Several that I looked at interested me, for example, rogalian, "pertaining to a large fire". I can't think of an alternative and it will sadly be an increasingly relevant word in the coming years.You never heard of a bonfire? Or even a balefire? There's note special about half of these words, honestly.
Rogalian isn't a noun. Rogalian suburban change is an increasing fact of life in the southwest US is an example where it has particular utility.I know rogalian is an adjective, but English has ways of making adjectives from nouns if needed, or even slight rephrasing otherwise. Further, I don't understand your example. How can suburban change be like a big fire?
I am reminded of "inkhorn terms".The interesting thing about the inkhorn debate is that some of the folk against the making of new words based on Greek and Latin were themselves seriously good Greek and Latin scholars. They gainstood these new words on two grounds. The first and most important was that it went outside what they thought of as good Ciceronian rhetoric, which held purity and perspicuity as principles. They believed that language with a closeness to concrete things and literal meanings worked best, and from there figurative and metaphoric meanings could be built. There was also a slightly vaguer belief that if you grew to have a good feel for a language, you would discover a proper or fitting way of using it which was clearer better quality.
Mid-16th to mid-17th century English developed in order to complete with (and hopefully displace) the perfection of the classical languages. Translators working with re-discovered texts from Classical Antiquity or with new texts from the Continent found themselves facing the limitations of the English language which was not equipped to discuss disciplines such as philosophy, politics or (natural) sciences.
And so people began coining words - and a lot of them did so by borrowing heavily from Latin and Greek. Several, several coined words are still used today but - by golly - many were terribly obscure, infrequent and personal coinages which demanded that the reader was familiar not only with the classical languages, but certainly also with the associative mind of the author. These are now generally referred to as "inkhorn terms" - and yes, these are obsolete, pretentious words of the highest order.
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posted by kmz at 2:21 PM on July 3, 2012 [6 favorites]