Liesl Schillinger

Liesl Schillinger, culture critic, blogger and the author of Wordbirds: An Irreverent Lexicon for the 21st Century (Simon & Schuster, 2013), shares her neologisms for things like a person who overdoes the teeth-bleaching (brightbite) and introduces a new listener suggested word.

Culture critic, blogger and the author of Wordbirds: An Irreverent Lexicon for the 21st Century (Simon & Schuster, 2013), Liesl Schillinger, shares her neologisms for things like a person who overdoes the teeth-bleaching ("brightbite") or an old boyfriend who won't go away ("polterguy").  

Have you coined a word to fill a 21st century need or have you come across new situations that need a word to describe them?  

→Liesl Schillinger will read tomorrow at 7PM at the Powerhouse Arena in DUMBO.

I’ve lived in the East Village, in lower Manhattan, for twenty years— in a narrow railroad apartment that I like to think of as quaint, where the living room is only eight feet wide. My walls are lined with bookshelves from the living room to the kitchen, because I’m a critic and a translator. If I’m home, which I often am, I’m either reading or writing. When Hurricane Sandy approached last October, and the skies darkened and the wind started howling, I rubbed my hands in anticipation, remembering the tornadoes of my Midwestern youth. This one, I thought, unlike Hurricane Irene, was truly going to hit.  Curling up in an armchair by the window, I started reading, listening as branches thrashed and trash cans clanged like cymbals on the sidewalk below. And then the power went out. It stayed out for five days.