Do you speak American?

PBS has an interesting website on American English at http://www.pbs.org/speak/ that they title “Do you speak American?”  One fun page at the site is an interactive quiz to see if you can match a speaker to a region of the country: [Link].

Another page explains how various presidents have coined new words throughout the years, such as “administration,” “lunatic fringe,” and “misunderestimate”: [Link].

The article refers to one who coins new words as a neologist.  My reaction to reading that was “Oh, they meant to say lexicographer.”  But, it turns out that PBS has the better word.    According to my dictionary, a lexicographer is “a writer, editor, or compiler of a dictionary.”  However, neologize means “to make or use new words or create new meanings for existing words.”  It would seem that a lexicographer is merely a person who records established definitions rather than the more creative neologist who coins entirely original meanings for words.

A lesser known corollary to the lexicographer [sic: neologist] rule is that a patentee is also entitled to be his or her own grammarian.  See Chicago Steel Foundry Co. v. Burnside Steel Foundry Co., 132 F.2d 812, 814-15 (7th Cir. 1943), cited in Jonsson v. Stanley Works, 903 F.2d 812, 820-21 (Fed. Cir. 1990).

*By the way, while playing SCRABBLE over the holidays, I tried to explain to my family that as a patent attorney, I was entitled to be my own lexicographer [sic: neologist] when proposing new words on the board.  They didn’t buy it.

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