JOURNEYS sent out its greatest need for assistance and the response was monumentous.What to make of a coinage like "monumentous"? My first instinct was to assume that this word (if it is a word - but read on) was just a flat-out mistake - that the author clearly meant "monumental" and somehow managed to append the wrong suffix.
But then I thought I had better check my assumption - after all, dictionaries are chock-full of unusual and archaic words, not to mention words I simply haven't run across. So I Googled the term "monumentous". And I quickly discovered that this local newsletter author wasn't the first to use the word. It seems it's been proposed as a new entry to at least one respectable dictionary publisher:
monumentous
New Word Suggestion
an action or event which is large in both task and
it's impact on life (emotional or physical)
it's impact on life (emotional or physical)
Additional Information
an amalgamation of monumental and momentous Elon Musk's task of creating his own space exploration company was monumentous
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/submission/21123/monumentous
The same web entry provides a brief list of other new word suggestions:
- Alsatian
- Electronicals
- Pluressence
- monumentous
- Inhappy
- have a moment
- poiesis
A word like "Alsatian" (a native of the Alsace region? Possibly a linguistic dialect? A breed of dog, or a member of that breed?), it seems to me, has no business not being in a dictionary already.
As for "Have a moment", I heard a form of it used by someone on television recently, in the two or three minutes of the recently-concluded season of "The Bachelor" to which I was unavoidably exposed (we have young fans of the show in our household): one of the female contestants had had a make-out session in the hot tub with the bachelor protagonist, which she subsequently characterized in one of those breaking-the-fourth-wall documentary spots they do, as that they "had a moment" together. So I'm guessing that phrase is an example of slang making its way into the mainstream.
"Electricals" is interesting. Sticking the "al" suffix onto a word feels like something that 18th century writers like Jonathan Swift and Benjamin Franklin used to do; a turn of phrase could be described as "poetic" or as "poetical". Does the "al" suffix convey a subtle difference - is "poetical" slightly different than "poetic"? To draw a comparison with another adjective pair, utilizing a standardized-test construction: it seems that "electronical" would be to "electronic" as "electrical" is to "electric". A wire could be electric, with the adjective meaning "to convey electricity", but the tape used to join two wires together isn't itself electric; but it is "electrical" - the "-al" suffix would seem to imply that it is associated or adjacent somehow with electric items like wires, without itself being electric. In the same way, perhaps we could talk about electronic gear like a laptop computer or a television, and "electronical" items that are associated with the gear - perhaps the styrofoam packaging used to brace the electronic gear inside the shipping carton. Of course, the word in question isn't "electronical", it's "electronicals". The final "s" would seem to turn the adjective into a noun, just like "electronics" is a noun based on the adjective "electronic". So maybe "electronicals" would be the category of electronical things.
As for "inhappy", it seems to do the same work as "unhappy". Unless there is a subtle difference between the prefixes "un-" and "in-". It seems to me that sometimes words are invented because the speaker or writer intuits that "in-" is more applicable than "un-" because of that perceived subtle difference. I wish I was one of the clever lexical people who has all sorts of apposite examples at his fingertips.
That these not-yet-listed words have been proposed to dictionary publishers indicates that the business of creating new words continues apace. There is something wonderfully democratic about it: people invent new words, either because the word they need hasn't yet made the list, or because of some other psychological or cultural influences; the new words take on common usage; and the guardians of the language admit the words into the pantheon. I am not certain whether "monumentous" or "inhappy" will gain admittance; but if people continue to use them, perhaps it doesn't really matter.
I always thought "flustrated" was interesting. It's basically a mispronunciation of "frustrated," but it works as an portmanteau of "flustered" and "frustrated."
ReplyDeletePeople are always making up new words and colorful idioms. I don't know where the use of "on" with certain verbs comes from--pray on, love on, hate on--or the use of "on accident" come from. They sound ignorant to me, but language changes generally come from the bottom and work their way up. Not sure if it's "democratic," but the academy is generally powerless to stop it.
I have stopped being bothered by "enormity," which used to mean "huge terrible-ness," but now seems merely to mean "enormous-ness."
Now you've got me wondering whether "monumentous" is a portmanteau of "monumental" and "momentous". As a matter of fact, in the last paragraph of the post, I had tried to type "monumentous" and it came out as "momentous" (I've corrected it now).
DeleteIs "portmanteau" a technical term for this sort of thing, or are you using a metaphor?
I've also heard "flusterated" meaning the same thing. That may (my dim memory recalls) come from a comic strip of the '40s or, possibly, "Amos and Andy."
Delete"Portmanteau" is a technical term that you are not allowed to use without official permission from your state Organization of English and Linguistics Majors, Jim.
DeleteI also thought Alsatians were a breed of dog, or people from Alsace, and probably the word was already in the dictionary. I was familiar with poiesis as a medical or scientific suffix, as in "hematopoiesis". But I see that it also has a meaning in philosophy, and is defined as"the activity in which a person brings something into being that did not exist before".
ReplyDeleteAnother word that has a relatively new use is "disrespect", used as a verb rather than a noun. And its slang shortcut, "to diss" someone or something. Both are terms I sometimes find useful.
Yeah I don't know what Alsatians are doing on that list, either.
DeleteIf there is a chance to block "have a moment," can we block "take a listen" while we are at it?
ReplyDeleteJim, back to the organization JOURNEYS and its mission of serving the homeless, have you heard anything about the impact of coronavirus on the homeless in your area? It just seems like being in the middle of an epidemic would be about the worst possible time to be homeless.
ReplyDeleteJOURNEYS administers a network of local churches who provide overnight shelters for the homeless. Before the pandemic, there were 19 churches providing shelter. Each church takes one night per week, which means that there were 2-3 churches providing shelter every night. In addition to the shelter, these churches also were the food lifeline: clients who stay in the shelters get a hot supper at night, a breakfast (frequently also hot) in the morning, and a sack lunch to take with them out into the daylight hours.
DeleteWe're told that, with the churches now closing down, the network is down to seven churches staying open.
The homeless folks have a "choice" to go to other areas like Chicago to try their luck there (if they are fortunate enough to have transportation), but we are told that the situation is no better there.
So here is the good news in all this: the Clerics of the Viatorians, a religious order of priests with a local presence, have donated $63K to put homeless folks up in local hotels. I read today that about 100 folks are now staying each night in a local Red Roof Inn or Motel 6. This is a godsend. The Viatorians are hoping that other religious and community orgs will contribute to the fund, and many have. As the snippet of the newsletter states, it has been "monumentous" :-).
I've spoken with a few folks who are taking advantage of the hotel offer. They are not being served meals, but they are being given bags of food which don't require a lot of preparation. And they're still coming to us: our Outreach group can provide them with gift certificates for McDonalds and local grocery chains, as well as pharmacies and discount department stores like Target and Walmart. It all helps.
That is good to hear about the Viatorians efforts. It gets the people to a place of shelter, where they have water and bathroom and bathing facilities. With travel at an all time low, you'd think there would be a lot of hotels willing to make deals with charities.
DeleteKatherine - yes, in fact some of us discussed this idea a few years ago, back when the dotCommonweal mothership was still in orbit. I remember discussing with someone (Claire? Irene?) how to calculate the hotel's labor cost, based on how many hotel rooms a housekeeper could clean in an hour.
Delete