Invention Playlist 4: Invented Words, Part 2

Where do new words come from? Robert and Joe explore...

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today's episode is brought to you by Slack. Before there
was podcast, there was radio. Before that, the stage, and
before that. You get the idea. Things evolve, Technology changes,
and we do too. So now we can listen to
a show wherever, whenever. However, why should our work be
any different? Why can't we work with more freedom, more flexibility,

(00:22):
more choices. That's how Slack works. It's a digital headquarters
that works how you work, and Slack is where the
future works. The NFL Podcast Network is your home for
all things football. Do you love hearing analysis around the
league with a touch of marth? Or maybe you enjoy
breaking down x and os in the college scouting scene.

(00:45):
Do you breathe, sleep, and eat fantasy football? Perhaps you
love the funny headlines that emerge each week. What if
you want in depth news coverage with reporters, or what
if you want to know exactly how each team got
its name? While you're in luck, because the NFL Podcast
Network has a show for everybody. Listen on the I

(01:07):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Jake Calburn, host of deep Cover. Our new season
is about a lawyer who helped the mob run Chicago.
He bribed judges and even helped a hit man walk free,
until one day when he started talking with the FBI

(01:28):
and promised that he could take the mob down. I've
spent the past year trying to figure out why he
flipped and what he was really after. Listen to Deep
Cover on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Invention, a production

(01:48):
of I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Invention. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormack, and we're back
with part two of our discussion of invented words. So
in the last episode we were talking about neologisms that
were deliberately invented and continuing that today, I wanted to
start out with a distinction that we might find useful,

(02:11):
and that's the difference between neologisms and something we might
call protologisms. So a neologism is a newly coined term
that's like still in the process of coming into common use.
You might use the term because you're an early adopter
of it, but it might be the kind of word
that people still need to look up a good bit.
You might need to explain what it means if you

(02:33):
use it in an article, right, it could be very
much be one of those words that you get the
feeling that's that people in in the culture are trying
to make happen, like they're trying to establish it, uh
and and get it into it just the the everyday lexicon. Right,
that that would be what happens. If it's successful, it
just becomes a regular word. You no longer need to
explain it. You don't need to look it up. Most

(02:54):
people just know what it means. Uh. And there are
a few examples of neologisms like I could think of
that have just been come regular words in recent years.
One great example I think is selfie. You know how
this was once a cute new word, and people would
remark on the fact that it was a cute new word,
like the fact that it was a neologism was one

(03:14):
of the main things you know about it. And now
it's just sort of a word, and it's it's weird,
like selfie as a term has this kind of like
viral presence and movement in our in our culture, but
but also the act associated with it seemed to spread
with it. And I wonder to what extent are you
seeing the the act the practice of taking selfie. Is

(03:36):
that pulling the term with it through our culture or
is it the reverse or is it some combination of
the two. I think that certainly the first part that
you're talking. I think there are definitely technological pressures that
made room for this word to intercommon usage. So the
word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in But

(03:57):
the word has a kind of interesting history before that.
I was looking up, but what what was the earliest
use of selfie? Because obviously the act of taking a
photograph of yourself goes way back. People have been doing
that for more than a hundred years, with various contraptions,
even just like timers on cameras and stuff. Um. But
the first documented use of the word selfie appears to

(04:19):
come from the year two thousand two, when an Australian
man posted the following message on an Internet forum on
a news website. Specifically, this was a thread from September
two by a user named Hopie h O p e Y,
and the statement goes like this, UM drunk at a

(04:40):
mates twenty one, I tripped over and landed lip first,
with front teeth coming a close second on a set
of steps. I had a hole about one centimeter long
right through my bottom lip, and sorry about the focus.
It was a selfie. He attaches a photo of his
busted lip for people to cat. The purpose of the

(05:01):
thread was Hopie wondering whether licking his lips would make
his stitches dissolved too early, and he's of course apologizing
for the the the quality of the photographs, saying I
have taken it myself. It is a selfie, right, so
this is before selfie sticks. This is even before you know,
any kind of high quality camera phone. This probably would

(05:21):
have been taken I guess with just like a handheld
digital camera pointed back at his face. But he probably
wouldn't have the ability to see the screen while he's
taking the picture, right, so he just has to guess yeah. Yeah.
So they have been the early days of selfies when
they were, they're even a far more chatic. Though it's
not clear that the author of this post actually intended
to invent a word, or even that he invented a

(05:44):
word at all. It might have been a slang word
in oral circulation before ever being written out in this context,
and it does follow a standard way of inventing slang
words in Australian English, which is adding a hyphen i
ees fixed to a noun, So like a barbecue becomes
a barbie, you know, put another shrimp on the barbie,

(06:06):
or a can of beer becomes a tinny from tin can.
I haven't heard that one in use, but it makes sense.
And by the same lexical logic, a photograph of the
self becomes a selfie, you know, put another duck lips
on the selfie. But if this was a term in
oral slang in Australian English before it appeared in print,
I would say it probably wasn't being used a lot,

(06:27):
because if it was used a lot, you'd expect to
find it written down at this point. Now, of course,
the obvious question about this is like, why does it
then get picked up? Why does selfie become and turn?
How does it create How does this journey even begin
into widespread usage? Yeah, so after two thousand two it
popped up here and there, but it didn't come anywhere
near common usage until around two thousand twelve when it

(06:49):
suddenly got very popular. And this probably had to do
with simultaneous techno cultural trends. You had new generations of
camera phones and of social media a way to take
selfies and then also a place to post them. And
this I think the technology made a pre existing word
suddenly very useful. And it may also, I think, have

(07:11):
played an important psycho social role, Like does having a
word like selfie help defuse potential doubts or worries people
have that they are engaging in narcissistic behavior? Does the
word take an act that you might worry is unsavory
and make it cute like that? There? I was reading

(07:31):
something where the editorial director of the Oxford Dictionaries in said,
specifically of the word, the use of the diminutive i e.
Suffix is notable, as it helps to turn an essentially
narcissistic enterprise into something rather more endearing. But then again,
maybe that's overly harsh. You could look at it the
other way, like, does having a word like selfie make

(07:53):
it easier to disparage an activity that most people do?
You know, It's not like you have to be some
raging arcissists to take a selfie? Does it just like
make it easier to mock people like this? Well? Yeah, yeah,
I can certainly see both sides of the coin there.
And now another thing about the about adding I e.
To to something is it comes from the the the

(08:15):
parental sphere of things and uh. And observing how children
will frequently add that to a word to say, name
is stuffed animal. So if it's a bear, you might
just make it it's Barry Buries the name of the bear. Um.
But you know it's it's a cute see addition to
any word uh. And then that lines up with this
idea that it makes something that could be viewed as

(08:37):
being you know, egotistical or not narcissistic, as being something
that is ultimately cute and harmless. Well, if you say
ah ha ha, I took a selfie, it almost is
self deprecating in a way that defuses the potential for
someone to criticize you as narcissistic for doing it right,
because it is it has this feeling of being silly

(08:59):
as well as you know, silly, harmless, but also maybe
a little bit narcissistic. But but but but it is
acknowledging the inherent narcissism of the act, you know, and
and dismissing it with this air of silliness to it.
Like if we instead of having picking up the words selfie,
if we'd gone with ego bonk, you know, like that

(09:20):
would probably be that's a little bit silly too. But
I can see where people would be a little less
inclined to use that terminology if they were like, well,
I'm really from my meeting. Here's a quick ego bonk. Uh.
You know, quick selfie works a lot better and it's
a little a little catchier. Yeah, Or if we'd called
it like self porn or something. Not going to take

(09:41):
that back, sorry, you know I just said and then
tried to take it back, but you convinced me we
should go down this road. I was saying, another alternative,
what would you call it? You call it something like
mirror porn or something like that's you know, self porn,
because this is now a common suffix. Actually, absolutely, you
hear people talking about what food porn or food port.
I think was the big one that caught hold the idea,

(10:03):
that of of saying that generally photography of food and
a picture of some sort of a very delicious looking
dish or or a baverage or something, uh is therefore
therefore should be compared to pornography, which is a weird
pairing because pornography is incredibly divisive in culture. There it is,

(10:25):
it is, you know, no matter what your personal take
on it, there's a lot of problematic area to consider
when thinking about pornography. Why do we drag it then
in to our consideration of say a very inviting looking lasagna. Well, yeah,
it could be just what we're talking about with this
possibility for selfie, that it's like self deprecating and ironic

(10:46):
in a way that diffuses other people's ability to criticize
you for engaging in it, because it's like you're already
sort of criticizing yourself, right, and I guess you're also
leaning into the idea that into the the excess of
pornography and and therefore diffusing this like food styling, uh
you know, high art photography, food photography interpretations that might

(11:09):
otherwise be uh applied to it. So like if you
were to say, hey, I'm trying out some food photography,
then people would have it would be able to say, well, actually,
i've seen professional food photography, and you know that the
lighting looks weird here. Um, you know that the fizz
isn't right. It's said right. You know, we've all I
think picked up on some of the various tips tricks

(11:30):
and and uh and illusions that are involved in that.
But if you just say, oh, it's just food porn,
that kind of implies that that it's it's less about
the art and more about invoking a visceral response to
the stimuli. Yeah, I think I think you're right there.
So obviously words like this are are great examples of

(11:50):
powerful lexical success stories like selfie of course is though
probably a much greater number of newly coined words just
fall by the wayside, right, you know, Instead, they become
little blips in literary history that you can find in
articles from a certain time period, but they just don't
catch on. They don't become common, right, Like I'm imagining, um,

(12:12):
drunk injured Australian dudes say a lot of interesting things,
but they don't all become parts of the global lexicon, right.
And I think with these examples, the things that fall
by the wayside, it might be useful to think of
them as sort of failed protologisms or protologism Oh man,
I think I'm going back and forth on whether that
that g is hard or soft. We'll we'll just plow

(12:34):
right through um. But the idea of a protologism is
a term introduced by the Russian American UH literary theorist
Mikhail in Epstein, who I believe is still a professor
at Emory University here in Atlanta. Quick question, is the
word protologism a protologism or neologism? I would say at
this point it is a neologism. It was originally a protology. Well,

(12:57):
I guess I have to define them. So a protologism,
in Mikhail Epstein's definition is that it's a word that
is freshly coined and hasn't yet been accepted by many
speakers at all. And the evidence of this would be
that it has not yet been published by anyone other
than the person or group that coined it. And I
imagine they're using the term published here in the broader sense,

(13:19):
So not merely the printed word, but any kind of
media publication in the same way, in the same way
you might treat publishing and publication and say both libel
and slander law. Right, So if you are trying to
make fetch happen, but nobody else is saying fetch, then
it's still a protologism for you. Maybe if you get
a few other people saying fetch, you're starting to make

(13:42):
fetch happen, then it's becoming a neologism. And if it
keeps going and then everybody starts using it, then it's
common use. Not to say it's immortal, not to say
it cannot then die, fall out of fashion, and die again.
But it has at least gained a foothold. Yeah, So
by these standards, I would say protologism was once a protologism,

(14:02):
but it is no longer a protologism, given that you
can find articles out there that are not written by
Michael Epstein himself that are using this term and and
talking about it, so it has probably legitimately graduated to
being a fledgling neologism. It's, you know, still sort of
a young word, a word that not everybody knows, but
it has use outside the the original you know, like

(14:25):
the room where it was created or the person who
tried to coin it. Right, So under this model, the
progression goes like that you've a person or a group
coins a new term or usage, this is a protologism,
and then an expanded subset of the population sort of
tries out the new term for a period of time,
but it's still often needs to be defined or looked
up at this point you would say it's probably a neologism,

(14:46):
and then eventually the term just becomes a word of
common use. It doesn't need to be looked up or
defined in the context in which it is normally used.
I mean, people still have to look up all kinds
of words, but like there there at least will be
contact in which the word is regularly used, and the
people within those contexts all know what it means. I'd
say a good indicator here is when people mostly stop

(15:10):
googling the word for a definition. Imagine there's a new word.
Let's say it is schmirf plex, like in the first
time you hear it as someone says, Hey, come to
my house at eight and bring your smurf smirt plex. Well,
I don't know what a schmirt plex is, and that
sentence gives me no context. I have no idea what
I'm supposed to bring. All I know is a smirt
plex can be brought. But smirt plex could be it

(15:32):
could be an attitude, it could be it could it
could be a physical thing. I don't know. Or someone
might say pizza cutter. Yeah, there's no way to tell.
Someone might say, gosh, I really like Dylan I just
wish he wasn't so smirt plexy again, no idea. That's
depending on how it said. You might be able to
lean into positive or negative interpretations, but beyond that hard

(15:55):
to say. Now if someone says I can't wait to
smirt plex that slice of pizza? Or do would you
smirt plex that slice of pizza? In one goal? Both
of these examples give you far more contact for not
only how it is being used, but then how it
can be reused appropriately. Yeah, or at least semi appropriately,
And then with some course correction, you can wind up
in a place where you were finally using this new

(16:16):
term correctly and passing it virally onto those around you. Well,
this example brings up a great question, which is why
would you bother inventing a new word for something the
side of course to illustrate a point of podcast right, Yes,
now it's clear why you do it there, But what like,
what if you were actually trying to make smirt plex happen?

(16:36):
Is there a reason you would be doing this? Maybe
we should take a break and then when we come
back we can talk about that. Today's episode is brought
to you by Slack. Before there was podcast, there was radio.
Before that, the stage, and before that you get the idea.
Things evolve, technology changes, and we do too. So now

(16:59):
we can listen to a show wherever, whenever. However, why
should our work be any different? Why can't we work
with more freedom, more flexibility, more choices. That's how Slack works.
It's a digital headquarters that works how you work, and
Slack is where the future works. Hi, everybody, I'm Rachel

(17:20):
Banetta and I have my very own podcast called Benched
with Banetta. You kidding make I'm just here so I
won't get You may know me from Game Debut or
Game Day Morning on NFL Network, basically any shows with
the word game in it. Odds are you'll find me
there every week. I'm gonna be talking about all the
things I find fascinating about the NFL, like breaking down games,

(17:41):
questioning Tom Brady, genetic makeup. It's gonna be great. I'm
also doing something that has never been done before. I'm
opening my d M d MS now open. We want
to hear from you fans of the NFL. And when
I woke up this morning, I was feeling pretty dangerous.

(18:03):
Did you commit a misdemeanor crime when you were twelve
and need to tell somebody about it. Please, for the
love of Roger Goodell, do not tell me I can
be held accountable. Listen every Tuesday and join me on
the Bench. Subscribe now and listen to the Bench with
Banetta podcast on the I Heart Radio app, on Apple
podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Colleen with

(18:27):
joined me the host of Eating Will Broke podcast While
I eat a meal created by self made entrepreneurs, influencers
and celebrities over a meal they once eight when they
were broke. Today I have the lovely aj Crimson, the
official Princess of comfin Asia, Kidding and Asia. This is
the professor. We're here on Eating While Broke and today
I'm gonna break down my meal that got me through

(18:49):
a time when I was broken. Listen to Eating Will
Broke on the I Heart Radio app, on Apple podcast
or wherever you get your podcasts. Alright, we're back, all right.
We were asking question of why protologisms are coined. When
somebody comes up with a new word for something on purpose,
Why does that happen? One pretty important reason for coining

(19:11):
into a new term, obviously, I think it comes about
often in science and that's discovering a new process or
proposing a new theory. You're essentially saying, we have new
new content in the world now, and we need a
word to describe it. It's not something that you're already
familiar with that we just wanted a different word for right.
So I found a short article from two thousand eleven

(19:33):
by Andrew Moore, who's the editor in chief of a
journal called bio Essays, and in this article he talks
about the importance of neologisms and the sciences, and he
writes the following. Neologisms or protologisms quote may be considered
seductive in two senses. Firstly, because their creators are seduced

(19:54):
by the ability to express a potentially new scientific concept
in language, a creative act that might stake their claim
as the first to discover something. Secondly, because they often
find favor in the rest of the scientific community for
their conciseness. So here more argues that in the science
is protologisms play multiple roles. The first, of course, is

(20:17):
the straightforward utility, being that they are concise. So like
once Charles Barnes invented the word photosynthesis, it was much
more convenient to just say, photosynthesis, than to say the
process by which autotrophic organisms like plants use energy from
sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars rolls

(20:37):
off the tongue, bet right. You You don't want to
have to explain that process every time you talk about it.
You can just use the one new word now, And
new terms appear in the sciences all the time because
they're indisputably useful. They save time, they save space, and
now now you all have the same words you can
refer to when you're talking about something, so you know
you're talking about the same thing. In addition to that, though,

(21:00):
this thing more is drawing attention to is that they
may play a psychological and social role within their use
in the sciences because the neologism number one, it helps
its coiner secure credit for having identified or proposed the
thing or the hypothesis in question. And I think this
is really truly the case. I think how often on

(21:21):
this very show, historical priority for discoveries and inventions is
in fact a disputed, but we generally end up trying
to give recognition to the first person to use the
same word that everybody still uses for the thing, right, Yeah,
when when someone is calling the particular invention by a

(21:41):
different term, it's sort of implied that they didn't have
it figured out all the way, right even maybe even
if that person was more important in the in the
technological discoveries that led to the to the invention, right right, Yeah,
because ultimately that the spread of the name is tied
with the spread of the idea. I feel like we
have repeatedly run into this inn invention history where you know,

(22:03):
somebody else's work was more pivotal, but ultimately credit goes
to the person who came up with the word. But then,
the other point is that the new word also makes
other scientists more likely to remember and discuss your hypothesis
or discovery because it's easier to talk about when it
has a name, especially if it has a catchy name.

(22:24):
Uh so more rights. He gives an example quote. It
is said that kur at All, in their landmark nineteen
seventy two paper, coined the term apoptosis, and of course
that means um, you know, programmed cell death within the
body uh from the Greek apo meaning from and potosis
meaning falling uh to sound similar to necrosis. It's biological counterpart, though,

(22:49):
at the time, more than a few scientists doubted that
the new word was anything more than an impostor disguising
a specific case of necrosis. It certainly helped to catapult
the concept into new realms of attention and hence testability.
So this is interesting. It's like, if you're a scientist,
you've got a new phenomenon you you think you've discovered,

(23:10):
or a hypothesis you want more people to investigate. If
you come up with a good word for it, other
scientists are more likely to pay attention and start putting
your idea to the test. In a weird way. To
come back to the invention parallels, it's very much like
branding and marketing. Yeah, I think evolution is another great
example of this. You know, like the term uh so

(23:33):
nicely sums up what is otherwise a fairly complicated process
that might not roll off the tongue as easily. Oh
and this was huge at the time, with you know,
Darwin agonizing over what was the best terminology to use
to explain in a simple way his complex ideas, Like
there was the competition within the theory for you know,

(23:56):
was it better to call it natural selection or survival
of the fittest. We have an episode of stuff to
blow your mind where we talk about just like the
fight back and forth between those two terms which sort
of described the same thing, but they have different marketing appeals. Now,
the other side of the coin and all of this
is is that why while the use of words like

(24:17):
this can certainly make it easier to communicate about topics
within the sciences, there's there is evidence to indicate that
it can in some cases make it harder for those
outside the field to understand what's being discussed. Uh. And
then this can often result in a in a lack
of interest in science or politics is another example that's
brought up, or a feeling that one is not good

(24:38):
at science or politics, you know, and so so not
not an idea that you don't understand it and maybe
you can't understand it. Um This according to a fairly
recent study from Hilary Shulman, Assistant Professor of Communication at
the Ohio State University. UM you just came out in
the last couple of months. Basically, the idea is that
the the specialized terms they're looking we're proving to be

(25:01):
a stumbling block to interest. And this, of course just
drives home the importance of science, communication and journalism in
the fields of science and politics, because obviously you need
those specialized terms within science, within the sciences within like
you know, academic discussion of politics, etcetera. But then if
you were going to convey those ideas to the to

(25:23):
the world outside of that in group, you have to
have more generalized terminology. You have to find to have
a way of reaching him, at least until those terms
become so widely used that you don't have to worry
about it, right, I mean, yeah, I mean there are
different considerations in play in these different types of communication.
I mean in scientific publications, Yeah, you would waste a

(25:44):
lot of space if you couldn't use technical jargon. It
just like allows you to say a lot more in
a lot less words. And a lot of this also
comes down to intended audience as well, Like, uh, you know,
the average person on the street is not the intended
reader for an academic neuroscience paper. Likewise, I am not
the the intended listener for a you know, a very

(26:06):
specific nineties dance hall uh reggae tune. You know. Um,
I have to come to it as an outsider, and
now it's possible that you know, years or decades down
the road, some of those terminal terms become part of
the general lexicon in either example. But it's not necessarily
going to be the case. Now, there are examples, clearly,

(26:27):
I think, where what you're talking about, though, where technical
language is just purely counterproductive, or at least counterproductive given
what somebody might state their their aims are, maybe not
to what their actual aims are. Joe, are you saying
that it's time to synergize backwards overflow? I think it's
time to talk a little bit about corporate speak. Yeah.

(26:48):
Uh So, of course, one of my favorite sources of
everyday comedy and shame is corporate speak. This vast, shallow
pool of business neologisms that I sometimes imagine us just
sort of spending our day's ladling over one another, like
so much stagnant pond water. We have to swim through
it from time to time. Yeah, And there was recently
a really excellent article I thought on corporate speak in

(27:10):
New York magazine. It was from February of this year,
so by Molly Young, called garbage language. Why do corporations
speak the way they do? Uh? In my opinion, this
was a very funny and insightful article on on the
phenomena of business buzzwords, which she calls garbage language, taking
the term from a novelist, and by that you might

(27:31):
guess where she stands on the subject. And of course
this kind of language is easy to hate, but that
doesn't make her wrong. She begins with an example of
a corporate word that she encountered at a startup where
she recently worked. Quote. The term was parallel path, and
I first heard it in this sentence, we're waiting on
specs from the San Francisco installation? Can you parallel path

(27:55):
two versions? Translated, this means we're waiting on spec from
the San Francisco installation? Can you make two versions? So,
she summarizes, in other words, to parallel path is to
do two things at once. That's all. But it gives
it this kind of It almost has like a Buddhist
air to it. Right, there's a middle path, parallel paths.

(28:18):
It sounds far more peaceful than can you do twice
as much work as we originally talked about. I'm sure
you know you've probably heard me complain about this on
one of our shows before. This kind of thing is
so annoying to me. And I want to be clear,
I understand the creation of new technical terms in business
when they function the way that words normally do, right
by putting a concise name to something that would otherwise

(28:41):
require more explanation. And I think there are plenty of
perfectly legitimate business terms that are actually useful and they
could be compared to specific technical jargon, and like medicine
or the science is one example. Here might be the
original use of disruption or disruptive. Like. Originally this referred
to a specific thing. It wasn't a new word, but

(29:01):
it was a word that gained a new usage in
a business context. And uh, this was coined by a
guy named Clayton Christensen in the nineties, and it referred
to like an innovation that creates a new market and
a new type of value, displacing old markets and old values.
So an example might be the mass production of automobiles

(29:21):
with the model T, which isn't just a new competitor
and entering a market, but it completely kind of disrupts
the transportation market. It you know, upsets the old like
traditional horse and buggy market. Uh. But even with this word,
which originally I think has a specific meaning and is useful.
I think there's a kind of semantic creep right whereover
time its meaning becomes less specific, and people start using

(29:44):
the word disruption or disruptive to just refer to any
business innovation or maneuver that they want to be seen
as new and dynamic. It's like it's like using the
word like powerful or strong. You see people describing business
things is disruptive that are in no way really changing markets,
are creating new markets. They're just like they're just saying, like,

(30:07):
you know, we're gonna be big, We're gonna spend a
lot of money on this and enter the market. So
some words really have a meaning. But at the same time,
a lot of corporate speak just feels like replacing one
number of normal, understandable words with an equal number or
more of confusing, buzzy technical words. There's no efficiency advantage

(30:28):
in the communication. The communication becomes understandable by a smaller
number of people. Why does this happen well? With regard
to the idea of a parallel path, Young continues quote,
I thought there was something gorgeously and inadvertently candid about
the phrases assumption that a person would ever not be
doing more than one thing at a time in an office.

(30:50):
It's denial that the whole point of having an office
job is to multitask ineffectively instead of single tasking effectively.
Why invent a term for what? But we're already forced
to do? It was, and it's fakery and puffery and
lack of a reason to exist. The perfect corporate neologism
now hold on, One can multitask in and effectively at

(31:11):
home as well as in the office. That's quite true.
I think we can all attest to that. But but no,
I get their point here. As she discusses a bunch
more examples, I think I'd say the article is very
worth reading. And of course she's fairly merciless and hypothesizing
the reasons these terms are often used. For example, she
says that you know, some corporate speak simply reflects a

(31:32):
desire to reimagine exactly what type of work it is
you're doing and what that work means. She says, quote,
our attraction to certain words surely reflects an inner yearning.
Computer metaphors appeal to us because they imply futurism and
hyper efficiency, while the language of self empowerment hides a
deeper anxiety about our relationship to work, a sense that

(31:54):
what we're doing may actually be trivial, that the reward
of free snacks for trual fealty is not an exchange
that benefits us, that none of this was worth going
into student debt for, and that we could be fired
instantly for complaining on Slack about it. And she ends
this uh string of thoughts by saying, empowerment language is
a self marketing asset as much as anything else, a

(32:18):
way of selling our jobs back to ourselves. I think
there's a lot of truth to that. Yeah, Yeah, and
a lot of times it does seem very you know,
intentionally euphemistic, you know, to try to having to explain
describe something in terms that are less damaging or more positive.

(32:39):
Like one example that comes to mind is is something
that's used a lot in business speaking, that's pivoting, you know,
pivoting to video for example, which sounds a lot better
than you know, drastically or recklessly changing course or being
thrown the throne off course by you know, the slightest
change and the winds of of of public demand and business.

(33:01):
That sort of thing, uh, pivot sounds like very geometric
you know, it sounds very precise and premeditated. It's what
your office chair does when you turn to look at
your other monitor. An obvious one about obvious. One of
these euphemisms is just trying to cover up hard truths.
Is like when I don't know all of the buzzy

(33:22):
corporate words for basically firing people. Oh yeah, like, are
you gonna fire people? Are you going to terminate people?
Are you going to engage in a strategic headcount reduction
or a new one? This was one that only came
out recently to my knowledge, employment dislocation, which when I
first read it, I had no idea what it meant.
I was like, oh, I guess they moved their jobs

(33:43):
to another city, Like there's there's a geographic change, and
maybe it wasn't that bad. And I think, now what
we're talking about is just people being terminated. I mean,
but but then again, you know, I look at it
from a business's standpoint and like, no, what business is
going to um, you know, send out a corporate email
and begin by saying, who, we just really had a

(34:05):
blood bath. Everybody. If you're reading this, you're all right,
but you know, no, no, nobody's gonna engage in that
kind of UH, you know, intercommunication about what has happened
or out of communication. You're you're you're gonna want to
put a positive spin on it and leave the negative
interpretations to other folks to do. What do you know?

(34:25):
One of the worst things about this type of language
is as much as I hate it, I sometimes find
myself unconsciously using it in work emails and stuff I
don't mean to, but it infects you. Here's the well,
here's one that we've I've seen used to hear at
work from time to time. What happens when a new
podcast or even an older podcast UH is not living

(34:47):
up to expectations? Well, do you just cancel it? Do
you terminate it? Or do you son set it? That's
one of those great examples. Yeah. Well, one of the
things that Young talks about a lot in the article
is the recent explosion of new ag language in UH
in business, you know, corporate speak, Like there are these

(35:08):
phases where corporate speak in the eighties was infected with
all these Wall Street style terms, and in the nineties
there was a lot of there was a lot of
like war and battle type language in corporate speak, and
for some reason. Now we're in an age of new
age kind of mystical corporate speak. Are they saying things like, alright,

(35:29):
it's time to really open up the chakras on this
new ad campaign. I think there are some things like that.
I think a lot of it probably comes from the
tech world actually, where they're you know, there are a
ton of people in the tech world who are also
plugged into like Eastern religion and stuff, so so I
guess you could say a lot of it is tied
to in these cases to putting a new spin on
something that is familiar. Uh, Like taking something that may

(35:51):
seem even exotic and using that is a way to
recast something that is for far more ordinary. Yeah, I
think there there's several all reasons we can come away
with here why we often see the introduction of neologisms
in the corporate world. One is to sort of reimagine
or put a new psychological spin on what it is
you're doing that you know, makes it feel maybe more spiritual,

(36:14):
or makes it feel more combative, or something whatever it
is that gets you amped up. Another is to be euphemistic,
to like to take hard truths and make them sound
like something different than they are. And then I would
say there is another one, which is just a desire
to sound professional, like there's this idea that, okay, where

(36:35):
are people definitely doing real work. One place you know
that they're doing that is like in the sciences and
in engineering and stuff, and they have lots of technical jargon,
you know, but in the sciences and engineering you probably
need a lot of technical jargon that is not actually
there's nothing equivalent to it that's necessary in a normal office.

(36:56):
But you have this desire to feel like you are
accomplishing things at the same level as the sciences are
in engineering, right, And then of course to come back
to politics, and politics is very much an example of
of of of a situation where you're needing to continually
spin things, uh, either in one direction or the other
and uh, and in doing so you come up with

(37:17):
different different terminologies to different descriptions of of what of
things that are essentially the same. Yes, I think that
fits more in with the the one about you know,
wanting to reimagine your job or sell your job back
to yourself with you know, new uh corporate neologisms because
they help you feel a certain way, you know, in

(37:38):
politics obviously, you're trying to make other people feel a
certain way about a concept by using pushy terminology about it.
All Right, we're gonna take one more break, but when
we come back, you know we're gonna get into a
little bit of science fiction e territory here as we
look at a couple of examples of of new words
that came upon us, and and some of their air

(38:00):
they're their fictional origins, but also some of the fictional
engines that help them reach their place in our lexicon. Hi,
I'm Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And where the
hosts of the science podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
where every week we get to explore some of the

(38:20):
weirdest questions in the universe, like if sci fi teleportation
was possible, how would it square with the multitudes of
organisms that inhabit our human bodies? Can we find evidence
of emotions in animals like bees, ants, and crayfish? How
would an interplanetary civilization function just free will exist? Stuff
to Blow Your Mind examines neurological quandaries, cosmic mysteries, evolutionary marvels,

(38:45):
and the wonders of techno history. Basically, this show is
the altar where we worship the weirdness of reality. If
anybody ever told you you ask the weirdest questions, it
is time to come join us in the place where
you belong. The Stuff to Blow Your Mind into podcast
New episodes published every Tuesday and Thursday, with bonus episodes
on Saturdays. Listen to Stuff to Blow Your Mind on

(39:07):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. What's Up, guys, I'm a Shop Bloud
and I am Troy Millions and we are the host
of the Earn Your Leisure podcast where we break down
business models and examine the latest trans and finance. We
hold court and have exclusive interviews with some of the
biggest names of business, sport, and entertainment, from DJ Khaled
to Mark Cuban, Rick Ross and Shaquille O'Neil. I mean

(39:29):
our alumni lists expansive listening as our guests reveal their
business models, hardships and triumphs and their respective fields. The
knowledge is in death and the questions are always delivered
from your standpoint. We want to know what you want
to know. We talked to the legends of business, sports
and entertainment about how they got their start, and most importantly,
how they make their money. Earn Alisia is a college
business class mixed with pop culture. Want to learn about

(39:50):
the real estate game, unclears, how the stock market works?
We got you Interested in starting a truck and company
or vending machine business. Not really sure about how taxes
or credit work. We got it all covered. The Arnie
Leisure podcast is available now. Listen to Ernie Leisure on
the Black Effect podcast network, I Heart Radio app, Apple
podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. On the latest

(40:16):
season of the Next Question with Katie correct podcast, Katie
dives into Well Katie Here exclusive podcast only conversations between
Katie and the people who made her memoir Going There Possible.
We spent a lot of time together around a dining
room table here and in the city, and you know,
it was a very intense experience. All episodes of Next

(40:38):
Question with Katie Couric are available now. Listen on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. All right, we're back. So we were going
to talk about a couple more interesting examples of invented
words and what they tell us about the you know,
the process by which words are coined. The next one
I think is interesting because it's common usage is so

(41:01):
uh intention with the spirit of its coinage. And that
word is robot, right, And boy, this is one that
is um. Robot is so broadly used these days to
things that are perhaps not technically robots get called robots um,
and the things that sometimes, things that are for all

(41:22):
intents and purposes robots, don't get called robot. It's uh,
it's it's a weird one. So this will be a
wonderful journey. So you could be forgiven for assuming that
the word robot was coined by an inventor, right, somebody
who maybe somebody who made automata or somebody who created
an early autonomous machine. But no, not at all. This

(41:43):
invented word, like so many others we have discussed, actually
comes from a work of fiction. That work was a
play called Are You Are, which stood for Rossom's Universal Robots.
And this was a player written by the check writer
and intellectual Carl Chopeck. It premiered in nineteen one, and
it's basic plot was that an inventor named Rossum creates

(42:06):
a series of artificial humans to serve as slaves for
regular humans. But these slaves ultimately revolt against their human
creators and they basically kill all the humans and they
take over, and then they find out, oh no, we
don't know how to make more of ourselves. But these
slaves in the play are known as robots. And this

(42:27):
word is not invented out of whole cloth. It's adapted
from a check word. I think that comes from an
old Slavonic term. Uh. The word is robot to r
O b O t a, which means forced labor or servitude.
It is the kind of labor that would have been
done by surfs under feudalism. Now, of course, this idea

(42:47):
of a robot is somewhat different from what it usually
means today. Today, a robot is generally some kind of
machine that operates with some degree of independence and moves
with some degree of freedom, mimicking human or animal movement.
You can tell from what I just said, of course,
that the concept is actually a little bit hazy, even

(43:07):
though it is so widely used. But the robots in
Chopics play, while they are manufactured products, are not depicted
as being mechanical machines made out of metal. They're closer,
I think, to the replicants of Blade Runner. They are
sort of like basically humans in every respect, except they
are manufactured instead of born, and the comparison to Blade

(43:30):
Runner is very close when you look at some of
the text in the play. For example, there's this part
where there's a triumphal speech given by a robot named
Radius after he and the other robot rebels sees power
from the humans. Roddius says, quote, the power of man
has fallen. By gaining possession of the factory, we have
become masters of everything. The period of mankind has passed away.

(43:54):
A new world has arisen. Mankind is no more. Mankind
gave us two little life. We wanted more life. Oh man,
that's Roy Batty, right, yeah, you can just you can
envision him giving that speech. So it makes me think
that are you are must have directly inspired Blade Runner. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
certainly really Scott's adaptation of the original Philip K. Dick

(44:18):
uh do Android's dream of Electric Sheep. But I don't
think that line is in the Philip K. Dick. I
don't know. It's when a long time since they read it,
but I don't. I don't remember that as being part
of Like I remember picking up that is. I think
that was the first Philip K. Dick book I read,
and my experience was probably like a lot of people
who pick it up expecting Blade Runner at the film
and it's you get something different. Is there are a

(44:39):
lot of differences between the novel and the book is great,
but oh, it's wonderful. It's it's very different. It's very different.
The book is wonderful for the kind of state of
unreality that it conjures because of like the moments where
the main character starts to wonder if he is real
or not. It's very Philip K. Dick. I was. I
would remember being so excited to read Blade Runner that

(45:00):
I even read another another novel that was called Blade Runner.
There was like a futuristic sci fi world about. It
had to do with like medical um, a medical black market,
like generally somebody who's running like surgical blades. Did this
come out after the movie? This was like, I'm not
sure when it came out. I just remember finding a

(45:21):
what felt like an old book in my school library
and I was like, all right, it's close enough. I'll
read the whole things I read already, and I remember
being entertaining, but it also not blade Runner. Well, anyway,
I was reading a good article about this in the
m I. T Press by a Penn State professor named
John M. Jordan's uh and Jordan lays out some interesting

(45:41):
context for are you are? He writes of Choppe quote.
Like many of his peers, he was appalled by the
carnage wrought by the mechanical and chemical weapons that marked
World War One as a departure from previous combat. He
was also deeply skeptical of the utopian notions of science
and technology. And you should remember that this was a

(46:01):
time of great technological utopianism. You know, remember our episodes
on the invention of the supposed death ray in this period,
which despite the name, was actually pitched as something beautiful
and humane. It was a technology that would end all
possibility of war. It would bring about an era of
peace and harmony. And the death ray is by far,

(46:22):
you know, not the only example. This was the time
of you know, Tesla and Marconi and so many others
fielding the idea that coming technologies would eliminate war and
disease and want. But of course there were many others
like Chopic who reacted to the technological horrors of World
War one with skepticism about the promises of of new
science and technology. Uh and so, yeah, he's criticizing this

(46:45):
idea of of science that is that is not concerned
with big questions, or with ethics, or or even the
the ultimate purpose of its own endeavor, that is just
concerned with, like what sort of leverage it can have
over the physical world, what can you produce? But Jordan's
characterizes chop x opinion on mechanization by saying, quote, when

(47:06):
mechanization overtakes basic human traits, people lose the ability to reproduce.
As robots increase in capability, vitality, and self awareness, humans
become more like their machines. Humans and robots, in chop
x critique are essentially one and the same. The measure
of worth industrial productivity is one by the robots that

(47:26):
can do the work of two and a half men.
Such a contest implicitly critiques the efficiency movement that emerged
just before World War One, which ignored many essential human traits.
Of course, this makes me think about Dune, right, the
implications of the past. But lerry a jihad that's right, hey,
when which humans rise up against the rule of machines.

(47:49):
But it's implied. It's certainly in the original books that
it's not just a it's not simply a matter of
rising up against machine overlords in the physical totalitarian sense,
but in a philosophical sense, the idea that the machine
way of life, the machine way of thinking, has corrupted
what it is to be human exactly. Yes, it's not

(48:09):
just that they're like, you know, enemies that are trying
to rule us. They've changed our nature and we don't
want that. But anyway, given the views of the play,
there's just some intense irony that this is actually the
terminology that was adopted by people who would end up
wanting to make autonomous machines for a living, like you know.
And of course I don't think there's anything wrong with

(48:29):
wanting to go into robotics. I think robot's gonna have
a lot of wonderful uses. Yes, certainly. But the term
you're using is saying like I want to go into robotics,
is like literally like I want to go into creating
slaves that will destroy our spirit and render us useless. Yeah,
that's fascinating. One last thing about the word robot, it's
pronunciation also appears to have changed over time. At various

(48:52):
times it might have been pronounced more like a robot. Ever,
but was it ever pronounced robot like Zoidberg does it's future?
I think maybe at some point it was there. There
have been multiple different ways of saying now, speaking of
technological fear and apprehension UM, the next word we're going
to consider here is is a perfect extension of this

(49:12):
and ties into some of these same themes, and that is,
of course clone. So clone was apparently first recorded UH
to have been used somewhere between nineteen dred and nineteen
o five, and it's from the Greek word clone a
slip a twig with clear botanical roots. Here, plant physiologist

(49:35):
Herbert J. Weber coined the term in reference to the
technique for propagating new plants UH through the use of cuttings, bulbs,
and buds. And I was reading about this UH in
an interview that Science Friday in their Science Diction series
UH conducted with Harold Markle, professor of History of Medicine

(49:55):
at the University of Michigan, and Ann Arbor UH. And
one thing that Marco pointed out is that Weber was
kind of trying to decide what term to use like
you didn't just fire from the hip here and think,
all right, what is the what? What? What words should
I use? Maybe with some of those considerations we talked
about earlier exactly. Yeah. So one of the other like

(50:15):
major contender that he came up with, is actually pretty great. Uh.
It is the word strength, a combination of strain and wraith. Wow.
But he, you know, decided it was too clumsy. But
that being said, I want there's got to be a
sci fi treatment out there, um somewhere where someone has
decided to abandon the word clone and just talk about streiths. Uh.

(50:37):
Like that that just changes the whole situation. Imagine, if
you will, I have throughout the Star Wars universe instead
of saying clone they said straight Yeah, like that would
have had It would have made it feel it would
have been rooted in the actual origin of our usage
of clone, but it would have given it this slightly
different feel and indeed strength with its wraith connotation, it

(51:00):
feels a little weird er, like it's more in line
with well, it's got to come back to Herbert the
use of the golas in Dune you know where you know,
it doesn't doesn't call them clones. It call you know,
call some goolas creates this new word that drags in
other um, other you know, feelings, other words, other connotations.

(51:21):
So um and anyway, Marco, you know, as this concept
steadily took off, you saw it used a lot in
the agricultural world world because that's of course where it
was originally utilized. But then it bleeds over into science fiction. However,
there are cases where you could have seen someone use
clone a lot more of where they did in For instance,

(51:43):
Huxley in Brave New World doesn't refer to it as cloning,
refers to instead as the Bakanofsky process. But uh. But
Marco points to two specific uses of clone in the
nineteen seventies that really helped to push it into the
popular lexicon. The first of which, uh is Alvin and
Heidi Toffler's best seller Future Shock from the year nineteen

(52:06):
seventy I know you like this and the the Weird
Horson Wells documentary. Yeah. The Weird the Weird Horson Weil documentary,
which I recommend looking up on YouTube, is great and
a little bit cheesy. The work of the Tofflers throughout
their career, they wrote various texts of futurism texts where
they're talking about, you know, trends and how we how
we um anticipate and receive new technologies. And generally the

(52:30):
idea of future shock is the idea that the world
is changing so rapidly, there's all these new technologies coming
online that it overwhelms us and we feel this sense
of future shock. Uh And and even today it's a
you know, it's it's a work that is to a
certain extent dated by their later works. You know that
they spent their their lives, they spent their careers covering this, uh,

(52:52):
this area of consideration. But it's still a very readable text.
And I recommend it that this is a This is
a line from Future This is a paragraph from Future Shock,
where the Tofflers discussed this quote. One of the more
fascinating possibilities is that man will be able to make
biological carbon copies of himself through a process known as cloning.
It will be possible to grow from the nucleus of

(53:12):
an adult sell a new organism that has the same
genetic characteristics of the person contributing the cell nucleus. The
resultant human copy would start life with a genetic endowment
identical to that of the donor, although cultural differences might
thereafter alter the personality or physical development of the clone
and uh Interestingly enough, in that Science Friday interview, Howard

(53:36):
Marcle pointed to another work from the seventies, this time
of fictional work nineteen seventies six novel by Ira Levin,
The Boys from Brazil. Oh, the one about Don't they
want to clone Another Hitler? Yeah, it's a It concerns
a a fictional plot where you have uh not Nazi
ex pats living in South America who are hatching a

(53:56):
scheme to clone at off Hitler. Uh, you know, using
cloning technology to create all of these uh the these
these male children, and then trying to figure out how
to raise them so that you can nurture their genetic
legacy into you know, I guess the ideal form of
the fere um, which I know. There are a lot
of problems with this plot, a lot of holes in

(54:18):
this plot, but it was a very popular work. And
then they made a pretty uh I remember being a
pretty entertaining film version of this as well, and which
Gregory Pack plays uh uh Dr Joseph Mangela, but also
Laurence Olivier is the good guy. Rum Yeah, and so
I I have very vague memories of this film. I

(54:39):
think I saw it on American movie Classics back in
the day, but I remember it. I remember it being
disturbing and effective in places. I never read the book myself,
but I was leafing. I picked up grab a copy
of it and leaf through it before we were we
recorded this with this episode, and I did run across
the passage where one character is telling another about the
origin of the work clone and referring to the uh,

(55:02):
you know, the Greek and the uh and the the
botanical origins of the term UH. So anyway, I guess
the idea here is that, you know, you have two
popular works that are using the word clone, and they
helped to sort of boost the signal throughout uh, you know,
the fictional world and just the the the popular conceptions
of the science itself. One of the funny things though,

(55:24):
in this selection you pulled out is that one character
says that the old word for cloning was mono nuclear
reproduction and then complains, why would you coin a new
word like clone when the old ones convey more And
the other character says cloning is shorter. Oh yes, how
true coloss Uh yeah, and uh, I was gonna actually
read this this uh, this bit from the Boys from Brazil,

(55:47):
but I thought it might be a little confusing because
the the character that is explaining it mentions a different
biologists and mentions in English biologist by the name of Haldane,
which I I thought might confuse people who were listening
to the the origin story that we've presented thus far. Well,
I hope I didn't confuse anybody. But I like how

(56:09):
they reproduce the same conversation. It's interesting and it is
again worth I think, stressing the importance of science fiction,
especially with scientific terminology, because there are plenty of other
examples where a bit, uh, like an idea is presented
first in science fiction and then gets picked up as
a possibility within the sciences. Yeah, you might think that

(56:31):
somebody created a robot and then came up with the
name robot, but no, yeah, goodness. And this is without
even getting into the situation where you have fictional worlds
that in which the creator comes up with their own
lexicon for like a an alternate reality or futuristic reality
like one of them. Think the more Jarring. Examples of

(56:51):
this would be a clockwork orange or inn In Banks
wrote a book called Fearsome Engine that is totally a
totally um worthwhile read. But it has like I think
three different perspectives in it, and one of them is
a is uh is is written in this futuristic slang,
and it's really really takes a little bit of getting

(57:14):
used to before you're rolling with it and understanding what
the character is saying. Um. Now, I don't know. I mean,
it's arguable to what extent those kind of exercises ever
actually produce new words, but there's certainly the potentiality is there. Um,
you know, any time any time a new word is presented,
you're you're putting out the possibility that it could, uh,

(57:35):
it could become a part of language itself. Yeah, I guess, so,
I guess you can't know what uh, you can't know
when you're making a word happen right right, and you
introduce something and it's like, I don't know, it's it's
in their hands now. Yeah, all right, Well, you know,
hopefully this we received a lot of great feedback from
our previous episode on invented words, so hopefully we'll hear

(57:56):
a lot of great feedback on this episode as well.
We would obviously to hear everyone's thoughts on on new
words that they've picked up, new words that you've rejected,
or are there words from science fiction specifically that you
find yourself using within a particular in group or a fandom.
Are there are there some that you wish would be
picked up by the by the wider world at large?

(58:19):
What are the worst business neologisms you've had to deal
with on a regular basis? Please share those with us
for sure? Or the best you know? Again, I don't
want to deny. Sometimes they might be useful. Sometimes they're
very useful, all right, you say with utter despair. No,
all right. In the meantime, if you want to check

(58:39):
out other episodes of Invention, you will find this show
anywhere you get your podcasts wherever that happens to be.
Just make sure you rate, review and subscribe. If you
go to Invention pod dot com, that will also shoot
you over to the I heart listing for this show.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other

(59:00):
suggest a topic for the future, or just to say how.
You can email us at contact at invention pod dot com.
Invention is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, because the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Raffie is

(59:23):
the voice of some of the happiest songs of our generation,
Babyga so who is the man behind Baby Bluga. Every
human being wants to feel respected. When we start with young,
all good things can grow from there. I'm Chris Garcia, comedian,
New Dad and host of Finding Raffie, a new podcast

(59:45):
from My Heart Radio and Fatherly. Listen every Tuesday on
the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Whence the last time you took a time Out? I'm
Ev Rodsky, author of the New York Times bestseller Affair Play,
Find Your Unicorn Space, activists on the gender division of labor,
attorney and family mediator. And I'm Dr Addyna Rukar, a

(01:00:07):
Harvard physician and medical correspondent with an expertise in the
science of stress, resilience, mental health, and burnout. We're so
excited to share our podcast Time Out, a production of
I Heart Podcasts and Hello Sunshine, repealing back the layers
around why society makes it so easy to guard men's
time like it's diamonds and treat women's time like it's

(01:00:27):
infinite like sand. And So, whether you're partnered with or
without children, or in a career where you want more boundaries,
this is a place for you, for people of all
family structures. So take this time out with us to learn,
get inspired, and most importantly, reclaim your time. Listen to
Time Out a fair Play podcast on the I Heart

(01:00:50):
Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Colleen with Join me the host of Beating Wall
Broke podcast While I eat a meal created by self
made entrepreneurs, influencers, and celebrities over a meal they once
ate when they were broke. Today I have the lovely
aj Crimson, the official Princess of Compton, Asia, Kidding and Assia.

(01:01:15):
This is the professor. We're here on Eating while Broke,
and today I'm gonna break down my meal that got
me through a time when I was broken. Listen to
Eating While Broke on the I Heart Radio app, on
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.