The Science of Silkening Our Language
If you're a Generation X-er like myself, you may remember the above headline as a parody of the slogan of a shampoo called Silkience. The Science of Silkening Your Hair was the promise with every bottle. I guess the name itself was a portmanteau word that shoved silk together with science in an unholy humentipeding of the two commonly used dictionary terms. The sharp-eyed amongst you will recognise humentipede as a portmanteau neologism recently invented by me in the previous sentence. And yes, I have sewn together the word human and centipede and thus blatantly ripped off the rather repellent concept invented by Dutch filmmaker Tom Six for his series of Human Centipede movies. I come neither to praise Tom Six nor mention his work any further, I am here to discuss words and the writing of same. The science of silkening one's hair sounds good. It is supposed to bring on thoughts of dedicated lab technicians testing myriad emulsions in different quantities