All words are made up
A Perfectly Cromulent Word (2016)
61–66 of 66 posts
Re: A Perfectly Cromulent Word (2016)
#62Words are just memes that stick around for a while.
My favourite example of this is "ok", which comes from a nearly 200 year-old meme:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-word-ok-was-in...
Re: A Perfectly Cromulent Word (2016)
#63>While we don’t yet enter cromulent into our dictionaries, it’s a perfectly cromulent candidate for future entry. Although the dictionary editors surely were hypnotized by their own humorousness, they ought not to have published that sentence.
It's okay. The Oxford dictionary has them covered:
Re: A Perfectly Cromulent Word (2016)
#64So... Is Embiggen a cromulent word?
It sure is. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/embiggen A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.
Interesting thing about "embiggen" -- the Simpsons _didn't_ invent it. It was already a thing, the show merely popularized it.
It's a century older.
Merriam may not know, but the OED does:
Re: A Perfectly Cromulent Word (2016)
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The later probably, cromulent was a word made up for a Simpsons episode about another made up work a while back
> a while back Over 25 years ago, actually! Lisa the Iconoclast , which coined the words "embiggen" and "cromulent" as part of a gag, aired in February 1996.
Cromulent yes; embiggen no.
See https://www.lexico.com/definition/embiggen