Fun_People Archive
29 Feb
Bytelock Digest

Content-Type: text/plain
Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 3.3 v118.2)
From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 100 12:46:57 -0800
To: Fun_People
Precedence: bulk
Subject: Bytelock Digest

X-Lib-of-Cong-ISSN: 1098-7649  -=[ Fun_People ]=-
X-http://www.langston.com/psl-bin/Fun_People.cgi
[A snippet from an ongoing email discussion.  It's the final helpful
 suggestion that does it for me...  -psl]

From: Tom Parmenter
Re: Unclear on the concept

|From: "Andrew C . Bul+hac?k"
|Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 05:10:15 +1100
|Subject: Unclear on the concept
|
|I recently got a sixdegrees message from a guy seeking help with a
|rather eccentric (and perhaps slightly psychoceramic) cause.
|It appears that he has coined a neologism ("bytelock"), which he
|really wants to get into the dictionary and become famous for.
|(There he seems a bit unclear on the concept; isn't it a prerequisite
|for a word's inclusion into dictionaries that it have an existence
|independent of any one coiner?)

How in the world would *that* work?  "I'm sorry, Mr. Capek, we can't
accept your invention of the word 'robot' because no one else has
invented it?"  Who would the "we" be?

Lots of words have a single inventor:  googol and googolplex, robot,
witticism, blatant, bytelock . . .  Shakespeare is the sole inventor
of dozens (hundreds?) of words.

I have to add that 'bytelock' doesn't strike me as an entirely
convincing word, however.  I suppose he is keying off the browser-rate
expression.   How about 'imbottglimento', Italian for 'traffic jam'.
The subtle will see 'embottlement' buried in there.

|For a number of years, he has had an announcement in his email signature,
|notifying the world of this factoid and asking them to spread it.
|Now, as that apparently isn't working fast enough, he has resorted to
|sending out notices on sixdegrees.
|
| -- acb
|
|----- Forwarded message from sixdegrees bulletin board  
<yq13n11u5@groupbbparser.sixdegrees.com> -----

<snip>

-----------------------------------------------------------

From: "Andrew C . Bul+hac?k"
Re: Unclear on the concept

[Tom Parmenter]
> |
> |I recently got a sixdegrees message from a guy seeking help with a
> |rather eccentric (and perhaps slightly psychoceramic) cause.
> |It appears that he has coined a neologism ("bytelock"), which he
> |really wants to get into the dictionary and become famous for.
> |(There he seems a bit unclear on the concept; isn't it a prerequisite
> |for a word's inclusion into dictionaries that it have an existence
> |independent of any one coiner?)
>
> How in the world would *that* work?  "I'm sorry, Mr. Capek, we can't
> accept your invention of the word 'robot' because no one else has
> invented it?"  Who would the "we" be?

The editors of the OED and the like.

> Lots of words have a single inventor:  googol and googolplex, robot,
> witticism, blatant, bytelock . . .  Shakespeare is the sole inventor
> of dozens (hundreds?) of words.

Though the words aren't accepted into a dictionary until they are
in general usage by people who don't know the coiner.  Being
self-consciously pushed by its coiner and various people personally
connected to them doesn't count.

-----------------------------------------------------------

From: Anton Sherwood
Re: Unclear on the concept

"Andrew C . Bul+hac?k" wrote:
> I recently got a sixdegrees message from a guy seeking help with a
> rather eccentric (and perhaps slightly psychoceramic) cause.
> It appears that he has coined a neologism ("bytelock"), which he
> really wants to get into the dictionary and become famous for.

It would help if he had a brain tumor.

-----------------------------------------------------------

© 2000 Peter Langston