In the 1930. You can visit us online for this weekends schedule. Booktv continues with paul dickson. He takes a look at the creation of words but by authors. This is about 50 minutes. Thank you, barbara. This is a special treat with you here today. Thank you. We actually did invent an authorism for our 450th birthday, 450th anniversary, and i did that by going to the editorinchief at merriamwebster, and they got the staff to come up with a name. Whether that makes it in the dictionary or not, at least it made it in my book, and now its on it will be shown elsewhere. This business of what gets in and what doesnt get in is a fascinating subject because a lot aaron mckeon once said words are simply a piece of communication, an element of communication and just because its not in the dictionary doesnt mean its not a word. She used to say you dont need a pedigree to be a dog. And so thats sort of the way to look at it. One thing i find thats really interesting is a lot of writers, especially contemporary writers, love to create their own words. My favorite example is calvin trillion, the humorist, and he actually crypted a couple words created a couple words. Wonky is one, and the other is the buffalo chicken wings which were called before that spicy chicken wings, and when he wrote a book called alice, lets eat, they became buffalo chicken wings because he fist had them in first had them in buffalo, new york. He was on a pilgrimage about food. When i was doing research on this book, i found that Sinclair Lewis would invent words, and then hed send off letters to merriamwebster, and the letters are in files up there, and hed come up with a word, one of his great words he thought he had created was titoaltarian which were the dries during prohibition, and then he had a robber baron that gave a lot of money to good things, and his favorite was kiplingo which was for rudyard kipling. And, of course, kipling had some really amazing words. One of his is the horrible racism which was carried for many years white mans burden. That was kipling, and that was his example of how, the kind of person he was. But on the brightest side, he invented the word with rookie which was a corruption of recruit, and recruit didnt rhyme for him, so rookie went in instead. But the thing about lewis was sort of to his chagrin, the two words he is credited with, theres, of course, babbitt, a character for a sort of philistine with money and no appreciation of the finer things in life, the arts and such, and, of course, shotgun wedding first appears in the writings of Sinclair Lewis. He needed a name for sort of a forced wedding in a rural setting, so shotgun wedding made it in. I tried a bunch of words, i probably tried about a hundred, and only two have stuck to the wall. Maybe authorisms will stick, because that was created for this one. Theres a phenomenon called a contrasted focused reduplication. That is you say was he talking about a book or a bookbook . Meaning is he talking about a physical book or an ebook, etc. Grass or grassgrass, you know, meaning the difference between marijuana and lawn clipping. So one time i wrote in a book, i called these wordwords. And now ive completely knocked contrasted focused reduplication out of the dictionary, and its now in the newest edition of the oxford it is in there as a form of speech, wordword. [laughter] so its, so tonight if you go and send some mail or some mailmail. [laughter] so thats what thats called. But another one i created was with the help of some dictionary people was [inaudible] for place, the adjective for a person or a place where a person comes from like liverpuddlian who comes from liverpool. Hoosier for indiana. And that sort of seems to be thinking. But the Oxford English dictionary, a lot of people use that as the final arbiter of whether youve created a word or not. And its interesting, if you go to the Oxford English dictionary, im credited with three first uses, which means the Oxford English dictionary says i was the first one to use it in the english language. Now, theyre fairly dubious. One i was, im credited with is waterpicked as a verb. In a little piece of fiction i once wrote, i said so and so woke up in the morning and waterpicked his teeth, and somehow they laid that one on me, and i have no respondent for it. They responsibility for it. They also laid on me strangelove an, and then theres another one for a body part turned into a verb which ill probably not mention given the cameras are rolling. [laughter] and this is going out to a family audience. And i was crepted with that, and it credited with that, and it wasnt mine either. But Phyllis Richmond is an old friend of mine whos a writer, she was the food editor of the Washington Post for many years, and she is now hounded by the fact that she is credited world wide with creating the word or the phrase comfort food. And we had lunch one day to discuss this, and, of course, she was eating macaroni and or something [laughter] and she said it was all over the Food Industry when she wrote it in 91977, a piece in the post magazine, she talked about some restaurant specializing in comfort food which was bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, things made with ice cream and such. Things that were the kind of cuisine you ate when you were feeling out of sorts. But she did say at lunch and shes really adamant about this that the one word she did create was ellaconnondros, she said she started using it in high school and occasionally put it in her column. It was an adjective that meant nothing, but nobody really challenged. She wants me to do everything i can to make sure that get going. Gets going. What got me going on this thing was interesting. The Oxford English dictionary, now that its dimmingtized, you can digitized, you can sort of set it up to look for what you want. Theres one way i could look through the Oxford English dictionary and find out who are the great word creators, in other words, who created the most words in terms of first use, but also first use often reflects its not a given, but its a strong suggestion that thats where the term came from because theyve spent hundred, over a hundred years trying to determine where it first be appears in fingerprint first appears in print. Whats really interesting was i ran into who the great creators were of language, and number one was shakespeare, but number two was Sir Walter Scott. And i said why, what about Sir Walter Scott . And i got really sort of fascinated by scott. And i came to this really sort of beginning conclusion that what scott did was create this world, a world of chivalry and nobility and the lost causes and a world in which there were klans with a k. And what he was really creating was a world that had words in it like freelance and there were world in it like back of beyond or phrases. And then i stumbled upon something very interesting which is in mark twain in life on the mississippi attacks scott, and one of the things he later admits is one of the reasons he wrote king arthurs counter was to mock the world that scott had created. And twain goes almost overboard in this. But he claimed that scott had created a world or a nobility to death, a nobility of lost causes, a nobility of dying, you know, the graceful and courageous death that was a proximate cause of the civil war. And twain goes on for paragraphs showing why he thinks that the popularity of scott especially in the south was that powerful. And it rings true only in one sense, that the power of scott was amazing. I live in garrett park, maryland, and the man who started the town was garrett of the b and o railroad. The town was set up like a feudal village originally, and every street and every physical aspect of the town is from the novels of Sir Walter Scott. And, of course, he had created, scott created this world with characters like robin hood and the sheriff of notingham, and, of course, ivanhoe and the whole business. I got interested in twain, and twain claimed in his lifetime he never created a word. Hardboiled, which is one thats on cover. But twain and brett hart were actually fascinating in the sense that they created, twain said i got all these words. Theyre the words that are, you know, attributed to twain are things like peter out, grubsteaks, blowup in the sense of the emotional blowup, bonanza, etc. , etc. And twain said he got all this new language from being on the mississippi, but also the mines of nevada and california where he got a huge amount of this slang. He said the most powerful slang hed ever seen came off the the mines. Out of the mines. And, you know, the gold rush and such. And the more i looked at dickens, i realized dickens had world that he created. His world was the world of sort of the low life. Dickens had this ability to see, you know, theres the slang of old bailey, of the cockney accents of the slums of london and paris, and you see in dickens that dickens wasnt a great creator of language, but he was one who picked up the language of the people, of the places that hed been. I mean, cockney, im sorry, sandwich boards is one of his. He creates this word for the people that walked around with a sign on the front and the back. That was one of his. He also does door mat as a metaphor for people who are walked on. In other words, he was a door mat meaning he let people walk all over him. But dickens great, sort of the great creations of dickens are words like name of people, scrooge as a character, sort of a bad spirit around the time of the holidays, you know, somebody is a scrooge. My favorite one is podsnapery. That was his word for selfsatisfied philistines named after mr. Podsnap, somebody who, you know, i dont like modern art, you know, that kind of thing. But just to say it to show how they werent going to accede to the mass as and everybody else. Masses and everybody else. But i, the other one i got really intrigued me in this whole, same vein was john milton. And milton is creating a world of heaven and hell for paradise lost. So the words that he creates are things like pandemonium, which he creates as sort of the dwelling place of the evil spirits, of the demons and the devil. And its really a city in his, the way he envisions it, as sort of an olympus of demons. The other phrase he came up with which is wonderful is it shows up in paradise lost which is all hell broke loose, which is one that he came up with. Satanic is his. And so in a lot of ways milton had a sort of phenomenal ability to do this stuff, come up with language. Lovehorn is his lovelorn is his, infin tuesday, earth shaking. Hes also the first one to use space in reference to that which is above us, that is the heavens. Before that space sort of was the distance between two people or two cities, but space to him became the heavens. And earth shaking is the kind of thing that he saw as part of the way he was creating this world. So another one, again, i think the most prolific and the most interesting writers are the ones who create a language that go along with the world that theyre in. And so i think of maybe the most powerful modern writer is George Orwell who creates a language of totalitarianism, but, you know, he comes up with double think. And even the word 1984, the phrase, title of his book, is sort of a metaphor for what was gonna go wrong with the world in terms of totalitarianism. And he also, you know, in news speak that suffix, speak to say, you know, use that as a way of introducing a new xi grn lang, thats his as well from that. And the other dystopian, of course, is [inaudible] brave new world. Brave new worlds a wonderful title and a concept and a phrase because it comes out of shakespeare, and the inside joke of brave new world is the first thing that the people in this totalitarian state in oxleys totalitarian states is they ban the works of shakespeare. So its a double, its a double hook there. James fenimore cooper, a lot of terms in here by cooper. Cooper was the first one to really write about the American Indian and the native american. And he invents a whole language more them which its not some people said its demeaning, but its his attempt to get at their culture. He creates words like war paint, firewater, happy Hunting Ground for their sort of heaven or the other life of the americanc indian. And cooper has a marvelous sense more this. If you reread it, i reread for this book i reread last of the mohicans, and hes basically, hes not den dating the indian denigrating the indian. I think hes trying to interpret their culture the best he can. And the europeans deeply appreciated cooper. Cooper was probably the most popular writer of his time in europe because the people in europe were understanding or at least trying to understand the culture that we were vanquishing at that point. We were taking over them. He had a nice, cooper also had a nice phrase, one of the things i liked in the early writing about John Paul Jones he talks about the right stuff. He says jones had the right stuff. He said he had courage, he was this, he was that. And, of course, tom wolf comes around and wants to write about the astronauts, and he goes back to cooper and says the right stuff. The other one, of course, thats a lot of fun to play with is Herman Melville whos creating another world, a world at sea, you know, a world of moby dick and such. And moby dick is sort of fun because be it sort of became for a long, long time, still to this day sort of for something outrageously large and a metaphor for something large and important. And he got it from the name of a real albino whale called moca dick, and he just changed it to moby dick. [laughter] whats interesting about moby dick is within ten this is why google maps is fun theres a suture shi place, and on wisconsin avenue there is the moby dick house of kebab. [laughter] the other great story about the language of moby dick, when they started this Coffee Company out of the west coast, there was a big group of guys got together and wanted to start this Coffee Company, and they had a name picked out. A guy named Howard Schultz came in and said you guys really dont want to call a coffee shop pequot. The first syllable was offputting for coffee. Do you have any other names from melville, and some people said starbuck was the first mate, he said, thats it, starbucks. So every time i drive down the street i say, well, theres another pequot. [laughter] melville had these strange words, people who were isolated from other people. Part of the crew he regarded as isolatos. And Harriet Beecher stowe, again, she creates uncle toms cabin, and, of course, we know what happened to the term uncle tom over time. There was an element where it became a pejorative. But she also had this wonderful sense of metaphor that she uses in the week. In the book. So when she talks about an end slaved person being sold down the river, she was talking about somebody who was probably in upper mississippi and most probably a household slave. And somebody who might have cooked or taken care of the children or something. But if the owner of this person sold the person to somebody down the river, it meant they were going to become field slaves, they were going to work out in the fields, in the horror of the fields. So being sold down the river in that book was literally being sold into a deeper, darker form of enslavement. I could go on about the different people, but i, just for a little bit, for a few minutes, and were doing pretty well on time, pick out a couple of my favorites. There are a lot in the book. Its what they call the name of one writer gave it was the sweet click of coinage where a writer is writing and they come up with just the right phrase, just the right turn. Even though when you come up with so one of my favorites is agnostic, and that was t. H. Huxley. And huxley really got sick. He was a scientist, and he really got sick of people calling him an atheist when, in fact, he budget. And he said he budget. He wasnt. He had to create a name that budget a religious person, a godfearing person, and he came up with agnostic. And the book, the word took off literally overnight. Franklin pierce adams, one of my favorite humorist writers, he came up with the term aptronym which is for names of people whose names reflected who they were. And one of his like olga tumblova as a ballerina. And there was a professor at annapolis, his name was d. C. Current. [laughter] then theres Banana Republic which was ohenrys term for sort of a dictatorial mace that sort of had place that sort of had only one crop or one mineral, and they were and, of course, hes down there hiding from the police because he was accused of stealing money from a bank, of embezzlement. Coed is a real out of place one, and that east louisa may alcott. One of the boys said he didnt like coyou would dining coyou would dining. Coed dining. The other one thats on the cover that i just love is the fist writer, i found some it may have been used a little bit before, but the very first writer of the use of the word baseball is what am i [inaudible] well go back to that in a second. So there are these wonderful words that sort of come out of the blue. Another one that i really like is dragon lady. And that was in a 1946 comic strip, and its just wonderful because but he said, the line was he said youre no mongolian princess, youre the dragon lady. And so that [laughter] factoid is fun to play with because that was norman mailers creation. And mailer said that it was really for a small falsehood, something that was repeated often that was untrue like nine out of ten Small Businesses fail during the first year or Something Like that thats repeated millions of times but has never been proven and is almost invariably untrue. But almost immediately factoid became a victim of its own definition, and people are now using it to mean small fact, inaccurate things. The first meaning in the dictionary is a falsehood, the second meaning is a truth, a small truth. So its a wonderful thing. And poor norman mailer, blame him for that one. Theres a mystery section over here, little bit. Very close. But [inaudible] was a wonderful one that ida nash created murder mongress for agatha christie. And it was used in a poem to rhyme with library of congress. Who dun it was a guy named donald gordon, a critic in 1930. And, of course, little gray cells for the brain matter f