Brave New Words

Language, of course, is an ever-evolving thing, with words added to the lexicon of life every day. Three such recent examples are below:

“Sharted” is a combination of “shit” and “farted”. While the concept is nothing new and “follow-through” has been around for yonks, it’s a neat way of describing a singular bodily action and is particularly applicable to small babies, of which we currently have one fantastic example. As in, “Oh dear, it sounded she’s sharted again, and her nappy’s only just been changed.”

The Apprentice last night included “Ideation” which, like “sharted” seemed to be a mashing together of two words, in this case “idea” and “creation”. I initially thought this was another highly objectionable example of marketing wankspeak, but a swift look online reveals the word to have been around for about 200 years (where to “ideate” is to undertake the process of forming ideas). Live and learn.

Another, less valid word was on Wedding Stories, where some hapless snaggle-toothed individual was seen tippy-tappying away on Ebay in an effort to obtain cheap and cheerful second-hand items for her forthcoming nuptials, one such search being for “wedding decoratations”. The programme never revealed what the search results were, but the irony is that if one person can mis-spell it, then so can others, so she probably got an abundance of unbidded-for stuff with which to decoratate her reception. Happy days…