Some to abhor, some to perhaps adopt.
Regrettable:
● debankify
―
OMG, coming from my very own bank! A
pathetic touch of straining too hard for Z-gen customers? I don't
even want to know what they have in mind.
● victimology
―
As in Nesbo's Cockroaches but
becoming common all over the place now. Seems to reduce
real pain to an all-inclusive label, a pedantic study.
● signalized
―
On a construction site, a sign to warn of a traffic intersection
ahead. An intersection with signal
lights. What happened to standard English? MUST
we ADJECTIVIZE
everything?!
Laudable:
● rhisomatic ―
Recognizable language root here, rhizome actually meaning
root, quite botanical. A very fine word indeed. My family surname
Jurikas that translates into English as root could use the
much more musical variation of Rhizome. Thank you.
● Gardy-Loo!!
― Let's resurrect this! From
those fun-loving Edinburgh high-rises of yore. I might be addicted to
"Today's Scots Word" on Facebook's Scottish
Genealogy.
● butterscotchness
― Made that up myself.
Sometimes it's okay to invent nouns. Contemplating perfect ice cream
on a hot day.
● vernissage
― As in Koch's Summer
House with Swimming Pool; a semi-archaic word for the reception
to preview an art gallery's new exhibition. Koch liked it so much he
employed it several times (but then he's European).
Neutral:
● Johari window ―
In Galbraith's The Cuckoo's Calling,
a character dismisses this self-awareness exercise, a crowd-sourcing
kind of technique choosing adjectives to describe your personality.
Oh really?
●
gravamen
―
Lescroart used it in its appropriate legal context, in The
Ophelia Cut,
as the most important or substantial part of a charge against an
accused person.
● alveolar
― to do with pronunciation of certain consonants, but its noun is
even more interesting. Alveolus can refer to the socket a tooth sits
in, or other small anatomical hollows or pits.
● homophily ―
support of homosexual rights, and,
● heterophily ―
support of heterosexual rights; neither of which made the
Oxford Online Dictionary last time I looked (shame, Oxford!).
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