At the University of Chicago Magazine blog they have Arika Okrent discuss her top ten favorite made-up words. She has just written a book in which she traces the history of dreamed-up languages, like Klingon.
Number 5 on the list...
pük
INVENTED LANGUAGE: Johann Schleyer's Volapük (1879)
In Volapük, pük means "language." It comes from the English word "speak" but it's hard to tell (vol, means "world", so Volapük is "word language.") Unfortunately, it looks a lot like a different English word. And even more unfortunately, it shows up in various other words related to the concept of language: püked – "sentence" and pükön – "to speak."
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