Coining Madness

I truly do appreciate that one of the strengths of the English language is its flexibility. Being a sponge of a language, it isn't shy about appropriating words or phrases from other languages, when they are particularly tasty. Nor does it have a problem with creating new words, if it doesn't already have one that suits. 

However, I don't think that this erases the line between temporary slang and genuine additions to the language.  And I don't think that people should be allowed to "create" new words, just because they are lazy or yearn for some weird kind of immortality.  Such as the case that I ran into last night. As part of changes that we are making to the production of documentation, I'm reading up on taxonomy in language. 

The author talks about the challenge of being precise without creating too much detail.  The example he uses is spork.  If you've created a category for "fork" and a category for "spoon", what do you do with a spork? Create yet another category? That won't work, eventually you'll have a category for every word! Apparently, some genius decided that we needed a word to describe words that straddle categories and he coined "intertwingled".

Really?

What's wrong with entwine, blend, intermingle, conflate, commingle, mix, fuse, coalesce, meld, combine, merge and however many I know I'm missing?

I've already forgotten the name of the intertwingled coin-er, but I will remember his existence for a long time to come.  Not as a language theory genius, but as a twit.  Do you think he'd be satisfied either way?