The Merriam-Webster Dictionary site lists 20 official new words in its 2007 Collegiate edition. They have gone beyond mere neologisms and have reached the point legitimate lexicographers consider them dictionary-worthy. They include these (definitions are mine):

• crunk — No one is sure of the original meaning, but now it’s a kind of music.
• ginormous – bigger than “big”
• perfect storm — everything worked out horribly wrong
• smackdown — four definitions listed, all involving someone getting hurt
• speed dating — Didn’t we used to call this activity “a mixer”?

What is a butt bra? Have you ever seen floordrobe? Where would you buy carbon offsets?

These are words newly coined and popping up in the media. Words to watch. Words that might make the end-of-the-year Best New Word (or Worst). Paul McFedries at Word Spy tracks these neologisms.

What a fun site to lose an hour with! My triva for today: the phrase “big box store” dates back to 1988, the era of equally big hair. NIMBY (not in my back yard) dates to 1980. I wonder if the phrase is still current — it sounds dated to my ear.

Quite a few phrases understandably emerged late in 2001; 9/11 is one example. The site points out, “This term … became a part of the lexicon literally overnight. By September 12, 2001, most of the world knew or could easily figure out what 9/11 meant. This was even true (although to a lesser extent) in countries (such as Canada, Britain, and Australia) where 9/11 means November 9.”

Word Spy’s home page lists the most recent additions to the collection. Use tabs at the top to find a browsable database of words organized by subject (don’t miss “Verbed Nouns”), archives dating back to 1996, and a very extensive collection of quotations about words. You can subscribe to updates of new words or new quotations.

I haven’t started Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows yet. It will be another week before I get home to the copy that is supposed to be waiting for me, and I’m avoiding all the reviews that might include any kind of spoiler. Please don’t tell me how it ends. (I’m not worried about Harry, but I am concerned about Hagrid.)

I figured checking up on the title would be safe. The word hallow has all but died from English as a noun. I’ve seen it as a verb: Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address states, “But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.” In that sense I understood hallowing to be something a person can do to show honor or to set something aside as holy.

In church I learned hallowed as an adjective: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

At some point I learned that Hallowe’en was a corruption of “All Hallows Eve,” but I never quite caught on to what a hallow was in that context. I thought it was a dead person.

So when I saw the phrase “deathly hallows,” I hope I can be forgiven some confusion. Apparently I was not alone, because the folks at the Merriam-Webster dictionary site (my favorite!) updated their entry for hallows and mentioned Rowling’s novel as the cause.

Hallows, according to Merriam-Webster, are saints, shrines, or relics. But in Rowling’s book they are deathly. Hmmmm … this should be interesting. Don’t tell me …

What do the poet William Wordsworth, Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin, and tennis champion Margaret Court have in common?

Their names are strikingly appropriate, considering their professions.

While terms such as Nominative Determinism, namephreaks, PFLN (Perfect Fit Last Names), and aptonym also describe this felicity of names, aptronym, a term coined by columnist Franklin P. Adams, appears to have the most usage.

Other aptronyms include these:

• golfer Tiger Woods
• astronaut Sally Ride
• White House spokesman Larry Speakes
• humorist and math professor Tom Lehrer (”Lehrer” is the German word for “teacher.”)
• Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings

When President
Bush named Tony Snow the new White House Press Secretary, was an aptronym created? That’s a discussion for another blog.

What aptronyms have you encountered?

My mother learned to type on a typewriter. What kind? Didn’t matter — there was only one kind.

I learned to type on a MANUAL typewriter. Due to a schedule change, I came to the class a day late and had to sit at the back. All the electric typewriters were taken. (To this day I pound my keyboard as though it were that heavy black Royal with stiff keys.)

I learned to type on the same kind of machine that my mother had used, but it had a different name. “Manual typewriter” is an example of a retronym, a phrase that changes the name of an existing technology to distinguish it from the new. Frank Mankiewicz, an aide to Senator Robert Kennedy, is generally credited with coining the term.

As old and new technologies overlap, language often favors the new but respects the old. Here are some examples:

• Quill pen, a retronym formed to distinguish that tool from fountain pens, ball point pens, and gel pens
• Hardback book, as opposed to paperbacks
• World War I was “The Great War” until after WWII.
• Whole milk, different from skimmed milk
• Acoustic guitar, coined when electric guitars were developed
• Black-and-white TV. Color became the norm so quickly that today the noun television implies color.
• Biological mother or birth mother, as opposed to an adoptive, foster, or stepmother
• Snail mail, not e-mail
• Rotary phone, as opposed to touch-tone or cell phones

Students of language, history, and technology can doubtless supply more. What retronyms have you seen lately?

What do Amelia Bloomer, Samuel A. Maverick, and Charles C. Boycott have in common?

Each of their names has become an eponym, a word derived from someone’s name.

The stories behind eponyms are wonderful introductions to word study. Take the story of Captain Boycott, for example. As the representative of an absentee English landlord, he was responsible for collecting rent from Irish tenants in the 1880s. Times were hard, and the tenants requested a decrease in the rent. Boycott not only refused, he evicted them.

In response the community refused to have anything to do with Boycott. No one would sell him or his family any food. He couldn’t hire anyone local to care for his livestock or work as a servant in his house. Some accounts say the mailman wouldn’t deliver his mail. People wouldn’t even speak to his family.

When it was time to harvest, Orangemen from other counties were escorted to the fields by 1000 British troops, even though no violence was ever threatened. The cost of security has been estimated at 10 times the cost of the entire crop. Humiliated and utterly defeated, Boycott and his family left Ireland.

Newspapers picked up the story, and before long boycott was a verb. The strategy was later used very effectively by Mahatma Gandhi, Nazi resisters, and civil rights activists.

One word yields a lesson in history, politics, interpersonal relations, and effective civil disobedience. This is a much more interesting way to study vocabulary than learning syllabication and parts of speech!

The people listed below have also donated eponyms to English. Enjoy their stories!

• Amelia Bloomer
• General Ambrose Burnside
• Samuel Maverick
• Jean Nicot
• John Duns Scotus

I was searching for a lesson on a poet, and a link took me into the middle of a unit at the Coverdell World Wise Schools program of the Peace Corps. I started reading and clicking around, and the next thing I knew it was an hour later. I had visited three continents with Peace Corps volunteers, laughed, wept, and wondered how these lesson plans would work with my summer school students.

They worked very well.

The site’s description is simple, “Stories, folk tales, poems, and letters from Peace Corps Volunteers will expand and enrich the lives of students by allowing them to see the world as Peace Corps Volunteers do.”

That simplicity belies a rich and generous gift to educators. Designed using the Wiggins and McTighe Backward Design model, each unit plan features an outstanding first person narrative rich with cultural insights and complete with the following:

• enduring understandings, essential questions, and standards
• an overview
• necessary background information
• objectives
• vocabulary
• materials
• daily procedures
• extension activities
• suggestions for assessment

The units are designed for grades 3-12 and are by their nature interdisciplinary with emphasis on student writing. The volunteers’ memorable stories help students respect cultural differences and see their own cultures with more insight. “A Single Lucid” moment, for example, focuses attention on the generosity of one group of people and the apparent callousness of another. “I Had a Hero” and its companion piece, “Ilunga’s Harvest,” memorably depict the concepts of hard work and community. And “The Extra Place” points to sad changes in society that can happen everywhere.

Through these narratives and these lessons, Peace Corps volunteers make a contribution not only in the countries where they volunteered, but here at home, too.

The bell for passing period rang. I grabbed a large stack of student portfolios and maneuvered down the hallway toward class. One of my eighth graders saw me coming and opened the door for me.

“That’s very chivalrous of you,” I said, my chin holding the top journal in place.

“Aw, Ms. Beard,” he said, disappointed, “what did I do wrong now?”

Poor guy — he was trying to do his teacher a favor and ended up a victim of vocabulary. Of course I immediately explained what I meant, and as he smiled I realized that we had both learned something. He had picked up a new word, and I had gained some insight into teaching vocabulary.

We learn new words in context. My eighth grader didn’t recognize “chivalrous,” so he had gone to my body language to help him. Unfortunately that awkward stack of portfolios up to my chin had left me with clenched teeth, and my attempt at a smile looked more like a grimace. My student guessed at a negative meaning for the word. Once he had the correct meaning, however, he had a context for it: he had opened the door to be helpful.

English teachers are adept at pulling meaning from context, and we tend to read widely, giving us multiple contexts from which to learn. We gain new words sometimes without even realizing it. Because our vocabularies are so well developed, new teachers are sometimes surprised by the words our students don’t know and by their lack of skill in acquiring new words.

Research suggests that the best way to learn vocabulary words is a combination of reading widely and direct instruction.

Teachers often introduce unfamiliar words as a prereading activity. Frontloading vocabulary helps students negotiate an unfamiliar passage successfully. This should be a standard practice acorss the curriculum as we introduce new texts.

Vocabulary workbooks may be the most consistent source of direct instruction. They have come a long way from “Memorize this list of 20 unrelated words.” Most now provide a variety of contexts for each new word, including a reading selection that uses the words, exploration of roots, and practice with synonyms and antonyms. Teachers often provide additional classroom practice by asking students to illustrate their words or to create mnemonics.

Combining wide reading with direct instruction produces better readers and writers. After all, the real test of vocabulary isn’t the one on Friday but the one that takes place the next time the student encounters the word.

I learned one more thing from my experience with those journals: if the stack is that big, it might be better to make two trips.