I learned things a month ago. Learning is almost always good, and it was appropriate, since I was at a continuing ed conference. But it wasn’t expected.

I may have been present for the birth of two word variations. They were new to me anyway. For the first time I heard “recordkeep,” and it was a transitive verb. For the first time I took in “overcomeable,” and it was a legal concept.

I’m in the business of record-keeping, so long now that I’ve seen it lose that hyphen, but I didn’t know it had moved out of noun/adjective country until last month. More than once I heard a phrase like “We have to figure out how to recordkeep that.”

As for the other new word, I’m not sure if it should be spelled “overcomeable” or “overcomable” or even “overcomible,” but it’s clearly the legal condition of surmounting/defeating a position. I’m just not sure why it needed coinage.

Hearing the new words was a bit like being in on the discovery of a new star. Or maybe not. Maybe these words are already popular, and I just don’t get out enough.