Why we need new words for life in the AnthropoceneOne day, Harold Antoine Des Voeux realised he lacked a word. It was the beginning of the 20th Century, and the doctor had been treating multiple people for lung ailments. Gradually, he figured out the reason for the excess illness he was seeing: it was the air pollution caused by nearby factories burning so much coal. In one 1909 incident that affected Glasgow, more than 1,000 people had died.
There was no name for this pollution, so Des Voeux coined one: "smog" – a portmanteau of smoke and fog. "He didn't ask for permission. He didn't consult a linguist. He just put it in his paper and announced it," says Heidi Quante, an artist who specialises in new environmental vocabulary. "It became a neologism, because people were desperate to name what was in the air."
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