Authorisms: Words Wrought by Writers by Paul Dickson Read Free Book Online Page B

press is in 1787 when Thomas Carlyle wrote in his book On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History : “Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than them all.”
    FRAK. A faux curse word created by writer Glen A. Larson for the original television series Battlestar Galactica . The word was mostly overlooked back in the seventies series but has become more and more commonly used in the twenty-first century in places ranging from sitcoms to coffee mugs. The emergence of the verb frack (short for the extraction process of hydraulic fracturing) has given new life to the term.
    FRANKENSTEIN. A monster who is out of control. It derives from the name of Victor Frankenstein, who in Mary Shelley ’s (1797–1851) 1818 romance Frankenstein constructed a human monster from an accumulation of human body parts and endowed it with life. In 2005 the Oxford English Dictionary added an entry for Frankenstein food as food that has been genetically modified or irradiated (also called Frankenfood ).
    FREAKONOMICS. For freak economics , a clever meld word coined by economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner in their 2005 book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. It’s economics based on conventional wisdom, common sense, and numbers. Much of freakonomics confirms what we have long suspected—for example, that political candidates who have a lot of money to finance their campaigns are still out of luck if no one likes them—but it is still enlightening when stated in economic terms.
    FREELANCE. One who sells services to employers without a long-term commitment to any of them; an uncommitted independent, as in politics or social life. The word is not recorded before Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) introduced it in Ivanhoe, which, among other things, is often considered the first historic novel in the modern sense. Scott’s freelancers were mercenaries who pledged their loyalty and arms for a fee. This was its first appearance: “I offered Richard the service of my Free Lances, and he refused them—I will lead them to Hull, seize on shipping, and embark for Flanders; thanks to the bustling times, a man of action will always find employment.” 4

     
    FRENEMY. A blend of friend and enemy coined in 1953 by the American journalist Walter Winchell (1897–1972). “Howz about calling the Russians our Frienemies [ sic ].” Can refer to either an enemy disguised as a friend or to a friend who is “a person with whom one is friendly, despite a fundamental dislike or to a friend who is simultaneously a competitor and rival.”
    FRIENDING. The act of befriending, a term coined by Shakespeare in Hamlet , act 1, scene 5:
     
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do, to express his love and friending to you.
     
    In The Shakespeare Key , a book published in 1879, the authors Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke make the point that this overlooked coinage could be adopted by the larger language as a word implying “friendly feeling.” With the advent of the social network Facebook in 2004, friended became widely adopted. Two other words from the Clarkes’ list appear later in this lexicon: irregulous and smilet . 5
    FRUMIOUS. Blend of fuming and furious created and applied by Lewis Carroll beginning in 1871 in Through the Looking-Glass with the warning: “Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!”
    FUDGE. This exclamation of contempt made its literary debut in Anglo-Irish novelist Oliver Goldsmith ’s (1730–1774) The Vicar of Wakefield describing the very impolite behavior of Mr. Burchell, who at the conclusion of every sentence would cry out fudge . 6
    FUTURE SHOCK. A term created by Alvin Toffler for his 1970 book of the same name to describe a certain psychological state of individuals and entire societies where there is the perception of there being “too much change in too