As I get older, my spelling deteriorates; as a child, I won plenty of spelling bees. As a college teacher, I see plenty of misspelled words; after a while, misspelled and misused words begin to look correct, such as "alright" for "all right," "loose" for "lose," and "there" for "their."
So I now keep my dictionary and spell check handy.
However, my misspellings still slip through.
My most recent misspelling cost me money--not a lot--but enough to make me more vigilant about spelling and usage.
As most wordsmiths know, a "lexiconist" is a writer of lexicon; for sure, the word is a bit fusty in that it's not commonly used any more. Now we simply say "dictionary writer."
But I spelled it "lexiconnist," after having already plunked down $7.00 for the dot-com.
So what does one do with a great big lemony non-word?
You make it a word; you assign a meaning to it, which is what I am about to do with "lexiconnist," which will also describe a person who misspells words and tries to weasel out of it by pretending the word has meaning.
Therefore, I'm fessing up and then moving on.
So, then, a "lexiconnist" is a writer who misspells, either by accident or on purpose, a word and then tries to con the world into believing that it has a real meaning. In other words, a con artist lexiconist.
This is definitely a spoof definition, one that is not likely to take the lexicon world by storm, but it is kind of fun to mess around with the English language. After all, if my students can do it, why can't I?
By the way, I'll be posting a version of this on my other blog, simply because it's relevant to the biz I'm in.
Bugzita
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