Roots
Enduring terms
Deepti

Considering all humans use language, the number of words taking birth everyday must be a mind-boggling figure. Our language reflects our experience and if words embrace the full spectrum of human experience, the process of word formation has to be an unending one in all cultures. If you are imaginative, think of words as people waiting for their result, holding their breath to see whether the lexicon accepts them or rejects them.

Neologisms or new coinages are rightly called ‘coinage’ because just as newly minted currency gets life when it enters circulation, words too, come alive when people use them. Any new construct has the potential to be a neologism or peter away into dark oblivion as a ‘nonce word’. James Murray, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, coined ‘Nonce word’ in 1884. He used the term as a label for words that appeared to have been used only once or ‘for the nonce’. The word ‘nonce’ is taken from the expression ‘for the nonce’ that means ‘for a particular purpose or occasion’. Murray’s dictionary gives as an example the word ‘touch-me-not-ishness’ created by Dickens in The Pickwick Papers for the peculiar bearing of a dignified spinster aunt.

So, just like the suspense before the birth of a baby, every coinage faces some suspense on being cast into the world. This suspense ends when the new construct is accepted as a neologism or it fades away, with time, in accordance with the fate of a nonce word.

When the word ‘metrosexual’ came into being, it was immediately adopted and owned. Created from the words ‘metropolitan’ and ‘sexual’, this word refers to ‘a heterosexual urban man who enjoys shopping, fashion and similar interests traditionally associated with women or homosexual men’. In part due to the efforts of trend-spotters like Marian Salzman, the word ‘metrosexual’ can now be found in the Oxford English Dictionary. Just as Salzman turned this word into a global trend, she has now come up with some catchphrases like adultescence, Bangalore envy, brand sluts and churchonomics that she feels will be the signposts of future trends.