Until three days ago there was no such word as bizbong. Now there is. That’s evolution for you.
It’s about time we made up a new word, isn’t it?
Regular readers will be familiar with the story of the word ‘quiz’, purportedly invented by an 18th century Irish theatre owner for a bet, and the portmanteau word ‘chortle’, coined in 1871 by Lewis Carroll in a frenzy of wonderful word inventiveness. “Twas brillig and the slithy toves etc etc.” Soon bizbong will be just as commonplace.
Bizbong evolved not from an intoxicated scribe sitting in a darkened room with a wet towel on his head waiting for a visit from the muse, but from the more traditional method of linguistic evolution, otherwise known as Chinese whispers. It originated as ‘abysmal’, from the Latin ‘abyssus’ (an abyss), spoken hurriedly on Wednesday through a mouthful of plum and misheard by a Yorkshireman, who was eating a milk chocolate Digestive. Heaven knows how many other words in the English language were invented in this way.
So what does bizbong mean? That is yet to be decided. Give it a chance, it’s only just been born. In fact, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help us determine a definition for this new buzzword. Here’s what you have to do. Use bizbong at least once over the next week, in a meeting, a phone call, a social gathering, even at the football, and see if anyone challenges you on it. If they don’t, make a note of the context in which you used it and report back.
“Our social media campaign’s gone bizbong this week.”
“The CEO’s really dropped a bizbong on this one.”
“Another thrashing for Palace. Hennessy’s had a proper bizbong.”
“Pint of bizbong please, barman.”
Just a few ideas for you. Off you go. When you report back, we can decide what the most apt definition of the word is. And then it will be a word forever and you’ll be part of history.
Like Shakespeare.
The Bard invented all sorts of words, which we use regularly today: arouse, laughable, puking, hobnob… the list goes on. And on. A bit like King Lear. You will read it in amazement. And then you’ll discover that he invented the word amazement too. According to Shakespeare Online, he invented over 1,700 of our common words “by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising words wholly original”.
But he didn’t come up with bizbong, did he? Oh no. This one’s ours.
