My understanding is that some other languages offer a greater selection of nuanced adjectives and nouns than ham-fisted American English.
I know that, on many occasions, I’ve closed my eyes and searched the synapses, then the InterWebs for words—sanctioned, accepted and widely used words—for things or actions or conditions I want to convey. And there were none.
And so, especially in the blogging years when writing was prolific and easy and fun, I’d not hesitate to make up a needed word that did not yet exist. These were one-of bits of word play, but I enjoyed the etymological spelunking nevertheless. And it always raised the alarms of my word-nazi readers who charitably disapproved.
So I confess. I take a more libertarian view of modern English and make my own words, if ready-made is not available. Two years of high school Latin does come in handy in the medical field (I was a physical therapist for two decades) and to toss together word roots and cobbled a brand new word for a single-blog-post useage.
Recently, I wanted to tell a friend about an experience that was both a reaction from taste and smell, equally. And there was no word. And why the heck not, since both senses are intertwined and mutually interdependent.
What my friend had offered me was truly synesthetic—both a smell and a taste experience. Gustation and olfaction at once. And hence: GUSTOLFACTORY.
Don’t bother looking it up—until maybe a decade hence, when I will be gone but my contribution to our depauperate and now enriched language will still live on. (Yeah, right.)
And here is the derivation path, for both of you who give a rat’s acetabulum:
GUSTOLFACTORY: derived from….
Gusta--- latin for taste
Olere--to omit a smell
Factare-- to make
making or causing to smell; having the sense of smell," 1650s, from Latin olfactorius, from olfact-, past-participle stem of olfacere "to get the smell of, sniff," from olere "emit a smell, give off a smell of" (see odor) + facere "to make".
GUSTOLFACTORY: a sensory experience that is a blend of what is SMELLED via the Olfactory Bulbs (Cranial Nerve 2) combined with the sense of taste. Okay, TASTE gets a little more complex.)
The sense of taste uses the the facial nerve (cranial nerve VII), which provides fibers to the anterior two-thirds of the tongue; the glossopharyngeal nerve (cranial nerve IX), which provides fibers to the posterior third of the tongue; and the vagus nerve (cranial nerve X), which provides fibers to the epiglottis region.
And so the cumulative experience I wanted to express to my friend was NOT a word I could find ready-made and currently in the working human language. And NOW it is (if only in that one email to my befuddled friend.) I did my part. Now it’s your turn. Go and spread the word.
Please, if you’re brave, share that word you are famous (in your own mind at least) for creating when the need arrived. You know there is at least ONE.
I was recently chastised for not employing the Oxford comma. More audaciously, I insert commas where I want the reader to pause regardless of protocol. So punctuation engineers and wordsmiths are my peeps. It delights me that you had this gustolfactory experience and pray it didn't trigger the gustolfunchies.
Bravo to you for your verbal creations! That's how languages grow, by their speakers inventing new words as well as new meanings for old words. There is even such a thing as Neo-Latin! Might we see, at some point, a lexicon of collected Fredisms? I, for one, would love to see a collection of the specialized vocabulary that was hatched in your fertile brain.