Tuesday,
December 16, 2008
"Made-Off With My Money" Unlikely
to Supplant "Ponzi Scheme"
The
ANNOTICO Report
Although
Bernard Madoff
Madoff is not nearly as euphonious, melodious, or mellifluous as Ponzi, BUT "Made Off with My Money" has a certain
pictorial impact.
Madoff Unlikely to Oust Ponzi in Lingo
Reuters News
By Phil Wahba
Monday December 15, 2008
Madoff
But despite the
relevance of his name to his alleged crime, "Madoff"
is up against a strong incumbent if it is to become part of the American
vernacular and earn a spot in the country
"A word has
to become a naturalized citizen of our vocabulary," said Peter Sokolowski, an editor at Springfield, Mass.-based
dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster.
That means it has
to be used plenty, far and wide, and for a long time, he said. Merriam-Webster
editors spend one hour of every day scouring periodicals, books, and journals
to decide if a word is popular enough for inclusion in the dictionary.
"It (Madoff) could become a word real quickly, but whether it
gets into the dictionary depends on its staying power," Sokolowski said.
Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant whose scam in the 1920s drew in
about 40,000 investors and $15 million with the promise of high returns
quickly, has become synonymous with schemes in which money from later investors
is used to pay off earlier investors.
Although "Ponzi" is now a well known term in
Several more
recent words have caught on like wildfire and been adopted quickly by
Merriam-Webster.
Blog, for
example, emerged in 1999 as the amalgamation of "web" and
"log" and by 2004 was already in the dictionary.
For "Madoff" to be as successful, it would have to become a
generic term for financial malfeasance and displace "Ponzi",
said Sokolowski. But first-mover words in the English
language are hard to dislodge....
"In the case
of
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