Jan 29, 2008

Erasmus to Mirriam

I was trying to read "The Praise of Folly" and came across this statement:

"Whoop Holiday!"

I laughed out loud. I think this phrase should be more common place...speaking of which:

I invented a word, and for the first time, I will be attempting to put it into type. The word? Well, here is some background first...

Many people say that chivalry is dead. You know, men doing courageous and courteous acts for women. Apparently, a lot of guys have been slacking off. Every so often I'll see a girl get the door for a guy, or hear of women being the sole leaders of setting boundaries or goals in dating/marriage relationships. This is a reversal of what was chivalry. Indeed this is "evolrish." More complicated explanation:

One night at Camp Willow Run, I was sitting around with a couple friends talking about chivalry and what not, when I got the idea to record my voice on a PC and reverse it. Thus "chivalry" reversed is "evolrish." Next step, contact the dictionaries. I did.

I submitted the word to Mirriam-Webster, and this is what they said:

"Dear Jon,
Thank you for writing, but I'm afraid we don't accept word submissions"


I thought this was an auto-generated reply, so I tried again and got this:

"Dear Jon,
Thanks for your e-mail. Your coinage is clever, but I'm afraid that
cleverness is not the criterion on which a word is entered into our
dictionaries. As I said in my earlier reply, we don't accept word
submissions."


So turns out that a "word," if that's what they call it, has to be cited thousands, if not millions of times in various publications before it is even considered.

Conclusion: With your help, we'll be rattling off "evolrish" in no time. Please forward this entry to all your famous friends/influential writer-types.

Maybe I understand Erasmus more than I think I do...

1 comment:

Dan Hawkins said...

Whoop Holiday! see you tomorrow.

I always thought that elvorish meant an extremely unpleasant person.