Let’s begin with old business. The puzzler in the last number of “Calling All Verbivores” (CAV) was this:

Consider these words: beard, bowl, cave, come, food, gone, wand, watch, weight.

If you were learning the English language, what might perplex you about them?
The answer is that for each of them, you can replace the initial letter with a different consonant to form a new word that does not rhyme with it, for example, compare beard and heard, bowl and howl, and so on.

I know that I promised to put aside the subject of semordnilaps, but something reported in the news media leads me to return there, but only incidentally. For any new readers of CAV, or for those readers who may have forgotten, “semordnilap” is the name for a word that spells a different word in reverse. An article titled “Heavenly twist sends name for baby girl soaring” appeared in the Dayton Daily News for May 31, 2006 under the byline of Mollie Millet. I subsequently saw the same news in other media.

Millet reported that the name “Nevaeh” (pronounced nuh-VAY-uh) has become a popular name for baby girls. She quoted Laura Wattenberg, author of The Baby Name Wizard, as having written:

"The name has exploded in popularity in the last three years; it literally came out of nowhere to be in the top 100 names. … It’s one of the 20 hottest names in terms of its rise for 2005."

Millet reported that “Nevaeh” made its first appearance on the Social Security Administration’s list of the top 1,000 baby names at No. 266 in 2001 and by 2004 it had risen to No. 104 on the list. Wattenberg (as reported by Millet) attributes this phenomenon to “parents’ preoccupation with coming up with creative names” and says:

"I think Nevaeh has struck a chord because it’s a whole new way to create a name. Across the country, there are probably a thousand expectant parents spelling words backward to try and create the new “Nevaeh,” but it’s harder than it seems.

What the parents who first created the name “Nevaeh” did is called neologism. That is, they created a new word. “Neologism” is also used as the term for the new word. In this instance, they also created a semordnilap by spelling the word “heaven” backward. Please note that I will not be adding it to my list of semordnilaps. One of my self-imposed rules is that proper names must be excluded.

Neologism occurs in English rather frequently, especially in the realms of technological innovation and application. Think of “fax,” “blog,” “x-ray,” and a host of other examples. Also, neologism has become a vehicle for humor. The Washington Post, at the instigation of columnist Bob Levey, has been conducting a neologism competition since 1983. The newspaper has published annual lists of winning entries. Each year’s contest has its own specification of rules. For example, the contest for 2003 challenged readers to alter a word from the dictionary by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter and giving a new definition for the altered word. My favorite examples from the list are these:

bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating.
giraffiti (n.): Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
sarchasm (n.): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
inoculatte (v.): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
dopeler effect (n.): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you’re eating.

By contrast, the contest for 2005 (the most recent one for which I have seen the list of winning entries), challenged readers to provide alternate meanings for common words. Here are my favorite examples from that list:

coffee (n.): The person upon whom one coughs.
esplanade (v.): To attempt an explanation while drunk.
negligent (adj.): Describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
lymph (v.): To walk with a lisp.
balderdash (n.): A rapidly receding hairline.
frisbeetarianism (n.): The belief that, when you die, your soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

You can find both lists at http://mipmip.org/tidbits/neologism.shtml or a number of other sites turned up by Google in a search for “neologism competition.” I have not been able to find them on the website of The Washington Post.

If you feel the need for playful application of your creativity, try your hand at neologism. The field is wide open for specifying your own rules or guidelines. You could try to find a name for a baby, either sex, by spelling words backward, as some prospective parents have been doing. You could challenge yourself to create names for imaginary diseases, the name being required to sound like the disease. I would say the sky is the limit, but you could also try to create names for imaginary communities of space dwellers on distant planets. You get the idea. Go for it.

Until next time, send me your solutions (or suggestions or complaints or stumpers) at hfox@juno.com or 2005 Burroughs Drive, Dayton, Ohio 45406.