INCHOATE: commenced, but not completed

Yesterday's New York Times Magazine had a great article by Ben Zimmer, executive producer of visualthesaurus.com. Zimmer is a linguist with impeccable credentials. Yesterday's article was about Justice Antonin Scalia's distaste for the use of the word choate. Scalia is known to point out to attorneys using the term that there is no such word. It is a bastardization of a legitimate word, inchoate. To drop the preface "in" from the word, says Scalia, to make a word meaning "completed or perfected" is inappropriate. As Zimmer points out, the previously-acceptable meaning for the word "Choate" was a prestigious prep school in Connecticut.

I found myself fascinated with the discussion, in which Zimmer points out that the extensive use of the shortened word has rendered it acceptable, even gaining recent entry in law dictionaries. That is how some words become legitimate: persistent usage.

I began to think about some commonly-used words and had to wonder if they had real or imaginary roots:

Informant...Is there a word formant that means someone who refuses to give information about someone? Someone who doesn't want their fifteen minutes of fame?

Instinct...I'd love to use the word stinct to mean not having a clue about how to do something. I could use that regularly.

Internet...The ternet is where I land frequently when trying to find my way through computer technology.

Invoke...To reject God's blessing of food about to be eaten has to be voke.

Irascible...I know a number of people who are rascible, meaning pleasant, agreeable. They are much more fun to be around than those who are irascible.

Impeccable...The opposite of Ben Zimmer's credentials...those that are peccable, or questionable. Does that mean they are "able to be pecked at?"

This list could go on for a long time. Maybe I should write a little book, a dictionary of words I'd like to see used. I could call it The Peditious Dictionary: A Cumbersome Way to Crawl through the English Language . I'm afraid it would become inchoate and never see completion.

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