An interesting article on how we create new words to fill mental gaps. By that reasoning, I should have come up with an entirely new language last night. But instead I just read Sky and Telescope and slipped into a doze that was something close to Zen transcendance — but with beer.

But many gaps in the language simply refuse to be filled: a gender-neutral third-person pronoun to replace he or she; a term for one’s adult children; the early-morning insomnia in which your bladder is too full to allow you to fall back to sleep but you are too tired to get up to go the lavatory. The comedian Rich Hall gave us the word sniglet (an example of itself) for a word that should exist but does not. Eg, Elbonics n. The actions of two people manoeuvering for one arm-rest in a cinema. Peppier n. A waiter whose sole purpose seems to be asking diners if they want ground pepper. Furbling v. Having to go through a maze of ropes at an airport or bank even if you’re the only person in line. Phonesian n. Dialling a phone number and forgetting whom you were calling just as they answer.

Barbara Wallraff inverted the formula in Word Fugitives, a history of recreational word-coining and a collection of her columns by that name in The Atlantic Monthly, in which one reader submits a lexical gap and others try to fill it: Saying something to your child, then realising that you sound like one of your own parents: déjà vieux, mamamorphosis, mnemomic, patter-familias, vox pop, nagativism, parentriloquism. The moment when you should introduce two people but can’t remember one of their names: whomnesia, persona non data, nomenclutchure, mumbleduction, introducking. The confusion experienced by everyone in the vicinity when a mobile phone rings and no one is sure if it is his/hers: conphonesion, phonundrum, ringchronicity, ring-xiety, pandephonium.

I come up with these kinds of things all the time, but only lay claim to, and regularly use, my number one neologism — “Douché!”: a rejoinder used upon conceding a point to an asshole. The other night I heard a good one spoken by accident. Someone meant to say “masterpiece”, but said, “masterpeach” instead. I am still trying to come up with a good definition.