The English language continues to burgeon with new words—or, depending on how you feel about this, perhaps we might say that the language continues to metastasize. For geopolitical reasons largely involving brutal conquests and global imperialism, English is a mutt language with a tendency to gobble up words from other languages. We English speakers are great at inventing new words, too, which are technically called “neologisms.” And why not invent new words? Modern life plods on, and we continue to invent new situations that require new words to describe them.

For instance, “brain rot.” This was the Oxford Word of the Year last year. It means, “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.”

Clearly, this is an apt and needed phrase, as we continue to dump all manner of rot into our minds, including the daily news. You might be surprised to learn, however, that the term goes back to 1854, thanks to that old grumpy pants, Henry David Thoreau.

Other recent Words of the Year include the eye-rolling but useful “rizz” (2023), the ever-applicable “toxic” (2018), climate-related terms such as “carbon neutral” (2006), “carbon footprint” (2007), and “climate emergency” (2019)—note the trajectory there—and neologisms that now feel indispensable, such as “podcast” (2005) and “selfie” (2013). My favorite is “omnishambles” (2012), which doesn’t seem to have caught on, but certainly should.

Shall we try for some more new words and phrases? Here’s my current thinking about situations that require a succinct description. I’ve come up with some ideas for situations and terms with the help of a handy focus group of long-suffering friends and family recruited against their will for this task. The ideas below represent a first go-round. You may have better terms for these situations—or additional situations that currently defy description. Feel free to add your ideas in the comments.

What do you call it when you are trying to type in your password, and you just can’t get the stupid thing typed in right? This happens to me all the time, often in front of a class full of patiently amused students. I might call this fumbiliation. Perhaps I have developed a case of password performance anxiety. With the three thousand passwords we now trail behind us in the ether like so many clattering tin cans behind a jalopy—passwords for everything from streaming services to Zappos accounts—we are highly likely to find ourselves at a loss for the right password several times a day, despite every effort to come up with good ones or to reuse the same ones over and over (against all advice). We could call forgetting your password passnesia. If you let your browser invent passwords for you, your browser could, inexplicably, develop passnesia, too. In which case your computer or phone might be balrogging you. (That’s a deep cut, that one, but imagine Gandalf confronting the Balrog on the bridge of Khazad-dum: “You shall not pass!”)

Here’s another situation. Recently, Ron and I were trying to store our luggage for a few hours at a self-serve luggage storage area in Florence. We had limited time before our train to Rome, and we wanted to use that precious time to visit the nearby church of Santa Maria Novella. Alas, in order to rent a locker—in fact, just to get the door to the locker place to open—we had to download an app. Of course we did. It took Ron (who is very adept at this sort of thing) a good twenty minutes just to get the app working, stealing precious time from our holy pilgrimage. I am so sick of downloading apps!

We might call this situation an apptrap. Ron handles apptraps with equanimity, but I tend to go appoplectic. I expect that all our phones, now cluttered with pointless apps, are suffering from appcreep. All this extra fuss to perform simple tasks like, say, opening a door or accessing accounts you have already set up, for crying out loud—it introduces a whole lot of verififriction into our lives. And then there are those apps that you downloaded long ago for some stupid little thing and never used again. They are sitting there on your phone, quietly suffering from apptrophy.    

Of course, things could be worse. You could find yourself in a terrifying blank nothingness in which you can’t find any WiFi. You might have fallen into a cyberabyss. It’s a cyberabysmal place to be. You might describe yourself as webvexed. This is especially torturous if you—like so many of us now, have zero patience for not knowing things. What year was the Colosseum built? Is that a petunia or a pansy? How is the weather in San Diego? Will eczema kill me? You need to know right this minute. Not knowing actually feels painful—it’s a condition we could call knowitallgia. The only way to treat it is to Googlesoothe.

Let’s talk about work situations. You have probably attended Zoom meetings where you were supposed to be Addressing Important Matters, but the meeting quickly turned to boring things like approving minutes, hearing reports, engaging in lengthy discussions of whether to change the regular meeting time, etc. You may have to resort to various deceptive measures, like shifting your email window to right under the camera so you can get some email done while still appearing as if you are paying attention. Be sure to nod and smile occasionally. You are performing fauxcus.  

Do you know people whose jobs involve mystifying tasks like “customer relations management” or “data analysis” or “logistics”? When you ask them to explain what they do, even they can’t use regular words to tell you. It involves spreadsheets? or emails? Who knows! Their work is characterized by jobscurity. Honestly, we all have to act sometimes as if we are Doing Important Things and Maximizing Efficiency or something. So we might have to engage in effort laundering at work.  

On to the bewildering labyrinth that is the American medical insurance “system.” Let’s say you manage to survive the flurry of forms at an actual doctor visit (forms which no one ever reads, including the nurse, who asks you all the same questions over again), but then, weeks or more likely months later, you receive your Explanation of Benefits form, benefits which you naively assumed covered at least some of the costs of your medical care. Silly you! You now owe $768.23 for mysterious reasons encoded in hieroglyphs. You might exclaim “HMOMG!” This expression can “cover” you for all manner of insurance surprises and frustrations.

When trying to figure out what is supposed to be covered and what isn’t and how, you may find yourself suffering from healthcare haze. Often, your problem is that you are dealing with the usual deductibaloney of your policy. You forgot that you have to pay your deductible! Some policies involve very high deductibles, so you will be dealing with this deductibullsh** until your plan year ends, at which time you will start over. Deductibles, in case you’ve always wondered, are a devilish device through which insurance companies get you to pay them an annual fee (“premium”) for the privilege of going ahead and paying again for your own medical care (“deductible”).

However, if you are a brave and intrepid soul, once in a while you might be able to call the insurance company, talk to several people in turn, and figure out the magic coding number that will allow you to re-submit your claim and… actually get insurance to pay for it! You will have to engage in escalation theater to work your way up a ladder of supervisors. This will take hours of your time and give you a migraine (not covered), but … congratulations! You have exhibited Rxcellence.

Time to relax by watching some TV. Thankfully, that show you love just dropped a new season! Oh you have been waiting and waiting and now it’s time to get the sofa pillows adjusted, gather the comfy blankies, pop some popcorn, and find the remote. You are binge-nesting. You settle in, perhaps binge-cuddling with your sweetie, and let the viewphoria wash over you.

This is all fabulous, but hours or perhaps weeks later, depending on how your show drops episodes, you will be finished with the new season. For a few lovely moments, you will experience a contented feeling of aftershow. But now what? You are bereft. There’s nothing for it but to wait a year or two until the next season drops. You have showdrawal. You can ease the showdrawal by rewatching the season, but of course it’s not the same. Unfortunately, you can also experience showdrawal if that much-anticipated new season turns out to be disappointingly lousy.

Perhaps you could take suggestions from friends about other shows to watch in the meantime. Maybe people have been recommending a new show that is “so good,” but for some reason… eh. You just don’t want to watch it. You might have canon fatigue, since there now so many excellent shows one is supposed to watch that eventually one gets overwhelmed and turns to, say, embroidery or paint-by-numbers.   

We will do anything, after all, to avoid reading the news these days. There are so many things to be anxious and sad about, including sinflation in public life. Doesn’t Watergate seem now like a quaint, adorable little scandal from a more innocent past? Our scandal floor has been raised to absurd levels. In fact, I think I am suffering from sadturation. Aren’t you?    

What we need are more good feelings. So let’s consider some other -phoria words. Truephoria is when someone tells the truth and everyone believes them—this is rare these days. Or how about duephoria—that great feeling you get when you turn something in on time. Or queuephoria—when you finally reach the front of the line. Or loophoria—when you have to go really bad and you finally find a bathroom.

By the way, while you are standing in that queue, waiting for sweet relief in the loo, you might notice someone near you with interesting tattoos. You don’t dare ask the person about them, though, because that seems forward and rude. Nevertheless, you remain inkquisitive.   

Well, that’s enough. This is all very silly, and I have no idea whether any of these terms will catch on. I thank you for tolerating this exercise in attempted newphoria (the feeling of delight in something new). If you are bored by this barrage of neologisms, feel free to scroll away to something else, as we live in an era we might aptly describe as the Scrollocene.

Many thanks to Ron Rienstra, Jana Riess, Phil Smith, Jacob Rienstra, Philip Rienstra, and Joshua Bareman for help with this post. I also have to admit that ChatGPT came up with some pretty good ideas when given the right prompts—and also a lot of really bad ones. In other words, a lot of chatcrap. 

(Image credit: romtec.com)