In her column today, Jan Freeman seems to have coined a very useful word: Peeve-ology. From there, we can derivse peeve-ologist. (I could do without the hyphen but it looks odd any way I can see to spell it.) You don't even need to hear what it means — as a proficient speaker of English, you know. And it sure looks like a coinage: Trying all sorts of variants, the only g-hit I can find is to this column. I'm just plain gobsmacked.The column is generally worth reading, too, for showing how hard the particular peeveologists (see? Looks wrong.) are scraping against the rusted bottom of the usage bucket with their primitive tools for 'fresh' material. And, in Safire-esque fashion, they have just harvested the gripes of their readers.
And in a great big bonus, I discovered the image on this website. I knew the guy's name and had seen a couple of the pieces up there, but he's brilliant.
8 comments:
Why not peevology? Isn't this how we were taught to write in school (for example, 'aging', altho ppl write 'ageing' too. That's one of my pet peeves!)?
Hey Mr. Verb -- I love the "enhance your grammar" ad, and just linked to it from the Brainiac blog.
On peeve-ology: I meant it as a nonce word, not a proposed coinage. I hyphenated because it's not now a word, and might have been hard to read without the hyphen ("phraseology," for instance, would be an obvious and incorrect model. But why do we pronounce the e in phraseology, I wonder?).
I suppose it would be spelled peevology if it entered the lexicon. But really, it was just a twist on "peeveblogging," a lovely word I first saw in a 2005 Language Log post by Ben Zimmer. Don't know if he coined it; I'll ask him to enlighten us.
Cheers, Jan (freeman at globe.com)
See, I *thought* I had coined peeveblogging, but now that I check, someone beat me to it by more than a year.
(Sorry, link to my Oct. '05 post here.)
Once again, the comments on the post prove more worth reading than the post itself ...
--Then I guess we're settled on the standard-looking peevology, peevologist. And whatever the coiner's intent, I think we have a successful word!
--The 'enhance your grammar' shtick was spontaneous and done without thought, but I've been thinking since I posted it that there's a model out there somewhere ... we'll see probably not on a blog.
--Completely failed to make the peeveblogging connection, even though I laughed out loud at it on Language Log.
Thanks, folks!
Since I didn't read anything yesterday, I missed my chance to suggest "peevologist", and of course I'm beaten to the punch! Nonetheless, I too love the word.
Oh, I'm seeing a potential 2007 Word of the Year ...
We pronounce phraseology with five syllables because the word began life in the 16C as phrasiology.
Post a Comment