Adding Words

Incorporating Nonsense Into the Language

All languages borrow words from other languages, although some attempts are made to limit this process in the name of purity. The English language has been said to be particularly vigorous in the process of borrowing words from others, sometimes being accused of brutally ripping words by force from other languages to feed its continual need for growth that has already made it the largest language on the planet, at least in number of words in current use.

Nonsense words are also picked up. We have seen the words 'geek' and 'nerd' appear seemingly from nowhere. In one case, 'geek,' the word was lurking, forgotten, in our collective vocabulary, referring to the carnival performer whose specialty was biting the heads off of fowl and reptiles. But 'nerd' comes to us as pure nonsense invented by Dr. Seuss in one of his children's books.

The word 'googol' is a nonsense word invented in 1938 by the mathematician Edward Kasner to represent an equally nonsense concept, the number ten raised to the hundredth power, represented as a one followed by one hundred zeroes. The concept is nonsense because there aren't that many of anything in the universe. Stories vary, but the word was invented in a discussion between Kasner and his nephew, Milton Sirotta, as was the even more nonsensical term 'googolplex,' which names the number ten raised to the googol power.

The googol and the googolplex are the largest numbers which have been given specific names, although the googol could be called 10 duotrigintillion in more conventional terminology.

The words entered the language because of their value in discussing very large numbers and the concept of infinity. Both numbers, while absurdly large, are finite, a concept that elementary school children have little difficulty grasping.

The name of the search engine 'google' is a deliberate reference to the number googol, to imply that it has vast capabilities for discovering information.

But many words entering the language have no known origin. Some of them even look funny, if you think about them. Here is a representative sample of words of unknown origin that entered English since the year 1900: bozo, chad, codswallop, dippy, dogie (a heifer), dweeb, dyke, fink, flivver, floozy, flub, fuddy-duddy, gandy dancer, gimmick, gink (person), gizmo, gorp (a concentrated food), grungy, hooey, hootenanny, jake (all right, fine), jalopy, jazz, jimmies, jitney, jive, malarkey, moola, nitty-gritty, palooka, pizzazz, pokey, raunchy, rinky-dink, scam, simoleon, snazzy, snit, stooge, tizzy, tootsie, twerp, willies, wingding, wonk and zit.

These are all new words, although some of them are older than some of us are. Some, like 'gink,' are old enough to have gone out of style. These are words we grew up with. Yet they popped into our language out of nowhere.

Some of them, if you weren't used to using them, would look like nonsense. Dweeb? We've made it what it is today because it became useful to us, even though it looks and sounds like nonsense.