ArcaMax

During my college years, I alleviated the tedium of a summer job flipping burgers by concocting word games to entertain customers (mostly kids) and employees (mostly myself).

One day I decided to invent a new word ... well, actually, a new definition of an existing word -- "whip." From now on, I decreed, "whip" would mean "cool, awesome, terrific," as in, "That t-shirt is really whip," or "That's a whip car." If I used "whip" this way, I figured kids would pick it up and it would spread across the nation.

Didn't work. My cool "whip" proved as popular as a buggy whip. No one used it.

I learned two lessons that summer: Whatever I did after college, it wasn't going to involve French fries, and it's very hard to deliberately plant a new word in the language.

But some have done it.

During the Prohibition era, Delcevare King, a wealthy teetotaler from Quincy, Massachusetts, offered a $200 reward for a new word to describe what he called "the lawless drinker."

From more than 25,000 suggestions, King chose a word submitted independently by Henry Shaw and Kate Butler: "scofflaw," which eventually became a general term for people who ignore any kind of law.

The writer William Woodward invented "debunk" (to take the bunk out of something) in 1923, and during the 1990s, Paul Lewis, an English professor at Boston College, minted two words within four months: "Frankenfood" (genetically engineered food) in a letter to the New York Times on June 28, 1992, and "schmooseoisie" (schmooze-wah-zee -- pundits who appear regularly on TV talk shows) in an interview published in the Boston Globe on Oct. 24, 1992.

The most prolific coiner of English words was none other than William Shakespeare. He devised no fewer than 1,500 neologisms, including such mainstays as "hint," "lonely," "hurry" and "excellent." But even the bard launched some sinkers; his "barky," "brisky," "vastidity" and "tortive" just never caught on.

Likewise, Ben Jonson scored with "damp" and "clumsy," but he missed with "ventositous" and "obstufact." Gee, I wonder why. Charles Dickens' "vocular" also slipped quietly beneath the waves until Apple rescued it during the 2010s as the name for an app that measures the depth of your voice.

Edgar Allan Poe was so annoyed by the two meanings of "suspicious" ("provoking suspicion" vs. "suspecting something") that he contrived a new word for the latter meaning: "suspectful."

But the American people were suspectful of Poe's word and deemed it less than whip. Quoth the public, "Nevermore."

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Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Connecticut, invites your language sightings. His book, "Mark My Words," is available for $9.99 on Amazon.com. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via email to WordGuy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.

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