LEND ME YOUR EAR: A MEANING IN SEARCH OF A WORD

My lifelong friend Esther Riechmann of Jacksonville, Fla., has added an unusual dictionary to my shelves. "In A Word," edited by Jack Hitt, bears the subtitle: "A Harper's Magazine Dictionary of Words That Don't Exist But Ought To." Editor Hitt wrote to a host of contemporary writers, artists, and celebrities requesting each to create a word for which no meaning exists. "In A Word" is a compilation of responses.

Verbalizations of nouns and combinations of parts of the whole make up a large portion of the dictionary. Jack Hitt himself added another ize word to our collection: neologize, the process of creating words from those we already have. Our dictionaries list neology the use of a newly-coined word, phrase or expression, or of a new meaning for an established term but neologize is not recorded.

Bill Geist has since come up with another ize word: scientize. Geist resents what science is doing to every aspect of living, and laments that we have nothing better to do than to "scientize" life.

Now for some favorites of ours from "In A Word," chiefly combinations of parts to create a new whole. Blandiose, derived from bland and grandiose, relates to entertainment that doesn't live up to its advance publicity. A good example of this gave rise to another neologism created by a New Yorker critic who claims that Hollywood script writers, bereft of ideas, keep writing inferior sequels to successful movies and are suffering from sequelitis. Obviously, "Batman Returns" is an exception.

Another contributor to "In A Word" offers blundit, from blunder and pundit. Washington is always rife with blundering pundits, so blundit has our whole-hearted blessing.

Cloin, derived from coin and cloying, is defined as "the habit of coining useless and forgettable phrases for the pleasure of hearing oneself speak." Related to cloin is nomendulger, from nomenclature and indulgence. Editor Hitt jokes about this one, accusing the nomendulger of making up words in the hope of seeing them catch on so he can boast of adding to our dictionaries. The names on his list did not include the only one that occurred to me, so I suggest you devise your own.

We have all known someone we considered too practical. In the Hitt collection, such folk are termed pragmyopic, from pragmatic and myopic, meaning practical to the point of blindness. Before I encountered pragmyopic, I referred to this breed as being unable to see the forest for the trees. Now I have a word for the idea.

Far-fetched but amusing is lolodacity, derived from low, low, and perspicacity. Lolodacity refers to campaign strategy hitting far, far below the belt. Not far removed is ignoramorous, denoting a person who loves things he knows nothing about. Ignoramorous, from ignoramous and amorous, is intended to describe anyone who is in love with being ignorant. More pitiable, perhaps, is the one who is ignorant and doesn't know it or is ignorance really bliss?

Also among good words for negative thoughts is lactitude, from lack and attitude. Lactitude, explains the creator, afflicts Americans who lack interest in their bread-and-butter jobs; workers who perform automatically, with never a creative turn. This could happen to assembly-line workers, but poets are known to have gotten their start in assembly lines.

Longage, opposite of shortage, is an effortless coinage but well-applied to the idea of having a longage of food we should give to the poor. Volumptuous, from voluptuous and lump, is related in that it describes an attractive women with misplaced amounts of flesh.

In a "Book of Lists" published in 1977, we found "16 Names of Things You Never Knew Had Names." Some have meanings different from those familiar to us. Did you know a harp is not only a musical instrument but is also the small metal hoop that supports a lamp shade?

Never mind that I have a harp that fails. Put the lamp shade in place, and it slips down again in nothing flat. I've searched for a word for this condition, but all I can come up with is Murphy's Law.

Murphyism? Just breathe this neologism within hearing of the media today and you may be courting legal action!