The Penguin English Dictionary Blog of Revelations: Are you malcoordinated or uncoordinated?

It all started a few months back. There I was, plodding along with all things reference, when I overheard my colleagues, Alice and Phillip, calling each other ‘malco’. The word was not familiar to me but as I’m not a native Brit I put it down to an ignorance of British colloquialisms. Where I come from, people call each other ‘unco’. For example, today I dropped my pen, bent down to pick it up, missed, bent down again, picked it up, dropped it again, bent down to pick it up, and tripped over own hand. Unco.

Although I’d heard malco before, it resonated more aggressively this time – possibly because it was being uttered by these aforementioned extremely-bright-and-well-educated-in-every-other-way colleagues. I was working on the dictionary at the time and thus acutely aware of the need for supreme accuracy when it comes to English. I decided to challenge them, explaining that malcoordinated is not a word. I even held open the Penguin English Dictionary to the page where it would appear if it really was a word. There began a raging debate and several other colleagues entered the arena to claim malcoordinated was a word and not only was I mad for disagreeing but that ‘unco’ sounds completely ridiculous. The only way to settle it was to ask Robert Allen, so here follows a short transcript of that correspondence:

Dear Robert,
I'm currently in the midst of a highly charged debate with some colleagues regarding the word 'malcoordinated'. Please could you confirm if this is a word or not? And whether using 'uncoordinated' is more or less correct?
Kristen
ps. I note that the spell checker queries malcoordinated when I try to send, and offers no alternatives. Looking forward to your reply - I should have put money on this.

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Dear Kristen
Well, it’s some time since I’ve been asked to resolve an office dispute like this. It’s not without its dangers you know. As you don’t say which way round the debate stands I can be completely impartial.

There is no such word as malcoordinated recorded in the OED (online).

I have found one slightly weird example (from a religious magazine, apparently) of its use on the Oxford corpus (500 million words), which goes like this:

“A Christmas baby, with fingernails and everything! Mal-coordinated childish digits needing practice. In Him all things hold together, but a baby has to be taught to hold! How did they stretch skin around the Invisible God? Was it like cling-film?”

No example on the British National Corpus (100 million).

So I think the answer is no, but as with all language there is scope for invention, and mal- is a productive prefix. It would be useful to distinguish the sense ‘badly coordinated’ (which I imagine is the meaning intended) from ‘not coordinated [at all]’. In general though, uncoordinated is much the better word.

I hope this helps!  No fighting now.

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Even this response from Robert didn’t stop Alice and Phillip from bandying around their tirade of ignorance. Here’s how Phillip responded:

See 'malcoordinated atoms' in abstract copyrighted by the American Physical Society.

'malcoordinated peristaltic activity'

'malcoordinated atoms' in the Brazilian Journal of Physics

and that great arbiter of lexical correctness - The York University Boat Club (see second blog down entitled 'Slutfest 2005/6 woo!')

As you can see - used widely by both academics and boaties!
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A small and random selection of online citations is not enough to justify a word being added the Penguin English Dictionary. Having said that, Robert makes the point that there is always room for invention. What do we think? Should malcoordinated be in the dictionary? If there’s enough support perhaps Robert will kindly add it to the next edition. But that still won’t make me wrong.

Kristen Harrison
Reference Editor

ps. "stretch skin around the Invisible God? Was it like cling-film?" – now that is inventive use of language.

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Comments

[Philip]

Well done on this enjoyable post. I would agree that 'malcoordinated' doesn't exist, but I think it should; Allen highlights the semantic difference between 'mal-' and 'un-' and I think there is room in this case to adopt a new word…
And 'unco' does sound bizarre.

Does that put me on the wrong side of the debate?

[Claire]

urbandictionary.com has definitions for both "malco" and "unco".

I've never heard "malco" before so, personally, I would always use "unco". Maybe it's an Antipodean thing?

[miriam]

Personally, intuitively, I’d say ‘unco’, because ‘malco’ just sounds and feels wrong; but rather than base my opinion on soft reasoning I thought I’d qualify it with the web equivalent of 'Ask the Audience' - Google Fight, I rest my case: http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=malcoordinated&word2=uncoordinated

[Duska]

The use of ''malco'' is just a dreadful mishmash of the English language -- and rather ''unco'', linguistically speaking!

[Margo]

Despite the existence of the prefix 'mal', I suspect the use of the word malcoordinated probably results from a transposition from 'malcontent' - a genuine word starting with 'malco' (see link) - to 'uncoordinated'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcontent

I think the word is OK even if not generally accepted yet, and appears to be entering the English language, as Robert says, as a halfway house between coordinated and uncoordinated, like 'moral', 'immoral' and 'amoral'. So, in my humble opinion you are right, but it should be added as it is useful.

Are you a lexical Luddite, or prepared to 'go with the flow'? If new scientific words can be added, why not useful words to graduate other words? What would Samuel have done? English is so exciting (and presumably difficult to learn to speak well) because it has continued to adapt from many sources and has so many fine semantic gradations.

[Ros]

I go along with Robert’s distinction between ‘mal-’ (= badly) and ‘un-’ (= not at all). I don’t think a person can be described as ‘badly coordinated’, though their movements may be. The person is either coordinated or not, so the correct word in this context must be ‘uncoordinated’. 'Malcoordinated' may be more appropriate in other contexts, but what is wrong with ‘ill-coordinated’? It has the same meaning, and gets more Google hits than the mal-word!

[Kitty]

I wonder what Steven Pinker would say about all this...

[Donald]

I'm siding with Alice n Phil on this one. 'Malco' is a much better word, sounding nothing like my father's long-lost tightrope-strutting brother (mon oncle, indeed), and - crucially -is far less of an insult ('badly put together' being much nicer than 'absolute klutz'). Friendships are sustained by these gentle slurs - not by outright denunciations - and what more does the world need than a little friendship, eh? :)

At any rate. I thought I'd get my word in before Mr Pinker tells me I've got it all wrong.

[Kristen Harrison]

Now, sorry to go on about this but... thanks to a very observant colleague, Rachel Mills, we have further proof of the use of 'unco' and this time it comes from ENGLAND (NOT the antipodes):

"I believed myself to be awkward and physically uncoordinated, in fact the unpleasant word 'unco' was always hooted at me whenever I dropped a ball or tripped over."

From Stephen Fry's 'Moab is my Washpot', page 216

The end.