Bouncebackability

Bouncebackability Bouncebackability Bouncebackability By Maeve Maddox Reader Graham Broadley is apparently scratching his head over a word thats recently been admitted to the pages of the venerable OED: I was watching the French Open tennis tournament the other day and heard the commentator say the word bounce-back-ability had made it into the OED this year. Can you confirm this is true? And if it is how an earth does such a word gain acceptability into a dictionary? Its not as if  its  widely in  use. Id never heard the word before, but Im not a sports fan. The word is out there a Google search turned up 26,900 hitsbut Im as speechless as Graham to know that bouncebackability is in the OED. Heres the entry: bouncebackability, n. chiefly sport: The capacity to recover quickly or fully from a setback, bad situation, etc. [1961 Times Recorder (Zanesville, Ohio) 18 Apr. 2B/1 The Tribe demonstrated its bounce-back ability in a three-game series with Washington, taking the set 2-1.] 1972 Manitowoc (Wisconsin) Herald-Times 25 May M3/2 The ‘bounce-back-ability’ is a valuable asset to the manager. 1991 Economist 5 Oct. 20/2 New York will again demonstrate its bouncebackability. 2005 Daily Record (Glasgow) (Nexis) 13 Apr. 3 We then showed some true bouncebackability when we equalised with a fine header from Christie. Curiously enough, although the word has been in use in the U.S. since 1961, Merriam-Webster has so far not added it to that extremely tolerant American dictionary. (I subscribe to the online unabridged edition and its not in there.) This from the MacMillan English Dictionary: In 2004, a phrasal verb has made its mark on the language again, though not by being intrinsically ‘new’, but by spawning a ‘new’ noun. The established intransitive phrasal verb bounce back, meaning ‘to become successful again after something bad has happened’ has formed the basis of a new derivative bouncebackability, an uncountable noun which apparently fills a gap in the language for describing a person’s ability to succeed again after a period of being unsuccessful. I guess bouncebackability is what Bill Clinton, the Comeback Kid, had in 1992 but there wasnt a word for it yet. And of course, Joe Montana had it way before that. I wonder why nobody thought to coin comebackability. I guess one answer to Grahams question could be that even an odd word can gain entry to a dictionary when its perceived by the lexicographer in charge as describing a concept for which no other suitable word exists. Can anyone suggest an already existing word that describes the concept of bouncebackability? Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Writing a Reference Letter (With Examples)The Writing ProcessPresent Participle as Adjective

Shuvuuia - Facts and Figures

Shuvuuia - Facts and Figures Name: Shuvuuia (Mongolian for bird); pronounced shoo-VOO-yah Habitat: Plains of Asia Historical Period: Late Cretaceous (85-75 million years ago) Size and Weight: About two feet long and five pounds Diet: Insects and small animals Distinguishing Characteristics: Small, birdlike head; dinosaur-like forelimbs; primitive feathers About Shuvuuia Shuvuuia is one of those ancient dino-birds that gives paleontologists fits,comprised as it is of an equal number of bird-like and dinosaur-like characteristics. The beaked snout of this late Cretaceous creature, for example, was distinctly birdlike, as were its long legs and three-toed feet, but its too-short arms call to mind (in much smaller proportions, of course) the stunted limbs of bipedal theropods like Tyrannosaurus Rex. Lately, the consensus is that the almost certainly feathered Shuvuuia was closer to a dinosaur than it was to a prehistoric bird, but as with the much earlier Archaeopteryx, this issue may never be settled conclusively. (By the way, Shuvuuia also stands out for being one of the prehistoric animals whose name is not derived from Greek rootsshuvuu is the word for bird in Mongolia, where Shuvuuias remains were discovered in 1987.) Technically, Shuvuuia is classified as an alvarezsaur, meaning it was closely related to the roughly contemporary Alvarezsaurus of South America (as were many of the dino-birds that lived in this region of central Asia, including another close Shuvuuia relative, Kol). Perhaps more tellingly, the tiny Shuvuuia inhabited a rich, complex, and extremely dangerous ecosystem already well-stocked with predatory raptors like Velociraptor and Tsaagan and feathered troodontids like Gobivenator and Byronosaurus. Given its small size, Shuvuuia would have been fairly low down on the food chain, and probably spent most of its day evading these larger dinosaursperhaps by squeezing itself into the same crooks of trees from whence it pried out termites and grubs for its dinner.