The Neologism Project

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Something Amanda Baggs said got me thinking. She said that it wasn't that she couldn't find the right words to explain something yet; it was that the right words didn't exist.

I have experience with being unable to describe my inner life, but until then, I had thought "I don't have the words." Conceivably, I thought my experiences could be describable, just not with my vocabulary.

Then I was reading... various posts here, which seem to have the same problem brewing under the surface.

The solution presents itself to me in one prominent characteristic of Asperger's Syndrome: the creation of neologisms. A neologism is a word an individual coins. I've coined a handful. Others coin them more often.

So I think we should create the language for our experiences.

I see this as being a very easy, if long, five-step process, in which not every step needs to be done by the same person:

1. Identify an experience for which there isn't a word (or for which there is a word, but it's inherently biased or inadequate)
2. Describe it, even if it takes a page. This may require a post along the lines of "Anybody else experience this [one-sentence inadequate description]?" and a response along the lines of "you mean [ten-page description]?" or even a link to a thread on the topic
3. Come up with a word
4. Use it in everyday conversation, referring back here or explaining it when necessary
5. Sticky this thread, assuming it takes off

Sound like a good idea? If so... somebody else start. I have experiences for which I've been substituting the names of colors, but I don't want this post to get too long. Anyway, this shouldn't require too much of an effort on anyone's part.

I understand the desire but I don't think a thread or even a deliberate project is the way to go about it. That's not how new words enter the language. New words enter the language by being used by the person who coins them, misunderstood by the listeners (most likely), explained, then adopted by some of the listeners. The best ones spread as a meme. "Neurotypical" and "neurodiverse" came into common use this way (at least on WP and related blogs).

If you want a word to spread, don't put it in a stickied thread. Use it. Use it in every thread where it applies (as people now do with "neurotypical" and "neurodiverse".) This is the way words spread.

"International" was a neologism once...

Maximize and minimize were also coined by the same person, Jeremy Bentham, a very strange man indeed.

He came up with a whole load others, that didn't stick - thousands Bentham's Neologisms

You probably have never heard of him - some people think he was one of the Greatest.

i started my own language when i was 12 or so. you can find a lot of them on the internet now.
the term preferred is "conlanging". i wouldn't be surprised if many of them were aut-spectrum (cf Rick Harrison's poll). but it's not easy to get other people to learn strange words (not to mention grammars)...

there's one in particular i think useful here, Lojban. it's designed to be syntactically unambiguous. and it has words for all the metalinguistic stuff that we have trouble with among English speakers. a person could communicate every part of that information in Lojban using the words alone.

m.

ran across this

http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=340

yeah, it makes me think of something, we should have a word for that sudden moment when the world around you seems to look like you're seeing it through extremely fresh clean air, as opposed to the kind of "aquarium"feeling i have most of the time and only remember when it goes away.
that surely must happen to other people too. It's generally very brief, and if i marvel on it too much it all goes back to blurry.
anyone relate or have a word for it?

@ediself, I've never felt that way, but that's probably a really good one.

Alright, I'll try my hands at some of Amanda's list. I haven't experienced all of them, though. I'm just tossing out ideas where words seem to come.

Splinter trivia?



Anti-communicator? Communication-blocker? Communication-block? (That almost sounds like a cube that facilitates communication, though, making it the opposite of a good idea...) Uncommunicator? Communinterferer? (Okay, now THAT is stupid.) Loneliness Enforcer?



Island of empathy?



There's already a word for this: duckspeak. Credit goes to George Orwell.

And from Elmindreda's list,



Featherpain?

we need a new word for what tsa/gummint et. al. does.
example: TSA will not allow guns on planes. fine.
but also prohibited is a t-shirt depicting a gun,a drawing of a gun, etc.
or schools expelling students for possession of aspirin, biting a piece out of a slice of toast to make it vaguely gun-shaped, etc.
the reason for this apparent hyper-stupidity(the word "stupid" just doesn't cover this sort of crappola) is there is a government rule set, generated by a committee of the clueless, that enforces this sort of mindlessness.
...
I have used the TLA of "G.M.S." (for "government mandated stupidity") to describe this kind of non-thought.
But that's not catchy or meme-worthy enough. It lacks the quality I call "bite". and It needs to be nastified.

how 'bout SFBS- "sh!t-for-brains syndrome"?
Maybe"duckthink"? via Orwells term "duckspeak"?
...

I'm serious: we must wordify and clarify this kind of crappistry if we are to successfully fight this pernicious creeping peril to our reason before it becomes the default setting' -if it hasn't already.

duckthink is good, but will fly over the heads of most NTs (aka "the marching morons").

...
Yah, I gots lotsa bitter.


out of milk though.