The Shapiro Files

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Neologism of the Week

From the time I started taking piano lessons at age 6 to the present, I've rarely gone a day without playing at least a little piano or keyboard. Now that I'm a parent, this practice has largely evolved into serving as my kids' music monkey, attempting to play their song requests (usually Disney tunes) while one or both of them is hanging on to me or otherwise blocking me from accessing all 88 keys.

So while the circumstances of my playing have changed, my piano playing is still a very common occurrence in our house. Which is why it surprised me the other night when Melody came up to me while I was improvising something at the keyboard and asked, "Daddy, what are you doing?"

I wasn't sure she asked this because I was playing an unfamiliar tune or she was just being funny. But either way, I playfully responded, "What do you I think I'm doing?"

Her reply: "Pianoing."

I thought this was a brilliant response. After all these years behind the keyboard, I never thought of turning "piano" into a verb. My daughter is a genius.

After all, we live in a text- and instant-messaging world in which concise language rules. I say we finally throw out the unwieldy "playing piano" and go with the much more efficient "pianoing"--as in "I pianoed yesterday," "I will piano tomorrow," and "He pianoed that piano at just the right amount of piano."

So how about it? Shall we petition Merriam-Webster to help us start a new age of lexicographic brevity? Maybe we can call it dictionarying. Who's with me?

1 Comments:

  • I was going to suggest adding this definition to Urban Dictionary, but it's already there:

    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pianoing

    By Anonymous David Scott, at 5/01/2009 2:13 PM  

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