PAGES : Need a Word? Make One Up

The reference shelf carries any number of dictionaries with definitions for words that exist. But where do you look for more fanciful entries?

Consider “In a Word” (Dell/Laurel), which contains words that “don’t exist but ought to.”

Dozens of writers, artists, scientists and others coined the hundreds of new non-words that Editor Jack Hitt has compiled in this dictionary.

Here are just a few choice ones:

* Ecoporn --Chemist Paul Bickart takes credit for this noun defined as “useless or harmful products sold as though they were beneficial to the environment.”

Given as examples are containers claiming to be made of recyclable paper, “without explaining how one recycles a plastic-coated, ketchup-stained hamburger box.”

* Plotto --From blotto and plot . Writer Scott Russell Sanders devised this word, which describes someone “enthralled by story; incapable of understanding life except as narrative.”

* Scud --And, in honor of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s favorite weapon, novelist Emily Prager gives us the verb scud --”to cause only a minor explosion, when a larger, more showy one is expected.”