Authorisms: Words Wrought by Writers (10 page)

ERGOTIZE.
To quibble, wrangle. This rare word was coined from the Latin word
ergo
by Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer
Robert Louis Stevenson
(1850–1894).
⁴

ESCAPEE.
Term that makes its debut in 1875
in
Walt Whitman
’s (1819–1892) in his memoirs of the war in which he writes of “Southern Escapees.”

ESCAPIST.
In the sense of seeking distraction from reality, the 1933 creation of British essayist and novelist
C. S. Lewis
(1898–1963).

ESOTERICA.
Term for esoteric objects or products; esoteric details. American poet of light verse
Ogden Nash
(1902–1971) introduced the word in a poem published in 1929 with the line: “The postal authorities of the United States of America Frown on Curiosa, Erotica and Esoterica.”

ET TU, BRUTE.
The last words of Julius Caesar as imagined by
William Shakespeare
. Literally, “And you, Brutus?” Used in a modern context as a sarcastic remark after a minor act of betrayal. It comes from the play
Julius Caesar
and alludes to the moment in 44
BC
when Julius Caesar was murdered by a group of senators led by Marcus Brutus, who had previously been Caesar’s close friend. In the play Caesar begins to fend off the attack but resigns himself to his fate when he sees that his friend has betrayed him:

Caesar: Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?

Casca: Speak, hands, for me! [They stab Caesar.]

Caesar: Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar! [Dies.]

Cinna: Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!
⁵

ETH.
A member of an ethnic group, one who displays ethnicity, a subject for study by ethnographers and ethnologists. Coined by American author and music critic
Herbert Kupferberg
(1918–2001) in his article “Confessions of an Eth” in
Parade
magazine in reaction to the 1,076-page
Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups.

EUCATASTROPHE.
Word coined by English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor
J. R. R. Tolkien
(1892–1973) in 1944 for a sudden or unexpected favorable turn of events, especially in a narrative, such as a surprise happy ending.
Eucatastrophe
was defined by Tolkien in his 1947 essay “On Fairy-Stories” as the “good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn’ . . . it is a sudden and miraculous grace . . . a fleeting glimpse of Joy.” He first wrote of the eucatastrophe in 1944 as “the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears.” In 1947 he expanded on the theme applying it to Christianity: “The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation.”
⁶

EUGENICS.
Coined in 1883 by
Sir Francis Galton
(1822–1911),
British anthropologist and cousin of Charles Darwin, from a Greek word meaning “well born.” Galton perceived it as a moral philosophy to improve humanity by encouraging the ablest and healthiest people to have more children.

EUTHANASIA.
A gentle and easy death and by extension the act of purposely killing or helping someone die. It was first coined by
Francis Bacon
(1561–1626) in 1605 from Greek
eu
(good) and
thanatos
(death).

EUTRAPELIA.
Clean mirth, a jest without a jeer, laughter without scorn, wit without malice, a joke without offense to one’s neighbor. A word fashioned from the Greek by
Anselm Kroll
,
a minister from La Crosse, Wisconsin. He tried valiantly to get others to adopt the concept in a crusade that pushed for the dawning of a new day of humor without barbs. “What a lovely world it will be when its clever folk cease to strive to be satirical or sarcastic, and resolve to be eutrapeleous.”
⁷

EYESORE.
William
Shakespeare
coined this word for something that is offensive to the eye. In
The Taming of the Shrew
, Baptista demanded, “Doff this habit, shame to your estate, an eyesore to our solemn festival!” The term was invoked with proper acknowledgment to its coiner in 2005 when plans were unveiled to build a massive metal shed in Stratford on Avon as a temporary home for the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. It was immediately dubbed the Rusty Shed.
⁸

F

FACTOID
.
Term created by
Norman Mailer
(1923-2007) in 1973 for a piece of information that becomes accepted as a fact, although it is not actually true; or an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print. Mailer wrote in
Marilyn:
“Factoids . . . that is, facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority.”
*

FAQ.
Initialism for
frequently asked questions
, a term in common use on Internet home pages. Attributed to
Eugene N. Miya
, researcher at NASA, who is said to have coined the term in ca
.
1983 documents circulated to Usenet groups on the history of the space program.

FASHIONISTA.
A person employed either in the creation or promotion of high fashion, by extension a devotee of the fashion industry. It can be used sardonically for someone obsessed by fashion. This word was created by writer
Stephen Fried
in his 1993 book
Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia,
referring to a specific group of fashion insiders and devotees. The word is a play on Sandinista
with the
–ista
suffix to imply “following.” In 1999 the word was added to the
OED
and it continued to appear everywhere along with copycat words ending in –ista. Then in April 2013, Fried published a seventeen-paragraph mea culpa in the
Atlantic
entitled, “I Apologize for Inventing the Word ‘Fashionista’ 20 Years Ago,” in which he said of his neologism: “Twenty years ago, I apparently changed language forever. I published a book that unleashed upon an unsuspecting public a single word of terrifying power and controversy . . . I suppose I should apologize to all users of language for my crime against nomenclature. I could also apologize to my wife, a writer and my editor, who lobbied loudly against the word when I invented it—and later came to believe that if we had only copyrighted it, we’d be fabulously wealthy by now.”

Fried’s apologia was published online and immediately attracted comments such as this one from a person named Carson: “This is the longest and most fulsome humble brag I can remember coming upon. It has to go in the humble-brag hall of fame and in the U.S. Dept. of Weights and Measures as the standard by which all future humble-brags are henceforth measured.”
¹

FEMINIST.
One who advocates social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. Created by
Alexander Dumas
in 1873 as feministe and translated as feminist by G. Vandenhoff and identified in his translation as a neologism “The feminists [Vr.feministes] (excuse this neologism) say, with perfectly good intentions, too: All the evil rises from the fact that we will not allow that woman is the equal of man.”
²

FILM NOIR.
First used (and presumably coined) by French critic
Nino Frank
(1904–1988) in 1946 to describe certain American B movies characterized by surreal settings, bold use of black and white, and visual contrast. The term has been clipped and extended to use as the adjective
noir
for anything akin to the films so described—a noir dream, mood, novel, etc.

FIRE-WATER.
Liquor; ardent spirits. A word introduced by
James Fenimore Cooper
in
The Last of the Mohicans
through the observations of the character Natty Bumppo, the wilderness scout known as Pathfinder among the English and as Hawkeye among the Mohicans. “The Dutch landed, and gave my people the
fire
-
water
; they drank until the heavens and the earth seemed to meet, and they foolishly thought they had found the Great Spirit.”

FLIBBERTIGIBBET.
As a verb meaning to gad about frivolously; to play the flibbertigibbet (from the Middle English
flepergebet
)
.
In 1921
John Galsworthy
(1867–1933) turned it into a verb, which netted him a separate entry in the
OED
because he wrote: “His daughter would flibberty-gibbit all over the place like most young women since the War.”

FLOWER POWER.
Slogan created by American poet
Allen Ginsberg
(1926–1997) while encouraging antiwar protesters to embrace nonviolent rebellion. Ginsberg was a poet and one of the people who inspired the sixties counterculture. He was one of the most articulate voices of the beat generation, and his poem “Howl” is considered one of the most influential poems of the post–World War II era.
³

FNORD.
Term first used in
Robert Anton Wilson
’s (1932–2007) trilogy
The Illuminati Papers
to mean a propaganda work used to condition the masses from a very young age to respond with fear and anxiety. Over time the term has come to mean anything out of context that also has a surreal element. Fnords find comfort in offbeat web pages and places like the
Urban Dictionary
where definitions abound. A merciful few examples: