When I get the chance, I listen to NPR while I do work at my desk that doesn’t require my undivided attention. This morning I heard this piece about an Italian schoolboy who invented a word on some homework he handed in recently. His teacher marked it as incorrect, as teachers are apt to do, but she wrote him a little message telling him she liked his new word. She also wrote the powers that be in her country and is trying to get his new word put in the dictionary.

Kudos to the teacher!

This is a great illustration of how our language is always changing – etymologist at it’s finest. Besides words that are created for things that didn’t exist 5, 10, 15 years ago such as emoticon or ipad, it shows us that language is anything but stagnant, which can be a challenge to someone like me…