A new word can spring into existence when inspiration enlivens a poet's tongue. But such treasures are easily missed when new words can be cranked out like so much sausage.
One sausage-grinder that regularly turns out many new words uses the addition of -IFY to a place-name, a personal name, or an adjective, to create a word meaning "to make something more like X". It turns out that a surprising number of X's have gone into the old sausage grinder, and in some cases the results are appalling!
Here is list of some odd words formed with -IFY or -IFIER or -IFICATION:
In our decade here she had done rather lurid, abstractified views of the rooftops from all of the third-floor windows, in all of the directions of the compass, and thus used up her world.John Updike, "Roger's Version".
But for a fellow like me, the real temptation of abyssifying is to hope that the approach of the 'last days' might be liberating, might compel us to reconsider deeply, earnestly.
[Neil] Postman does not only argue that television produced adultified children; paradoxically, it also produced childified adults.Donovan Hohn, Harper's Magazine, January 2007.
Through singing, dancing, painting, telling fables of neurotic mobsters who visit psychiatrists, and otherwise engaging in what Ms Dissanayake calls artifying, people can be quickly drawn together, and even strangers persuaded to treat one another as kin.The New York Times, 27 November 2007.
Now Asya averted her eyes so as not to have to stare any longer at her mother, the mother whom she had never called "mom" and had perhaps hoped to keep at a distance by auntifying.Elif Shafak, "The Bastard of Istanbul"
Never miss awardifying celebritiesAn advertistement for the Dish Network DVR, appearing in USA Today on 25 February 2008, just after the Oscar awards.
"Best put on a jail face, BG. These crabs see you puckerin', they're gonna bitchify you in a heartbeat
Bob Strauss, above, refuses to blandify his apartment by getting rid of his stuffed baby seal, even though it puts some women off.The New York Times, 29 March 2007.
Going to a different part of the country for a month can also brickify it.
Though some have complained about the Broadway-ification of the London theater scene, with its increasing reliance on bloated musicals and empty-headed revivals, the West End still remains a place to find compelling, original theater.The New York Times, 31 December 2006.
I routinely exposed their slip-shod, unsupportable testimony for the foul bratwurst that it was! It was for these performances that the media coined the new verb to brucify, often used as the passive adjective, brucified, which signifies none other than to rip into a witness's foundation, expose its shaky regions, then demolish his house of evidence in deafening tumultua.
For many, even square-built Corliss Henderson with her dogged melancholy butchifying of the saints, would have liked to know me better, to 'get in touch with' impeccably gray-swaddled Professor Roger Lambert, who had made his deal with the universe and was damned if he was going to welsh on it.John Updike, "Roger's Version"
Senate President Warns Against 'the Californi-fication of Florida'
Even kids get it. But '300' - the new cartoonified version of the hard day's work at the Hot Gates on the coast of Greece, where 300 stood against a million-man march of Persians - is clueless.Stephen Hunter, The Washington Post, 09 March 2007.
The Chickenification of the American PigHarper's Magazine, May 2006.
"All I care about is the Wild Wild West. I'm going to Cody-fy the world."
We always use the convention that the right hand side does not contain more information than the left hand side. The right hand side is a crudification of the left.Donald Knuth, "The Art of Computer Programming", Volume I.
...I take her hand and feel suddenly purged of yet another ghost, as de-Kafkafied by my pilgrimage to the cemetary as I would appear to have been de-Birgittized once and for all by that visitation on the terrace restaurant in Venice.Philip Roth, "The Professor of Desire".
Back in 1980, another futurologist, Alvin Toffler, anticipated the de-massifying of society in his best selling book "The Third Wave", which is still in print.John Cassidy, The New Yorker, 10/17 July 2006.
This month Mathew Knowles, father of Beyonce, released the CD "Kid's Rap Radio", featuring 8-year-olds behind the mike rapping deraunchified hits like Busta Rhymes's "Touch it".The New York Times, 26 November 2006.
The de-Santafication process has begun!"
"Like, 'You're my competitor, so I'm going to dogify you.'"Anne Packer, "The Dive from Clausen's Pier"
"Dogify?" I said.
"Make doglike. You know, with that kind of here's-the-brutally-honest-photographer-turning-his-unpitying-eye=on-real-life type of thing."
"Was she dogified?"
"Completely," Simon said. "Houndified. Muttified."
The inspiring verses and the singer's beautiful voice seemed to dulcify the King.Susan Sontag, "The Volcano Lover"
The editorial team, based in Indianapolis, gives authors a kind of "Dummies for Dummies" manual and a computer template. "Copy editors do the line editing and Dummifying," Steele said.The New York Times Book Review, 24 September 2006.
The dynastification of American political life is weaking America's claim to be a democratic beacon.The Economist, 12 May 2007.
"Shark Tale" has wonderful animation, and it was very entertaining to watch. What the directors and producers did, was take common objects in the human world that are recognizable by most people, and fishify them. For instance they have "Swim" and "Don't Swim" signs in the fish world of Times Square.
Instead, trying something unique, fun and perfect for the season - a sparkling red wine thatŐs sweet enough to please and bubbly enough to giddify.
I started out trying to genericize without gimplification, but it turned out to be rather complicated, largely because you still sometimes need to generate temps. You could just add them directly to the outermost BIND_EXPR, but that doesn't work if we haven't already genericized. So I'm punting for now.
The Googlification of MSN will occur in two parts.The New York Times, 08 July 2004.
There was a declension of Egyptian heads, from the oblique formality of early dynasties to the full-lipped irony and passion of the middle, down into Greekified versions which crossed with Greek versions of Egyptian formalism and led to another plane, a shelf of green-veined marble with a Phidian Athena in high relief on a temple slab.Richard Stern in "Stitch".
He says that SEGA and Nintendo are responsible for the "subtle but massive Hello-Kittification of North American animation."Douglas Coupland, "Microserfs".
Adamson, co-director of "Shrek", wisely doesn't try to hip-ify the tale, leaving its curious blend of medieval pageantry, Christian fable and children's bedtime story intact.Newsweek, 19 December 2005:
Though your aim is to release endorphins and hunkify your calves, you also want to see what's going on, who's on the street, who's on the street with a dog.
In January 1988, after spending a year trying to hunkify myself and writing about that effort extensively in The Washington Post, I finally mustered up the courage to sign up for a genuine triathlon held annually on Grand Bahama Island called the "Conch Man": swim a mile, bike ten, run five.
Breaking that culture of dependency, they concluded, is the key to making the long discussed Iraqification of the country's security a reality.The New York Times, 04 December 2006.
Muslim women such as myself are thrilled that we don't live in Saudi Arabia or Iran and we are already alarmed at the Islamification of Britain.An article in the London Independent.
To linguify a claim about things in the world is to take that claim and construct from it an entirely different claim that makes reference to the words and other linguistic items used to talk about those things, and then use the latter claim in a context where the former would be appropriate.An example given is
"organic feedlots" - two words that I never thought would find their way into the same clause.Similar, I suppose, are statements such as "military intelligence is an oxymoron".
They have bemoaned what some call the mallification of the square for years now, aghast that even a hub of intellect and creativity cannot keep out the chains.The New York Times, 22 November 2008.
Since World War II, however, has come the massification of culture.The New York Times, 26 April 2004.
Alfie: You smell a bit milkified.
Michael Caine, in "Alfie".
THE MITTIFICATION OF MCCAINThe New York Times, 16 February 2008.
The first lady tries to humanize - and mommify - the case for reform.A headline in the online magazine Slate, 18 September 2009.
They were dissolute but human, guilty but glamorous: the MTVification of "Hill Street Blues".
Alcatraz, too, has given in to the museumification of everything.
She pleads the American reader to not museumify the writings that she translates, that is not to view them as representative cultural artifacts to be observed and objectified.
Christopher Hitchens, petty criminal? He became one for the purpose of his February 2004 column "I Fought the Law", a broadside against the nanny-state-ification of New York under Mayor Michael Bloomberg.Vanity Fair, October 2009.
The Napa-fication of an Ancient Wine RegionThe New York Times, 28 August 2005.
Nibbler: It's a genetic abnormality that resulted when you
went back in time and performed certain actions which
made you your own grandfather.
Fry: I did do the nasty in the past-y!
Nibbler: Verily. And that past nastification is what shields
you from the brains.
"'Only one colleague has really understood it,' he wrote to his friend Heinrich Zangger, 'and he is seeking to nostrify it (Abraham's expression) in a clever way.' The expression to nostrify (nostrifizieren), which had been used by the Goettingen-trained mathematical physicist Max Abraham, referred to the practice of nostrification by which German universities converted degrees granted by other universities into degrees of their own."Walter Isaacson, "Einstein - His Life and Universe".
While relaying a report on The University of Manchester's name a little while ago, I mentioned three initialisms that people now staunchly maintain DO NOT STAND FOR ANYTHING (despite their history, of course): UMIST (one of the predecessors of Manchester as we know it today), Texas A&M, and SRI International. Right after that, I wondered out loud on the ADS-L if there was a name for these things. I suggested the lame term opacinym (for terms that had become "opacified by institutional fiat").
A guest herself on one of GreenStone's shows last week, Ms Steinem said she didn't understand people who bemoaned the Oprah-fication of the news.The New York Times, 19 September 2006.
Then, too, the governor seemed Oprahfied, especially in the last few days, when he couldn't keep from musing into microphones about whatever was running through his mind.The New York Times, 23 January 2009.
"Hank's one and only successful novel, 'God Hates Us All', has been pappified into a sappy and successful movie renamed 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' and starring 'Tom and Katie', no last names necessary.The New York Times, 29 July 2007.
Platonification - This is the bias toward overvaluation of factual information and reliance on expertise. We tend to believe that the stock markets are driven by such underlying leading indicators as new housing starts, the unemployment rate, the presidential election cycle, or who won the Super Bowl.Gerry Smedinghoff, "Black Swan or Black-Scholes?"
I have noticed a progressive cochonification of the boys swimming in the Danube. How would you say that in English? Porkification!
PORNIFIED: How Pornography is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Familiesa book by "Horrified" Pamela Paul.
Star 80 foresaw the pornographication of American life.
It had turned him [Zola] into a perpetual prosification device, an inexhaustible ream-machine.
"Men have dinner. They go to the movies, where they actually sit next to each other. They walk sans sports equipment. They do these things millions of times, every day, without awkwardness or fear of queerification".
Pretentious? Moi?or perhaps
I am tres excited!
The Religification of John Kerry has begun. He started lacing his speeches with a Bible reference here and there. He released a TV ad discussing his faith, and just days before the convention began, the campaign hired a new director of religious outreach.
...the fireplace was decorated with blue ceramic tiles depicting biblical themes like the salification of Lot's wife...T. Coraghessan Boyle, "World's End".
Menchu raised her eyebrows and said at once that the very idea left her petrified, or saltified or whatever the word was, like Noah's wife, or was it Lot's?Arturo Perez-Reverte, "The Flanders Panel"
Paradoxically, Khomeini helped Sunnify Shiism by assuming the role of autocrat and empire seeker, while helping Sunnis to Shiify their creed by glorifying martyrdom.Irshad Manji, New York Times Book Review, 13 August 2006.
After the sentence was pronounced, MSNBC trotted out a bullet-headed talk-radio host to sneer at "the sissification of America."The New Yorker, 15 May 2006.
To that end, he draws inspiration from a broad swath of pop culture. Those include Web sites (he quotes a long and blush-inducing list of raunchy slang terms culled from the Web site of the Salem, Oreg.-based "Sly Records"), magazines (he unearths a gold mine of girl slang from the late, beloved Jane), movies (he cites the effective use of "fuckin-A" in Mike Judge's 1999 film "Office Space") and television shows (including, of course, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," although he finds untold riches of slangification in "The Simpsons" as well).Stephanie Zacharek, Salon Magazine, 16 April 2009.
After looking at all the examples at the Eric Meyer website last night in both IE and Mozilla, I only saw one that wouldn't work in IE on Windows. That one was slantify. Others didn't work 100% but that didn't effect presentability of the examples.
His recipes are full of surprise and playfulness: strange juxtapositions of hot and cold ingredients, intensely flavored frozen powders, and mysterious liquid-centered gelatin orbs made through a process called spherification.Slate magazine, 08 October 2008.
Carter and Anderson would Spy-ify writers' copy, often completely rewriting it to get the tone - equal parts venom and glee - just right.The New York Time Book Review, 03 December 2006.
"I've heard more than one person refer to it as the Starbucksification of Second Life"."Ned Reuters", discussing the online game "Second Life", in which people develop avatars that can fly around, but also go to work, buy property, and so on. Reuters News Service has paid to "put up" a "news building" in this fantasy world, and "Ned Reuters" is the name of the avatar of their "local" reporter. You wouldn't think nerds could make you cry...
"There is absolutely a Survivor-fication of television at some level."Howard Gordon, an executive producer of "24", a scripted show which has been sacrificing noted cast members extravagantly.
Although the entree's ills were first diagnosed in the late 1990's, when the rise of small plates kicked off the tapafication of American menus, the attacks have become more serious lately.The New York Times, 05 December 2007
"Added a link to giftrans, a useful little Unix program that can transparentify a GIF file."on the web site for the xv graphics program.
"I want to be involved in science communication to allow it to enrich people's life like food, literature, or music can. We need to re-trendify science.
"Unhappily, darling, I can't. I'm all trustified. Didn't you know? Apart from my income, it's all - well, I can't touch a thing."Maurice Edelman, "The Prime Minister's Daughter"
The process of sharing slides is broken. It goes from my hard drive to yours via email. Or if I put it online, its in a clunky format like pdf or Powerpoint that you need to download. Slideshare solves that problem. It webifies your slides - it makes the experience of viewing them, sharing them with individuals or groups smooth and seamless.
Gay jokes, or more specifically, men assuring themselves that they are not gay, mark a new phase in the Will and Gracification of American television.The New York Times, 01 September 2005.
"foppery, frippery, metrosexuality and the wimpification of America..."as the Washington Post described the men's shopping magazine Cargo.
All day long he helps yogified babes try on form-fitting clothes and assesses the result.The Utne Reader, November/December 2007.
For grasshoppers, zombification is an everyday hazard and it obliges them to end their lives in a bizarre manner.The New York Times, 06 September 2005.
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