'It's a Perfectly Cromulent Word'

“Perhaps you know this word, but I didn’t: ‘cromulent.’ I've seen examples of it used to describe players of different sports.” 

So writes a friend. The word was new to me, so I went to the OED for the definition: “acceptable, adequate, satisfactory.” Not unlike “a gentleman’s C.” You pass but without distinction, like most American presidents. More interesting is the adjective’s extra-literary origin: “frequently used humorously or ironically in recognition of its origin as an invented word in the television programme The Simpsons.” Here is the pertinent dialogue from the 1996 episode:

 

“[Mrs. Krabappel] Embiggens? Hm, I never heard that word before I moved to Springfield. [Ms. Hoover] I don’t know why. It’s a perfectly cromulent word.”

 

The word sounds authentic, a little old-fashioned and stuffy, perhaps Johnsonian. That’s the key to lastingly successful coinage. Forty years ago a fellow reporter and I working for a newspaper in Indiana challenged each other to work arcane words into our copy. I covered courts, he covered city government, so exotic lingo would be conspicuous. Our only stipulation was that the words be rare but legitimate, words that might sound invented. Once I described a county commissioner as “freaming” a comment. The word has a distinguished pedigree. In 1575, George Gascoigne wrote “a Bore freameth,” and the commissioner was certainly a bore. The OED defines the verb fream as “to roar, rage, growl: spec. of a boar.” A timid copy editor changed it to the anemic “said.”