Meaningless word coined by a psychotic

I just created a word. A compound noun to be exact. With a snazzy hyphen. One for the ages: ice-goof.

Who invested this authority in me? No one, really. I just needed a word, it didn't seem to exist, so voila!

Every single word in every language had an inventor, of course, and I think ice-goof is as good as a third of them.

What is an ice-goof? Use it in a declarative sentence, please?"

OK.

" 'Blades of Glory,' The Will Ferrell ice-goof, opened at No. 1 on the box office charts."

This noun/adjective might not catch on, but by venting this bit of improv I avoided a description that feels familiar and worn, such as "skating comedy." Not quite Kerouac, but I try.

This, according to Merriam-Webster, is a neologism: "a meaningless word coined by a psychotic." (I am not making this up.) Fortunately, that is the No. 2 definition. The first is a bit more kind: "a new word, usage, or expression." Want to dig in? Here's "A Century of New Words" (Oxford Paperback Reference) from John Ayto.

New words tend to start off life hyphenated. The hyphen adds some clarity, reducing the shock of the new. Then they close up as usage widens. The "Shorter Oxford English Dictionary" just de-hyphenated 16,000 words. (De-hyphenated?) So icegoof could happen. If we all believe, yes it could.

Give it a try. Next post, make up a word or two. Do a mash-up (n., neologism).

More on hyphens: See the usage of "box office charts" up above? For editors who work on the Hollywood trades, which deal with box-office numbers all the time, the two-word-hyphen thing got really old with repeated use. So, for some of the trades, it's simply boxoffice. (The rest of America, curiously, has not felt the need for that economy.)

Same sort of thing with "Web site." You see "website" more often these days as the original connection to World Wide Web unravels a bit. This is the kind of evolution that keeps psychotics and linguistic professors in business.