The “-ification” of Everything

Ahalf-formed thought feels worse than an empty head—the tip-of-the-tongue sensation, the inkling of a there there without the foggiest notion of how to get, well, there. Especially dire is when the “what” that we wish to articulate feels half-formed itself, something observable yet emergent, for which the masses have yet to find language. But all we have is language, of course, and so we must muddle through, reaching for a word to serve as a placeholder for our idea until something better comes along. Some would say that finding new language is the work of scholars, but in the age of the Internet we may have lost track of who is leading whom. However provisional, the placeholders sometimes stick.