Stranger, February 2014

I was delighted to be invited to take part in the Stranger Collective‘s first publication about Feeding, their practice of taking one day in every ten out to stay inspired. I wrote an article about the ever changing nature of language.

Language is constantly evolving. As human beings we can’t seem to resist playing with the words we use. We combine words to make one new ones like “Bradjelina.” We switch the first letters of two words to create “par carks” and the like. We add prefixes and suffixes to make new words like ‘Facebookable.’ And we create words to describe new things, as evidenced by 2013’s Oxford Dictionery’s word of the year, “selfie”.

As Stephen Fry says, “There’s no right or wrong in language, only usage.” Fascinated by the idea of playing with words, I set out to find as many new, made-up and hacked words as I could. Here they are: