Wednesday, 4 December 2019 09:12 pm
Book Review: Word Spy: The Word Lover's Guide to Modern Culture
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deckardcanineI had not heard of author Paul McFedries, who has written mostly about computers; or the website he runs, WordSpy.com. I knew only that this book had a few positive blurbs, was available for free, and concerned English. That was enough to draw me to it.
Each chapter talks about a different aspect of modernity, and each aspect brings forth a bunch of neologisms, presented in boldface with their years of first known use (rarely earlier than 1980) in parentheses. These terms were not found in esteemed dictionaries at the time of the book's publication and probably still aren't, but they had seen enough use by independent sources to merit attention by McFedries standards. We also get a few italicized words that, while older and more established, may well have escaped an erudite reader's vocabulary until now.
To my surprise, most of the neologisms consist of two or more preexisting words separated by space. I barely even register those as coinages. The few single words are all or nearly all portmanteaus.
And just when was the book's publication? Alas, 2004. You may think that after I bothered with a 30-year-old book on screenplays, a 15-year-old one on language wouldn't be so bad. The trouble is that it boasts up-to-the-minute relevance. I suspected that about 90% of the terms had since fallen into disuse.
OK, that's not really fair. Just because I hadn't read or heard them before doesn't mean that they're used any less than they were in 2004 or that they'll never cross my path again. And honestly, what was I looking for? The ones I already knew wouldn't educate me further, so why not give the rest a chance? (I found a few descriptors that apply to myself, but they're not among the cleverer or prettier entries. "Quirkyalone"?)
I wound up taking more interest in the facts that led to the words. There weren't a whole lot of surprises -- I was an adult at the time, after all -- but I did note the occasional statistic, and some cultural outliers got me thinking. The picture McFedries paints of our world isn't one I'd like to hang on my wall, but it doesn't depress me either.
The book runs some 410 pages, but I skipped over the example sentences or paragraphs following indented definitions, so it went quickly. I could have finished a lot sooner, but I didn't want to run out of reading material on vacation. Besides, I had a more compact book on hand. Tho I didn't get especially far in that yet.
My current reading is of Frederik Pohl's Man Plus. Little did I realize when I started that Pohl would've turned 100 late last month.
Each chapter talks about a different aspect of modernity, and each aspect brings forth a bunch of neologisms, presented in boldface with their years of first known use (rarely earlier than 1980) in parentheses. These terms were not found in esteemed dictionaries at the time of the book's publication and probably still aren't, but they had seen enough use by independent sources to merit attention by McFedries standards. We also get a few italicized words that, while older and more established, may well have escaped an erudite reader's vocabulary until now.
To my surprise, most of the neologisms consist of two or more preexisting words separated by space. I barely even register those as coinages. The few single words are all or nearly all portmanteaus.
And just when was the book's publication? Alas, 2004. You may think that after I bothered with a 30-year-old book on screenplays, a 15-year-old one on language wouldn't be so bad. The trouble is that it boasts up-to-the-minute relevance. I suspected that about 90% of the terms had since fallen into disuse.
OK, that's not really fair. Just because I hadn't read or heard them before doesn't mean that they're used any less than they were in 2004 or that they'll never cross my path again. And honestly, what was I looking for? The ones I already knew wouldn't educate me further, so why not give the rest a chance? (I found a few descriptors that apply to myself, but they're not among the cleverer or prettier entries. "Quirkyalone"?)
I wound up taking more interest in the facts that led to the words. There weren't a whole lot of surprises -- I was an adult at the time, after all -- but I did note the occasional statistic, and some cultural outliers got me thinking. The picture McFedries paints of our world isn't one I'd like to hang on my wall, but it doesn't depress me either.
The book runs some 410 pages, but I skipped over the example sentences or paragraphs following indented definitions, so it went quickly. I could have finished a lot sooner, but I didn't want to run out of reading material on vacation. Besides, I had a more compact book on hand. Tho I didn't get especially far in that yet.
My current reading is of Frederik Pohl's Man Plus. Little did I realize when I started that Pohl would've turned 100 late last month.