Deccan Chronicle has an irritating daily feature called 'Word Spy' where they (on second thought, they're not smart enough to do this; it's probably syndicated) tweak regular words slightly, in a way nobody else would, and create supposedly charming and quirky new words that make you -- in theory -- smile and nod your head intelligently.
Example from a recent edition: 'Trialogue'. Before looking at the answer, let's try to figure it out ourselves: hmm, sounds like 'dialogue' which is a conversation between two people, so could this be a conversation among three people? Bingo! You win a free subscription to DC for a year! What? You don't have a to-be-potty-trained pet? Maybe you have a cat litter to fill up? OK then.
To see how easy it is to make up new (crappy) words from regular ones, here are three of my own inventions:
Kudos to John Michael Greer for being the first person from the native English-speaking world to use the word 'crores' in a normal way (at least to us Indians).
Example from a recent edition: 'Trialogue'. Before looking at the answer, let's try to figure it out ourselves: hmm, sounds like 'dialogue' which is a conversation between two people, so could this be a conversation among three people? Bingo! You win a free subscription to DC for a year! What? You don't have a to-be-potty-trained pet? Maybe you have a cat litter to fill up? OK then.
To see how easy it is to make up new (crappy) words from regular ones, here are three of my own inventions:
- Polisex: 1. Using sex as a weapon in politics 2. The dynamics of physical relations between people
- Furvasive: Condition of too much fur on a dog's back
- Introduckory: Evasive behaviour of someone who wants to avoid meeting new people.
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