Trade-Name Irradiations

T HE NEED for new names for new products, gadgets, mechanical inventions, fabrics, drugs, and the like was never greater than now. That the names be novel and that they catch the attention are, of course, primary desiderata. Patterns of word creation establish themselves, and some are likely to be worked overhard. A taking affix may develop surprisingly. Who, for example, would have prophesied the multiple extensions of the -teria of cafeteria, getting its start in the twenties, and of the -burger of hamburger, starting somewhat later? Or of the -torium of auditorium, which has fathered such names for institutions and shops as gymtorium, sportatorium, bathatorium, slimmitorium, pantatorium? In the language of advertising are to be found extensions, abridgments, manipulated spellings, distortions, hyphenations, novel employment or discarding of capital letters, and now and then neologisms that are arbitrary in toto. New affixes appear alongside the old and occasionally have a curious heyday. Just now two verbal novelties, one a noun and its adjective and one a connective, are in the foreground and are perhaps worth recording while they establish themselves, if they do, for future utilization

Linguistics · Lexicography and Language Studies · Linguistics and language evolution · History · Philosophy