In a Word, He Has the Hot ’88 Prospects

In 1988 and beyond, you gridlocked, stressed-out urban travelers may be known as metronauts and your destination as turbs.

At least one neologist, with his mind on lexicographic immortality, hopes so.

“A neologist is a word-coiner,” says William Drennan, who is one, and has been drawing national attention lately for his unusual attempts to be the first to name a phenomenon--sometimes even before the thing has happened. “Neology is really new intelligence, that’s the etymology of it. I’ve coined more than 1,000 words,” he claims, and has taken 228 of what he considers the best and put them in a manuscript called “Neonyms,” which means new words.

The Word Formula

Metronauts and turbs are two. He took metro from metropolis, meaning any large city, and linked it with naut , as in astronaut, meaning traveler, Drennan said. Then he combined turgid, meaning swollen, and urban, for city or town, and came up with turb: “any congested city.” Hence, fellow Angelenos, we are all metronauts living in a turb.

Drennan, a Woody Allen sound-alike complete with New York accent and frequently hyperactive delivery, moved to Weston, Conn., this year where he lives with his wife and two children.

A copy editor by vocation, Drennan, 52, makes up words for fun but is looking for a publisher for his book of neonyms. “And down the road, I would like to be the person in the country that they think of when they want a new word. I’d really love to coin words for businesses trying to come up with a new company name, for instance.” It’s a field, he said, with few players and some big payoffs.

In addition, on a less mundane financial level, “I’d like immortality,” he said, by which he means having one of his coined words show up in the dictionary.

In the meantime, he cleans up the grammar and syntax in other people’s books for major publishers--Scribner’s, Morrow and Doubleday among them. Alex Haley’s “Roots,” Lee Iacocca’s autobiography, two Allen Drury novels and chapters of Richard Nixon’s “Six Crises” are some of the manuscripts he’s helped polish.

Using recent political, economic and social events as inspiration, Drennan has come up with these words for 1988 and beyond:

Omnanoply, prompted by the Reagan-Gorbachev summit.

“It literally means worldwide disarmament.” It’s a phenomenon that has yet to occur but, says Drennan, “if Reagan and Gorbachev had gone all the way and come out for omnanoply, that would get into the language almost instantly, because the media would be using it all the time.

“ Omni means universal. Oply means armed, an is the negative. I put it together so that it means worldwide disarmament.”

That’s a mouthful.

He agrees. “I’ve got others.”

“ Oo means egg, cranio means skull. So oocranio means egghead.”

Adlai Stevenson should be glad he’s not around to endure that.

“Oh, he might have coined a word like that, too,” Drennan said. “He was into words.”

Got any words on Gary Hart, the alleged affair with Donna Rice, the campaign withdrawal, the sudden re-entry, he’s asked?

“I couldn’t coin you one right off the bat, but I do have some words for politicians.”

Ichthy , for fish. Osphresio , for smell. Pol , for politician. “A fishy smelling politician. Ichthy-osphresio-pol. Or, as I like to abbreviate it, IOP.”

Then there’s politute, “a combination of politician and prostitute,” Drennan said. “That’s a politician involved in corrupt activities for personal gain.”

The October stock market crash has inspired possible entries in the economic lexicon.

“Schizonomics. That’s the crazy economics of the market today. Here’s another, boaflation,” he says, sounding more and more like Woody Allen, the comic’s maniacally funny, yet serious assessment of phenomena shaping his delivery. “That’s inflation that fiscally strangles those it affects.”

And who, in the future, could pass economics 101 without knowing “fiscapation. That’s fiscal constipation, failure of the economy to move,” Drennan said.

Can’t you hear Louis Rukeyser now?

“If, if, if somebody like Rukeyser used these words on ‘Wall Street Week,’ it would be like a shooting star,” says Drennan excitedly.

But “99% of these words won’t go anywhere.” One percent of them could, however, Drennan believes.

Unlike comedian Rich Hall’s Sniglets books, which Drennan pooh-poohs as “amusing” but “trivial,” his words are serious combinations of established Greek and Latin word roots. Hence, he thinks they have a greater chance of acceptance.

But in recent years it has been the drug culture and physical sciences that have consistently contributed words to the English language, says Drennan. “Other areas don’t necessarily spawn new words” because there isn’t somebody sitting down and consciously concocting new ones--except for him.

Consider, he said, “mutergics.” He combined the Latin mut , meaning basic change, with the Greek erg for work and ics for action. The meaning: “fundamental changes in the conduct of, patterns in and attitudes toward work. Now that expresses something that is fundamental today,” Drennan said. “Flexible hours, less authority in the work place, more cooperation, people working at home.”

And reflecting the feared fate of the planet, he’s come up with geodump. “ Geo means earth and a dump is a dump,” Drennan said. “The entire earth as a polluted area.”

He has also taken nu from nuclear and combined it with triage for nutriage. “It’s a word that expresses what would happen in a hospital after a nuclear holocaust. Namely, they would allocate treatment on the basis of who could survive.”

Fear that there might be a real need for the word may have compelled Drennan to link the Latin roots for skull, sheet, sleep and madness. The result: “craniopallisomnimania,” meaning an “insane desire to pull the sheet over your head and go to sleep.”