Vocab from social television: a nascent phenomenon

Welcome to Wondrous Words Wednesday, a meme hosted by Kathy of bermudaonion.

wondrous meme

I chose my word this week from a story I heard on NPR about “Social Television.”

(Yes, I listen to a lot of NPR-  on the dreadmill, or even in the car.  With radio news,  I don’t have to worry about disturbing images for my children…)

In 2012, broadcasters worked hard to get their shows viewed not just on TVs, but also on “second screens:” laptops, tablets, and smartphones.  An industry guru described this phenomenon as “nascent.”

I paused in my morning preparations to consider this word nerdy word.  A little voice suggested nascent must have something to do with birth.  I looked it up in Websters:

nascent \’nas-ənt\ adj from the Latin nascent, nascens, to be born; coming or having recently come into existence

A ha!  I love it when the little nerdy voice is right!

Word Nerd Workout

Think of another nascent phenomenon and write a sentence about it.  In our tech focused society, this shouldn’t be too hard.  My example:

Last night Eli read a book to the family; we were all impressed with his nascent skills at deciphering the words.

Leave your workout in the comments, and thanks for joining in the discussion!

 

 

Julia Tomiak
I believe in the power of words to improve our lives, and I help people find interesting words to read. Member of SCBWI.

16 Comments

  1. The problem is it’s now very over-used in media.
    I can’t read an article without seeing nascent… or red!

    Whenever there is an earthquake, it is without fail called a ‘temblor’ in the media. Every single time. Who calls it that?

    Remember preternatural? It was desperately overused, but now it’s fading out. When was this ever used in a sentence?

  2. I’m not surprised that nascent means newly birthed. I’m a little surprised to hear it applied to technology, but I guess I shouldn’t be. It takes some mental adjusting, but I’ll get over it, lol!

  3. Terrific word today! I did know it, but your post gave me more to think about.

    In kindergarten, the young children kids were not afraid of the Apple computers, and some seemed to possess a nascent ability to figure out how to do things that their teacher didn’t know how to do.

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