- The Occupational Safety And Health Administration released figures Monday indicating that record numbers of elementary-school art teachers are falling victim to pneumosparklyosis, commonly known as glitter lung.
Pneumosparklyosis
noun; compounding
A respiratory disease caused by chronic inhalation of glitter. Writer wanted to name an imaginary disease in the same system as most other diseases are named (using the Greek noun-forming suffix ‘–osis’). The writer compounded the most significant parts of the disease (‘pneum’, to show it is a respiratory disease and ‘sparkle’, to show it is caused by something sparkly) along with the standard ending, to create the name of a disease which fits well in the system generally used for naming diseases.
Etymology : ‘Pneum’ (Greek: breath, from PIE ‘pnein’: to breath), ‘sparkle’ (Middle English: to flash), ‘-ly’ (English adverb forming suffix), and ‘-osis’ (Greek: n.)
Source : The Onion Newspaper.
Last modified: 10 June 2008