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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 [br]into the dictionary.

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

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Everybody who speaks English [br]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[br]who agree to understand each other.

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Now, sometimes when people are trying [br]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,[br]"Because grammar!"

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(Laughter)

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

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

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

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and if you're a native [br]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[br]when you speak that language.

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And this is what you learn when[br]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 [br]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, [br]you just understand it.

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This is an experiment that was invented[br]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 [br]for a long time.

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

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

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

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

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"Hey, honey, I think[br]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[br]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, [br]"Don't wear hats on your feet."

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

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Who gets to wear a hat?

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

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Those are more of the second kind [br]of grammar,[br]

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which linguists often call usage, [br]as opposed to grammar.

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Now, sometimes people use this kind of [br]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, [br]people are always telling you,

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

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But when it comes to [br]words, they're like,

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"Don't! No. Creativity stops right here,[br]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.[br]We should have more of them.

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I want you to make[br]as many new words as possible.

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And I'm going to tell you six ways that[br]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 [br]languages.

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["Go rob other people"][br](Laughter)

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Linguists call this borrowing,

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but we never give the words back ,[br]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 [br]that we like, like delicious food.

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We took "kumquat" from Chinese,[br]we took "caramel" from French.

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We also take words [br]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 [br]ninjas are hard to steal from.

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(Laughter)

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So another way that you [br]can make words in English

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is by squishing two [br]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, [br]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," [br]"sandcastle" all are compounds.

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

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(Laughter)

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

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

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that some parts fall off.

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So these are blend words, [br]

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like "brunch" is a blend [br]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" [br]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 [br]there are parts missing.

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"Edutainment" is a blend [br]of "education" and "entertainment."

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

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(Laughter)

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You can also make words[br]by changing how they operate.

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This is called functional shift.

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

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and you change it into another [br]part of speech.

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

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"Friend" used to be noun [br]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 [br]and make them into nouns.

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"Commercial" used to be an adjective [br]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[br]in English is back-formation.

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

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

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"Edit" was formed from "editor."

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Sometimes these back-formations [br]sound a little silly:

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Bulldozers bulldoze, butlers butle [br]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[br]and squish them together.

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So National Aeronautics and Space [br]Administration becomes NASA.

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

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

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They can be really good words of English.

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"Absquatulate" is a perfectly [br]good word of English.

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"Mugwump" is a perfectly [br]good word of English.

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So the words don't have have to sound [br]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 [br]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 [br]you're saying

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

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A lot of people [br]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 [br]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 [br]in my online dictionary, Wordnik.

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Thank you so much.

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(Applause)