Neologisms for password woes
“The Deeper Meaning of Liff” presents, like I do here, words for commonly-known but hitherto unnamed concepts. It is less concerned with Latin/Greek etymology though.
I want words to exist for two common annoyances in computer usage. First:
- senex
- Latin for “old” (as in senile, senator)
- tessera
- a small tablet of wood, bone, or ivory used by the ancient Romans as a means of identification — the modern-day equivalents are passwords, PINs, etc.
- a-mnesia
- inability to remember; from amnēstos, “not remembered,” from mimnēskein “to recall,” from Indo-European base men- “to think, remember.”
- ⇒ senectesseramnesia
- inability to remember an old password or PIN (because you haven’t used it in a while)
… and then the one that’s bugging me these days:
- novus
- new (as in novelty, innovation)
- inertia
- diseased or abnormal condition (as in neurosis, psychosis, narcosis)
- ⇒ novotesserinertia
- the reluctance of your semiautonomous nervous system to start using your new password, causing you to mindlessly type your old one everytime, for days or weeks after changing it.
Now they do!
No doubt this is a completely incorrect way to patch together Latin and Greek stems. So sue me. :-)