The Debut Of iPhools

In-house columnist Mark Herrmann nominates a word that should appear in the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Times change.

Ten years ago, when you saw a guy walking down the street, screaming into the air, and gesticulating wildly, you knew the score:

Crazy guy. It’s time to cross the street.

Today, when you see a guy walking down the street, screaming into the air, and gesticulating wildly, you have to ask yourself a question:

Crazy? Or Bluetooth?

I’ve always wanted to add a new word to the language, and technology (and my own curmudgeonliness) is finally giving me that chance. Today, I’m swinging for the fences; I’m going to make language history.

Here’s my candidate for a word that should appear in the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary:

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iPhool.

It’s a noun, with two definitions.

Definition 1: A person so absorbed in an electronic gadget that he becomes a menace to the world around him.

You know who I mean: It’s the guy with his head down and his fingers tapping away at his iPhone. He’s walking along Fifth Avenue during rush hour and stops suddenly, nearly causing the woman with the kid in the stroller behind him to bowl him over. The iPhool then starts walking again, but he weaves left and right as he walks, cutting off people who are trying to pass him. He stands at the red light, absorbed in his gadget, and so doesn’t realize that the light has turned green and he can walk. He then starts gesticulating wildly, scattering people around him as they run for cover.

I suppose, if I’m going to add a word to the vernacular, I must supply a few sample sentences. I propose:

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“Did you see that iPhool who stopped right at the top of the jam-packed escalator?”

“Did you see that iPhool stopping to search the web directly in front of the turnstile?”

“Who were those iPhools sitting on the steps leading out of the subway at Grand Central Station at rush hour?”

That’s the first definition. But my word fills two omissions from the current English vocabulary!

Definition 2: A person convinced that all knowledge is just two clicks away, so there’s no longer any need to actually know anything.

Unlike the first definition of iPhool, which is plainly disparaging, this one is not. There’s an outside chance that this type of iPhool is correct, and those of us who still bother knowing things are the fools with an “f.”

Years ago, I carried scores of telephone numbers in my head. Today, I basically know my own office, cell, and home telephone numbers, and that’s it. A computer remembers all the rest for me.

I still like to look at a map occasionally. Armed with knowledge, rather than just a series of directions to follow, I’m not completely lost if I misstep. If I’ve looked at a map and then accidentally walk a block in the wrong direction, I can figure out where I am. If I’m just following directions, I’m like a rat in a maze; once I make a mistake, it’s awfully hard to get back on course.

And heaven help the wandering iPhool whose battery runs low.

But I’m plainly a vanishing minority. Almost no one looks at a map before getting in a car these days, and many don’t check maps before walking around in unfamiliar cities. People just plug an address into an iContraption and follow where the iGadget leads.

Years ago, there was a reason to know the meanings of obscure words: If you encountered an odd word in a book and knew its meaning, then you didn’t have to get up and grab a dictionary. Today, if a word baffles you, you ask your Kindle to supply the definition.

Years ago, it was worth knowing how to make change if someone handed you ten bucks to buy an item that cost $5.99 plus tax. Today, the cash register computes the change for you; why bother to learn subtraction?

So, too, with historical facts, the names of authors, lines of poetry, or interesting trivia. There’s no need to know it; all knowledge rests two clicks away.

The only facts that aren’t two clicks away are those about you personally: What did you do yesterday, and what do you plan to do tomorrow?

You can’t Google that.

So they invented Facebook!

You can record your own life, and then look back, years from now, to see how you lived.

How does one use this meaning of iPhool in a sentence? Maybe:

“That iPhool is dead if it’s a closed-book test. But if it’s open book, he’s set.”

Or maybe it’s:

“Schools should teach students to think, not to memorize facts. We’re all iPhools now.”

But enough of this iPhoolishness.

Happy holidays!


Mark Herrmann is the Chief Counsel – Litigation and Global Chief Compliance Officer at Aon, the world’s leading provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, and human capital and management consulting. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Inside Straight: Advice About Lawyering, In-House And Out, That Only The Internet Could Provide (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

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