The bewildering stream of
new words to describe technology and its uses makes many people angry,
but there's much to celebrate, writes Tom Chatfield.
From agriculture to automobiles to autocorrect, new things
have always required new words - and new words have always aroused
strong feelings.
In the 16th Century, neologisms "smelling too much of the
Latin" - as the poet Richard Willes put it - were frowned upon by many.
Willes's objects of contempt included portentous, antiques,
despicable, obsequious, homicide, destructive and prodigious, all of
which he labelled "ink-horn terms" - a word itself now vanished from
common usage, meaning an inkwell made out of horn.
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