"Learnative" is absolutely brilliant and is exactly what I need. Thank you and your daughter!! "Non-resembling" sounds fine too. Thanks a million!!! If you have or come across some more, please share them too

When our daughter was about ten, I suggested buying a book as a gift for a cousin. "Oh, Mom," she said in disgust, "don't get them anything learnative ." Does "learnative" count? In a recent blog post about the

She doesn't really have difficulty, but she's just not what my friend's mother calls "a language person." She's very musical, not so verbal. Well into her toddlerhood she preferred to point rather than speak. An earnest

Wow, I didn't expect such a willingness to help and I'm most grateful to you. Thank you. I wouldn't call your daughter's ability to create these words as a language difficulty. Of course you know better, but I think that it takes a

And more - you can see I can't stop thinking about your thesis! There is an episode of "The Simpsons" in which an actor playing Jebediah Springfield in an educational flm delivers the catchphrase, "A noble spirit embiggens the

And I've thought of another one, also from a blog comment. I was writing about waiting for the results of a mammogram and used the phrase "breastal anxiety."

Just came across another one in a post on a political blog: Now that I think of it, Senator Shelby, I haven't seen your birth certificate. Is natural-bornedness and citizenship a requirement for your office? It seems to me that these words,

Hi, thanks for the info! I guess that every child is quite a unique person and once you're good at something you're not so good at something else. You say she's musical, does she play any instrument? I've always been a musical

I think I've found another nonce word - it's not in Webster's, at any rate. "Anonymised," meaning to make anonymous. A new nationwide study (pdf) of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment

I don't think "not resembling" is technically ungrammatical, but the use of resemble as a verb is certainly more common and sounds much more natural. "Non-resembling" doesn't imply "each other." You'd