New word alert!

I tend not to be a language innovator.  But I just saw a new word that I think has a good chance of rapidly entering the vocabulary.  From David Neiwert's Orcinus blog: Vindictive [expletive deleted] 08/23/04.  I've highlighted it in this sentence:

One of the immediate obstacles facing any effort to reform the nation's media will be the fact that the Foxcists who are now driving our national discourse have no intention of surrendering control.

"Foxcists," as in Fox News.  Yep, I think that belongs in the American English vocabulary.

My first reaction is that it sounds a tad too snarky to last, being obviously not far from "fascist."

But then it dawned on me that, except for Second World War hobbyists and political-science geeks, nobody remembers what the word "fascist" means any more, except that it's some kind of insult.

I think I'm going to use it with the spelling "Foxist," though.  Somehow I think that makes it roll off the tongue better.  Trying to say "Foxcist" makes it tempting to throw in a kind of "ch" sound, like if you were pronouncing "tz" together.  Knowing how long it took me to reasonably master the German "z" that's pronounced that way, I'm pretty sure it will come out "Foxist" when people say it.

But, like I said, I'm not much of an early-adapter when it comes to new vocabulary.  Or alternative forms of new words.  When "yuppie" first enter the language, which was in 1983 as I remember (in connection with Gary Hart's presidential campaign), there was an alternative version "yumpie" that I thought would win out.  For whatever reason these things happen, "yuppie" was the one that survived.

So far as I know, Neiwert created the word "Foxist/Foxcist".  A "neologism," as the linguists say.  Or maybe it's just in the air and he was the first one to get it in front of my face.

Arlo Guthrie says that song-writing is sort of like fishing.  You sit on the bank and you throw your pole in the water and you eventually pull some songs out.  His advice on this approach: try not to sit downstream from Bob Dylan.

But downstream from writers like David Neiwert is not a bad place to be.  At least for us amateur bloggers.