Epistemophilia: Founding neologists

I was listening to an episode of PRI's To the Best of Our Knowledge on the subject of linguistics. They interviewed Patricia O'Connor (the word lady that is always on WNYC.) She said several of the founding fathers were big neologists. Washington gave us hatchet man (although he meant it literally), bakery, indoors, off-duty, paroled and nondiscrimination. Jefferson gave us pedicure and monotonously and he loved creating new words so much he coined the term neologism. Or rather, Washington and Jefferson were at least the first recorded users of those words. Lincoln first used the word relocate and coined the phrase "point well taken." Nice to know they were carrying on in the tradition of Milton and Shakespeare.

She also said what Americans think of as the British accent is a fairly recent development. She theorizes it came about after the Revolutionary War, including that posh Oxbridge accent that Americans all feel salivate over.  The Brits also love to criticize us for stinking up the language but American English actually preserves some elements that British English didn't, like the subjunctive mood (example: "I suggest he get a job" versus "I suggest he gets a job.")

They also had a man named Dan Everett on who started out as a missionary in the Amazon Jungle and ended up studying their language. The tribe, called the Piraha, speaks a tonal language which is notoriously difficult for Westerners to get a handle on. He suggested whistling the words to hear the tonal vowel differences which is an excellent idea actually. What I liked best about him though is he decided he would rather study their language and culture rather than stick them in Church singing "Jesus Loves Me" and looking for Satan under their beds. Well done.