| We live in a rapidly changing, technology-based society full of strange things and people. New words are being coined all the time in order to describe things that never existed before. Old words are being reused and taking on new meanings.
Examples:
Those are just a few minor examples from my own, somewhat limited, frame of reference.
Who invents these words? And why do we let them? One thing I've noticed is that most of the new words tend to be nouns, stating the existence of whatever it is that's new, but not allowing us to describe it, or explain how we feel about it. The Jargon File explains in some detail how a particular technical culture has developed its own rich vocabulary, and the propagation of that file -- including here on everything -- and its paper equivalent The New Hacker's Dictionary has introduced more people to the language. Eventually the words become mainstream, and the language is richer for it, and consequently society is richer for it.
Let's do our part. We have a pretty good subculture of our own going here on e2. (I'm not quite sure what, but we've got one.) There are plenty of nodes out there, and many more to come, that describe something that we don't have a word for. Who better that the serried ranks of noders to coin a term and immortalise it here for all eternity?
Alternatively, node words that already exist somewhere but deserve wider provenance - like screehee, which is currently used only by about four people that I know of.
Here are a few of mine:
And some which are not mine:
Last updated: July 27, 2001 | 
