Sprachgefuhl

We'll get to what the German word means in a minute. There is no English equivalent , by the way. An article about the making of Merriam-Webster English dictionary appeared in the newspaper a few days ago. The dictionary is edited out of Springfield, Massachusetts. A team of editors there scours newspapers and journals in search of words, new words, old words. They have no telephones on their desks (!) (I do have one on mine, but it rarely rings and I've no idea how to use its advanced features.) A new word must appear at least eight times somewhere in print (everyday speech, television, radio, don't count!) before it can be considered for inclusion in the next edition of the Collegiate Dictionary. A recently added word which no longer appears, will be dropped. This is what happened to 'snitty', meaning disagreeably agitated. It was added in 1989, then dropped a few years later, to be added again most recently.

Around 1995, the word 'regift', which meant to make a gift of something that had been a gift to us, was introduced by the television comedy show Seinfeld. But the word didn't start appearing in print publications until 2001, when it was finally picked by the Merriam-Webster. Here are some new words being considered by the editors: 'za', for 'pizza', and 'air-kiss', meaning exactly what is says. I wonder if there is a word for the meaningless hugs so often forced on us in group meetings, after yoga classes, and such, by people who often enough hate our guts, just because it's become a custom. Jerry Seinfeld should have invented it back in 1995, he hated those hugs too.

Oh, and finally, the skill required of the editors of the dictionary. It's called 'sprachgefuhl' in German and it means a feeling for the language, an intuitive sense of what is linguistically appropriate. Have you got it?