Autobesity: a neat new term for cumbersome cars
Have you heard of the term ‘autobesity’ before? I came across it a while ago and instantly adopted it into my lexicon. It’s one of those perfect neologisms that captures a concept so succinctly.
Neat neologisms
But what’s a neologism? The term itself is one of my favourite words because of the way I have to curl my tongue and shape my mouth into an ‘o’ shape to pronounce it.
Oxford Dictionaries defines a neologism as a ‘newly coined word or expression’ and combines the affix of Greek origin neo-, ‘new’, and the Ancient Greek logos, ‘word’.
It’s also one of those words that looks and sounds almost identical in other languages. In Spanish, they call it neologismo, in French néologisme, and in Portuguese it’s neologismo.
I love how creative and incisive neologisms are – how they respond to cultural change and the gap in the dictionary where a concept should be, often before that concept even enters our lexicon. They neatly blend words to make new ones, reminding us of how innovative language can be.
Automotive weight gain
Every so often, a neologism comes along that offers a brilliantly novel expression for a modern concept: autobesity.
Have you ever struggled to open your car door because of the immense size of the car parked next to you?
Have you ever needed to swerve your car slightly into a hedge to avoid the truck-sized SUV coming towards you on the other side?
If you have, then you’ve probably experienced autobesity. I know I have, and I’m delighted there’s a word out there that expresses the congestion caused by cars’ expanding waistbands.
This neologism is so new that it’s not even in the Oxford English Dictionary…yet. But it featured in Cambridge Dictionary’s About Word’s blog in August 2023.
Collins Dictionary has a submission for this word, but it hasn’t yet been accepted as a new dictionary entry. It defines it as ‘the phenomenon of cars getting bigger and heavier year by year’.
Etmyology
What are the origins of this word? When searching online, I actually found more more search results for this term in French (autobésité) than for ‘autobesity’ in English.
Could it be a cross-cultural new word borrowed from the French?
In French, the term already has its own Wikipedia entry and a lot of the articles in English referring to the term are about the fact the city of Paris has introduced charges for larger cars, as a major cause of air pollution and road damage. One article even asks if cars are the new tobacco.
Autobesity in the press
A Guardian article reports that councillors in Paris called SUVs ‘dangerous’ and ‘cumbersome’, after the number of these ‘fatter’ vehicles increased by 60% in four years. And Forbes reported in January 2024 on ‘car bloat’, with cars having widened by two centimetres per year. This article says, ‘roads in most British cities are becoming more and more choked as wider motor cars struggle to squeeze past each other’. How true that is.
This is such a neat and fitting word that I believe it’s a definite contender for a dictionary entry.
What do you think?
Do you know any neologisms that deserve a dictionary entry?
Do you know any neologisms that are more widely used in a different language?
Solidarity in four different languages: tricky terms to translate.
In December each year, the BBC runs a series of lectures by leading figures. These are called the Reith Lectures, after Lord Reith, the BBC’s first director-general.
The joy of the accidental discovery
In December 2023, it was Professor Ben Ansell of Oxford University giving these lectures. This year I came across the lectures by chance, tuning into Radio 4 in the car while taking my dog to her grooming appointment. The glamorous life I lead!
This chance discovery reminded that, when we carefully curate and filter the content we consume through podcasts and streaming services we sometimes miss out on this joy of discovering something by chance.
What is the true mean of ‘solidarity’ in languages other than English?
This year’s lectures were entitled ‘Our Democratic Future’, and the episode I tuned into was ‘The Future of Solidarity’ – the third in the series. I quickly reached to turn up the volume, because when I heard ‘solidarity’ it got me thinking about the word itself and what it really means.
‘Solidarity’ is not a term I hear much among English speakers, except when someone is expressing their backing or sympathies for someone or something. To me, the word ‘solidarity’ also has quite strongly political connotations.
There are terms that look very similar to ‘solidarity’ in other languages, for example ‘solidarité/solidaire’ (French), ‘solidariedade/solidário’ (Portuguese) and ‘solidaridad/solidario’ (Spanish). In my experience, these are used more often in those languages than in English, where a different word is usually more appropriate. Especially in the international development field.
For translators, these terms are notoriously tricky to translate and, when it comes to deciding on the English word that fits best, that decision is guided by the context. So what we English speakers think of as ‘solidarity’ is not necessarily what French speakers think of when they say ‘solidarité’. Or is it?
Narrow definitions need to be ‘unpacked’ to fit their context
What I found so interesting about Professor Ansell’s lecture was that he seemed to me to be proposing a definition of solidarity. One that gets closer to the meaning of the equivalent term in French, Spanish and Portuguese. Or am I wrong about that? Let’s see what my trusty bilingual and monolingual dictionaries say.
Compared and contrasted definitions
The table below compares the meanings of roughly equivalent terms in French, Spanish, Portuguese and English. It’s worth noting that a dictionary definition is just a starting point for a professional translator – the definition can rarely just be inserted into a text as is; context is everything.
Translators do their research
What do you notice about the English definitions and examples, compared with those in the other languages? Some sources provide quite a few different examples from specific contexts and sectors. One glaringly obvious thing is that we don’t often use the word ‘solidary’ in English. Well I don’t!
Perhaps you also notice subtle differences in nuance, or perhaps you don’t think they differ much at all. What I notice is that it’s those examples in context that really tell you what the term might actually mean.
You’ll also notice that not all of the examples I’ve quoted are from conventional dictionaries. One is a corpus, and another is Wikipedia. This shows how, though the dictionary is often a translator’s starting point, things get REALLY interesting when you dig deeper than that.
I find it intriguing that the Wikipedia articles in French and English, and the parallel language corpus, offer the most context (I use Sketch Engine on most days for that reason). Perhaps because language is always evolving.
More real-life translation examples
Whichever the source language, it’s generally true that English prefers more concrete language. Over the years, this has often required me to ‘unpack’ the intended meaning behind a French, Spanish or Portuguese term to pinpoint the right English word for the context.
Depending on context and register, I’ve used some of the following words and phases to express the concept of ‘Solidaire/solidario/solidário’:
Community/community outreach
Supporting good causes
Pulling together
Inclusive
Close-knit (if talking about a team)
Socially responsible (referring to funds)
Standing shoulder to shoulder
(Re)connecting with others (when talking about people)
Charitable initiatives
For the common good
Caring (education)
As a translator, my task is to successfully communicate across cultures in a way that someone who simply ‘speaks the language’ cannot. Intercultural communication is about more than simply replacing words with other words; it recognises that our understanding of words is forever shaped by our (changing) social and cultural contexts as humans.
Over to you
Going back to the Reith Lectures, what I believe Professor Ansell was proposing was a revival and almost a repurposing of the term ‘solidarity’ that I think fits more closely with the French, Spanish and Portuguese concepts. He talks about solidarity as the ‘social glue’ that binds us together in our polarised societies.
The lecture distinguishes solidarity – a shared feeling of ‘us’ – from charity, which is more an act of a fortunate ‘us’ giving to an unfortunate ‘them’. And Ansell argues against seeing ourselves through a binary lens – us and them.
What do you think about the various meanings of the term ‘solidarity’?
Would you agree it has subtle nuances and differences between languages?
Have you found any other definitions, or have you used any other translations of these terms in your work?
