I thought that would be a good word. (It occurred to me in the context of finally switching to a DVD player for the first time, and feeling that I don't like DVDs. They're too flimsy and insubstantial, like so much of the stuff that's on them. They sort of undermine the seriousness, the weightiness, of the good old stuff that's been transferred onto them.) I also was pretty sure it must have been used before.
It has. Google comes up with about 5,300 hits, which take it 0.17 seconds. (Google always brags about its record-breaking speed, like a runner with a stopwatch.) Here they are, if you're interested.
- amba
(My other recent coinage, however -- Oprahmerican -- gets no hits but me! And Oxblog found only one use of "unBorkable" -- in the Supreme Court-related sense, that is -- prior to mine a month ago, and that was a dead link to the St. Paul Pioneer-Press. This is almost unbelievable, as once "bork" was used as a verb, "unborkable" was inevitable.
UPDATE: An e-mailer to OxBlog has turned up a 1990 Wall Street Journal use of "unBorkable" in relation to . . . ready? . . . David Souter! (I repeat my contention that the real coiner here was whatever wag first used "to bork" as a verb; all else followed.)
NOW we need a word for what Bush was trying to avoid this time around. Fred Barnes writes of "Souter-Phobia." (Hat tip: Althouse.) Other candidates? Roberts won't "Souter out" on him?
Hey, how about "He's unSouterble"!
According to OxBlog's link, what makes a candidate unBorkable is lack of a paper trail. What makes him unSouterble is less easily definable -- an impression of transparency and lifelong firm convictions. In other words, to be unSouterble is not to be inscrutable.
Judge Roberts, apparently, is both. That's what makes him such a smart choice.
(If all this Googling of "my coinages" seemed self-obsessed, here's why I care.)
UPDATE: A warm welcome to Althouse readers.
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