# Neologisms coined by non-literary people **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 22, 2010, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neologisms-coined-by-non-literary-people/533299 "2010-03-22T03:26:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellis_Aponte_Jr)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2010, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neologisms-coined-by-non-literary-people/533299/21 "2010-03-30T23:28:25Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Did ‘Wardrobe Malfunction’ really not exist before the Justin Timberlake/Janet Jackson thing? I don’t think it did. Now, I’ve always assumed Timberlake said it in the spur of the moment, but it would be interesting if someone could prove it was a scripted remark. ---
**Author:** ![Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellis_Aponte_Jr)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2010, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neologisms-coined-by-non-literary-people/533299/22 "2010-03-30T23:37:03Z")
By the way, I find the -aholic construction slightly annoying, and in looking into the matter it appears that comedian Rodney Dangerfield coined the first one - workaholic - and therefore could be considered the grandfather of all similar derivations. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2010, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neologisms-coined-by-non-literary-people/533299/23 "2010-03-31T00:28:56Z")
If an alcoholic is addicted to alcohol, does that mean a chocoholic is addicted to chocohol? Amusingly, the Firefox spellchecker actually recognizes “chocoholic”. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2010, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neologisms-coined-by-non-literary-people/533299/24 "2010-03-31T00:50:25Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Did ‘Wardrobe Malfunction’ really not exist before the Justin Timberlake/Janet Jackson thing? Nope. It really didn’t. I did a pretty thorough newspaper search. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2010, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neologisms-coined-by-non-literary-people/533299/25 "2010-03-31T01:04:00Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > “Jack Shit” (as in “I can’t see Jack Shit out there”) has been traced to an underground comic book by Spain Rodriguez, one of his biker stories about the Road Vultures. (Source: **The Comics Journal** interview with Mike Baron, writer of **Nexus** and **The Badger** , back in the 80s.) I’d love to know which comic and when it appeared. The term “jack shit” to mean nothing of significance was pretty much in use(but not much in print) by 1972. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2010, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neologisms-coined-by-non-literary-people/533299/26 "2010-03-31T01:15:01Z")
> [@light\_strand](#): > > I’ve heard it said that Bill Bellamy coined the tem “booty call”. Possibly true. He was on MTV in 1993, and the phrase first starts showing up in Google Groups in 1994. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2010, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neologisms-coined-by-non-literary-people/533299/27 "2010-03-31T01:16:35Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > Forget Cecil. **samclem** is the true master. All bow down before **samclem**! I"d like to subscribe to your newsletter. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Rrose\_Selavy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bcef8e/32.png) [@Rrose\_Selavy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rrose_Selavy)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2010, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neologisms-coined-by-non-literary-people/533299/28 "2010-03-31T02:14:14Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Wasn’t that coined by newspaper reporters, though? I would count them as “literary”. Judging by the standards of what passes for journalism all too often these days, I wouldn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2010, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neologisms-coined-by-non-literary-people/533299/29 "2010-03-31T02:37:17Z")
> [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](#): > > By the way, I find the -aholic construction slightly annoying, and in looking into the matter it appears that comedian Rodney Dangerfield coined the first one - workaholic - and therefore could be considered the grandfather of all similar derivations. No, it appears to be a pastor named Wayne E. Oates. [answers.com](http://www.answers.com/topic/workaholic) > [@](#): > > In the 1960s, someone had the idea of taking -holic as a suffix meaning “addict”, and a whole new category of addictions followed. One of the first and most important is workaholic. It was announced in the 1968 article “On Being a ‘Workaholic’ (A serious Jest)” in the journal Pastoral Psychology: “I have dubbed this addiction of myself and my fellow ministers ‘workaholism,’” wrote Wayne Oates, a professor of psychology of religion at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. However, it was the appearance of Oates’s book Confessions of a Workaholic in 1971 that propelled that term and prompted many writers to start using the suffixes -aholic, -holic, or -oholic to describe “all-consuming obsessions,” not all of them so serious. You can also find this in a [2000 William Safire column](http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/02/magazine/the-lives-they-lived-on-language-wordplayers.html?pagewanted=1) (which also credits 'Herbert Freudenberger for burnout in the emotional sense). Going through Google Books appears to confirm this. They give 1969 for the year, but the years they give periodicals are notoriously bad, as you’ll find if you try to search workaholic for earlier citations. They give dozens but all appear to have false dates. ---
**Author:** ![Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellis_Aponte_Jr)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2010, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neologisms-coined-by-non-literary-people/533299/30 "2010-03-31T03:21:17Z")
Thanks… I had heard the year 1968 given as the birthdate of “workaholic” but your cite is much more believable than the Rodney Dangerfield one. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/neologisms-coined-by-non-literary-people/533299.md?page=1)