I'm not sure you can truly claim ownership of a word, but you can certainly claim to have started a trend which uses a word, though whether we should consider that ownership I'm not particularly sure either.
I think that the creator of a word should ethically be compensated for any money made off of the word because it is their intellectual property. This can be enforced if the creator of a word issues a patent for any potential merchandizing with the word featured in it. Unfortunately this can only apply if the word is solely a neologism and not anything already existing, but this is reasonable. There should also be a time cutoff where if a word is older than a certain time, it could be patented as long as the meaning of the word is different. This ensures that if someone took an archaic word and gave it a new meaning it would be protected.
I'm not sure you can truly claim ownership of a word, but you can certainly claim to have started a trend which uses a word, though whether we should consider that ownership I'm not particularly sure either.
I just wish demure lasted, though. It was my favorite word 😭
I read somewhere that someone *other* than Jools trademarked "demure" and sued her for using it. Messed up!
I think that the creator of a word should ethically be compensated for any money made off of the word because it is their intellectual property. This can be enforced if the creator of a word issues a patent for any potential merchandizing with the word featured in it. Unfortunately this can only apply if the word is solely a neologism and not anything already existing, but this is reasonable. There should also be a time cutoff where if a word is older than a certain time, it could be patented as long as the meaning of the word is different. This ensures that if someone took an archaic word and gave it a new meaning it would be protected.
solid ideas, I like how you address what to do with archaic words that are given new meaning
Peter the millenial, on fleek (meme video)