10^6 Units of Language
Couple weeks ago I was reading the Nerdist entry on Hogwarts snaps. They’re funny, sort of, and gross. But what caught my eye even more than Dobby’s tongue stud was Hardwick saying “megaword”:
Needlesstosay (a fun mega-word), it took me a while to put everything together and for that, I apologize.
I went all zingy. Mega-words! Was this an actual linguistic concept I had just never encountered? Turns out not. Googling “megaword” or “mega-word” pulls up some interesting info. There’s
- Megawords Magazine, which has nothing to do with language
- The Urban Dictionary definition, which uses “mega” to modify “word” in the, “Dude, I appreciate what you are thinking, feeling, and saying” sense
- Another word for picture since a picture is worth a thousand words and “mega” is the computer prefix we put on things in the neighborhood of 1024
- A Spanish to English translation explaining that a megaword is equal to 8 bytes
- Scrabble for the blind and visually impaired
None of these reflect the Nerdist use and they’re also unsatisfying on a lexiphile level. So let’s make up our own definition. What does it take to be a megaword? Hardwick smashed three words together. That immediately brings to mind another adverb: “nevertheless.” Three more words smashed together. Also “nonetheless” and “notwithstanding” and “howsoever.” Then there’s “permayhaps,” which I only ever see used in Firefly fanfiction, but is still a good and useful (mega)word of the three-smashed variety.
What other megawords can you think of? What about joining up four words? Or more? Would you still call them megawords? Maybe different prefixes could be used to indicate just how many words were conjoined to achieve any given mega plus word. You could even do it up #firefly style with “octoword” if you mananged to get eight.
What’s the largest possible word we might achieve without using prefixes or suffixes? And, should we achieve an ultramegaword, do you think it’d shoot lasers out its eyes?
The first three-word masher that comes to mind is ‘wherewithal’.
I will probably spend an inordinate amount of time trying to come up with more, bigger, better megawords. Although I don’t imagine I’ll be attempting any ultramegawords because I live alone and don’t own any weapons that could handle the results.
Comment by Apollo on April 14, 2009 at 9:51 am
I can see your desire to define the term. I propose something that, while possibly confusing to some, is likely one of the less confusing terms (among all the confusing terms that exist) in the English Language.
Define mega-word as the term for mashing other words together and MegaWord as the word representing ~1024 other words. :)
Oh, and for my addition, at least one I use a lot, whatsizname/whatsername. I use that all the time having a decreased capacity to remember names I haven’t heard enough yet. Sometimes I substitute the “name” chunk for “nose” (or some other body part that can be funny) depending on the crowd. Body parts staring with an “N” seem to be the best.
Cheers!
Comment by Joel on April 14, 2009 at 10:20 am