Neologism
A new word, coined to explain a new thing or phenomenon, but that hasn’t been totally accepted by the mainstream yet.
Why I Looked It Up
I don’t remember the book, but I found this passage.
Tracing back how Neologisms are born helps us understand why anyone needed this word in the first place.
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Cyber
September 17, 2023
This prefix comes from the field of cybernetics, which is the study of the command and control of groups and beings (yes, it’s very vague). It’s usage in that field dates to the 1940s. That name came from the Greek “kubernetes” for “steersman” or “governor.” Sometime in the 1980s, this morphed into...
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Estuary
October 18, 2023
This is where a freshwater river meets the ocean. The main feature of an estuary is that the water becomes “brackish,” which is a salinity halfway between freshwater and the ocean – so, “half salty,” basically. An estuary can be a simply river delta, or a large ecosystem of marshes and barrier...
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High Jinks
September 18, 2023
Everyone knows what this means, but no one is really sure of the etymology. The word “high” is easy, in the sense that it just amplifies what comes after it (“high fashion,” “high crime”). But what does “jinks” mean? It was a dice game at one time, and it’s been used as slang to mean “to move...