Authorisms: Words Wrought by Writers (9 page)

*
The earliest form of this word was
domunym.
After publishing several articles on the subject, including one that appeared in the March 1988
Smithsonian
magazine, I received several letters noting that I could use some help with my neologism. The most compelling case was made by George H. Scheetz, then director of the Sioux City (Iowa) Public Library and member of the American Name Society and the North Central Name Society, who has actually made a study of words with a
-nym
ending. Scheetz wrote:

All but two historically occurring words ending in
-nym
actually end in
-onym,
and all but approximately six percent are formed from Greek root words. In other words, the Latin root
dom-
(from
domus
), more correctly forms
domonym
. However, the Greek root is already in use as a combining form,
domato-
(from
domatos
), which forms
domatonym
. Literally, both these combinations mean “a house name.” The names Tara and The White House are domatonyms. So Scheetz must be credited with a major assist with this word.

*
Fuller attained a level of eponymous glory in the name
buckminsterfullerene,
which is officially described as “an extremely stable form of carbon whose molecule consists of 60 carbon atoms joined together as a truncated regular icosahedron of 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons, forming a symmetrical spheroidal structure suggestive of the geodesic dome.” The geodesic dome is one of Fuller’s inventions.

E

EARFUL.
As much talk as one’s ears can listen to at one time; a large quantity; a strong reprimand. The first appearance is in a 1917 story by American sports columnist and short story writer
Ring Lardner
(1885–1933).
¹

EBONICS.
African American English when seen as a dialect with features derived from West African languages rather than a nonstandard variety of English. The name and the theory made its public debut on January 26, 1973, by
Robert L. Williams
, an African American and professor of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. Its first published appearance was in a 1975 book edited by Williams,
Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks
. Williams fashioned the term
Ebonics
by combining
ebony
(for black) and
phonics
(for the scientific study of speech sounds), and he used Ebonics to identify the variety of English spoken by many black Americans as a language or at least a dialect of its own rather than merely “bad English.” Aside from some Afrocentrists, however, everyone else continued to call it black English or, in a more scholarly vein, African American vernacular English.

ECDYSIAST.
Word coined by American author and journalist
H. L. Mencken
for a striptease. The term was based on a request from a very popular practitioner. As Mencken recounted in the second volume of
The American Language
, in 1940 he received a letter from Georgia Sothern asking him to create a word that would mean striptease but would contain a more elegant sound and sense: “I am a practitioner of the fine art of strip-teasing . . . In recent years, there has been a great deal of uninformed criticism leveled against my profession . . . I feel sure that if you could coin a new and more palatable word to describe this art, the objections to it would vanish and I and my colleagues would have easier going. I hope that the science of semantics can find time to help the verbally underprivileged members of my profession. Thank you.”

Mencken chronicled the difficulty he encountered in searching for a synonym for stripteaser. “The word moltician comes to mind, but it must be rejected because of its likeness to mortician . . . A resort to the scientific name for molting, which is ecdysis, produces both ecdysist and ecdysiast. Then there are suggestions in the names of some of the creatures which practice molting. The scientific name for the common crab is
Callinectes hastastus
, which produces
callinectian
. Again, there is a family of lizards called the
Geckonidae
, and their name produces
gecko
. Perhaps your advisers may be able to find other suggestions in the same general direction.”

Mencken settled on
ecdysiast
.
²

ECONOLOGY.
The blend of the words
economy
and
ecology.
The link between the two is based on the growing awareness of the impact of human activities on the environment. The word was minted as a typographical error by the teletype operator transmitting a column by
Frank Worbs
in the
Beaver County Times,
published in Pennsylvania. The column discussed the relationship between economy and ecology. A typo is a typo and nothing was made of the error for a month. But on February 17, 1972, Worbs wrote a follow-up column entitled “New Word Coined” in which he declared
econology
to be a legitimate new word with real-world application to environmental problems.
³

EEYORE.
A pessimistic person and by extension
eeyorish
for gloomy, or pessimistic. Several words and character names coined by
A. A. Milne
(1882–1956)
in the Winnie-the-Pooh series have come into general use. The most prominent example may be the donkey, Eeyore, whose gloominess is notorious in the stories. A typical exchange between Eeyore and Pooh occurs when Pooh says “good morning” to Eeyore, and Eeyore responds, “Good morning, Pooh Bear . . . If it
is
a good morning . . . Which I doubt.” Eeyorish was added to the
OED
in 2003 along with
muppet
(taken from the children’s TV show
Sesame Street
, to mean a foolish person).

EGGCORN.
Name for the
substitution of a word or phrase for a word or words that sound similar or identical in the speaker’s dialect but that still make sense—e.g.,
old timer’s disease
for
Alzheimer’s disease
,
mute point
for
moot point,
ex-patriot
for
expatriate,
and the author’s favorite
doggy-doggy world
for
dog-eat-dog world
.
Eggcorn
was coined by linguist and coauthor of
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language
Geoffrey Pullum
in 2003 as the soundalike substitution of
acorn
.

EGGHEAD.
A 1918 letter from American author and poet
Carl Sandburg
(1878–1967)
introduced this derogatory term for an intellectual. Sandburg indicated that Chicago newspapermen used the term to refer to highbrow editorial writers out of touch with the common man. In the 1950s, the word surged in popularity when Democrat Adlai Stevenson was branded with the term in his unsuccessful presidential campaigns.

EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES.
A metaphor for human folly from the name of a fairy tale by Danish author
Hans Christian Andersen
(1805–1875) about two weavers who promise their emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those who are unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. Since no one wanted to admit he could not see the clothes and admit to being a fool, the clothes were praised. But when the emperor parades before a child in his new clothes, the child cries out, “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!”

EPHEMERALIZATION.
The 1960 creation of
R. Buckminster Fuller
for doing more with less, specifically referring to machinery becoming smaller and lighter over time.

EREWHON.
Title of a
Samuel Butler
(1835–1902) novel published anonymously in 1872. The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist. In the novel, it is not revealed in which part of the world Erewhon is, but it is clear that it is a fictional country. Butler meant the title to be read as the word
nowhere
backward even though the letters
h
and
w
are transposed; therefore Erewhon is an anagram of
nowhere
.
In the preface to the first edition of his book, Butler specified:
“The author wishes it to be understood that Erewhon is pronounced as a word of three syllables, all short—thus, E-re-whon.”
Nevertheless, the word is occasionally pronounced with two syllables as “air – one.”