Surely the conversion of a phrase into a single word is the reduction of language, not the extension of it? Taking an existing word and attempting to apply new meaning to it is reducing our vocabulary.xybre wrote:It's an extension of language, not the bastardization of it (Well okay, sometimes it is).
"THIS" is kind of a shorthand for "This is just the thing I wanted/was thinking!" But that is wordy and not as emphatic. It's not too different from when you can't think of a word, then suddenly someone else says it and you exclaim "Yeah, that!", rather than "Yes, 'onomatopoeia' was the word I was looking for." It conveys an additional excitement that the full phrase may lack.
/neologistilinguistogeekery
So...just watch out!Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel by Orwell, it is described as being "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year". Newspeak is closely based on English but has a greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar. This suits the totalitarian regime of the Party, whose aim is to make any alternative thinking — "thoughtcrime", or "crimethink" in the newest edition of Newspeak — impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion and so on.
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