Autobesity: a neat new term for cumbersome cars
Have you heard of the term ‘autobesity’ before? I came across it a while ago and instantly adopted it into my lexicon. It’s one of those perfect neologisms that captures a concept so succinctly.
Neat neologisms
But what’s a neologism? The term itself is one of my favourite words because of the way I have to curl my tongue and shape my mouth into an ‘o’ shape to pronounce it.
Oxford Dictionaries defines a neologism as a ‘newly coined word or expression’ and combines the affix of Greek origin neo-, ‘new’, and the Ancient Greek logos, ‘word’.
It’s also one of those words that looks and sounds almost identical in other languages. In Spanish, they call it neologismo, in French néologisme, and in Portuguese it’s neologismo.
I love how creative and incisive neologisms are – how they respond to cultural change and the gap in the dictionary where a concept should be, often before that concept even enters our lexicon. They neatly blend words to make new ones, reminding us of how innovative language can be.
Automotive weight gain
Every so often, a neologism comes along that offers a brilliantly novel expression for a modern concept: autobesity.
Have you ever struggled to open your car door because of the immense size of the car parked next to you?
Have you ever needed to swerve your car slightly into a hedge to avoid the truck-sized SUV coming towards you on the other side?
If you have, then you’ve probably experienced autobesity. I know I have, and I’m delighted there’s a word out there that expresses the congestion caused by cars’ expanding waistbands.
This neologism is so new that it’s not even in the Oxford English Dictionary…yet. But it featured in Cambridge Dictionary’s About Word’s blog in August 2023.
Collins Dictionary has a submission for this word, but it hasn’t yet been accepted as a new dictionary entry. It defines it as ‘the phenomenon of cars getting bigger and heavier year by year’.
Etmyology
What are the origins of this word? When searching online, I actually found more more search results for this term in French (autobésité) than for ‘autobesity’ in English.
Could it be a cross-cultural new word borrowed from the French?
In French, the term already has its own Wikipedia entry and a lot of the articles in English referring to the term are about the fact the city of Paris has introduced charges for larger cars, as a major cause of air pollution and road damage. One article even asks if cars are the new tobacco.
Autobesity in the press
A Guardian article reports that councillors in Paris called SUVs ‘dangerous’ and ‘cumbersome’, after the number of these ‘fatter’ vehicles increased by 60% in four years. And Forbes reported in January 2024 on ‘car bloat’, with cars having widened by two centimetres per year. This article says, ‘roads in most British cities are becoming more and more choked as wider motor cars struggle to squeeze past each other’. How true that is.
This is such a neat and fitting word that I believe it’s a definite contender for a dictionary entry.