a whole nother conversation

Still on the track of that elusive new word, nother, I found a trace of it today on the radio, on ABC 774, when Jon Faine, a presenter whom I respect, used it. He was talking to John Alexander, former tennis star, about Alexander's try for preselection in the electorate of Bennelong, and Faine said a particular topic (I forget what) was "a whole nother conversation".

As far as I can see, the new word only occurs with the word whole. Back in August I thought it would oust other, but I'm coming to the conclusion that it will come in as a new word alongside it, seeing it is only occurring as a phrase with whole.

befriend or friend?

I posted about the new word friend, a verb meaning to make friends with someone on Facebook. (I don't think I've seen this word used as a verb on Facebook itself, though.)

I was wondering why we don't use the existing word, befriend, but perhaps befriend has too specific a meaning:

verb [ trans. ]
act as a friend to (someone) by offering help or support.

Maybe when we friend someone on Facebook we don't want to enter into the complexity of a relationship that places any demands on us; we don't want to have to help out or support the other person. After all, the new Facebook friend might be someone we haven't seen for twenty years, someone we don't intend to see in person in the next twenty.

new word 'friended' slides into everyday parlance

Chad Taylor wrote an article in The Age newspaper last week about turning his back on Facebook because it no longer serves his needs. He said,

I liked it at first. I joined and was quickly “friended” by an ex-colleague…

and…

I didn’t “friend” strangers or celebrities.

It’s a relatively new word, friended, so it seemed logical to me that Chad Taylor would place it in quotation marks. After all, he’s a word-smith, a novelist.

But the third time he used it in his article, he didn’t put quotation marks around it. He said,

…but one of her friends was an editor whom I friended…

And that seems logical to me also. You can’t go on forever placing quotes around a word. If it’s going to make its way in the world, it has to stand on its own.

So Chad Taylor’s one-page article seems to me a microcosm of the absorption of a new word into everyday English.

(I'd like to have put a link to the article but you have to pay to read it, so I didn't do so. Oh, the joy of old technologies - I have a hard-copy on my desk, and I can re-read it as many times as I like, for free.)