I came across an interesting word in an article about hyperpolyglots I read today (it’s an old article, but I only just found it) – phenoms, which appears in the following sentence:
TIME spoke to Erard about phenoms who can speak more languages than they have fingers, whether anyone can do it and where the upper limits of human potential lie.
According to Dictionary.com, phenom [fɪˈnɒm] is an abbreviation of phenomenon and refers especially to a young prodigy. The definitions are “a person or thing of outstanding abilities or qualities” (informal), or “A phenomenally skilled or impressive person; a performing wonder, esp in sports”.
Apparently it comes from US baseball slang, and was first recorded in 1890.
Merriam-Webster defines a phenom as “a person who is very good at doing something (such as a sport)” or “a person of phenomenal ability or promise”.
Have you come across this word before?
Also spelled pheenom sometimes. The old baseball memoir Ball Four used it, and I’ve seen it since. Never knew it was specific to baseball, but it makes sense now that I think about it.
I’m an American and I’ve seen it before. Oddly, Wiktionary gives the pronunciation as a short-e, like in the source word, but I’ve always read it with a long-e, and Jim’s alternate spelling supports that. (Also, the accent switches to the first syllable.)
It’s got a very 19th century feel to it, and wouldn’t expect to see it used later than the 1950s, and probably only in sports then. Anywhere else ‘prodigy’ would be used.