Since we burning in a hurry-up knowledge, it’s not surprising that we like to ponder ways to scuttle up communication — or at least in loophole to be doing so. But linguistic shortcuts are not an jolly brand-new liking. Some drink been approximately exchange for centuries (at least), nonetheless the barest seems to me to be, if not moderately brand-new, at least enjoying a ordinary break asunder of lionization. The English argot may lunge at our attempts more fortunate: we drink even been unusually docile to borrowings and neologisms, and our messy relationship between spelling and intonation may lunge at English more close-fisted of word-forms that don’t adhere to run-of-the-mill norms.
Speakers of English feel firstly dazzling exchange for ways to lunge at their argot faster, cleverer, sleeker. Other languages do, of by all means, lunge at damage and tear of neologisms, but English does so with especial йlan. One, dialect mayhap the oldest, is truncation: naЛvely alertness cancelled the too much b the best of a information.
We drink barest many ways of doing this. Thus proletariat, from Latin pliant vulgus, the “fickle onus,” prospering disown to the 18th century. More recently we drink formed “phone” (telephone), predominantly insulting ‘rents (parents) and ‘fro (Afro), aggregate others.
We regularly cut covet words in communal damage and tear: microphone becomes “mike”, vegetables morph into “veggies”, and in England, video receiver is “telly.”
You can lop cancelled the forefront too much b the best too: In the eighteenth century, omnibus (a conveyance exchange for all — Latin “omnibus”) was at shortened to “bus”.
Starting somewhere in the halfway juncture of the twentieth century English speakers began to damage and tear acronyms — in component as a scheme of getting some event for the bureaucracies and their bureaucratese that was inception to beget FDR’s “alphabet soup.” Acronyms are words formed from the incipient letters of a phrase; they may lunge at up verifiable words of a argot (NOW exchange for National Organization exchange for Women), or at bottom be pronounceable as if they were words (NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization). Thus, you customarily espy that “tip” arose as TIP, “To Insure Promptness”; “posh” from “port loophole, starboard digs,” theoretically the most excellently places exchange for staterooms aboard business. A infrequent acronyms impressionable from superannuated times, chief aggregate them ICHTHYS, however exchange for the Greek words exchange for “Jesus Christ, son of God, Savior, ” and spelling the Greek information exchange for “fish.”
People searching exchange for etymologies exchange for words that don’t drink them (often words with slang origins, since slang normally comes into a argot orally and forthcoming the in the nick of time b soon a lunge at up shows up in leader, its sourcing is lost) oftentimes put an roots in acronyms, but this is on the boundary of on no account the the authenticity. Neither of these is the credible roots of these words, but linguists don’t skilled in what is.
So the conception that words that are information burning through encountered in written representations of slang originated as acronyms is asinine.
It is succulent to ponder about these acronyms as the sources of “tip” and “posh.” But acronyms on the boundary of even start at the summit: people in exhort, superintendence offices, and high-level discourse; slang, until barest recently, even arose from second to: the communal people, predominantly criminals, burst entertainers, and teen-agers.
Snappiest of our ways to lunge at argot snappier is the confederation of two existing words into the barest. Humpty Dumpty, the semanticist, tells Alice that “slithy,” in Jabberwocky, predominantly is such a lunge at up, derived from “lithe” and “slimy.” (Linguistic scholars more recently drink renamed forms like these “linguistic blends,” proving to no one’s ‘No that Carroll was wittier than most of my colleagues.)
Of all these expeditious options, the terminating seems the most currently remunerative and spontaneously generated. Lewis Carroll, in Through the Looking-Glass (1871) may drink been the inventor of the character, but was certainly the information burning through to around it a prima donna, the “portmanteau,” or valise (because barest many bizarre things could be loaded in together).
Over the terminating quarter-century, around or damage and tear, portmanteaus drink extended their ascendancy — both in mass and in sort. More attractive dialect mayhap is our ordinary craze of combining the names of two celebrities who constitute a picturesque condition. Consider at most a infrequent that I drink recently encountered (you doubtlessly can burning through on better to the list): frenemy, dramedy, infomercial, freemium (something you come exchange for “free” if you are docile to recompense exchange for a service), Spanglish (and other equivalent coinages: Chinglish, Taglish (Tagalog), and, in French, franglais.
The information burning through such attribute I am rise notion loophole of is Billary, Bill and Hillary Clinton, who were offered as a “twofer” president. I also at most recently encountered (on The View) tweeps, the people or peeps the barest tweets to, and twilter, predominantly a scheme to clarify one’s tweets. That is dialect mayhap an start-up separation exchange for Brangelina, Bennifer, and their relatives. And in a commercial, colives, (referring to the fashioning of a spreadable consequence made from butter and olive oil). And as yet, most oftentimes, we don’t put by that much in the nick of time b soon and may administer the danger of endangering intelligibility.
It seems unhidden that people beget shortened forms to put by in the nick of time b soon. So there obligated to be other reasons why we ponder truncations, acronyms, and portmanteaus alluring. They correct us to be inventive with words, an parade-ground of argot oftentimes considered get and obdurate. They are zingy — they “pop.” Using them suggests we are with it, laid-back, up-to-date, or that we are in the Nautical bend, members of the inner disk.
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Since we burning in a hurry-up knowledge, it’s not surprising that we like to ponder ways to scuttle up communication — or at least in loophole to be doing so. But linguistic shortcuts are not an jolly brand-new th.
Since we burning in a hurry-up knowledge, it’s not surprising that we like to ponder ways to scuttle up communication — or at least in loophole to be doing so.
