Go Ahead,Make Up New Words

⊙ By Erin McKean

如果有人说你也可以造英语单词，你肯定觉得不可思议吧。可权威词典编纂者告诉我们，这就是事实，她还把造新词的方法告诉我们呢。那还犹豫什么？行动起来吧！（但是可别在考试作文里乱用哦！）

I’m a lexicographer[词典编纂者]. I make dictionaries. And my job as a lexicographer is to try to put all the words possible into the dictionary. My job is not to decide what a word is—that is your job.

Everybody who speaks English decides together what’s a word and what’s not a word. Every language is just a group of people who agree to understand each other.Now, sometimes when people are trying to decide whether a word is good or bad, they don’t really have a good reason. So they say something like, “Because grammar!” I don’t actually really care about grammar too much—don’t tell anybody.

But actually, there are two kinds of grammar. There’s the kind of grammar that kinda lives inside your brain, and if you’re a native speaker of a language or a good speaker of a language, it’s the unconscious rules that you follow when you speak that language. And this is what you learn when you learn a language as a child.

Now, these kinds of natural rules that exist in your brain, they’re not like traffic laws, they’re more like laws of nature. And nobody has to remind you to obey a law of nature, right? There are other rules that are more about manners than they are about nature. So you can think of a word as like a hat. Once you know how hats work, nobody has to tell you, “Don’t wear hats on your feet.””What they have to telll you is, “Can you wear hats inside? Who gets to wear a hat? What are the kinds of hats you get to wear?” Right? Those are more of the second kind of grammar, which linguists[语言学家]often call usage, as opposed to grammar.

Now, sometimes people use this kind of rules-based grammar to discourage[劝阻]people from making up words. And I think that is, well, stupid. So, for example, people are always telling you, “Be creative, make new music, do art, invent things, science and technology.” And then when it comes to words, they’re like, “Don’t! No. Creativity stops right here, whippersnappers[自以为是的人]. Give it a rest.” But that makes no sense to me. Words are great. We should have more of them. I want you to make as many new words as possible. And I’m going to tell you six ways that you can use to make new words in English.

The first way is the simplest way.Basically, steal them from other languages.Linguists call this borrowing, but we never give the words back, so I’m just going to be honest and call it stealing. We usually take words for things that we like, like delicious food. We took “kumquat[金桔]” from Chinese,we took “caramel[焦糖]” from French. We also take words for cool things like “ninja[忍者],”right? We took that from Japanese, which is kind of a cool trick because ninjas are hard to steal from.

So another way that you can make words in English is by squishing[挤压]two other English words together. This is called compounding[使混合]. Words in English are like Lego: If you use enough force, you can put any two of them together. We do this all the time in English: Words like “heartbroken,”“bookworm[书呆子],” “sandcastle” all are compounds. So go ahead and make words like“duckface[嘟嘟嘴],” just don’t make duckface.

Another way that you can make words in English is kind of like compounding, but instead you use so much force when you squish the words together that some parts fall off. So these are blend[混合]words, like“brunch[早午餐]” is a blend of “breakfast” and“lunch.” “Motel[汽车旅馆]” is a blend of “motor”and “hotel.” Who here knew that “motel”was a blend word? Yeah, that word is so old in English that lots of people don’t know that there are parts missing. “Edutainment[教育性娱乐]”is a blend of “education” and “entertainment.”And of course, “electrocute[处电刑]” is a blend of “electric” and “execute.”

You can also make words by changing how they operate. This is called functional shift[变化]. You take a word that acts as one part of speech, and you change it into another part of speech. OK, who here knew that “friend” hasn’t always been a verb?Yeah, “friend” used to be a noun and then we verbed it. Almost any word in English can be verbed. You can also take adjectives and make them into nouns. “Commercial[广告]”used to be an adjective and now it’s a noun.And of course, you can “green” things.

Another way to make words in English is back-formation[逆构词]. You can take a word and you can kind of squish it down a little bit. So for example,in English we had the word“editor[编辑]” before we had the word “edit.” “Edit” was formed from “editor.” Sometimes these back-formations sound a little silly: Bulldozers[推土机]bulldoze, butlers[男管家]butle and burglers[号手]burgle.

Another way to make words in English is to take the first letters of something and squish them together. So National Aeronautics and Space Administration[美国国家航空航天局]becomes NASA. And of course you can do this with anything,OMG!

So it doesn’t matter how silly the words are. They can be really good words of English. “Absquatulate[逃走]” is a perfectly good word of English.”Mugwump[中立者]” is a perfectly good word of English. So the words don’t have to sound normal,they can sound really silly.

Why should you make words? You should make words because every word is a chance to express your idea and get your meaning across. And new words grab[抓住]people’s attention. They get people to focus on what you’re saying and that gives you a better chance to get your meaning across. You can make a new word right now. English has no age limit. Go ahead, start making words today, send them to me, and I will put them in my online dictionary, Wordnik.

Thank you so much.