I rather enjoyed this post on The Nonist about Andrew Comstock’s ludicrous attempt at inventing a new phonetic alphabet (via Daily Meh). The first thought I had was that “comstockery” would be a perfect word to refer to those advocating phonetic alphabets, spelling reforms, and the like (“Nothing but unabashed comstockery! It doesn’t even have vowels!”).
Imagine my disappointment when I found the word had already been coined. With an entirely different meaning, relating to Anthony Comstock rather than Andrew!
George Bernard Shaw coined the term comstockery, meaning “censorship because of perceived obscenity or immorality”, after Comstock alerted the New York police to the content of Shaw’s play Mrs. Warren’s Profession.
Then again, a logical coinage for the meaning I had in mind would more appropriately refer to Benjamin Franklin, since he was the first proponent of such a thing (to my knowledge), back in the 1760s.
You learn something everyday though, I suppose. Today I learnt that attempts at coining words will always result in disappointment.
This post's short URL is http://tumblr.com/xoxgi5st
This theme isn't yet complete, because I'm lazy. Don't mind the rough edges, and the unexpected appearance of this message at the bottom of the page.
