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Old 11-17-2006, 11:24 AM   #8
slayda
Retired & reading more!
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: North Alabama, USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by airlik
Traveling these days can be an endless source of amusement.... because it means I get to listen to "made up" words. For example, "de-plane" has got to be the worst case of making up a word to mean something for which we already had a perfectly good word - would anyone care to disembark? Or perhaps, like "delouse" they mean that we're ridding ourselves of the aeroplane... Recently (as in the last few years) they've also started to ask people to "turn their electronic devices to the off position"... what is that, upside-down? Sideways?

I used to take the train every week to DC a couple of years back, and I almost burst out laughing when conductors would occasionally ask us to "de-train", showing their ability to take made-up words and modify them for use in other cases where we already have words to mean exactly what you want to say.

Anyway, gotta de-house and head to work - later.

You may find the book "The Unfolding of Language" by Guy Deutscher interesting. In actuality, almost all (maybe all) of our words are "made up" or are derived from words that originally had another meaning. According to Deutscher, this is not only universal in the evolution of language but often follws the same path (as to meaning of words) in various languages.

Don't suspect you'd be able to find his book as an ebook though but haven't checked.

Also if you want to see "made up" words, check out the German language. They take it to an art form.
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