Neologism

A neologism is a new word or phrase that has not yet gained full acceptance as standard vocabulary. At one time, "blog" was such a word. More recently, we got "blogosphere," which may still belong to the category of neologism.

We need a neologism!

In class on Wednesday, I suggested that we need a word to describe that quality of being able to maneuver in such a way as to pass by degrees from outside to inside or from the periphery to the center.

Hermes does this in the Hymn to Hermes. He divides the sacrificial portions of the cow into twelve, not eleven, portions. He argues with Apollo in such a way that they end up taking their dispute to Zeus on Olympus -- exactly where Hermes wants to be. He uses his lyre to ingratiate himself with his half-brother. Finally he joins the pantheon.

The character Paul (played by Will Smith) in the film Six Degrees of Separation attempts something similar. Pretending to have suffered an attack in Central Park, Paul arrives in false distress at the apartment of the wealthy couple Ouisa and Flan Kittredge. In a buttoned-down shirt and blue blazer, he looks as though he could in fact know the couple's children from boarding school. In fact, he's a trickster, a flimflam artist, a con man. But through ingenuity and charm -- including a spellbinding monologue on J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye -- he almost succeeds in joining the pantheon, which for him is the elite social class that the Kittredges represent.

So we need a new word. What is the combination of chutzpah or audacity and finesse or subtlety? 

Maybe "tricksterism"?