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New Words... Narayanisms...
This is a collection of new words that I have made up here and there. Just about every word in English that could be made up must already have an existing word. However, English is always changing, which is one of the great beauties of the language. So I've added my two cents. If you have a word that you would like to have added to this collection, then please let me know... I will update this as I have time.
Complify
The opposite of "simplify", as in "She has an amazing abilitiy to complify even the simplest task"; see Complicate.
Indid
The opposite of "Outdid", as in "He really indid himself this time" meaning that he came in way below expectations.
Bytes and Bits!
I have no idea why the progression in numbers is the following: byte>kilobypte>megabyte>gigabyte>terabyte. A much more logical and simpler progression would be another Narayanism. Here goes: byte>kilobyte>milobyte>bilobyte>trilobyte>tetrabyte>pentabyte>sexabyte>septabyte>octabyte>nonabyte>decabyte, etc. With this naming convention, we know very easily that a pentabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. I can't really comprehend the size of such a number without thinking about it, but I can figure out what it means very easily.
TMTM
Yes, this is the Narayanism that started it all off back in 1995. TMTM is the ultimate party invitation term that goes along nicely with RSVP and BYOB. TMTM means "The More, the Merrier". At the top of your next party invite, put "RSVP, BYOB, and TMTM", and save yourself a lot of writing.
Other
Why do we "write down" things, and yet "type up" things? I have never heard anyone say "Did you ever type down that report?" What ever happened to all of the words that have extra prefixes or suffixes but that no longer exist by themselves. We have "befuddled", but no one ever talks about being "fuddled".
Someone asked me what is an easy way to figure out which words came from where. As a rule of thumb this is easy.
The low-brow words are frequently the ones the peasants used and are of anglo-saxon origin. Pig, Cow, Chicken, etc. The high-brow ones are frequently French: Pork, Beef, Poultry, etc.
But don't forget, there are gazillions of other words from lots of other language groups and languages - probably from every language in the world.
Narayan Sengupta
Etmyology 101
There is an easy technique for figuring out word origins...
If it's a word of either Roman or Greek origin - basically most words that use standard prefixes or suffixes or both - that defines an object defined prior to 1066, then usually the word came into English from French. This is because Old English was derived primarily from Germanic languages, and the Germanic tribes were linguistically isolated from the Romans - who spoke Latin. And Greek words came to most of the rest of the world from Latin. So old English had very, very few terms or Roman or Greek origin because older Germanic languages didn't either.
In 1066, the French (Normans) invaded England, and old French meshed in with Old English to form Middle English, I suppose. Of course, French was a child of Latin - a Romance Language.
Now since Old Greek and Latin were "dead" languages by 1066, the only new Old Greek or Latin words that have been invented have actually been invented in other languages. So words for items or thoughts invented since then ("aeroplane"/"airplane", "television", "psychotherapy", etc. are actually generally English words or words from whichever culture was most advanced in that discipline at that time. So high-tech or electronic goods usually have Greco-Roman names that were coined in the US, psychological terms probably in Germany/Austria, etc.
There are exceptions to the above, BTW. The word "wine", is a good example for instance, which we pronounce like the Romans did - written vinum, but pronounced "winum", rather than as the French did - "vin", but here too, we use the "vin" root for other words such as "vintage" and "vinyard". In any case, these are good rules of thumb.
Happy Etymology...
Narayan
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