Authorisms: Words Wrought by Writers (12 page)

GLOBAL VILLAGE.
The concept advanced by Canadian communications theoretician
Marshall McLuhan
(1911–1980) that the globe has been contracted into a single village by electronic technology—radio and television, for starters—with the instantaneous movement of information from every quarter to every point at the same time.
²

GLOBALIZATION.
Coinage of Harvard professor
Theodore Levitt
(1925-2006), which he debuted in a 1983
Harvard Business Review
article ‘’The Globalization of Markets.’’ His concept was that business was becoming globalized, which he defined as the changes in technology and social behaviors that allow multinational companies like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s to sell the same products worldwide. In his sweeping style, he said, “Gone are accustomed differences in national or regional preferences.”
³

GLOT.
A person who cannot bear to waste anything. Scottish-born journalist, poet, and scholar
Alastair Reid
first used it in his imaginative
Ounce, Dice, Trice
. See also
GNURR
and
POOSE
.

GNURR.
Alastair Reid
’s word for the substance that over time collects in the bottoms of pockets and the cuffs of trousers.

GOALLESS.
American poet
Emily Dickinson
(1830–1886) from her poem “No Man Can Compass a Despair”:

No Man can compass a Despair—

As round a Goalless Road.

A cluster of nonce words ending with
–less
(
postponeless
for that which cannot be put off or averted;
reduceless
for that which cannot be reduced; and
reportless
for that which is not worthy of or receiving notice) achieve listing in the venerable
OED
because—or despite the fact that—they appear only in the poems of Emily Dickinson.
*

GOBBLEDYGOOK.
This term was coined by US Representative
Maury Maverick
, D–Texas (1895–1954), a grandson of the Samuel Maverick whose personality and presence gave us the name for one who is “independently minded.” Maury Maverick was chairman of FDR’s Smaller War Plants Corporation during World War II.
Gobbledygook
is Maverick’s name for the long high-sounding words of Washington’s red-tape language. “Just before Pearl Harbor, I got my baptism under ‘gobbledygook’ . . . its definition: talk or writing which is long, pompous, vague, involved, usually with Latinized words. It is also talk or writing which is merely long.”
⁴
It was first used in writing in a memo dated March 30, 1944, banning “gobbledygook language” and mock threatening and saying that “anyone using the words activation or implementation will be shot.” Maverick explained that the term alluded to the noise of a turkey “always gobbledy gobbling and strutting with ludicrous pomposity.”

GONZO.
Crazed; having a bizarre style—especially as a modifier of the word
journalism
when referring to a purposely exaggerated rhetorical style. American slang expert Tom Dalzell supplies the etymology: “Although coinage is credited to US journalist and author
Bill Cardoso
, close friend and partner in adventure with the late
Hunter S. Thompson
(1937–2005) the dust jacket to Cardoso’s collected essays claims only that he is ‘the writer who inspired Dr. Hunter S. Thompson to coin the phrase Gonzo journalism. Thompson first used the term in print and the term is irrevocably linked with him in the US.” He used the term to great effect in
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:
“There was no avoiding the stench of twisted humor that hovered around the idea of a gonzo journalist in the grip of a potentially terminal drug episode being invited to cover the National District Attorneys’ Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.”
⁵

GOOD BAD BOOK.
A term coined by
English author and mystery novelist
G. K. Chesterton
(1874–1936
)
and later adopted by George Orwell who defined it in his essay “Good Bad Books” as “the kind of book that has no literary pretensions, but which remains readable when more serious productions have perished.” He divided these books into two further categories: escape literature, and other works “quite impossible to call ‘good’ by any strictly literary standard.” Orwell also wrote of the genre: “One can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one’s intellect simply refuses to take seriously.”

GOOGLE.
In his weekly
Washington Post
column of March 1, 2012,
Gene Weingarten
wrote that few companies are as protective of their corporate name as Google. He continued, “The company is proud of its unusual name, which it says was coined in 1997 by its co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in an accidental misspelling of the mathematical term ‘googol.’ It’s not a verb, Google says, and never was, and using it as such violates the company’s trademark.”

George Ade

“
So,” Weingarten continued, “imagine my surprise when I got an e-mail from a reader named Ed Lloyd, who had happened upon ‘google’ used as a verb in a collection of short stories published in 1942. In a story called ‘Single Blessedness,’ humorist
George Ade
wrote this: ‘Charley Fresh—who regards himself as the irresistible captivator—googles his way among the girls for six nights a week and is known as a ‘lady’s man.’”

Weingarten concluded that from its context, Ade appeared to be using
google
to mean “unctuously ingratiate oneself with the opposite sex,” but it could also be explained as meaning oogle and may have gotten a boost from the song “Barney Google (with the Goo Goo Googly Eyes)
.
”

GOOSE-STEPPER.
A dupe of conformity.
H. L. Mencken
introduced it in 1923 in his
Prejudices: Third Series
in an essay entitled “On Being an American,” containing a typically Menckenesque blast of invective aimed at the American people: “The most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag.” The term had earlier roots as the original goose-steppers were from the British army, and the practice of marching without bending one’s knees was used in training troops for balance.

GOTHAM.
One of New York’s most enduring nicknames,
Gotham
is Anglo-Saxon for “Goat Town,” and comes from a town called Gotham (GOAT-um) in Lincolnshire, England, which was famous for tales of its stupid residents. Gotham was applied to New York City by
Washington Irving
and others in the 1807
Salmagundi; or the Whim-Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, Esq. and Others
. Lexicographer Barry Popik adds, “
Salmagundi
lampooned New York culture and politics in a manner much like today’s
Mad
magazine.” It was in the November 11, 1807, issue that Irving first attached the name Gotham to New York City and it was he that first called a native of that city a
Gothamite.

GRANFALLOON.
Any large, amorphous organization without real identity. Coined by American writer
Kurt Vonnegut
, who added, “Other examples of granfalloons are the Communist Party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows—and any nation, anytime, anywhere.” He introduced the term in the 1963 science fiction novel,
Cat’s Cradle,
in which Vonnegut described the term as referencing a false
karass
, another Vonnegutian neologism referring to “a proud and meaningless association of human beings.”

GREATEST GENERATION.
Term created by journalist
Tom Brokaw
in his 2004 book of the same title to describe the cohorts who grew up during the Great Depression and went on to fight World War II. Brokaw described them as “the greatest generation any society has ever produced,” arguing that they did not fight for fame and recognition rather because it was the right thing.

GREMLIN.
Coined by the Royal Naval Air Service sometime during World War I, this word was made known by a children’s book called
The Gremlins: A Royal Air Force Story,
written in 1943 by
Roald Dahl
. According to the story, a
gremlin
is a small creature that causes mechanical problems in aircraft. Since 1943, gremlins were blamed by Allied aircraft personnel for various mechanical and engine problems during World War II. The name was bestowed on a subcompact car by American Motors, but given the name’s association with mechanical problems it was replaced by the name Spirit in 1978.

GROK.
To understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with. It was the creation of American science fiction writer
Robert A. Heinlein
(1907–1988) and made its debut in his 1961 novel
Stranger in a Strange Land.
“Smith had been aware of the doctors but had grokked that their intentions were benign.” Heinlein also begot the
grokker
for one who understands. A favorite expression of Trekkies (ardent followers of the
Star Trek
television series) was “I grok Spock”—an allusion to one of the story’s more complex characters.