be (a) new, (b) easily remembered, and (c) not directly descriptive. Probably the most successful invention of this sort is kodak, which was devised by George Eastman, inventor of the portable camera so called. Kodak has so far won acceptance as a common noun that Eastman is often forced to assert his proprietary right to it. [1] Vaseline is in the same position. The annual crop of such inventions in the United States is enormous.[2] The majority die, but a hearty few always survive.
Of analogous character are artificial words of the scalawag and rambunctious class, the formation of which constantly goes on. Some of them are shortened compounds: grandificent (from grand and magnificent), sodalicious (from soda and delicious) and warphan ( age ) ( from war and orphan ( age ) ) ,[3] Others are made up of common roots and grotesque affixes: swelldoodle, splendiferous and peacharino. Yet others are mere extravagant inventions: scallywampus, supergobsloptious and floozy. Most of these are devised by advertisement writers or college students, and belong properly to slang, but there is a steady movement of selected specimens into the common vocabulary. The words in -doodle hint at German influences, and those in -ino owe something to Italian, or at least to popular burlesques of what is conceived to be Italian.
§6
Pronunciation—"Language," said Sayce, in 1879, "does not consist of letters, but of sounds, and until this fact has been brought home to us our study of it will be little better than an
- ↑ It has even got into the Continental languages. In October, 1917, the Verband Deutscher Amateurphotographen-Vereine was moved to issue the following warning: "Es gibt kein deutschen Kodaks. Kodak, als Sammelname für photographische Erzeugnisse ist falsch und bezeichnet nur die Fabrikate der Eastman-Kodak-Company. Wer von einem Kodak spricht und nur allgemein eine photographische Kamera meint, bedenkt nicht, dass er mit der Weiterverbreitung dieses Wortes die deutsche Industrie sugunsten der amerikanisch-englischen schädigt."
- ↑ Cf. Word-Coinage and Modern Trade Names, by Louise Pound, Dialect Notes, vol. iv, pt. i, 1913, pp. 29-41. Most of these coinages produce derivatives, e. g., bevo-officer, to kodak, kodaker.
- ↑ This conscious shortening, of course, is to be distinguished from the shortening that goes on in words by gradual decay, as in Christmas (from Christ's mass) and daisy (from day's eye).
