You Can’t Just Make Up Words—Oh, Really?
Spoiler alert: This page turner’s ending is all about the . . . zyzzyva!
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Language Lesson: How to Invent a Word
It’s become a sitcom trope: One character’s remark prompts another character to retort, “That’s not even a word!” or “You can’t just make up words!”
But according to the most widespread, time-honored language lore, people have been inventing words ever since the guttural grunts of one human first morphed into vocal patterns that made sense to other humans.
Let’s settle this with the world’s shortest language lesson, here.
Oh, I see: Making up words is precisely how language happens. When people invent a word, language grows and goes out into the world, keeping robust pace with ever-changing ideas and events until the time comes to pass the torch to other new language.
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