This is a linkpost for https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1773806.html
In my own experience coining new technical terms, it's helpful to do it in a way that it can't be mistaken as having some more generic interpretation. The usual trick I employ is to use a foreign language word, usually from either Greek or Latin, so that the reader, when they first see it, will clearly understand that they don't know what this word means, which means I get the chance to define it. For example, this is why I used the word "noemata" in some of my writing to talk about what many people would call "qualia" or just "experiences": it breaks free of whatever they think that word means and lets me define it fresh.
The other trick that works is to make the noun phrase really weird or capitalize it everywhere or do something to set it apart. This doesn't work quite as well (cf. "Friendly AI") but it's better than not doing that.
It's a pattern of language usage which casts more shadow than light, and, as far as I can tell, has absolutely no upside unless you can find some benefit to causing misunderstanding and confusion.
An upside is that their name acts as a hook to help remember what they refer to. Knowing that chronic fatigue syndrome is an improper noun, if someone tells me they have CFS I'm not going to think they're literally fatigued all the time but I am able to remember which syndrome that is even if I don't remember the exact definition. If someone tells me they have myalgic encephalitis... well, in that case I'd also be able to remember, but it's not as easy.
I don't think 'chronic fatigue syndrome' is a great example of what the post discusses because 'syndrome' is a clear technical (e.g. medical) word already. Similarly, 'myalgic encephalitis' is (for most listeners or readers) not a phrase made up of common English words. Both examples seem much more clearly medical or technical terms. 'chronic fatigue' would be a better example (if it was widely used) as it would conflate the unexplained medical condition with anything else that might have the same effects (like 'chronic overexertion').
The post:
Interestingly, 'improper nouns' – as described by the post – is itself an example of the phenomena it describes (as 'improper noun' is itself an existing term):
There's a thing you probably have encountered and maybe haven't really registered as it went by. It usually plays out like this. Somebody else takes a noun phrase – usually there's an adjective or two involved, sometimes multiple nouns – that seems perfectly ordinary and makes sense on the face of it, and which refers to something in the real world, and the speaker makes some bold assertion about it that strikes you as really weird, and possibly highly prejudicial. What they've said leaves you thinking, "wait, how could that possibly be true?"
That's all you get. That's all the sign of what's happening. That's the glitch in the matrix.
There's a lot of reasons that people make ridiculous claims about all sorts of things, and you will always be tempted to write it off as just ridiculous people saying ridiculous things and thinking no more about it.
But if you can catch yourself in that moment, and not reflexively dismiss it as silliness, you could, instead, ask yourself: "Hey, is that noun phrase maybe a technical term of art which means something much more specific and possibly quite different from what the individual words literally mean?"
Doing this? Is a super power. Lots of people can recognize specific technical terms that they are acquainted with. Few people cultivate the more general ability to recognize – or just suspect – that a noun phrase is a technical term they aren't familiar with.
This is a useful enough idea that it's already been referenced in another post here.