And Another Thing | 8 November 2008

There’s plenty of goodies yet in the English word-factory

The most overused word this autumn has been ‘crunch’ in the sense of ‘crisis’, as in the phrase ‘credit crunch’. Not many know that it was first used thus by Winston Churchill, so adding to his many other claims to fame that of being a neologist. The OED credits him with inventing the usage but says it was in the Daily Telegraph on 23 February 1939, whereas I think it was a decade earlier in his book on the first world war.

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Ross Clark

Labour is out of its depth with electric cars

I think I can fairly be called a neologist by virtue of using triumphalist in its current sense, in my History of Christianity (1976), having picked it up from the late mediaeval usage. The OED gives me credit for early usage in Enemies of Society (1977), but not with its discovery, which they attribute to Professor Henry Chadwick (1967), though I would argue he uses it in its original sense.