Word of caution: It’s mobydiculous to shwash your squoobs while phishing

PHISHING, googling and apps.

They’re all words that wouldn’t have figured in any dictionary a decade ago, but are now in constant use. Not satisfied with hoovering up words which naturally become part of the lexicon, publishers Collins are on the hunt for newly-invented words for inclusion in their online dictionary.

They’re actively seeking lexicographical creativity, looking for wordsmiths to generate terms which should already exist but don’t. Already, they’ve had submissions such as “shwash,” defined as windscreen washer that flies over the roof of the car whose driver has activated their washer, so that the driver of the following car gets a freebie and has no choice but to use their windscreen wipers, too. Another suggestion is “mobydiculous” signifying something that is ridiculous on an epic scale.

“The idea came out of the work our editors do all the time,” says Alex Brown, head of digital at HarperCollins.

It’s an interesting experiment, not least in using digital as a test ground in which to establish if objectively clever words catch on enough to justify their inclusion in the printed Collins Dictionary. Many won’t, although new words get invented all the time. Recently fabricated words include “selfie” to indicate a photograph of oneself taken on a mobile phone camera.

The word’s chance of survival was enhanced (but not much) by its use by Hillary Clinton in a public communication, no doubt prompted by one of her hip and cool young advisors. Another new word was proposed by a tabloid newspaper earlier this year to convey the upward-and-inward pressure of a low-cut bodice, tightly laced.

The sort of top of the ice cream cone bulge and cleavage appearing on stage in Sheridan plays or occasionally introduced for no reason justified by plot in TV series like Downton Abbey. The word is “squoob,” a hybrid of “squeezed” and “boob.”

Given our warm self-image as great users of the English language, we must hope that many of the best offerings going to collinsdictionary.com/submissions come from this country. In just a few minutes, for example, a group of colleagues in my office came up with the following, presented in alphabetical order:

* Bouncebackability: The ability to bounce back from a challenge. Not quite the same as resilience, which is bouncebackability for the long haul. This is the trait that separates sheep from goats, men from boys, the long-term successful from the one-hit-wonders and the entrepreneurs who fall flat on their faces and demonstrate, well, bouncebackability.

* Crinkleavage: The wrinkling which makes many women over 50 abandon low necklines on their dresses.

* Croparker: A radio or TV sports commentator who hasn’t noticed the first K in Croke Park.

* Diasporation: The lurking unadmitted fear that large numbers of distant, half-remembered relatives from overseas will be lured to Ireland by Leo Varadker’s Gathering and may turn up on the doorstep expecting a real Irish welcome and a bed for several nights.

* Diregood: An improvement that makes things worse. I’m told German has a word, “schlimbesserung,” to cover this concept, but a straight importation is unlikely to work. However, we seriously need a word to cover improvements that disimprove life. The invention of television is one classic example, as was Anglo Irish Bank. Facebook is now coming into contention.

* Duffy: A verb, meaning to encourage a moany whinge by leading questions, attributed feelings, appreciative silences, impatient herding noises and minor key moans of sympathy. A narrow if not unique skillset owned by Joe Duffy, who has the marvellous extra ability, having led the caller up the Trail of Tears, to turn around, metaphorically smack them in the kisser with a three-day-old kipper and establish that they had never deserved a place on the Trail in the first place.

You might think Ireland is moany enough without this approach, but Liveline is the Olympics of whinge. It attracts a higher level of performer. No drug-testing necessary.

* Gobspite: The keyboarder of minimal spelling skills who responds to any issue raised on any website about anybody famous. The gobspite is a broad spectrum hater, protected by anonymity and untroubled by fear of libel or a yearning for evidence.

* Hanger: The rattiness towards the people around you caused by being too hungry to think or care about anything else except eating something. It usually occurs about 12.50pm on weekdays.

* Huming Being: What we all thought Luke Flanagan was, back in the days when he concentrated on losing elections. Once he won a place in Leinster House, he turned iffy, first going for Mary Mitchell O’Connor’s dress sense and more recently barracking the Ceann Comhairle in a corridor.

* Katywaiting: Patience on steroids, demonstrated by a willingness to stay single throughout one’s teens in the belief that Prince Charming (or, in this case, Prince William) will eventually come up with an engagement ring. Derived from the nickname “Waity Katy” wished on Ms Middleton before she became Duchess of Cambridge.

* Laughtear: Hearing something so funny that you end up crying from laughter.

* Mammification: The slow process of turning into your mother. Symptoms include talking about the stretch in the evenings, worrying about where people will sit at a party and developing a capacity to care how the bed looks when you’re not in it.

Less obvious symptoms include the realisation that your internal commentary is now delivered in her voice, her terminology and her terms of reference (“No, you may not go out looking like that, and I’ll thank you not to shrug at me. This is not a hotel. This is your home and you will respect it and yourself. As long as I’m in charge”).

* Podiagony: The shocking pain consequent upon leaping out of bed and putting full weight on one foot without noticing that foot is about to come down on the three-pronged molars of an upturned electrical plug.

* Posilutley: An obvious hybrid of “positively” and “absolutely,” offered to vary the response to the know-all questions of bad radio interviewers, which deliver so much information that 90% of their interviewees end up saying “absolutely”.

* Rainbow Warriors: Members of the Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Bisexual sections of society who, now they have an acronym and a flag, would want watching. Remind me again what the subversive thing is that they’re demanding? Oh, right. Marriage. Shocking, isn’t it?

* Shovel Friend: This is the pal you can ring in the middle of the night to tell him or her you have a dead body that needs burying, knowing they’ll be around in 10 minutes with a spade, no questions asked. Now, OK, that’s a bit of a reach, but the concept is a good one. Each of us needs at least one shovel friend.

* Tuckeritis: The inability to complete a sentence without swearing, the term owing its origin to the character Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It.

* Yeahno: Term for the chronically indecisive who start every sentence with “Yeah, no.”

No doubt you can think of better off the top of your head. In which case, go to it.

“With everyone’s help,” Brown says, “we can spot more new words and make our snapshot of English as live and dynamic as possible.”