Smelliotic, anyone?

Oops, I guess you can't really see the full comic strip over here. But do click on it to enlarge it! =)

This is, in my opinion, a rather senseless exchange between Bucky and his owner Rob. Haha. But anyway, I'm intrigued by the new "words" that Bucky has formed. Bucky has combined rude and luddite to form ruddite, dim and stupid into dimpid, and ugly and annoying into ugloying. According to Collins Cobuild English Dictionary (1995), "if you refer to someone as a Luddite, you are criticising them for opposing changes in industrial methods, especially the introduction of new machines and modern methods". I guess Bucky called Rob a luddite because he didn't believe that Bucky has "revolutionised household electricity".

And of course, Google did not have any results for the new "words" ruddite, dimpid and ugloying. I guess the combination is based on phonology, rather than morphology, since Bucky seemed to have combined the first syllable of the first word and the last syllable(s) of the second word to form the new word. Once again, this shows that lexical words are open to the formation of new words. However, can we take two words and simply combine them in this manner to form a new word, for convenience perhaps? Would anyone be able to understand what we are referring to?

And lastly, Rob seemed to have learnt Bucky's way of forming new words. Haha. He came up with a new word too! But there weren't any Google results for smelliotic either. A combination of smelly and idiotic, perhaps? What do you think? Haha.

Could you be suffering from email apnea?

Hello everyone! Welcome to my blog! =)

I saw this interesting phrase while I was browsing through today's The Sunday Times. I guess email apnea has been improvised from the word apnea, or sleep apnea, which is "a period of time during which breathing stops or is markedly reduced, usually during sleep". You can find the full definition here: http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=2309. We can say that a new compound has been formed, by combining the words email and apnea. We know that lexical words are open-class words, and therefore they welcome the formation of new words and phrases.

This new phrase seems to have retained the meaning of the word apnea, which is that of being a "disease". Using "struck by" in the sentence gives the impression that email apnea is a disease which one can be afflicted with. Also, it appears that the sufferer of email apnea is unaware of his/her condition, as shown in part of the sentence "I didn't know I was struck by email apnea", just like how sufferers of apnea are not aware of their condition, since apnea usually occurs during sleep. I realise that although email apnea is a relatively new phrase, it has somewhat kept the meaning of the original word apnea which it has been derived from.

I did a Google search on email apnea, and found that this concept was coined by a researcher named Linda Stone, who is interested in the relationship between people and technology. You can read an article that she has written, over here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-stone/just-breathe-building-the_b_85651.html. And oh gosh, who would have thought that simply going through our email inboxes can disrupt our breathing patterns, and may even lead to asthma, depression, obesity, and a host of other stress-related conditions? This is indeed a shocking read. But come to think of it, we can bring in the importance of having knowledge of the context over here. If a person does not know anything about having to plough through endless emails in his/her inbox at work in this present age of information overload, then he/she might find it hard to fully appreciate the meaning of email apnea.

Could you be suffering from email apnea too? Remember to breathe while checking your inbox the next time! Haha.