98. Chillax — a fashionable blend (21st century)
This combination of chill (in its ‘calm down’ sense) and relax arrived in the early 2000s — a coinage which has come to be loved and hated in about equal proportions. By 2010 it had become a newsworthy headline. A piece by Simon Hoggart in The Independent for 23rd February began: ‘Chillax man — or Gordon will get you’ — apparently referring to the then prime minister’s use of the word while telling his advisers not to panic. If Gordon had been really cool, of course, he would have used the derived expression: Chillax to the max.
This is one of the latest blends, or portmanteau words — a technique of word creation (§67) that has become extremely popular in the 21st century. Chillax is gradually building up a word family of its own: already we have chillaxing and chillaxed. Podcast — a blend of iPod and broadcast — is even more productive: first used in 2004, it’s now found as a noun (a podcast), a verb (to podcast), an adjective (a podcast experience) and in several derived forms (podcasting, podcasters, a podcasted show).
Dozens of new blends are around now: have you seen a threequel (a ‘second sequel’), eaten turducken (‘a combination of roast chicken, duck and turkey’), read about a bromance (‘affection between two men’), taken a staycation (‘vacation staying at home, or in one’s home country’) or daycation (‘a day-long holiday’) or used a freemium (‘an internet business model in which basic features are free but advanced features are not’)? You may have frenemies (‘people with whom you remain friendly, despite some sort of dislike’). You will certainly know some screenagers (‘teens who have an aptitude for computers and the internet’).
And what about jeggings? These are leggings designed to look like tight-fitting jeans, a blend of jeans + leggings, and one of the most fashionable clothing developments of 2010. The word family here is growing: meggings (‘men + leggings’), treggings (‘trousers + leggings’). It seems to be a trend within the fashion industry to mix different types of clothing, and the language is desperately trying to keep up. Have you worn a coatigan (‘coat + cardigan’), shacket (‘shirt + jacket’), skorts (‘skirt + shorts’) or tankini (‘tank top + bikini’)? Or a mankini (‘man + bikini’, male skimpy swimwear such as that used by the film character Borat)? Then there are blurts (‘blouse + skirt’), cardigowns (‘cardigan + dressing gown’), mackets (‘mac + jacket’), shoots (‘shoe + boot’) and skousers (‘skirt + trousers’). I sometimes wonder which came first — the design or the word?
99. Unfriend — a new age (21st century)
In 2009 the New Oxford American Dictionary chose unfriend as its ‘Word of the Year’. It meant ‘to remove someone from a list of contacts on a social networking site such as Facebook’. A minor controversy followed. Some argued that the verb should be defriend. But the use of un- was already well established in the terminology of reversing computer actions, with undo, unerase, undelete, unbold and many more. As a New York Times article said in 2009 (15th September), we are living in an ‘Age of Undoing’.
Unfriend also probably appealed because it feels more English, as evidenced by a history of earlier uses dating from the 16th century (§44). Antonio describes Sebastian as ‘unguided and unfriended’ in Twelfth Night (III.iii.10). A noun (an unfriend) occurs as early as the 13th century. And in the 19th century, a member of the Society of Friends (the Quakers) could describe a non-member as an unfriend. Defriend, by contrast, had no such history, so it has been slower to take root. But both unfriend and defriend are found in the social networking world now, with unfriend almost twice as popular in 2011.
Prefixes and suffixes continue to make their presence felt in word coinages of the new millennium. We find ecogloom (‘depression about environmental progress’) and bargainous (‘relatively cheap’), overthink (‘think about something too much’) and underbudget (‘underestimate costs’), catastrophise (‘present a situation as worse than it is’) and therapise (‘provide therapy’). As technology allows us to investigate smaller and smaller entities, previously obscure prefixes such as nano- have become widespread. It is, according to some commentators, a nano-age, with a nanocosm containing nanomachines using nanomaterials on a nanoscale, and investigated by nanoscientists. Virtually any word, it seems, is going to be prefixed by nano- sooner or later.
Nano- has left micro- a long way behind, though micro- did receive a boost with the advent of micromessaging. The posting of very short entries on a blog came to be called microblogging, and when Twitter arrived in 2006, with its 140-character message limitation, it was soon being described as a microblogging site. There are microbooks, micromovies, micromusicals and (§92) microapps now. Speaking as a lexical cool-hunter (a 1990s’ marketing term: ‘a monitor of cultural trends’), I wouldn’t write it off yet.
100. Twittersphere — future directions? (21st century)
It’s remarkable how a single sound can be taken to heart and used as a source of fresh word formation. In 2010, around 600 new words were listed in Twittonary, one of the online dictionaries collecting terms invented in connection with Twitter. That’s an amazing total, given that this web site had then been in existence for only five years.
Most of the words are the result of people exploiting the playful possibilities in the name, especially those suggested by the unusual (in English) phonetic properties of the initial consonant cluster tw- . Two-thirds of the entries play with that cluster. Some replace an initial consonant, as in twictionary and tweologism. Some pretend to be a speech defect, replacing a tr- word, as in twendy and twaffic. Some add the cluster to the beginning of another word, as in twidentity theft and twaddiction. Blends are also very common, as in twitterhea, twitterati, twitterholic, celebritweet — and, summarising its entire world, twittersphere.
Most of these creations are likely to have a short linguistic life. Just a few will be long-term additions to the language — or, at least, for as long as Twitter exists. We can see this from what happened to an earlier internet
