I believe that I may have invented a new word today. I was working on the third volume in the Oliver Booth series and I needed to find an alternative word to describe the topography of Palm Beach. Without further ado, here is my new word, as I anticipate it will be presented in the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary:
Main Entry: hillless
Pronunciation: \ˈhi-ləs\
Function: adjective
Inflected Form(s): (none)
Date: 21st century
Meaning: lacking hills
That’s right, the word is hillless, to my knowledge the only word in the English language that includes the letter “l” three consecutive times.
Before you begin writing a snarky comment to inform me that I have violated some arcane rule of English composition, please take a moment to understand that languages and their rules are in a constant state of evolution. In the present case, I’m confident that there are certain people, particularly writers of geography textbooks, who have tired of the use of the word “flat.” It is to those people that I offer the use of my new word.
Are you still concerned that my new word has violated a hard and fast law of our language? Then you might find that the following letter that was written by George Bernard Shaw to to the editor of the London Daily Chronicle in 1892 regarding split infinitives will help you become more open-minded:
* * *
Sir,
If you do not immediately suppress the person who takes it upon himself to lay down the law almost every day in your columns on the subject of literary composition, I will give up taking The Chronicle. The man is a pedant, an ignoramus, an idiot, a self-advertising duffer. A little while ago, when somebody pointed out to him a case of the misuse of “and which,” the creature, utterly missing the point, rushed about denouncing every sentence containing “and which” until some public-spirited subscriber of yours stopped him by a curt exposure which would have shamed any corrigible human being into humble silence for at least a month.
Yet he has already broken out in a fresh place. Mr. Andrew Lang, moved by a personal antipathy to “split infinitives” and to sentences ending with the word “such” (for example, Shakespeare’s line, “No glory lives behind the back of such”) once made a jocular attempt to bounce the public out of using them by declaring that they were bad English. Of course, all competent literary workmen laughed at Mr. Lang’s little trick; but your fatuous specialist, driven out of his “and which” stronghold, is now beginning to rebuke “second-rate newspapers” for using such phrases as “to suddenly go” and “to boldly say.”
I ask you, Sir, to put this man out. Give the porter orders to use such violence as may be necessary if he attempts to return, without, however, interfering with his perfect freedom of choice between “to suddenly go,” “to go suddenly,” and “suddenly to go.” See that he does not come back; that is the main thing. And allow me, as one who has some little right to speak on the subject, to assure your readers that they may, without the slightest misgiving, use adverbed infinitives in any of the three ways given above. All they need consider is which of the three best conveys by its rhythm the feeling they wish to express.
Yours, &c.,
G. Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw did not tolerate grammar zealots
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