A.Word.A.Day -- AWADmail Issue 1155

Over the years I have coined two words that I believe fill specific needs. One describes the half-sister of my daughter. She is my daughter-in-half. The other is the acronym COCWIA (kok-WEE-uh), a term that can be used in response to receiving news when the receiver isn’t certain whether that news is favorable or otherwise. Example: Other person: “Fred and I are getting a divorce.” Me: “COCWIA.” (It stands for “Congratulations or condolences, whichever is appropriate.”)
-Chris J. Strolin, Belleville, Illinois (oedilf yahoo.com)

My mother coined the word flinker for the TV remote. I have used it since the early 70s.
-Chris Sullivan, Ottawa, Canada (chris sullivanweb.me)

I coined a word. At least I think I did. When something makes me both sad and angry at the same time, I call it sangry.
-Wendy Adler Levin, Brooklyn, New York (speketome1510 aol.com)

In 1985 I coined the word copyleft, which is now in many dictionaries. It refers to a technique of using copyright law for the opposite of its usual purpose. Copyright was designed for the right-wing purpose of controlling all use of any version of a work. Copyleft flips it over, by giving every user of every version of a particular work the right to redistribute copies with or without modifications. And these rights must propagate to modified versions too.
-Dr. Richard Stallman, Boston, Massachusetts (rms gnu.org)

Don’t forget about contraduction. The book Contraduction, introducing a new word to philosophy, will be out Sep 3. Contraduction is an act of inverting reality. For example, to claim that conditions like gravity and other constants were perfectly tuned for us is a contraduction. In reality, it’s we who evolved to fit them.
It’s too early to tell if the word will catch on, but it is indeed new, and endorsed by many thinkers ... including Anu Garg!
-Dan Barker, Madison, Wisconsin (dbarker ffrf.org)

When my late wife would ask if I had taken care of our elderly pets, I would report they had been fed and given their medicine, using the word fedicated (fed + medicated.)
-Alex Rounds, Urbana, Illinois (alexrounds flatcat.us)

I like to have a funky home, but if someone straight or official has to come into my place, I de-weird where I live by taking down far-out art that could offend someone with more middle-of-the-road sensibilities!
-Melissa Silva, Massachusetts (meldsilva44 gmail.com)

When my native-Shanghai wife first came to America, she had many English language challenges. Sometimes the words she spoke were ingenious and fun. She called our cooking appliance a stoven, which I thought was much better than a stovetop and oven or range. Don’t you think?
-Andrew Kokas, Clarklake, Michigan (akokas comcast.net)

I put this into the Urban Dictionary: Anticipiss -- The feeling one gets that one must urinate, starting very weakly yet increasing tremendously the nearer one approaches a bathroom, usually experienced when in one’s car: the nearer one’s driveway, the more urgent, and the nearer the bathroom, more urgent still.
My anticipiss is so strong that I’m not sure I can make it since I’m not wearing Depends.
-Art Scotti, Marcellus, New York (arthur.scotti gmail.com)

Several years ago, I coined a word in a book review. I was casting about for a female equivalent for phallocentric, only to discover that the word doesn’t exist, so I coined vaginalogocentric, expecting the editor to strike it out, but mine is still the only listing on Google.
“Once the reader has waded through the vaginalogocentric jargon of Sandra M. Gilbert’s argument ad feminam in the introduction and the author’s preface and prologue, this book becomes very interesting.” (ref)
-Catherine Campbell, Nevada, Missouri (catherine.campbell53 yahoo.com)

I was once a patentability analyst. Whenever I had to study a patent, I first studied the drawings and pictures in the document. A colleague, however, never looked at them because they didn’t mean anything to her and she didn’t understand them. So, I coined the word dyspixia for the condition and dyspixic on the pattern of dyslexia and dyslexic. Later I found another person had used the word in a forum. I jocularly wrote to him to “claim” my copyright.
-Anil Jagalur, Bangalore, India (jagalur gmail.com)

Brumalities: Formalities carried out for a coming winter season, like gathering coals, buying woollens, stocking up on provisions, and the like; A portmanteau of brumal and formalities.
-Suhail Khan, Kupwara, India (snkhan1007 gmail.com)

I was fiddling around trying to get the last few petits pois off my plate when one fell off my fork, bounced off the plate, hit the floor running, and disappeared under the couch. I said out loud, “Oh, an escapea!”
-Tony Flavell, Vancouver, Canada (toneyvr gmail.com)

I coined honkasec, the time between when a light turns green in NYC and the car behind honks at you to get moving.
-Kate McLeod, New York, New York (girldriverusa gmail.com)

I have appropriated the word napkin to mean a little nap. Now all my family uses it.
-Judah Rosner, Washington, DC (jlr4206 gmail.com)

In late 2011 I coined the word prehab. I had a hip replacement scheduled in early 2012. I knew that, after surgery, I would need rehab with physical therapists. As a doctor, I also knew that my rehab would be easier if I built strength and stamina before surgery.
So I did what I called prehab, with Pilates classes and exercise at home. The Pilates instructors had never heard the term prehab. Since I coined it, I’ve seen the word pop up here and there.
-Merilee D. Karr, MD, MFA, Portland, Oregon (merilee merileedeborahkarr.com)

When our son Kyle was 10, we visited a fast-food restaurant that offered free refills on drinks. Kyle thought that these should be called freefills. Seems like the perfect word to me.
-Buck Bragg, Asheville, North Carolina (buck.bragg gmail.com)

I love to make up words. Today’s is groan-up, as an adult.
-Liz Kurtz, Eugene, Oregon (lizhkurtz gmail.com)

While I mash words together all the time for fun, the one I think is worthy of coinage is legumatician, which means a bean-counter (accountant).
-Roger Grow, Vermont (rogersingvt gmail.com)

When I was a kid, my friends said I had listiomyelitis because I would compulsively make lists about everything, but I would also put something on a list, just to cross it off.
-Debbi Lawson, Clinton, Maryland (DebbiLawson1 outlook.com)

I coined dequire. We spend much of our lives acquiring stuff. But at a certain age we need to rid our lives of years of accumulation. It is time to dequire. Whether through estate sales, tag sales, donations, or simply dropping stuff off at a transfer station. So as not to leave a mess for the kids to clean up.
-David Clement, Connecticut (dclement534 gmail.com)

In Spanish the word for hugs is abrazos and the word for kisses is besos. When writing in Spanish to a girlfriend long ago, I would sign my emails with abrezos meaning “hugs and kisses”.
-Dr. James L. Castner, Archer, Florida (jameslcastner gmail.com)

In your call for newly coined words, you note that often people independently invent the same word. In the knitting world, the term unvent is commonly used in such cases, when knitters independently invent “new” techniques. This term acknowledges both the achievement of the latest inventor and the fact that others have used the technique before.
The term is usually attributed to Elizabeth Zimmermann, the matriarch of modern knitting, who most famously invented, or unvented, the EPS (Elizabeth Percentage System) for knitting sweaters. Here is her lyrical commentary on unvention:

One un-vents something; one unearths it; one digs it up, one runs it down in whatever recesses of the eternal consciousness it has gone to ground. I very much doubt if anything is really new when one works in the prehistoric medium of wool with needles. The products of science and technology may be new, and some of them are quite horrid, but knitting? In knitting there are ancient possibilities; the earth is enriched with the dust of the millions of knitters who have held wool and needles since the beginning of sheep. Seamless sweaters and one-row buttonholes; knitted hems and phoney seams -- it is unthinkable that these have, in mankind’s history, remained undiscovered and unknitted. One likes to believe that there is memory in the fingers; memory undeveloped, but still alive.
Elizabeth Zimmermann; Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac; 1981

-Liz Bass, Manhasset, New York (elizabethbass att.net)

Took your advice and googled for prior invention of my coined word. Fascish existed, but pronounced fash-ISH, meaning fascist-like, I guess. My reinvention is fascish, pronounced fash-EESH, the favorite mind-altering toke of the MAGA crowd. It pollutes the air at all Trump rallies.
-Hunter Heath, Zionsville, Indiana (calciophile gmail.com)