What Makes A Word? Making Sense Of The Argle-Bargle

08:28

June 30, 2015

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia addresses the ACC America, Association of Corporate Counsel Washington Metropolitan (WMACCA) Chapter, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, in McLean, Va. (Luis M. Alvarez/AP)

Its been a busy week for the Supreme Court. Not surprisingly, that means it has been a busy week for linguists. Consider that in the last few days we've heard Justice Antonin Scalia use both jiggery-pokery and mummeries.

Justice Scalia is known for his eyebrow-raising words. In recent years he's also used the words ukase and argle-bargle.

Are these really words, even if no one knows them? What makes a word a word? And while we're constantly putting words into the dictionary, do we ever take them out? The director of Tufts University's Linguistics Lab, Ariel Goldberg, joins Here & Now's Robin Young with his thoughts.

Guest

Ariel Goldberg, Director of the Tufts University Psycholinguistics and Linguistics Lab. He tweets @arielmc_g.

This segment aired on June 30, 2015.