What Goes Around...A Hundred Years of New Words

It is fascinating to look back at the words which were created for their time. By looking at the areas in which language is expanding fastest, we can arrive at a fairly accurate picture of the chief preoccupations of the moment. At the beginning of the last century, these areas of expansion included time, transportation, radio, film, and psychology. Today's coinages reflect a prolific growth in computer and Web terminology, preoccupations with warfare and terrorism, and a renewed public interest in the potential of science, whether in the field of genetics or cosmetic surgery.

A study today of the new lexicon of the 1900s offers up striking examples of the cyclical nature of history and of words. The first decade of the 20th century, which saw the end of the South African Boer War but which retained a sense of social and political unease, introduced the concepts of pacifism and war crime, racialism and social security, and of propaganda and pogroms. The terms genetics, identity card, tabloid journalism, voyeur, and remote control were all born in that opening decade, but have maintained their places in our language for over 100 years. That is not to say that the first decade of this century is merely a duplication of the last. Beehive, bakelite, toodle-oo, and oozie all carry the unmistakable stamp of their times even as they have survived into the present, whilst the 2000s are providing rich evidence of new iconic terms filling the gaps in their new social and technological environment.

Some words did not survive. Of those new coinages of 1903, marconigraphy and Marconism (two of the unsuccessful candidates in the large group of words for wireless telegraphy), Mauser (to shoot with a Mauser ri.e), and automobility, failed to make any longer-lasting impact. Language is full of such 'fizzlers': of the several candidate names coined around a new idea, only one or two will usually survive.

Below is a further selection of words making the headlines in 1903, set against a number of those making their mark a hundred years on, and some which remain just as relevant today as when they were first coined. Many may startle with their true age.

 

1903 automobility divvy fritz wireless segregation Brachiosaurus superman tin hat Weltpolitik Shinola

Then as now propaganda hangover clone identity card solar heating multi-racial tabloid journalism supertax landfill remote control

2003 speed dating celebreality weapons-grade Botox� party cyberbegging therapeutic cloning dataveillance decapitation strike Lipostructure� moblogging

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