Weekend Word Wrap: coin a word

David K. Israel
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I've written posts in the Wrap before about coining new words, if you recall my Default Song post, for example. Recently, in one of my novel-writing classes, I had a student who kept using the word download in a sci-fi novel set in the far future. I said to her: "It's the future; the word download is so 2003, why not invent your own word for downloading information from the ether; why not invent your own language the way Madelaine L'Engle did in her classic, A Wrinkle in Time (if you're not familiar with the novel, time travel was made possible by wrinkling through space.)

This got me thinking about coining new words again, which made me think: hey, I bet our loyal Word Wrap readers have a whole pantload of words their heads just waiting to be coined. So let's see how creative you are. I'll send the top three new words over to Wordspy and maybe you'll even make history for an authentic, new coinage. Now, I can't promise the good folk over at Wordspy will list your word without an official citation, but then again they might! And if this post gets spread around the net long enough, someone's sure to cite your hot, new word, I'd say. So what are you waiting for? Show the world your very own word.

I'll start the coinage rolling with egrex: \ee-grex\ vb 1. to exert oneself with such physical force that the veins in one's forehead, neck and arms show through the surface of the skin. 2. The absolute hardest one can push or pull at/on an object. [e.g. He egrexed, but alas, the closet door would not budge.]

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