Invention

We spoke about the fashionable buzzwords or clichés during lunch meeting the other day. Like so many geeks, I must admit, I hardly come to fall in love with the new thing. That being said, vogue words can be quite fun and that’s how they got to be vogue words.

Nowhere is the classical language in the Anglo-Saxon times more creative than the new clichés that are born every now and then. Well, obviously new words and phrases have to be born. The nub of the problem is birth control. Just as if you print too much money, its value goes down, so if you grant too many fashion words or buzzwords, the fun of them becomes debased.

There are, of course, numerous examples I found myself carried away by the brilliant buzzwords. Think of the scene of birds laying their eggs – as what I did during my recent reading The Selfish Gene. The best buzzword that strikes a chord, indeed, comes from the Japanese who invented the word saku-taku-no-ki.

Saku – the special sound a mother hen makes tapping on an egg with her beak.
Taku – the sound a chick makes tapping from within.
No-ki – the moment the tappings come together.
Saku-taku-no-ki – the very instant a chick pecking on the inside and the mother pecking on the outside reach the same spot. The egg cracks open. A new life is born, in just the way a new cliché comes to life.