The Failure of Plathegel

Grice had the right ear for a neologism. "What's good for Sidonius is good for me: implicatura". But that's not all:

Kantotle, Ariskant. You name it.

In a public reply to N. E. Allott, who is Kantian and Aristotelian all over the place -- his PhD -- I wrote, "Surely you are dismissing Plathegel's cunning of reason".

I was playing, flatly, on

Aris-kant
Plat-hegel

--

Why did _he_ fail?

Alan Metcalf has the answer.

"Predicting new words: the secrets of their success" is a mini-history of Grice, and second, of the English language".

For...

"Why did "schmoozeoisie" and "sylvanshine" fail
to catch on, while "Frankenfood" and "digerati"
appear regularly in the newspaper? Allan Metcalf,
executive secretary of the American Dialect Society,
doesn't have an easy answer to this question, but his
charming new book _Predicting New Words: The Secrets
of Their Success_ is a fascinating mini-history of
the English language. Using a handful of words as
case studies, he examines the reasons behind their
staying power or lack thereof, from "scofflaw" (the
winner of a Prohibition-era newspaper contest for
a neologism to describe people who drank alcohol)
to the "sniglets" proposed by 1980s comic Rich Hall
(a favourite is "tacangle," "the position of one's
head while biting into a taco"). Obviously a word's
utility plays an important role in its adaption into
the language, but a surprising number of other factors
co-exist, including ingenuity, catchiness, and
politics. Metcalf is a bit of a humorist himself: at
one point, demonstrating the power of the mot juste,
he cites some samples from a website that randomly
generates names for military operations, including
(presumably for the war in Afghanistan) "Operation
Fabled Turban" and "Operation Beaming Wolverine.""

Etc.