ArcaMax

They lurk like menacing demons on the fringes of our linguistic campfire. Watching and scowling from the dark woods, they wait for their chance to leap into our vocabularies.

Yes, folks, they're the nonwords -- those diabolical distortions and deviations that occasionally defile our mouths and pens.

Their satanic leader is "irregardless," a repulsively hideous ghoul. Speak his name but once, and you'll be eternally banished to the land of the despised. Though "irregardless" bears a logical pedigree (by "regardless" out of "irrespective"), this nonword is universally loathed and detested.

His friends are legion.

There are the genetic experiments gone awry: effectuate (for effect), cohabitate (cohabit), preventative (preventive), paralyzation (paralysis), submittal (submission), administrate (administer), analyzation (analysis), experimentalize (experiment), investigatory (investigative). And there's the gruesome queue of "q" words: quantitate (for quantify), qualitive (qualitative), quiescency (quiescence).

In some cases, one flawed letter turns friends into fiends: momento (for memento), miniscule (minuscule), cumberbund (cummerbund), napsack (knapsack), plentitude (plenitude), rarefy (rarify), sacreligious (sacrilegious), impressario (impresario).

Perhaps the most insidious nonwords are adverbs formed by adding a needless "-ly" to a word that's already an adverb, e.g., muchly, seldomly, thusly, fastly, doubtlessly. Many people doubtless speak and write these much-maligned words thus.

Then there are the needless adverbs "uncategorically," "unmercilessly" and "unrelentlessly," which are sometimes used to mean "categorically," "mercilessly" and "relentlessly," respectively.

And we can't forget the nonexistent past-tense verb forms "bursted," "brung," "clumb" and "sawn," or the false singulars mistakenly formed from singular words, such as "forceps" and "kudos," that happen to end in "s": "forcep," "kudo," "bicep," "tricep," "quadricep." Meanwhile, compulsive compression breeds a small but nasty nest: "alot," "amn't," "noplace."

And, yes, many nonwords eventually become real words. All of the following words, now perfectly acceptable, were once condemned as nonwords: accountable, answerable, conversationalist, donate, exponential, jeopardize, practitioner, presidential, reliable and tangential. In fact, until it appeared in dictionaries during the 1960s, "nonword" was itself a nonword.

========

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Connecticut, invites your language sightings. His book, "Mark My Words," is available for $9.99 on Amazon.com. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via email to WordGuy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.

Copyright 2024 Creators Syndicate Inc.