New Words I like

On my recent family visit in L.A, I encountered two words that tickled my fancy.  They were actually incredibly sounding of combinations of common words.  Special circumstances brought these odd couples together, creating the need for a new catchy phrase.  Of course, the market provided the answer, even I don’t know who exactly came up with the phrase.

The first one appeared in this title “Teenagers who sext are more likely to get into trouble.”  The term “sext” combines text with sex.  I assume it means to send erotic messages to your chat partner.  I see the term in Hebrew is סקסמס, a term that combines לסמס  pronounced lesemes and means to send SMS messages and סקס  pronounced sex, which means what it means.  I imagine that in French would be envoyer un sexto.  By the way, nothing came up when I googled that term.  So, all of those are sexting, sexemsesing or sending sextos, you should watch out!

The other term is Carmagendon , actually Carmagendon II as this is the second time this event occurred.  Specifically, it was necessary to close a section of the main north-south freeway in LA, the 405, because of bridge destruction (no spelling error), for almost two days (a weekend).  The 405 normally resembles a parking lot from 8 in the morning to 8 at night as we witnessed from the comfort  of our hotel window.  So, the necessity of closing this pass was considered such a local disaster that the upcoming Carmaggendon was the main news item for more than two weeks. 

Of course, possibly due to the all of the talks of traffic jams and alternative ways, most Angelinos stayed home.  Disaster was avoided, with many children expected to enter this world in nine months.  Still, the combination of car and Armageddon is delightful.

I would like to hear more new hybrids arising to fill the need for the right term at the right time.