Go ahead, make up new words!
2,198,019 views | Erin McKean • TEDYouth 2014
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.
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.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.
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About the speaker
As the co-founder of Reverb Technologies, the maker of the online dictionary Wordnik, Erin McKean is reshaping how we interact with language itself.
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This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.
Participate in Wordnik. Help build the world's largest online dictionary.