{"id":972,"date":"2013-10-06T11:32:10","date_gmt":"2013-10-06T15:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=972"},"modified":"2013-10-06T11:32:10","modified_gmt":"2013-10-06T15:32:10","slug":"where-words-come-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=972","title":{"rendered":"Where Words Come From"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Where do words come from? The dictionary\u2019s entries arrive in their alphabetical slots through a lengthy process of vetting. Rules of acceptance require that they be fairly well accepted, at least in some significant population subset (rocket scientists or software engineers, for example), that they don\u2019t squat precisely on the meaning territory of an existing word, that they be pronounceable, and so on. Which may explain what doomed Prince\u2019s preferred name, above. Meanwhile, on the frontiers of language use\u2014how you and I talk and write\u2014whole arrays of new and often context-specific words crop up.<\/p>\n

Since its inception, Wired<\/i> has included a Jargon Watch feature for decoding the digiworld. Some of the entries are new words, and some are new uses of existing words. In this month\u2019s issue is a new phrase laden with grim possibilities\u2014\u201cwi vi.\u201d In case you aren\u2019t yet familiar with wi vi, it\u2019s wall-penetrating vision based on Wi-Fi signals, which \u201ccould be miniaturized into a handheld device for police and rescue workers.\u201d Superman may be kvelling, but for the rest of us, where are those lead-lined bomb shelters when we need them?<\/p>\n

In a disturbing story also in this month\u2019s Wired<\/i><\/a>, <\/i>\u201cPublic Enemies: Social Media Is Fueling Gang Wars in Chicago,\u201d Ben Austen describes how Chicago\u2019s youth gangs are using social media to call each other out. Insults and threats flow, couched in a very specific street slang, and people die. These teens\u2019 YouTube videos, tweets, and Facebook posts are full of violence-related words like \u201cdrilling\u201d (shooting someone\u2014hey, didn\u2019t mobsters use that one? I hear a Jimmy Cagney echo); \u201ccobra\u201d (a .357 Magnum); and \u201c30-poppa\u201d (a handgun with a 30-round clip).<\/p>\n

Only time will tell how many of these usages will become language fixtures, but it\u2019s easy to think of words from the past with similar paternities and all now resident in dictionary.com: \u201chit,\u201d \u201cvig,\u201d \u201cbit,\u201d \u201cbyte.\u201d \u201cCyberspace\u201d itself. Writers use new words with trepidation\u2014will they be understood twenty, ten, two years hence?<\/p>\n

According to Orin Hargraves in his October Visual Thesaurus column<\/a>, that process of lexicon expansion is difficult to document: \u201cEven today in the Internet age, tracing the origins of linguistic innovation is a sleuth\u2019s game.\u201d Parallels with evolutionary biology abound. Just as our genes enable the transmission of biological information, and mutations produce life forms with new and unexpected features, words transmit cultural information, and their changes enable understanding of new cultural phenomena. If they don\u2019t fit well into the vernacular environment, they die.<\/p>\n

You can play games having to do with word development at Wordovators<\/a>, a project involving scientists from Northwestern University and the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. The project is inspired by analogies between biodiversity and language diversity, and is attempting to figure out why new words become acceptable. Meanwhile, says Hargraves, \u201cThose who think of a dictionary as an authoritative book are ever decreasing in number; more who will know it mainly as a helpful but not necessarily authoritative Internet-based service are born every minute.\u201d This shift changes the dynamics of word-acceptance just as new crops of words continue to sprout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where do words come from? The dictionary\u2019s entries arrive in their alphabetical slots through a lengthy process of vetting. Rules of acceptance require that they be fairly well accepted, at least in some significant population subset (rocket scientists or software … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62,51,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-words","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-fG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=972"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":973,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972\/revisions\/973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}