Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success [Hardcover]

Allan Metcalf (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 21, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0618130063 | ISBN-13: 978-0618130061

Have you ever wanted to gain linguistic immortality by making up a word? Many people have coined new words — famous people like Jonathan Swift, Lewis Carroll, and Dr. Seuss, along with many lesser-knowns. But many more have put forward new words that failed. Why are some new words adopted while others are ignored? Allan Metcalf explores this question in his fascinating survey of new-word creation in English.
By examining past new-word contenders, Metcalf discerns lessons for linguistic longevity. For instance, he shows us why the humorist Gelett Burgess gave us the words blurb and bromide but failed to win anyone over with bleesh and diabob. Metcalf examines words invented for political and social reasons (African American, pro-life), words coined in books (edge city, the Peter principle), brand names and the words derived from them (aspirin, Ping-Pong), and words that started as jokes (big bang, couch potato). On the basis of this research, he develops a scale — the FUDGE scale — for predicting the success of newly coined words. The FUDGE scale has five factors: Frequency of use, Unobtrusiveness, Diversity of users and situations, Generation of other forms and meanings, and Endurance of the concept. By judging how an emerging new word rates for each FUDGE factor, Metcalf is able to predict which words will take root in the English lexicon and which words will dry up and blow away. In this highly original work, Metcalf shows us how to spin syllabic straw into linguistic gold.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1990, Metcalf (How We Talk: American Regional English Today), executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, had the idea that the ADS should choose an annual New Word of the Year. That year, the winner was the shortlived bushlips ("insincere political rhetoric"). Some of the ADS's other choices fell into obscurity just as quickly, prompting Metcalf to write this entertaining investigation of which new words have staying power, and why. He discusses winners (1941's teenager) and losers (1995's schmoozeoisie, "a class of people who earn their living by talk"); reveals the forgotten jokes behind familiar terms like couch potato and gerrymander; and shows that the success of a word has little to do with whether or not it fills a gap in the English language. Metcalf also describes his system for predicting the success of au courant words (he gives weapons-grade high marks for endurance, while consigning quarterlife crisis to the ash heap). Edifying and humorous, this little book is irresistible fun.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The author's How We Talk: American Regional English Today (2000) was written mainly for writers and people whose interest in the language is of a rather scholarly nature. This new book, on the other hand, has something for everyone. In lively, entertaining prose, it traces the origins of a dazzling array of words and phrases: Marlboro Man, Frankenfood, blurb, skycap, quark, scofflaw (there was a contest to coin this useful word). It also introduces us to a fascinating array of would-be words, coinages that never quite caught on (linner, for example, was intended to designate the meal between lunch and dinner). The author, the executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, offers tips on creating a new word: make it something whose meaning is self-evident, introduce it subtly, and keep using it. The book is jam-packed with treats for word lovers, and it blows the lid off some common myths. Shakespeare, for example, might not have invented a lot of the words he's credited with. A must-read for word buffs. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (October 21, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618130063
• ISBN-13: 978-0618130061
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,338,885 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Allan Metcalf is OK. In fact, he's never been more OK than now, with the publication of his "OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word" by Oxford University Press. Doesn't sound right to say a person or book is merely OK? Right! and you can read all about it in the book, which was featured in a full-page review by Roy Blount Jr. in the November 21, 2010 New York Times Book Review. OK is unquestionably America's greatest word, indeed arguably (and the book argues it) America's greatest invention and most successful export. And yet it's so humble, we hardly notice it as we pepper (or salt) our communications with OK. We're going to celebrate March 23, 2011 as OK Day - the anniversary of the birth of OK in a Boston newspaper in 1839.

He's written five previous books about language, and a book about expository writing (Writing to the Point, 6th edition) that is the best such book ever - at least he thinks so, because it embodies a lucid method that is the only writing instruction that has ever improved his own writing. (It's a method invented by William J. Kerrigan years ago.)

He's a professor of English at MacMurray College in Illinois, and long ago earned a B.A. from Cornell University and M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He's also executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, a national scholarly association for the study of American English, past and present.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Word Up!, January 2, 2003

By 

Bill Marsano (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success (Hardcover)

By Bill Marsano

Take heed: This enjoyable and informative book is those who love words and ingenuity; all others stay clear. Author Allan Metcalf, professor of English and executive secretary of the American Dialect Society proposed in 1990 that--just as Time magazine had its Man of the Year--the ADS should
elect a New Word of the Year. Done and done! This book looks at the winners (and many others) and what became of them; it encourages readers to create new words of their
own devising and suggests criteria for success.

And success has been mixed, not only for ADS honorees but for other new words (officially called 'neologisms'). For example, my own creations. I produced "oldveau riche" a dozen years ago, but seldom have opportunity to use it. Currently I'm struggling to popularize "e-dress," which is certainly more efficient than "e-mail address." The first ADS winner,
"bushlips" (for insincere political rhetoric), stemmed promisingly from President George W. Bush's "Read my lips: No new taxes," but, like Bush's promise, it went nowhere. "Frankenfood," a recent American coinage for
genetically modified food, is popular only in Britain. "Scofflaw," Metcalf says, was selected in 1923 from 25,000 contest entries. It's used for people who ignore parking tickets but was created specifically for illegal
drinkers during Prohibition, and it was thought to carry such a sting that it would shame them into reform. Fat chance!

Metcalf discusses other semi-successes. Gelett Burgess invented the very useful 'blurb' and 'bromide,' but their <meanings> were supplied by others. Lewis Carroll invented lots of neologisms that remain pleasing (e.g., "'twas brillig, and the slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe . . . .") but are so obscure no one uses them. The champion failure would seem to be Rich Hall, said to be a comedian, who in the 1980s
published several paperback books full of "sniglets"--words, he said, that don't exist but should. The examples cited by Metcalf show why they've all disappeared: They're desperate, useless and ruthlessly unfunny.

Shakespeare, Metcalf says, is the all-time champion. Words and usages he produced four centuries ago are still in common use; his instinct for the right word at the right time was uncanny. Not so mine. A couple of years ago I came up with 'three-wuh' in the hope of getting around 'www' which, as someone else had noted, is the only word to have three times as many
letters as it does syllables. Fat chance again: www itself has almost disappeared because, being at the head of <every> web address, no one needs to say it any more--or bothers to.

So, creative readers, buy this book and study it. Once you and your neologisms had almost no chance of success unless you wrote for newspapers and magazines. and were thus able to spread them around. But now you have the internet to spread the word, as it were. Use (and explain) your neologisms often in e-mails--which should be sent to everyone for whom you have an e-dress. Professor Metcalf included.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New Words and Their FUDGE Factors, December 24, 2002

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success (Hardcover)

If you feel yourself just one person in a sea of humanity who will be unremembered by future generations (and most of us are indeed going to be forgotten), and you'd like to claim just a little bit of immortality, you might coin a word that gets used by lots of people and then enters the dictionaries. That's what Paul Lewis did. He's a humorist and English professor, and his new word is one of the many reported in _Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success_ (Houghton Mifflin), an amusing new way to look at new words by Allan Metcalf. Every dictionary which lists Lewis's coinage "frankenfood" and goes to any detail on its etymology will have to list him as the inventor (author?) of the word. "Frankenfood," meaning genetically modified comestibles, is a clever, funny new word. It gets its point across clearly, and will probably be around as long as genetically modified food itself is. Score a big one for professor Lewis, but beware: he has subsequently tried coining other new words, some of them seemingly clever and useful, but none of them have caught on. Metcalf's book tries to show why some new words catch on and why some don't, and how to make predictions. Maybe his prediction system is quite good; we will have to wait a couple of generations to see what words stick or fall away as it predicts, but even so, this is a fascinating look at how words come into being.

It is surprising that so many new words are created every day. You might even make a few yourself, like President Bush does; he comes up with words like "misunderestimate" rather frequently, but it isn't surprising that a lot of other people have come up with that one, all on their own, too. Often people perceive a need for a word and want to invent one to fill that need. This seldom works to make a lasting word. For a few decades we have been pondering replacements for "boyfriend" and "girlfriend," since older people are doing a lot of dating these days. It would be nice to have a word that meant "he or she" so that one wouldn't feel pressed to go for the ungendered but ungrammatical plural "they" as in "If anyone wishes to leave, they may do so now." As the millennium rolled over, we wondered if after leaving the nineties, we would be entering the "aughts" or "naughts" or "oh-ohs," but the decade still has no agreed-upon name, and maybe we will have to wait for the twenties for an easily namable decade. Words do not rush in to fill all gaps. But many of the new words here have surprising stories. "Scofflaw," though it sounds like something Shakespeare could have used, was invented in a contest in 1924. A member of the Anti-Saloon League offered a $200 prize for a word to mean "a lawless drinker, menace, scoffer, bad citizen, or whatnot." The word was widely publicized, and became immediately popular, although the original aim to deter such scofflaws seems to have failed.

Flashy words don't tend to last as well as the unobtrusive ones; in this way, an evolving language is something like an evolving jungle, with the fittest surviving. Since the American Dialect Society still is picking Words of the Year, Metcalf has proposed a rule that will more accurately predict a word's success. It is the word's FUDGE factor, an acronym of "Frequency of use" (popularity), "Unobtrusiveness" (seems like something we already know about), "Diversity of users and situations" (whether it is used by people in many different arenas), "Generation of other forms and meanings" (how fertile it is in creating derived forms), and "Endurance of the concept" (whether the thing it describes stays around so you need the word to describe it). This is all well and good, for a professional word prognosticator, but the rest of us can enjoy this new way of looking at our complex and amusing language, with many interesting examples, presented in an original book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars They have a word for it..., December 22, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success (Hardcover)

Why do some coined words catch on and others not? Why do some catch on quickly and others burn out equally quickly? As someone who works with word puzzles, I was intrigued by these questions: we like to keep puzzle vocabulary up-to-date, but at the same time make sure that our entries are generally known so as not to frustrate the solver, not always an easy task.

Metcalf presents a well-written, jargon-free analysis of his theories on this, including a historical perspective. I found it fascinating, and my copy has already started circulating amongst my coworkers.