Alex Horne (Comedian) – How to invent a word
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/features/alex-horne–how-to-invent-a-word-1900477.html
Image sourced from: http://www.celebritybusinessspeakers.com/speaker-catalogue/alex-horne/
Alex Horne (2010) set himself a goal of 4 years to get a word or words in the dictionary. “I am going to scatter a handful of verbal seeds into the language. These will be new, original, freshly coined words or phrases which, over the next 1,000 days, I am going to water and watch to see if they can flower and thrive.” He knew that for these words to work he needed some help in getting them circulated and to monitor its growth. As Horne (2010) soon found this task is not as easy as it make sound or look! “…dictionary editors require substantial evidence that that word has been used by people from all walks of life for several years before even considering accepting it.” The obvious advantage Alex Horne had in this task, which I myself do not is he has connections and connections in the right places and of substantial influence and of course being a comedian himself he too had is career as an advantage. “I have been able to spout my words from countless stages across this country, scrawl them in the guestbooks of every guesthouse I’ve stayed in, and implant them in ever motorway service station I’ve passed through. I’ve also brandished them on banners at major sporting events, branded them onto mugs, T-shirts and umbrellas and casually dropped them into countless local radio phone-ins. I’ve infiltrated several schools and (mis)educated credulous schoolchildren, I’ve confused friends, family and many many strangers, I’ve even managed to infiltrate the holy grail of mass communication, television, infecting such varied shows as Daily Politics, Loose Women and Channel 4’s mighty Countdown.”
As Alex was my first find in the beginnings of this study I thought, though ambitious, it was worth trying to get in touch with him considering my project was very similar to his. After several obsessive tweets I surprisingly get a response and he followed me and direct message me his personal email…result! So the collaboration begun!
I wrote him a long email explaining my project and after a long wait and another email to request a response I eventually got the communication going on 2nd December 2013. He responded really well to my project, “…your masters sounds great. Good work! Right up my street.” And he continued on to explain his mission.
“I started my sort of similar project way back in 2005 and gave myself 1000 days to get a word in the dictionary. Unfortunately I failed (although I did get the slang word Honk (meaning cash – according to us) into an American book of British slang!”
As slight disappointed prevailed upon reading this, to think a well-known comedian had no success what chance does this give me! He continues to explain more positively the process he went to to try and achieve his goal:
“…fortunately, it was a lot of fun trying – although very time-consuming. I had various approaches – 1) just using the words amongst friends; which actually had the most long-term effect of some of them still being ‘alive’ today. 2) slipping them into bits and pieces on the internet, radio and telly; which did nothing to make them ‘real’ words but did give me lots of evidence to then send to the dictionaries as part of a corpus. 3) writing a show, book and various articles about the process itself; this also got the words out there and even though it wasn’t what I was hoping to do – mine was meant to be a secret project, implanting words in the language without telling other people what I was doing – it did mean more people got on board with the project. I still get messages from people saying they’ve seen or heard someone using a word I made up. Which is nice.”
It was interesting to hear him say that he had the most long term success amongst friends, guess fame doesn’t necessarily help. He clearly was more easily able to slot them in to radio and telly appearances as he did them. All this gave him lots of evidence to send off to the dictionaries. But with all that evidence and he still failed made me wonder what was missing! He also was able to get the word published, something I know is a requirement for any sort of consideration of submission of the word – again another advantage Horne has!
After the Christmas break and lots of work in constructing the words (see ‘The Words!’ post) I felt I was in a good place to get back in touch with Alex and to ask for his help in getting the words used! I couple of days later 20th January 2014 I got a response:
“Well done! And I can definitely try to use a word somewhere…”
So I responded with the list of words and their definitions (see ‘The Words!’ post) and was delighted to receive a very positive response back.
“…yes! I like! Excellent work – they feel v.well researched and properly planned – unlike my slapdash efforts!”
He seemed like he genuine in that he would use them and that he would let me know if he manages to get them “…in an interview or the like” but I was disappointed to hear that he had nothing in the immediate future. What bad timing! 
I left it a bit then as I felt he was being honest and there was no need to bother him continuously. But a couple of weeks later I thought it was worth catching up to see if anything had progressed. It hadn’t but he sounded positive for the future however his plans were beyond the timelines of this project:
“…what I need is a tv or radio appearance and I just don’t have any coming up. I tend to do a load of publicity in the run up to Edinburgh but that’s not till june/july. I’ll keep looking for an opportunity though and will let you know if I succeed.”
Guess we shall just have to wait, but if it gets used after the project so be it…at least its being used!
