Name: Go ahead, make up new words!
Uploaded: 2014-12-22T17:47:13Z
Duration: 6 min 42 s
Description: In this fun, short talk from TEDYouth, lexicographer Erin McKean encourages — nay, cheerleads — her audience to create new words when the existing ones won’t quite do. She lists out 6 ways to make new words in English, from compounding to “verbing,” in order to make language better at expressing what we mean, and to create more ways for us to understand one another.

Here I say the wug test was created by Jean Berko Gleason at Boston College, but it was actually Boston University.

In this fun, short talk from TEDYouth, lexicographer Erin McKean encourages — nay, cheerleads — her audience to create new words when the existing ones won’t quite do. She lists out 6 ways to make new words in English, from compounding to “verbing,” in order to make language better at expressing what we mean, and to create more ways for us to understand one another.

Erin McKean: Go ahead, make up new words!

Go ahead, make up new words!

Language evolves through consensus; what's deemed a word is the collective choice of its speakers, echoing a shared understanding.

"Wug test" showcases innate grammar; we unconsciously know language rules, demonstrating our brains' natural linguistic wiring.

Inventing words is an act of creativity, akin to art or science, challenging the idea that linguistic innovation should have limits.