Jerkish
n.— «The word is “Jerkish.” Originally coined by the Czech novelist Ivan Klima to describe the thoughtless, boiled-down language acceptable to Stalinist censors, he announced that Jerkish had been invented in America for communication between people and chimpanzees; it consists of 225 words. Now, says Alvarez, Jerkish really has spread to the West and its “codified stupidity” continues to flourish as the “sentimental and intolerant moral coercion of political correctness…the power of kitsch and cliché.”» —“Notebook” by Andrew Marr Telegraph (U.K.) Jan. 19, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
How and why do words from one language find their way into another? Vietnamese, for instance, includes many words borrowed or adapted from French, a vestige of colonialism. For example, the Vietnamese word for “train station,” ga, comes...
Cat hair may be something you brush off, but cat hair is also a slang term that means “money.” In the same way, cat beer isn’t alcoholic — some people use cat beer as a joking term for “milk.” And imagine walking on a...