Lexicon Injection Project introduces phrases for immediate and widespread dissemination

April 10, 2009

The objective of the Lexicon Injection Project (LIP) is to see how long it takes for the following terms, “exit call” and “entrance call,” to gain widespread usage in the English-speaking world. The terms below were also submitted to the Urban Dictionary, with entries there linked to below in blue.

Usage examples:

Exit call: The phenomenon of receiving a telephone call (non-cellular) while in the process of departing one’s domicile.

Usage: “I wanted to board the 2:15 train, but I got an exit call from my cousin in New Jersey and had to take the 2:30 instead.”

Entrance call: The phenomenon of receiving a telephone call (non-cellular) in the process of arriving at one’s domicile.

Usage: “I had my hands full with the kids and groceries when I got home, so I just let voicemail handle the entrance call.”

There are two ways you can participate in the LIP. One is to begin using these terms verbally whenever the phenomena they seek to represent shows up in your life. For example, if you think of the phrase “exit call” the next time your landline phone rings when you are in a hurry to walk out the door, that’s a good sign that the LIP is working. If you use it in conversation soon after, then by all means you are a friend of the LIP.

The other way to participate is to forward this report to everyone you know. Just copy the URL that’s in the address bar right now and paste it into the body of an e-mail. The report you are reading now should tell them all they need to know. By way of explanation, ask them to forward it, too. Begin forwarding like there was no tomorrow.

TPP, the overseer of the LIP, encourages everyone to participate in both ways.

How long will it take for everyone in the English speaking world to know about the LIP and these two new and very useful phrases? Will the LIP spark a linguistic revolution among those with the power to shape language, or will it slip into obscurity? Or perhaps it will languish for months or years, only to be discovered in a keyword search by someone trying to determine if there is a name for the phenomena that the LIP is naming right now.

Stay tuned, and be sure and check back to this report for updates. Given the fact that sites like the Drudge Report gets millions of hits in a 24 hours, there’s no reason this report can’t generate enough grass-roots excitement to get 1 million hits in 100 hours. It’s almost 8 p.m. Pacific Time on April 10 as I post this report on Allvoices.com, so let’s see if we can get the word to a cool million people by 11:59 p.m. on April 14.

100 hours to make a name stick for telephonic phenomena that have been with us since the days of Bell but are only now being recognized as worthy of their own terminology – the entrance call and the exit call.

Spread the word. Make a difference. Forward the link to this report.

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