Have fun making up new words!

 Earlier this week TED posted an amusing seven-minute talk by lexicographer Erin McKean encouraging us to Go ahead, make up new words!

She mentioned six different ways:

Stealing from other languages
Compounding
Blending
Functional shift
Back formation
Acronym

Satisfice is a prize-winning compound word coined by Herbert A. Simon to describe the idea of bounded rationality. A sports analogy is that optimizing is like the high jump, while satisficing is like the hurdles. 

Glossophobia might as well mean the above, since it will lead you down blind alleys.

I made up hoplocynohydrophobia to go with an XKCD cartoon, but so far it hasn’t caught on.

On the web I found an acronym meaning for the word THEY.

I also made up the acronym YAKWIRM, which hasn’t caught on either.

The hurdler and roast turkey images came from Wikimedia Commons.