Showing posts with label coined words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coined words. Show all posts

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Making Up New Words

I love new words, even when they don't deserve to be standard usage. It's just fun.

Here's one that I *think* is an error in editing, from the beauty copy today.



squoval-shaped nails


I *think* the editor was trying to change "square" to "oval" (or vice versa) and didn't realize that she'd left letters in. But she also pushes the envelope a little (and the best way to push it a little is to push it more, and than dial back), so maybe she MEANT it to be square/oval?

I'll ask her. Meanwhile, I love it. It even SOUNDS fun.


Follow-up: It's an industry term. So I'm going to lobby for this:

"squoval"
nails

to let the quotes do one of their *real* jobs, which is to indicate jargon.



Some background:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squoval