Those crafty advertising agencies (TBWA\Chiat\Day in this case) are at work on an ad campaign to play with the English language, and make an observer wonder what it is that they are trying to communicate to the public. I am, of course, talking about the campaign for Snickers. More specifically about the made up words that replace the space where “Snickers” usually appears on its candy bar wrappers, buses, billboards, and other public spaces. The Snickers ad campaign is using the concept of word coinage to invent new words that seek to gain observers’ attention. Really what they’ve done is to combine morphemes, or base elements of internal word structure from other words in an attempt to define their product in a new, robust way.

1. hunger + ectomy
2. nougat + ocity
3. peanut + opolis
4. satis + fect + ellent
5. substantial + iscious

From this morphological breakdown, the linguist might determine that a Snickers 1) removes hunger, 2) is full of nougat to the nth degree, 3) makes you feel like you are in a city of peanuts, 4) satifies with excellence, and 5) is deliciously substantial. I any case, Snickers is making up words to draw attention to itself. Similar marketing campaigns have used morpheme-play and word coinage to equal effect, e.g. Uncola (Un + cola). I doubt Snickers’ new words will be added to the lexicon, but one can only hope because they’re so fun and satisfying!