I'm not one to make an effort to view/listen to advertising in any format. In fact, I try to avoid advertising when possible. I Tivo most of my television shows and fast forward through commercials. I change stations or tune out advertisements on the radio. My brain has turned print ads in the paper or online into blind spots that I can't even see. But despite my efforts to avoid ads, I've become aware of a trend in advertising that not only disgusts me, but actually scares me a little bit: made-up words.
Advertisers are always looking for that magical turn of phrase that will not only entice the ad's intended target, but will stick in their heads and eventually become synonymous with the product being advertised. Some of the greatest creative minds in our society spend all day, every day, bending their brains to this purpose. But with the glut of advertising and slogans out there, it must be becoming increasingly difficult to come up with a stand-out slogan or phrase that hasn't already been used AND creates the mental-picture the advertiser is looking for. What's a poor ad developer to do? Well, why not make up some new words that serve the purpose instead?
One of the earliest instances I can remember of this type of behavior was the Butterfinger commercials from the '90s:
"Crispety, crunchety, peanut-buttery, Butterfinger"
Though many of their commercials featured my at-that-time cartoon-hero Bart Simpson, even then I couldn't get past the fact that the Butterfinger ads seemed to be making up new words to sell their product. Sure, "crispety, crunchety" adds alliteration and a certain texture to the product, but does that give Nestle the right to try to pass them off as a real words?
Others from that era, such as "L'Eggo my Eggo"*, may have rolled off the tongue just as easily, but did nothing to endear their products (or ads) to the authors of dictionaries.
*OK, Eggo's actually had this slogan since the 60's, but what's a few decades between friends?
Since then, I've seen many different advertisers follow suit:
Taco Bell, one of the worst offenders, has adopted "melty" into the company dictionary, tacking it onto the "Beefy, cheesy, crunchy, and spicy" adjectives they bandy about to describe their food products. Then they topped it by introducing "Fourthmeal". Talk about the literary equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard!
A few years back, Hyundai came up with "Powercision" , but luckily it didn't stick for any real length of time.
Snickers came out with a monster campaign, trying to Dr. Frankenstein to life "Substantialiscious", "Peanutopolis", "Nougatocity", "Satisfectellent", and "Hungerectomy", most of which sound more to me like you're going to get some kind of disease from eating their candy bar.
Recently, Budweiser has been advertising that their Bud Light product has "Drinkability", something not found in their competitors' light beers. To which I respond – OF COURSE THEY DON'T HAVE IT. Drinkability is a made up word! They don't have crispaliciousness or tinglelicity in their beers either! What do you say to that, Mr. Commisioner of the More Taste League???
I understand that advertising is a tried-and-true profit maker for product manufacturers and media alike, and that this concept of making up words to market products is neither new nor likely to stop with the offenders I've listed above. Some may even say that what I'm complaining about is just the evolution of the English language in action, and that I shouldn't complain about the made-up words any more than I would complain about the derivation of "God Be With Ye" into "goodbye".
But this misuse of the English language to create abominations like "drinkability" and "hungerectomy" just doesn't sit well with me, and probably never will. Even if those advertisers get book-smart and adopt such classic made-up words as "brillig", "slithy", and "mimsy" into their lists.
Bonus points to those who know either where the title for this post came from, or where the other made-up words I didn't define came from.
Possibly related posts (auto-generated):
October 16th, 2008 on 12:17 PM
you're such a stickler.
:-P
(actually i mostly agree with you)
October 16th, 2008 on 12:19 PM
Anybody remember "Let's go Krogering?" 'Twas the beginning of the end.
October 16th, 2008 on 12:21 PM
Woohoo! I get a bonus point! The title is from The Princess Bride! Montoya says it to Vencini about the word ' inconceivable'!
Good point about made up words – what really gets me though is the ads that just repeat and repeat and shout. As if that's actually going to make you buy it! Well, maybe out of the hope that if you do they'll stop…
October 16th, 2008 on 12:25 PM
And every time I see "hungerectomy" I think it says "huge erection." I hate when I get all excited for no reason.
October 16th, 2008 on 12:26 PM
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October 16th, 2008 on 12:57 PM
i hate the ads on the billboards for at&t that mash together names of cities. like Chilondoscow.UGH. those ads KILL ME.
October 16th, 2008 on 1:06 PM
Hrm, I guess you could re-write it as "Hung Erectomy"….wait, "erectomy" is a word, right? Right?
October 16th, 2008 on 1:14 PM
While researching this post I found that there are supposedly SIX (6) different Drinkability advertisements. I bet you could find some of them on Uoutube if you searched a bit.
October 16th, 2008 on 1:30 PM
Pshaw. One of the purest joys of the English language is that you can make up any crap you want, and there's no absolute authority to tell you that you can't. There's a classic, Germanic quality that comes from munging words together into larger words.
October 16th, 2008 on 1:37 PM
Haha! That's my plan, now that I know what I'm looking for. Really. Something I've only seen once and then slept a couple of times … at my age … didn't stick around to tell the tale. :~D
October 16th, 2008 on 1:59 PM
Great post! Blonde_sister beat me to the movie quote. However, I think you should trademark crispiliciousness.
October 16th, 2008 on 2:07 PM
Hrm…. Correctitol has a nice ring to it, don't you think?
October 16th, 2008 on 2:26 PM
I sometimes make up words (or to be arty about it, "neologize") in my fiction. Sometimes it just gets the feel across better than the words I already know. But at least I don't should them at people from a 30-second ad.
And if it's good enough for Lewis Carroll, it's good enough for me.
October 16th, 2008 on 3:36 PM
Timely… I was noticing the TV ads for the movie "W" and became ridiculously bugged by the repeated use of "dubya" or "dubba-ya" in the commercial. The letter is DOUBLE-U… ya know, like 2 Us, like what a W looks like!! Dohhhh!I don't mine if people say Dubya when they mean ol' Georgie. But the letter is still DOUBLE… U.
October 17th, 2008 on 1:30 AM
Made-up words and truth-in-advertising ethics certainly don't go hand in hand, as far as I'm concerned. It seems many advertisers boldly lay claim to imaginary qualities that sound good (questionable) but have no real meaning. Fancification?
October 28th, 2008 on 5:19 PM
As an avid word lover I feel obligated to point out that, because of the way words are made in English, quite a few of the ones you ranted against can rightfully be considered words in their own right. Grammatically speaking, if a new word consists of a known root word and an accepted prefix, suffix or both, then it can be considered a word.
-Ectomy is a recognized suffix for a removal or excision so a hungerectomy would be the removal of hunger. The fact that it consists of the root word "hunger" and the suffix "ectomy" gives it valid grounds of being a word.
-Opolis is a borrowed Greek word from city seen commonly in the well known English word "metropolis". It's also a valid suffix and, seeing as a peanut is a valid root word "peanutopolis" can stand on its' own as a word. An argument can be made that "City of peanuts" is a stupid name but we're not talking about definitions so much as the recognition of the word itself.
-Ility is a Latin suffix expressing the ability to do something so, for the same reasons mentioned above, "drinkability" is, in fact, a word.
Nougatocity is debatable seeing as it consists of two base words.
Substantialiscious and satisfectellent are both obvious combinations of two words in an attempt to make a third word. I personally have nothing but disdain for 99% of words made this way. I can point out, however, that if enough English speakers use an unofficial word it becomes an official word so whether or not these hybrids are actual words is a question for the masses.
Melty is one I'm not sure about because -y isn't considered a suffix though it does have a tendency to mean, when added to words, the ability to be the base word. Eg Cheesy being the ability to be made of cheese.
Fourthmeal's main problem is that it's two base words not properly joined together. It's clearly two words lacking a hypen.
October 29th, 2008 on 2:16 PM
Hear hear. I'll counter that some compound words start out with hyphens or spaces and end up a single word. I feel going from a compound word to a single word is a mark of legitimacy, which is why I insist on using email instead of e-mail. "Real" words don't have hyphens.
October 29th, 2008 on 3:00 PM
Well said! I think I had more fun reading your comment than writing my original post. :-)
November 3rd, 2008 on 10:18 AM
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