Ingenuine Isn’t a Word?
March 28th, 2007, 46 Comments »
Whiskey tango foxtrot. I’ve been using ‘ingenuine’ for years. I’ve apparently used it nine times on this site. And yesterday my spell checker indicated that it wasn’t a word. Poppycock! I checked Dictionary.com. Nope. I checked Merriam-Webster. Nada. I even visited the bookshelf and checked my massive (steady, steady) OED. No joy.
Clearly I’m a buffoon. What is the appropriate antonym to ‘genuine’? Ungenuine? Agenuine? Nongenuine? No such version of ‘genuine’ exists. This antonym finder suggests ‘insincere’.
Google has a mere 19,100 mentions of the non-word. Just me and 19,000 other illiterates, I imagine.
What other words do I use that don’t actually exist? Bogosity (thank you, Joe)? Awesomeified? Automagical? The list goes on.