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Made-up Words

By Nick Wright

Don’t make up your own language. If a word doesn’t exist in a dictionary, how can other people understand its meaning?

Have you ever heard of:

  • autoised
  • billocked
  • bloatware
  • custodied
  • impactful
  • incentivizing
  • jointery
  • mentee
  • rebranding
  • subjectlets
  • trilemma
  • vaporware

Such coined words are the sign of a poor writer trying to impress the reader. Most readers just dismiss the message unless you write in familiar words they understand.

Use your spell-checker to find non-existent words. Add only proper nouns to your dictionary and you’ll find it becomes a useful tool to pick up the worst examples of bad language.