Learn · TED

Talk7 min

Go ahead, make up new words!

Erin McKean · TED

Watch At TED

About

In this fun, short talk from TEDYouth, lexicographer Erin McKean encourages — nay, cheerleads — her audience to create new words when the existing ones won’t quite do. She lists out 6 ways to make new words in English, from compounding to “verbing,” in order to make language better at expressing what we mean, and to create more ways for us to understand one another.

The talk

  1. Go ahead, make up new words! 7 min · TED's player

Credits and licence

Institution
TED
Department
TEDYouth 2014
Speaker
Erin McKean
Year
2014
Level
For everyone
Language
English
Subjects
Society and politics, Languages and linguistics
Source
TED
Licence
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, as TED states it. Non-commercial use only, and no changed versions. TED's terms
Attribution
TED Talks are licensed by TED under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International and are shown here in TED's own player, as TED's usage policy asks.
Who can watch
TED gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Teens profiles and older, judged from what the source says about it. How courses are placed