Every week, to try and expand my vocabulary a little and make more use of the wonderful English language, I learn a couple of new words. Sadly, I don’t always remember them or even get to use them but I have just acquired a new favourite which I am really going to try to stick with: neologism.

A neologism is a newly coined word or expression. A friend emailed me a few funny ones (which aren’t, of course, new but merely made up for the purpose of raising a smile). They are contributions from Washington Post readers for the paper’s annual neologism contest. Here are a couple:

• Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach
• Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
• Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.

There were many others, several rather too rude to repeat in a public blog.

But they did remind me of another neologism I have found out recently: ‘freemium’. This is a combination of ‘free’ and ‘premium’ and refers to a top quality free offer which businesses may give away in order to attract in potential customers.

At Word Worker we have our own freemium on offer currently – a free one-hour review of the words on your website. We check to make sure the copy is doing its job – i.e. selling your product – and isn’t littered with grammar and spelling gaffes.

Please do take us up on this offer by emailing info@wordworker.co.uk or calling 01666 861149.

Here’s one more neologism from the Washington Post: Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists. If you are anything like me, you’ll have to go and look up proctologist.