Inchoate.

[conuly]

What IS it with that word? In the 29-odd years since I learned to read, I don't think I encountered that word once until this last year. And now I've seen it no less than 4 times since January!

Now, the first time I was pleased to encounter a word that was truly new to me, new enough that I had to look it up. I'm always happy to build my vocabulary, and like my much vaunted typing speed, my vocabulary is at a point where it's hard to see any improvement. Unless I am reading very technical articles, and thus vastly improving my knowledge of specialist terms regarding science subfields, I rarely encounter unknown words in the wild. (This is perhaps exacerbated by my habit of reading the dictionary, but what can I do? I like the dictionary.)

Times two and three surprised me, but I chalked it up to a frequency illusion. Now that I'm at time four, I'm getting outright baffled. Did everybody know this word but me? Was it in some inordinately popular word-of-the-day calendar, and if I look at the Google N-grams I'm gonna see some spike in 2015? Did it appear on the SATs in 2013, and everybody decided to help the kid next door study for the test last year and this? DID I STEP INTO A PARALLEL UNIVERSE WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS WORD? There has got to be a rational answer for the fact that it's all of a sudden everywhere, but damned if I can see it.

Inchoate. It's not even a bad word (though it looks funny), but I'm so perplexed.

***************

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Comments

[steorra]

"Inchoate" is a word I've come across from time to time. No specific memory of contexts, just I've definitely seen it and not just once, and not particularly recently.

[conuly]

You must be a native of this universe :P

[old-cutter-john.livejournal.com]

I learned the word in my teens, reading the old New York State Penal Code in the library at Grand Army Plaza: There was a chapter called something like "Inchoate Crimes" or "Inchoate Offenses." I've rarely encountered it since, and I seem to have been missed by the flurry that hit you, except to the extent that you echoed it.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I've had this effect with the German word for "sustainable", nachhaltig. I can't recall having encountered the word even once until 2004 or so, when suddenly every politician began to use it. By now, it's ubiquitous. A couple of months ago, some paper showed that the word was in fact first used in the late 19th century or something, as in "it's totally not a modern term!". But it used to be a rare word - people would use dauerhaft or langfristig instead - until somebody dug it out. It just hit a nerve and caught on really fast. I expect it's the same with "inchoate"...