new words

I’m always on the lookout for words that people use but that aren’t (yet) in LPD, so that I can add them for the next edition, whenever that may be. (Last time, the publisher abruptly asked for 5,000 additional entries, which is not something one can supply overnight or at a few weeks’ notice. Better to be prepared.)

One such word I have seen or heard a few times recently is ghrelin, the hunger-stimulating peptide and hormone. This word has not yet made it into the OED, or indeed to any dictionary that I know of. But it scores a million and a half Google hits.

The origin of the name is acronymic: growth hormone-releasing peptide, with the -in suffix characteristic of hormones, perhaps from inducing. Wikipedia claims that the name also bears reference to the IE root ghrē ‘grow’ (as in green, grow, crescent, increase, etc.), though this is clearly coincidental.

The discovery of ghrelin was reported by Masayasu Kojima and colleagues in 1999. The name is based on its role as a ''growth hormone-releasing peptide'', with reference to the Proto-Indo-European root ''ghre'', meaning ''to grow''. The name can also be viewed as an interesting (and incidental) pun, too, as the initial letters of the phrase ''growth hormone-releasing'' give us "ghre" with "lin" as a usual suffix for some hormones.

The only pronunciation I have heard is ˈɡrelɪn.

Another word new to me is inotrope, with its adjective inotropic. An inotrope is ‘an agent that alters the force or energy of muscular contractions’ (Wikipedia). This word has a straightforward etymology, from Greek via scientific German, as befits a medical term. The first part is from the Greek ἴς, ἴν-ός, ῑν- ís, ín-os, īn-‘muscle, fibre, nerve, strength’ (OED). My cardiologist pronounces it ˈaɪnətrəʊp, which is also what Wikipedia gives, though the OED, at inotropic, hesitates between aɪ and ɪ as the initial vowel. The M-W Collegiate also offers the possibility of initial iː for the adjective.

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I shall be busy over the next two days. Next posting: 17 Sep.