Schadenfreude might not belong on this list, in that it seems to have changed from a word that requires explanation to a word that is widely used and commonly understood. It first appears in English print in 1842, in a book on psychology by a man with the enviable name of Samuel Simon Schmucker: “what the Germans term schadenfreude, a malicious pleasure in the misfortune or sufferings of others.” For a number of decades the word was only used in reference to German vocabulary, but by the end of the 19th century it had become more or less naturalized (or at least was awarded a green card), and it simply used as an English word. Profile on This lovely word, so useful for describing the human condition, is taken directly from the German. This is obviously true, but what is also obviously true is that sometimes this is how a word enters the language.ĭefinition: enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others Some purists might well say that this doesn’t make them any more real, and that they still are just made-up. However, something peculiar has been happening to some of Koenig’s words: they are now cropping up in online lists of words that people particularly enjoy, and are so inching toward some sort of realness. These words are obviously not "real" words, at least not in the sense that many people think of words are being real they are intentional creations. Vellichor is one such word, and Koenig’s site has hundreds of others, such as zenosyne (the sense that time keeps going faster), liberosis (the desire to care less about things), and sonder (the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own). The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, by John Koenig, is an ongoing collection of invented words, each representing an attempt to find a word to fit a concept for which our vocabulary is currently lacking. Vellichor is now one of my favorite words.” The recent use of the word to refer to "government by idiots" is showing fairly wide usage, and if it remains healthy it stands a good chance of joining other political insults defined in reference books soon.ĭefinition: the strange wistfulness of used bookstores Very few dictionaries have taken the step of including either of these uses of idiocracy, and the earlier one seems to be in little danger of becoming suddenly popular. This all changed in 2006, with the release of Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, a film in which a man awakens five hundred years in the future and discovers that the world is ruled by…well, by idiots. However, this use of the word (and pretty much all others for the next 350 years) referred to government by self-rule (the idio- in this word is the same one that we find in words such as idiosyncratic). It can be found as far back as 1654, in Seth Ward's Vindiciæ academiarum. Idiocracy is not a particularly new word, although it has picked up a new meaning recently.
“DH's favorite word is "Idiocracy" - it defines the A.I. Update: This word was added in January 2021. Like the spurious cromulent, many of these words are not even entered in dictionaries, as they seem to only be trotted out as examples of one's extensive vocabulary.Įmbiggen, by the way, was also said to have been created for this episode, although it had already been used in an issue of Notes and Queries from 1884, meaning "to make great." Both cromulent and embiggen have been quite successful, and stand an excellent chance of one day being used in a manner that does not slyly reference the television show that they came from. One famous example is cromulent, which was coined specifically for the 1996 episode “Lisa the Iconoclast." In reference to one character’s questioning of the use of embiggen, another says “it’s a perfectly cromulent word.” Despite being a complete fabrication, the word caught on, and seems to be made for the internet-where the most popular "favorite words" are rarely used for their intended purposes. Post on It is safe to say that The Simpsons has contributed a great deal to the English language. “Are you a word geek like me? 8) So any way, my new favorite word is cromulent…It caught my attention because I'm a Conan fan, and I thought it was Crom-related. Definition: uncertain, possibly "acceptable," or "fine"
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