October Word Fugitive

Barbara Wallraff Oct 6 2008, 5:17 PM ET

Let's test the new word-fugitive delivery system. I've already received suggestions for the October word fugitive (below) by the old-fashioned route. But more are more than welcome, so feel free to post your word inventions as comments. Anything that appears here will be considered for inclusion in my write-up in the magazine. Except, please send requests for new words to me directly, by way of the Word Fugitives form.

Michael McWatters, of New York City, writes, "I use a computer for the better part of my waking life, and I've noticed that certain repetitive keyboard tasks are making their way into my non-computer life. For example, I recently knocked a jar off the counter, and a little voice inside yelped, 'Command-Z!' (the keyboard shortcut for Undo). Ditto for the time I accidentally ripped a page in a book. A friend mentioned that she recently lost her keys and thought, 'Command-F' (Find). There should be a term for this confusion, as it's only going to become more common."

Jump to comments

Presented by

Visit Barbara Wallraff’s blog, at barbarawallraff .theatlantic.com, to see more commentary on language and to submit Word Fugitive queries and words that meet David K. Prince’s need. Readers whose queries are published and those who take top honors will receive an autographed copy of Wallraff’s most recent book, Word Fugitives. More

Barbara Wallraff, a contributing editor and columnist for The Atlantic, has worked for the magazine for 25 years. She is also a weekly syndicated newspaper columnist for King Features and the author of Word Fugitives (2006), Your Own Words (2004), and the national best-seller Word Court (2000). Her writing about language has appeared in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Wilson Quarterly, The American Scholar, and The New York Times Magazine.

Wallraff has been an invited speaker at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the National Writers Workshop, the Nieman Foundation, Columbia Journalism School, the British Institute Library of Florence, and national or international conventions of the American Copy Editors Society, the Council of Science Editors, the International Education of Students organization, and the Journalism Education Association. She has been interviewed about language on the Nightly News With Tom Brokaw and dozens of radio programs including Fresh Air, The Diane Rehm Show, and All Things Considered. National Public Radio's Morning Edition once commissioned her to copy edit the U.S. Constitution. She is a member of the American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel. The Genus V edition of the game Trivial Pursuit contains a question about Wallraff and her Word Court column.