On the Hugging of Words: A Response

What a marvelous post, but . . . no. A thousand times no, on freely creating new words.

I am not a lexicographer by training, though I've worked on a variety of dictionaries, primarily of slang. Nor am I a linguist; I am at heart a philologist, with particular expertise in dead Indo-European languages. Moreover, like most philologists, I loathe Webster's; it's a hack dictionary. I turn, instead, to the American Heritage Dictionary, which has not only lexiographers, but linguists, philologists, and, best of all, a panel of usage experts from a range of fields and backgrounds who offer knowledgeable opionions about the actual real-world use of words and phrases. Plus, the AHD is the only dictionary with Calvert Watkins Dictionary of Indo-European Roots as an appendix. Who wouldn't want that?

English is the most felicitous and adaptive of all known human tongues, ever, but many of the words you propose are already better served by extant words in what is the most copious language ever to have known to exist. I'm all in favor expanding English, but I want the new words to carry their meanings with them—and this is where the creation of words based on roots and suffixes gets tricky; because words like irregardless have decoys in them.

The dictionary does not create words, people do, and that's both glorious and horrific. It's glorious, because we have new words like meh, a fine example of onomatopoeia. It's horrific because it means people mistakenly coin words by mashing together roots with suffixes and prefixes, so we have words like "irregardless," which isn't actually a word, in part because it's formed irregularly. People use irregardless, as you did, when they mean regardless, which is in fact a legitimate and properly formed word. the ir- prefix is a negation marker, but the -less suffix is already a negation marker, so it's redundant (not to mention repetitive) to use both. Use regardless; it's what you mean, and you won't look foolish or be committing linguistic abuse. I note that the Usage Note for irregardless in the sacred AHD reads:

The word was coined in the United States in the early 20th century, probably from a blend of irrespective and regardless. Perhaps this is why some critics insist that there is "no such word" as irregardless, a charge they would not think of leveling at a nonstandard word with a longer history, such as ain't. Since people use irregardless, it is undoubtedly a word. But it has never been accepted in Standard English and is usually changed by editors to regardless before getting into print.

We say "orthodox teaching" because "straight" refers, as it always has, to form—straight is not in opposition to gay, but to queer, which at its heart means "bent" or "warped." Gay, on the other hand, was initially used to refer to female prostitutes or "gay girls"; it then became used to refer to male prostitutes who cross-dressed, by the time of the Oscar Wilde trial. In the twentieth century gay, like dyke, began to be reclaimed, or (heaven help us, "re-purposed"—another word I hate) by self-identified homosexuals, many of whom now identify themselves as queer without a pejorative connotation.

Orthodox also has connotations (English is more connotative than most languages as well, because most words have at least two synonyms; we tend to have a Germanic word, a Latin or Greek word, and a French word) that straight lacks; orthodox implies organized, formal, and rule based. It's also Greek, rather than Latin—that O beginning is a clue to a Greek word borrowed by the conquering Romans.

Obivate does mean to "make necessary," or at least it can; rather than use disobviate, why not use any number of other words that already exist? In fact, for most purposes, why use obviate? The common reason for using obviate rather than require is the speaker's desire for a more formal register; the question to ask, is "why?" Often the more formal register is a tool to distance or intimidate, or to sound more knowledgeable than one really is. Sometimes people drop into a formal, Latinate and academic register as a form of self-mockery; this is particularly true of academics.

I am reluctant to encourage more linguistic abuse by randomly coining new words by piling on suffixes and prefixes; I think words like disincentivate are evil. Sometimes such constructions are attempts to cloak wrong actions with words that sound academic and formal. Take, for instance, the idea of referring to harmful radiation units as "sun shine units." This is the newspeak of Orwell's 1984. Having said that, you can look here for my argument about a new word I want to create.

Like Erin McKean, I have no desire to be a traffic cop; unlike Erin who gets to collect or fish, I also have to be concerned that what we write now remains easily understandable five hundred years from now without constant recourse to an online dictionary. As Chaucer wrote:

And for ther is so gret diversite
In Englissh and in writyng of oure tonge,
So prey I God that non myswrite the,
Ne the mysmetre for defaute of tonge;
And red wherso thow be, or elles songe,
That thow be understonde, God I biseche!
--Chaucer Troilus and Criseyde V 1793-98