We Love Our Dictionary

We blame Cosmopolitan.  Their pages have always been sex-drenched, packed with references to  pectoral muscles and thong underwear.  So it wasn’t too jarring when, a few years ago, we spied the word (if you want to call it that) “sexify” in their pages.

What, you’ve never heard that?

Sexify (v.): to make sexy. Painting your nails fire-engine red will sexify even the most buttoned-up ensemble.

This odd equation of noun + -ify = verb caught on, and then there was a veritable onslaught of newfangled words in all our favorite magazines:  Glossify.  Bodify. Shineify.  We admit we’re sticklers about language, but we could live with this.  Obnoxious as it is, at least these made-up words were expressing concepts that usually required a full phrase. Painting your nails fire-engine red will add sex appeal to even the most buttoned-up ensemble.

But Glamour’s August 2005 issue crossed a line we hadn’t even drawn yet.  In a feature on denim, they stated that a pair of jeans had a “slimmifying” effect.

Let us repeat that for you.  SLIMMIFYING.

They took an adjective, slim, and made it into a verb, slimmify.  Then they turned that verb back into an adjective.  That’s quite complicated, especially when they could have just said “slimming.”  Um, Glamour staffers?  There’s no need to make up words when a perfectly good one ALREADY EXISTS.   

Maybe we should just be grateful they didn’t say “skinnifying.”

Comments

[anonymous]

that's not even the worst of it. i used to work at cosmo, and my pet peeve was their absurd fear of reps. we couldn't repeat a word twice on the same page, which led to hair stories that referred to your tresses, locks, mane, etc.