Verbalocity, redux

TOF ran across one of those list-sites and found thereon 25 handy words that English does not have, but should. 

One of the benefits of having a word for something is that one can talk about it without talking around it.  For example, the ancient Greeks had no word for 'velocity' and so could not easily discuss the physics of local motion.  Not that they were unaware that things changed location at various rates, but they simply called it 'motion.'  A constant velocity was said to exhibit uniform motion, that is, it's motion had a single form.  Acceleration, by which a thing took on successively greater forms of motion, was call difform motion.  But that's as far as they took it.  Terms like 'velocity,' 'instantaneous velocity,' and the like awaited the Middle Ages.  So did terms like 'numerator' and 'denominator,' which you kinda need to speak of velocity intelligibly.

Thing is, the ancients (and early medievals) were interested in motion as such, more so than in its magnitude, so they wondered how a thing might move at all rather than in how one would describe that motion arithmetically, and their vocabulary reflects this.  We Moderns are just as hobbled when we try to talk about love, since the distillation of modern English boils everything down pretty much to plumbing.  The fine distinctions of eros, agape, philos, and the like are not for the blunt Modern ear, which just wants to know if she is available and if so, how soon. 

Of the words on the list linked to above, the one that seems most keenly wanted is:

Backpfeifengesicht (German): A face badly in need of a fist

Simply to define the word conjures up many needful applications.  

OTOH, only in German would that even qualify as a single word....

Your task, should you decide to accept it, is to create word badly needed by the English language and give its definition.  The word should be eminently plausible.  It may even be an actual foreign word!

An eager world awaits your contribution.  

Verbalocity

 Words change over the ages, sometimes in form, sometimes in matter, that is, the substantial meaning.  These changes are of two sorts in the final sense: those that make finer distinctions and those that coarsen them.  Call them splitters and lumpers. 

The magpie tendency of English to adopt foreign words is a case in point.  "Why does English have so many words?" a Sino-Panamanian once asked me.  (The Chinese went to Panama to build the Trans-Isthmian Railroad which, while technically trans-continental, is somewhat shorter.)  She gave as example the two words director and conductor, which she said in Spanish were the same word.  So I conducted her across the room and then directed her to return.  Now both of those words were Latin, so I am puzzled that the distinction did not survive in Spanish. Otherwise, we are aware of the distinctions we make between sweat and perspiration.  Though technically they mean the same thing, there are distinctions in usage.  A ditchdigger sweats while swinging his pick; a nervous suitor may perspire as he comes to pop the question.  That is, sweat carries connotations of hard physical work, of extreme guilt, extreme heat, etc.  Perspiration connotes mere nervousness, moderate heat, etc. 

Odds and Ends

Congressman Weiner Strikes Again!
"Four Restaurant Customers Burned by Flaming Bananas"

--headline, Northwest Florida Daily News (Fort Walton Beach), June 13

Imagine if He Were Not "Friendship Man"
"Friendship Man Kills Himself and Injures Wife in Process"

--headline, Dyersburg (Tenn.) State Gazette, June 14

Unfortunate Headline of the Week
"Boehner Jokes About Weiner's Name in Ohio Speech"

--headline, Associated Press, June 12

BTW, aren't we all just a little bit happier that Congressman Weiner's given name is not Richard?

On the Unprefixable

or
If It Ain't Yet Broke, Don't Prefix It

L. Sprague deCamp once wrote a story called "The Hibited Man" in which he played with the idea that there is a word for 'inhibited' and 'uninhibited' but what meaning would the root word have?  Hibited?  How does exhibited fit into this continuum? 

There are other words that seem to exist only in their prefixtual form or only with certain prefixes. 

This being Christmas season, one such word is "redeem."  What does it mean to be "deemed" and is "redeemed" to be read as "deemed again"?  What of "predeemed" - perhaps to indicate the Elect of Calvinism.  Exdeem, undeem, subdeem, the possibilities are endless. 

We can postpone a matter, but can we prepone it?  Repone it?  For that matter can we pone it? 

We can presume, subsume, assume.  Can we ever actually sume?  What about postsume or supersume?  Should Stanley have said, after the identity had been verified, "Dr. Livingstone, I postsume"?

Any more examples, folks?

Echoed on http://m-francis.livejournal.com/