Quote:
Originally Posted by daniellaaarisen
Yes, yes you can. Shakespeare make up hundreds and got some weird reactions from his audiences/readers, but now we use them every day  "LOL" and "OMG" just recently entered the OED-- someone made those up a few years back. The beauty of language is that it is versatile and continuously evolving. |
to be fair, shakespeare was living in a time before "standard english" was a concept. to compare his use/abuse of english to contemporary use/abuse of english is to compare apples and oranges. furthermore, many words that were first recorded in shakespeare's manuscripts like "lumen" (light) have latin and greek roots - hardly a defense for "just making up words." shakespeare also spelled his own name like 12 different ways. maybe he was just dyslexic.
of course language is ever-evolving, but i tend to be pretty conservative regarding what constitutes a valid contribution to the language and what does not. what is the point of making up a word if one already exists to express what you're thinking? the point of language is to be precise and efficient (if you know what you're doing). what kind of noodle-brained bloviator thinks that what he/she is feeling is SO erudite and SO important that he needs to make up a word to express it? (see what i did there?)
not that i'm against the word "shat." i'm just a curmudgeonly prescriptivist.
Quote:
Originally Posted by markolas
lol You can't just make up words. Of course, I'm probably the only person in the universe who still uses "he" and "his" as the gender-neutral plural pronouns. It drives me up a wall to hear or read someone say something like, "Each person should take off their shoes before entering the room."
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it's gender-neutral singular, and no, you're not.