Typically, I’m a big fan of neologisms. I love watching them arise from movements in culture. I love how technology trends add new nouns and verbs to our vocabulary. I love it when artists or wordsmiths take two words and create hybrid baby words from their parents. I like doing that myself. I’m guessing I’ve done more mashups than “Glee,” in some cases. But I came across an invented word this morning that I hope meets a hasty demise.
“Cautionistic.”
Say it out loud. Don’t you feel stupid? Don’t you feel like smacking whomever invented that word upside the head? I do. Here’s where I came across it, and why I hate it:
This morning, after almost zero sleep – like maybe “one sleep” – I was blearily putting together my breakfast with the morning news on the radio in the background. A reporter was filing a story from Capitol Hill regarding Congress and the economy and blah, blah, blah … I’m friggin’ tired! The Congressperson, or economy expert, or random idiot in a suit she was interviewing said that he and whatever group he represents were “cautionistic” about the economy’s apparent slow-growth recovery. She made a point to note that he had coined the term to describe their reluctant encouragement at the economy’s improving health stats. They were CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC about the economic recovery.
You know what would have been the perfect phrase for their wary enthusiasm? CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC!! Instead, he created a single word to stand in for a perfectly good phrase that would’ve done a better job conveying their mood.
There are probably plenty of other cases where someone made baby words out of a perfectly good phrases that I probably have no beefs with. But I’m too tired and grumped over this instance to think of them. (Comments section, please, dear reader.) But that unnecessary smooshing only half bothers me. The other half, or maybe the other 75%, is that “cautionistic” fails at letting the hearer or reader know exactly what is meant by that adjective. The root of the word appears to be “caution.” That they are “istic” makes me suspect there must be “cautionISTS” in the world and Congress, or whomever this Suit represents, is adopting the viewpoint of “cautionists” in this instance, and so they are taking a “cautionistIC” approach.
If someone said they approached a subject with a “feministic” attitude or was a member of a group that had a “communistic” method of self-governance, then I’d know what they meant. I might not agree with the choice of those adjectives (I suspect “feminist” and “communist” would work just fine), but it would be pretty clear to me what they were getting at. When the Capitol Hill Suit says, “We’re ‘cautionistic’ about the economy,” I think he means he’s very wary and ultimately untrusting. Not that he’s cautiously optimistic.
Here’s hoping tomorrow morning will be less bleary-eared. And that the Suit on the Hill refudiates his own neologism. Uh … oops. Repudiates it!
