Young Writers Society

Entry for the "For want of a better word" contest, which you can find here.

Simpher [Sim-pher]
Verb: To simpher. Strutting in a conceited, or arrogant, manner. The act of walking, while looking down on others.
Noun: An arrogant walk.

Ex.) Verb: Jenifer, the newly appointed boss of the department, simphered through the maze of cubicles.
Noun: The rich girl took a quick simpher down the hall to show off her expensive designer jeans.

I like it. My one problem is that it sounds a little like "saunter" though.

Hey there, Mick.

This is obviously not a big-time literary piece, so this review is going to be super-short, but I figured I’d let you take some sort of brain-noms in case you want to reconsider the construction of your word for your contest entry!

First of all, let’s talk relative words. A sassy walk with attitude—it reminds me of the word saunter, which is pretty close to simpher. Considering that the word is pretty much the core of the piece you’ve posted, I’m unsure if I’m at liberty to say you may want to change it, but that’s my opinion either way.

Second, roots. Language is borrowed, stolen, moved and rearranged from other languages, either dead or alive. I can’t put my finger on the place you’ve taken this word from, so I’ll assume it’s purely from your head. I think the mark of a great wordsmith is being able to take the classical approach to creating a word: discover roots and meanings while constructing.

Think on it,

-Lumi

Hello Mickixoxo,

This is an interesting start that you have here and although this will be difficult to review as there isn't much substance I will give you my general impression of this and my personal opinion. Please try to excuse the length of this review, this isn't exactly something that would require lots of editing as you already have a pretty decent start here and I think you have established the basics of what a word needs.

Fist of all I am actually quite impressed with your word itself. It has a nice ring to it and it can have suffixes and prefixes added to the beginning and end to change the meaning or to help it fit in a sentence which is good. You've also presented this really well, you've covered all of the information that people would need to know to use this word which is excellent and you've set this out like it would have been in a normal dictionary which is a nice touch.

The only problem with this is that you haven't taken a word and recreated it. Most words derive from one or more other langauges which is how they get their meaning. From what I can tell you haven't gone out of your way to explore the meanings of other ancient or current languages and combined them to make your new word. You have simply either made this up from scratch or used very little other words.

Apart from that well done! What you've done is both creative and interesting. This is a fantastic way of exploring the language which we use everyday and it is a great way to open up our minds to the possibilities. Keep up the great job and if you have any inquiries or comments about this feel absolutely free to PM them to me and I'll get back to you pronto!

From DreamingForever