Go ahead, make up new words!

I'm a lexicographer.

I make dictionaries.

And my job as a lexicographer

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

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

Everybody who speaks english

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

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

Now sometimes when people
are trying to decide

if a word is good
or bad,

they don't really
have a good reason.

They say something like,
"Because...grammar!"

(Laughter).

And I don't actually care
about grammar too much.

don't tell anyone

But the word grammar--

actually, there are two
kinds of grammar.

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

If you're a native speaker of a language or
a good speaker of a language,

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

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

Here's an example:

this is a Wug.

Right, it's a Wug.

Now there is another one.

There are two of these.

there are two...

(audience): Wugs.

Exactly! You know how to
make the plural of Wug.

That rule lives
in your brain.

You never had to be
taught this rule

You just understand it.

This is a experiment
that was invented

by a professor at Boston College
named Jean Berko Gleason

back in 1958.

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

now these kinds of natural

rules that exist in your brain

there's not like traffic laws

there more like laws of nature

and nobody has to remind you to obey

a law of nature, right?

when you leave the house in the morning

your mom doesn't say,

"hey honey, it's going to be cold

take a hoodie, don't forget
to obey the law of gravity"

no body says this

laughter

now there are other rules

that are more about manners than they are about nature

so you can think of like

a word is like a hat

once you know how hats work

nobody has to tell you

don't wear hats on your feet

what they have to tell you is

can you wear hats inside

who gets to wear a hat

what are the kinds of hats you get to wear

those are more of the second kind of grammar

that linguists often call usage

as opposed togrammar

now, sometimes people use

this kind of rules-based grammar

to discourage people from

making up words

and i think that is, well, stupid

so for example,

people are always telling you,

"be creative, make music

do art, invent things

science and technology"

but when it comes to words,

they're like

"don't! no. creativity stops right here,

whipper-snappers, give it a rest"

(laughter)

but, that makes no sense to me

words are great

we should have more of them

i want you to make
as many new words as possible

and I'm going to tell you six ways

that you can use to make new words

the first way is the simplest way

basically, steal them from
other languages

(laughter)

linguists call this borrwing

but we never give the words back

so I'm just going to be honest

and call it stealing

we usually take words for things
that we like

like delicious food

we took cumquat from chinese,

we took caramel from french

we also take words for cool things

like ninja, right?

we took that from japanese

which is kind of a cool

trick cause ninjas are hard to steal from

(laugter)

so another way that you can make

words in english is by squishing

two toehr english words together

it's called compounding

words in english are like legos

if you use enough force

you can put any two of them together

we do this all the time in english

words like heartbroken

bookworm, sandcastle

all are compounds

so go ahead and make words

like duck face, just don't make duckface

(laughter)

another way you can make words in english

is kind of like compounding

but instead you use so much force

when you squish the words together

that some parts fall off

so these are blend words

like brunch

is a blend of breakfast and lunch

motel is a blend of

motor and hotel

who here knew that

motel was a blend word?

yeah, that word is like so old

in english that lots of people don't know that

there are parts missing

edutainment is a blend word

of education and entertainment

and of course electrocute

is a blend of electric and execute

you can also make words by chaning

how they operate

this is called functional shift

you take one word that acts

as one part of speech

and you change it into
another part of speech

okay, who here knew that "friend"

hasn't always been a verb?

friend, used to be noun

and then we verbed it

almost any word in english
can be verbed

you can also take adjectives

and make them into nouns

commercial use to be an adjective

and now it's a noun

you can green things

another way to make words

in english is backformation

you can take a word

and kind of squish it down a little bit

so for example, we had the word

editor before we had the word edit

edit was formed from editor

sometimes back-formations sound

a little silly

bulldozers bulldoze

butlers butle

and burglers burgle

(laughter)

another way to make
words in english

is to take the first letters of something

and squish them together

So National Aeronautics and Space Administration

becomes NASA

and of course you can do this

with anything--OMG!

So, it doesn't matter how silly

the words are

they can be really good words of english

absquatulate is a perfectly good word of english

mugwhump is a perfectly goo word of english

words don't have to sound normal

they can sound really silly

why should you make words?

you should make words because every word

is a chance to express your idea

and get your meaning across

and new words grab people's attention

they get people to focus on what you're saying

and that gives you a better chance

to get your meaning across

a lot of people on the stage have said,

"in the future, you can do this

you can help with this

you can help explore

you can help us invent"

you can make a new word now

english has no age limit

go ahead

start making words today

send them to me

and ill put them in my online

dictionary word bank

Thank you so much

(Applause).