‘whataboutery’
1974—coined by the Irish journalist John Healy with reference to the Troubles in Northern Ireland
Read Morea personal view on the ‘animal-friendly’ phrases suggested by PETA
Fundamentally, I object to the will of any group to artificially modify language in order to impose their world view.
Read MoreHow Thomas Jefferson was berated for coining ‘belittle’.
coined by Thomas Jefferson in Notes on the State of Virginia, first published in Paris in 1785—literal meaning: ‘to make little’ (composed of the prefix ‘be-’ and the adjective ‘little’)—criticised in The European Magazine, and London Review of August 1787 when the book was published in London
Read More“wedding vowels”, “tongue and cheek” and other eggcorns
‘eggcorn’: alteration of a word or phrase through the mishearing or reinterpretation of one or more of its elements as a similar-sounding word—coined in 2003 on the website Language Log with reference to a misinterpretation of ‘acorn’ as ‘eggcorn’
Read MoreThe noun ‘blurb’ was coined in 1907 by Gelett Burgess.
For a limited edition of his book ‘Are You a Bromide?’ sent to the guests of the 1907 annual dinner of the American Booksellers’ Association, Gelett Burgess devised a jacket showing a young lady whom he facetiously dubbed Miss Belinda Blurb.
Read Morethe story of ‘greengrocer’s apostrophe’, a.k.a. ‘apostrofly’
UK, ‘greengrocer’s apostrophe’ – ‘apostrofly’: the mistaken use of an apostrophe, especially its insertion before the final ‘s’ of an ordinary plural form
Read More