Question
What are the best words or phrases you've coined or believe you did?
Answer
I coin a lot of words/phrases in my writing. It's pretty much my main schtick, and I get a big kick out of it. I've done it enough that I am thinking of putting up a glossary page on my blog.
My personal favorite (got some modest popularity within my D-list sphere of influence) is "Gollumized" (destroyed and turned subhuman through too much consumerism and too little creative production). The origin is "Gollum" from LOTR.
It's even been thrown back at me (a friend recently exclaimed, "You're such a gollum!" to call out one of my own consumerist failings).
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/0...
The worst is probably "Developeronomics." I regretted it the moment I hit "publish" but it was too late to change. The post got slashdotted and the term has been fairly popular in a temporary, faddish way. I don't think it will survive very long and got me a few interesting calls/emails and a speaking gig. Simply too clumsy and unpronounceable to be a stable meme. So I am abandoning it like an unwanted baby...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/venk...
I've hard a lot more success with phrases and with mischievous overloading of existing terms, but since the question asked specifically about new words, I'll leave it at these two examples.
My personal favorite (got some modest popularity within my D-list sphere of influence) is "Gollumized" (destroyed and turned subhuman through too much consumerism and too little creative production). The origin is "Gollum" from LOTR.
It's even been thrown back at me (a friend recently exclaimed, "You're such a gollum!" to call out one of my own consumerist failings).
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/0...
The worst is probably "Developeronomics." I regretted it the moment I hit "publish" but it was too late to change. The post got slashdotted and the term has been fairly popular in a temporary, faddish way. I don't think it will survive very long and got me a few interesting calls/emails and a speaking gig. Simply too clumsy and unpronounceable to be a stable meme. So I am abandoning it like an unwanted baby...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/venk...
I've hard a lot more success with phrases and with mischievous overloading of existing terms, but since the question asked specifically about new words, I'll leave it at these two examples.