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I'm a lexicographer.

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I make dictionaries.

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And my job as a lexicographer

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is to try to put all the words possible 
into the dictionary.

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My job is not to decide what a word is;
that is your job.

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Everybody who speaks English 
decides together

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what's a word and what's not a word.

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Every language is just a group of people
who agree to understand each other.

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Now, sometimes when people are trying 
to decide whether a word is good or bad,

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they don't really have a good reason.

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So they say something like,
"Because grammar!"

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(Laughter)

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I don't actually really care about grammar
too much -- don't tell anybody.

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But the word "grammar," actually,
there are two kinds of grammar.

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There's the kind of grammar
that lives inside your brain,

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and if you're a native 
speaker of a language

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or a good speaker of a language,

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it's the unconscious rules that you follow
when you speak that language.

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And this is what you learn when
you learn a language as a child.

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And here's an example:

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This is a wug, right?

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It's a wug.

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Now there is another one.

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There are two of these.

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There are two ...

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Audience: Wugs.

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Erin McKean: Exactly! You know 
how to make the plural of wug.

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That rule lives in your brain.

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You never had to be taught this rule, 
you just understand it.

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This is an experiment that was invented
by a professor at [Boston University]

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named Jean Berko Gleason back in 1958.

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So we've been talking about this 
for a long time.

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Now, these kinds of natural rules 
that exist in your brain,

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they're not like traffic laws,
they're more like laws of nature.

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And nobody has to remind you to obey 
a law of nature, right?

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When you leave the house in the morning, 
your mom doesn't say,

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"Hey, honey, I think
it's going to be cold, take a hoodie,

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don't forget to obey the law of gravity."

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Nobody says this.

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Now, there are other rules that are more
about manners than they are about nature.

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So you can think of a word as like a hat.

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Once you know how hats work,

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nobody has to tell you, 
"Don't wear hats on your feet."

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What they have to tell you is, 
"Can you wear hats inside?


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Who gets to wear a hat?

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What are the kinds of hats
you get to wear?"

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Those are more of the second kind 
of grammar,


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which linguists often call usage, 
as opposed to grammar.

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Now, sometimes people use this kind of 
rules-based grammar

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to discourage people from making up words.

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And I think that is, well, stupid.

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So, for example, 
people are always telling you,

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"Be creative, make new music, do art, 
invent things, science and technology."

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But when it comes to 
words, they're like,

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"Don't! No. Creativity stops right here,
whippersnappers. Give it a rest."

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(Laughter)

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But that makes no sense to me.

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Words are great.
We should have more of them.

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I want you to make
as many new words as possible.

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And I'm going to tell you six ways that
you can use to make new words in English.

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The first way is the simplest way.

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Basically, steal them from other 
languages.

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["Go rob other people"]
(Laughter)

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Linguists call this borrowing,

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but we never give the words back ,
so I'm just going to be honest

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and call it stealing.

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We usually take words for things 
that we like, like delicious food.

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We took "kumquat" from Chinese,
we took "caramel" from French.

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We also take words 
for cool things like "ninja," right?

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We took that from Japanese,

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which is kind of a cool trick because 
ninjas are hard to steal from.

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(Laughter)

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So another way that you 
can make words in English

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is by squishing two 
other English words together.

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This is called compounding.

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Words in English are like Lego:

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If you use enough force, 
you can put any two of them together.

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(Laughter)

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We do this all the time in English:

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Words like "heartbroken," "bookworm," 
"sandcastle" all are compounds.

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So go ahead and make words like
"duckface," just don't make duckface.

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(Laughter)

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Another way that you can make words 
in English is kind of like compounding,

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but instead you use so much force
when you squish the words together

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that some parts fall off.

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So these are blend words, 


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like "brunch" is a blend 
of "breakfast" and "lunch."

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"Motel" is a blend of "motor" and "hotel."

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Who here knew that "motel" 
was a blend word?

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Yeah, that word is so old in English

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that lots of people don't know that 
there are parts missing.

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"Edutainment" is a blend 
of "education" and "entertainment."

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And of course, "electrocute" is a
blend of "electric" and "execute."

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(Laughter)

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You can also make words
by changing how they operate.

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This is called functional shift.

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You take a word that acts 
as one part of speech,

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and you change it into another 
part of speech.

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Okay, who here knew that "friend"
hasn't always been a verb?

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"Friend" used to be noun 
and then we verbed it.

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Almost any word in English can be verbed.

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You can also take adjectives 
and make them into nouns.

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"Commercial" used to be an adjective 
and now it's a noun.

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And of course, you can "green" things.

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Another way to make words
in English is back-formation.

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You can take a word and you can
kind of squish it down a little bit.

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So for example, in English we had the word
"editor" before we had the word "edit."

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"Edit" was formed from "editor."

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Sometimes these back-formations 
sound a little silly:

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Bulldozers bulldoze, butlers butle 
and burglers burgle.

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(Laughter)

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Another way to make words in English

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is to take the first letters of something
and squish them together.

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So National Aeronautics and Space 
Administration becomes NASA.

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And of course you can do this 
with anything, OMG!

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So it doesn't matter how silly 
the words are.

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They can be really good words of English.

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"Absquatulate" is a perfectly 
good word of English.

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"Mugwump" is a perfectly 
good word of English.

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So the words don't have have to sound 
normal, they can sound really silly.

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Why should you make words?

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You should make words because every word

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is a chance to express your idea and get 
your meaning across.

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And new words grab people's attention.

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They get people to focus on what 
you're saying

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and that gives you a better chance to get 
your meaning across.

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A lot of people 
on this stage today have said,

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"In the future, you can do this,

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you can help with this, you can 
help us explore, you can help us invent."

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You can make a new word right now.

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English has no age limit.

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Go ahead, start making words today,

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send them to me, and I will put them 
in my online dictionary word bank.

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Thank you so much.

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(Applause)