When to invent a word?
Last week Jeff Bezos used the word “complexifier” throwing internet grammaticians into a storm of controversy that almost overshadows the point of his blackmail article. To clarify, “complexifier” is not an english word, but is French for ‘to make more complicated.’ While Bezos didn’t invent the word the use still begs the question: why?
Why go outside of the english language when trying to communicate? Below are a list of reasons to invent a word, use a word outside of the native language of the conversation or mutilate the meaning of existing words.
The most important thing is that the invented word serves a function.
Inventing a functionless word is pretentious gibberish. Words do a lot of heavy lifting so it is necessary they have purpose lest they end up a grammatical Sisyphus.
You need to reference a cultural idea outside of english.
If you read my previous post about sentences you will know that sentences are ideas. What happens when an idea isn’t native to english? To portray this you need to go outside of the language. For example the Japanese “samurai” which refers to a cultural idea that doesn’t exist in native english speaking countries. Using the culturally correct word portrays a deeper, more nuanced…