The Dr Ivan Šreter Contest for New Croatian Words by the Jezik journal: purpose, results and similarities with contests in the United States and Germany

Objective: To show the results of the Dr Ivan Šreter Contest for New Croatian Words for the best new Croatian word and compare it with similar contests in the United States of America and Germany. Methods: Descriptive review of the words from the 2020 contest conducted by the Jezik journal since 1992 and sponsored by the Dr Ivan Šreter Foundation. Results: The paper explains the best words from the 2020 contest in detail and provides an overview of all the best words chosen so far. Croatian, German, and American contests are compared based on their selection and inclusion criteria of the words. The best new words are not imposed on speakers but are proposed as an alternative to foreign origin words, or as names for new terms. Conclusion: The competition encourages Croatian speakers to have a creative attitude toward their own language.


Introduction
The Croatian neologism contest boasts a relatively short history -it had a modest launch in 1992, with the academician Prof Stjepan Babić publishing a call in the Jezik journal and inviting its readership to send in suggestions for the best and worst new Croatian words.
The contest has since been regularly organized by Jezik, currently the longest-running lin-4 piled and signed between 11 and 17 March 1967. The Declaration was a turning point for Croatian linguistics -it symbolized the refusal of Croatian linguists, writers, and cultural and scientific institutions to take part in the fabrication of the artificial and politically imposed "Serbo-Croatian" language (Ham, 2020a). The declaration was Croatia's response to the unitarian Novi Sad Agreement, signed in 1954.
In 1960, the Agreement resulted in the Novi Sad orthography (Katičić, 2008). This was an attempt at fundamentally transmogrifying the Croatian orthographic standard. The unitarian Novi Sad Agreement was a vehicle for foisting the Serbian language on the Croatian people and promulgating its use in the public sphere. Under the guise of the "federation" language, Serbian became the language of diplomacy and the army (Jonke, 1971, pp. 251-384). The 1967 Declaration called for the freedom of the public use of Croatian in Croatia.
However, as the contemporary unitarian politics resented seeing the Croatian national identity separated from the artificial, unitary Yugoslav one, the participants in the proceedings surrounding the Declaration were publicly criticized in an attempt to smother their demands (Bašić, 2017). The best new Croatian word contest is held in memory of these critical days, a homage which culminates in the announcement of the winning words.
The annual contest is run by Jezik and announced on the journal's website (Ham, 2020b).
The competition is open from January 1 to December 22 of the current year. December 22 is a symbolic date -it is Ivan Šreter's birthday.

The contest and Ivan Šreter
The best new Croatian word award is named after the Croatian language martyr and victim of the Homeland War (Perković Paloš, 2020), Dr Ivan Šreter. Although held by the Jezik journal, the contest enjoys moral and financial support by the Dr Ivan Šreter Foundation, founded by friends of the late Šreter (Babić, 2007, pp. 32-33).
Dr Ivan Šreter was a victim of the Yugoslav communist regime. Initially, he was removed from his position of chief physician at the Lipik Hospital for using the Croatian word for umirovljeni časnik (retired officer) instead of the Serbian term penzionisani oficir in the medical record of a former Yugoslav People's Army officer he was treating in Lipik and was subsequently accused of insulting and disparaging "socialist, patriotic, and national feelings of the people". In the end, he was sentenced to prison. The original record of the incident -the resolution of the disciplinary procedure against Šreter for his work in the Lipik hospital -was published in Jezik (Ham, 2008). The document clearly shows that it was, in the literal sense, dangerous to use Croatian. Losing one's job and reputation for using Croatian words was a real threat (Erceg, 2020). During the Yugoslav regime, Croatian words were banned (such as the ban on using the Croatian adjective umirovljeni instead of the Serbian penzionisani, "retired"), and this doubly applied to military terms (one could

Ivan Šreter and Croatian military terminology
Croatian military terminology has a long history. However, in Yugoslavia, it was forbidden as being nationalistic and "anti-people". The 19 th -century Croatian lexicographer Bogoslav Šulek (1870-1912) is widely regarded as the creator of Croatian military terminology. He translated military rulebooks from Hungarian into Croatian. Thus, the Croatian army acquired its own army code, Naredbenik za kraljevsko hrvatsko-ugarsko domobranstvo (Rules of the Royal Croatian-Hungarian Home Guard). The first booklet was published in 1870, with twenty more to follow; the last one seems to have been printed in 1912. In the four decades, Šulek's booklets were reprinted and their title changed, from Naredbenik to Službovnik: Službovnik za kraljevsko ugarsko domobranstvo (Service Code of the Royal Hungarian Home Guard). The rulebooks contained the official Croatian Home Guard terminology. Šulek's Naredbenici and Službovnici series were the basis for Tóth's Dictionary of Military Terminology (Tóth, Schweitzer, Pandić, & Spicer, 1900). Contemporary Croatian military terminology is largely based on Šulek's terms (Vince, 1990, pp. 563-568;Samardžija, 2008, pp. 84-86).
Ivan Šreter made use of the same terminology when he called a Yugoslav officer časnik instead of oficir -the terminology that suffered decades of persecution and ridicule (Vince, 1990, pp. 566-568;Ham, 2016).

Disputes over Croatian military terms
Home Guard military terms were also ridiculed in "Croatian God Mars", a book by Croatian writer Miroslav Krleža (Krleža, Miroslav, 2021). As Krleža's criticism of various topics, mostly expressed through his prose, prevailed due to his reputation, one may wonder whether Krleža's jeers at Home Guard terminology were the reason behind the decades of its neglect. The linguistic justification of Krleža's critique should also be questioned.
In the chapter on The Home Guard and Foreign Word Interpreter of his highly appraised work, "Croatian God Mars" (where he depicts the bleak fate of Croatian home guard soldiers in World War One), Krleža ironically dismissed Službovnik (translated from Hungarian by Šulek) as "one of the most wondrous Croatian books", calling himself the first person "to give it the time of day." In giving the Officer's Code "the time of day", Krleža drew a connection between Croatia's ill fortune during its time in Austria-Hungary and the Croatian linguistic stylization in the most pernicious sense possible: "...'tis an anthem to the Hungarian, Deákian Home Guard 'infantry', written in the language and spelling of the seventies [of the 19 th century] and dressed up by a more recent, highly refined style favored by a number of our linguists, the Settlement advocates, unionists, and academic purists, who on a whim resolved to call this masterpiece "a rulebook for the team and the superior officers." And when they "twist and turn in an unfolded line," then "the boys shall cover their peers in the first row, so that those who are closest in the pivot step a little to the side... Jumping backwards in twists and turns" of this Hungarian syntax, which also teems with the same kind of Hungarian barbarisms and Germanisms (these being, in turn, a caricature of the Mariatheresian Baroque curial and court Galicianisms)" (Krleža, 1985, pp. 344-345 In the post-World War II Yugoslav era, interlinking and identifying a particular brand of politics with a certain linguistic style was a common affair; Croats were thus condemned for allegedly using the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska; NDH) Croatian language as a means of stripping them of their right to use an inherently Croatian Croatian (Bašić, 2021). More specifically, between 1941and 1945, the NDH (Gitman, 2011 pursued a state-sponsored language policy -the language laws. The policy is, to this day, shrouded in various deliberate, politically driven misconceptions; not so long ago, the policy of the Independent State of Croatia was painted as monstrous and superfluous, even as it was fully obfuscated. The linguist M. Samardžija's works on the language policy and language of the Independent State of Croatia (Samardžija, 2008) refuted these misconceptions, shining a light on the linguistics of the period between 1940 and 1945 in Croatian history. Samardžija's research also contributed to clarifying several misconceptions about the Croatian language of the time, especially those related to rumors spread and fueled by Yugoslav authorities and the linguists of the Greater Serbia regime, like Pavle Ivić (for more information on Pavle Ivić's disastrous role in demonizing the Croatian language in the Independent State of Croatia, see: Samardžija, 2008, p. 79). The most widespread misconception is that the NDH was a fertile ground for novel, unnecessary, and largely grotesque words. Similarly, Yugoslavia was obsessed with inventing fictious NDH-era "neologisms" for satirical reasons, such as međunožno guralo (between-legs pusher -literal translation for bicycle) or okolotrbušni pandalodržač (stomach-surround trouser-holderliteral translation for belt). Samardžija's data show this to be a gross misrepresentation, as only 23 new words were coined in the NDH (međunožno guralo and okolotrbušni pandalodržač were, naturally, not among them). These included, for example, putničar (tourists) and putničarstvo (tourism), izostavnik (apostrophe -still in use today), prvoborac ("appropriated" by the partisan authorities as the title of Partisans who joined the movement at the beginning of World War II), and slikokaz (cinema) (Samardžija, 2008 (Vince, 1990, p. 568).

Šreter's ill fortune
On 20 January 1987, Šreter was sentenced to 50 days in prison for using a couple of Croatian words, regardless of what linguists had to say about it. He thus became one of the Croatian language martyrs, alongside other Croats who were tried for using Croatian.
Smiljana Rendić (1971) served two years in prison for publishing a journal article on the Croatian language (Erceg, 2020); in 1974, Josip Šćurić was sentenced for casually claiming not to be able to read handwritten Cyrillic. His sentence was annulled in the appeals process (Vuković, 1996).

st-open.unist.hr
Apparently, the Greater Serbian appetite could not be satiated by Šreter's prison sentence.
On 28 October 1984, writer Goran Babić published an article entitled "Language to Death" in a well-known Croatian weekly, the Nedjeljna Dalmacija. This was a call for a lynching, rather, for Šreter's death for using Croatian: "as this medico is obviously beyond help -from word or fire poker alike, the only cure for him is black earth and a green mound." And that is exactly what happened. On 18 August 1991, insurgent Serbs (Perković Paloš, 2020) kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered Dr Šreter. His body has never been found (Degoricija, 2008, p. 165-167;Babić, 2008b).
The Dr Ivan Šreter Foundation was founded by Šreter's friends and now provides support for the Jezik contest. For this reason, the best new Croatian word award is named after Dr Šreter and sponsored by the Šreter Foundation. The ceremony is attended by the winners, Committee members, members of the Šreter Foundation, mayors of both cities, doctors from the Lipik hospital, and other distinguished guests from Pakrac, Lipik, Zagreb, and Osijek. The award ceremony has become an annual media event -for at least a month leading up to the occasion, newspapers, portals, radio, and television shows cover the Croatian language and its new words. ple categories, as is the case in Germany or the US; there is only one, general "best word" category. Rather than being selected from contest entries, the worst word (if chosen at all) is a word already in public use. However, the selection of the worst word has been abandoned. Since the creator of the word is personally identifiable, singling out one "worst" word would be offensive to its creator, particularly because nobody wants to send in a new word only for it to be declared "bad".

The process of selection of the best new Croatian words
The Croatian contest looks for replacements for unnecessary foreign words, primarily related to the surge of new Anglicisms. Beyond the categorical and stylistic classification, the German and American contests focus on words that best reflect the year's social climate and highlight words for new concepts and social movements. These contests are highly socially and politically involved. The Croatian contests does not have any political overtones.
For example, the three best new Croatian words in 2018 were zapozorje (backstage), oznak (brand) and bilješkinja as a replacement for javna bilježnica (feminine form of public notary). These words have no political connotations and do not comment on societal affairs.
Unfortunately, some still look at linguistic creativity and neologisms and see nationalist politics, instead of the language culture. Such individuals are well-known advocates of the common Bosnian-Montenegrin-Croatian-Serbian language (Kordić, 2010) or political activists who, under the guise of linguistics, fight against the autonomy of the Croatian language (Kapović, 2010). Table 1 contains the best and worst Croatian neologisms. The worst words were not selected from contest entries but were already in public use. They were announced only twice, in 1992 and 1993. No new words were chosen between 1995 and 2005.

The best new Croatian words in 2020
In 2020, our contestants were inspired by the same concepts and developments that informed the American and German contests. In a world ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic, the disease-related words were front and center in each country. However, in Croatia, the aim of the contest is to provide Croatian words to replace internationalisms. In contrast, Germans and Americans favor international words. Table 2 shows shortlisted words in the most recent, 2020 contest. Among the 19 shortlisted words, three were selected as the best.
A lot of the entries were words that aimed to replace foreign words and phrases related to the epidemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, including half of all shortlisted words.
Although not shortlisted, one of the entries was krunski virus (coronavirus).

2012
The best words were not announced due to anonymous letters of shameful content that were sent to the Jezik Editorial Board.
No new words were chosen.

2013
sebić -selfie vitičnik -@ Only these two words were considered and highlighted, but the winner was not announced nor awarded due to slim pickings as well as the fact that the words failed to get the required number of votes to win the prize.
No new words were chosen.

2014
odmrljivač -stain remover Due to the dearth of entries and participants, the best word was not announced, only highlighted. * The numbers next to the words indicate: 1. first place, 2. second place, and 3. third place. Words with no numbers did not receive a prize, only an honorable mention.

Samoosama
Several new words were suggested to replace samoizolacija (self-isolation), and two will be highlighted here: samoosama and samobiv. Samoosama is preferred in the morphological sense -it neatly follows the Croatian word formation system and is also more transparent than samobiv. It is a compound word featuring a pronoun as the first component, suicide, self-protection)" (Babić, 2002, p. 372).
The common Croatian synonym is karantena (quarantine), but this was, for no good reason, pushed aside for samoizolacija (self-isolation).

Subolesti
The frequent mention of comorbidities (komorbiditeti) prompted the creation of a new word, subolest (in Croatian, su means "with"). This word is more transparent and straightforward than komorbiditeti, which is, according to the general thesaurus available at the st-open.unist.hr Croatian Language Portal, a medical term: simultaneous occurrence of two or more illnesses or conditions (Komorbidìtēt, n.d.). We may as well discard this word subolesti (literal translation for co-illnesses). Interestingly, two contemporary Croatian monolingual dictionaries (Šonje, 2000;Jojić, 2015), do not contain the word komorbiditet. Jojić (2015) gives morbiditet as a synonym for pobola (morbidity), while Anić and Goldstein (1999) takes it as a synonym of obolijevanje (to fall ill). Klaić has morbiditet under the entry for morbidno, "morbid", which has multiple meanings, including "a diseased state" (Klaić, 1985). None of the above dictionaries make a mention of komorbiditet. This suggests that komorbiditet is not a part of the common lexicon; it came into common usage during the last year, due to extralinguistic reasons. We are, of course, aware that komorbiditet is a technical term, but for general purposes, subolest is more transparent.

Velepošast
Velepošast was proposed as a synonym for pandemija (pandemic). Older Croatian words for "epidemic" include pošast, pošalina, pošlica. The illustrious Croatian lexicographer Bogoslav Šulek already recorded pošast and pošlica in 1874, in his Rječnik znanstvenoga nazivlja (Dictionary of Scientific Terminology) (Šulek, 1874). In contemporary use, pošast has a broad meaning and may describe any rapidly spreading, bad or cataclysmic largescale event, and pošalina and pošlica are used in vernaculars.

Daljinska nastava
Daljinska nastava was submitted as a translation of "distance learning", also known as the educational (mis)adventures during the COVID-19 era. According to its creator: "In my opinion, this phrase has a broader meaning than online nastava (online education), i.e., it may also be applied to the forms of teaching that do not use the Internet. In fact, since this has also been referred to as online nastava, the term daljinska nastava seems even more appropriate. I also propose replacing the expression online predavanje (online lecture) with daljinsko predavanje (distance lecture)" (from the contest documentation).
The proposal is excellent; unfortunately, we may only give a nod to it here. It cannot be considered for the award as the proposer has personal connections with the Committee.
However, we are free to communicate the word to the public. Let us recall that this was also the case with sebić (selfie) and odmrljivač (stain remover) -these were good suggestions that could not be taken into consideration for the prize for the same reason.

Kartičnik
Kartičnik is a necessary word and a good name for the card wallet; more precisely, the card has become so ubiquitous that we now have special wallets just for cards -so we may as well call them kartičnici. The word kartica (diminutive from karta [card]) is mistakenly thought to be of English origin; it is a Greek word that entered Croatian through Latin and has become well-established. Its localization is apparent from the many meanings of the word (postcard, ticket, playing card); the same is true of kartica (calling card, credit card, advertising card, cards of various retail chains).

Kockomat
Kockomat was formed on the model of automat (vending machine), mljekomat (milk vending machine), parkomat (parking meter), redomat (queue management system), svjećomat (candle vending machine). In 2010, parkomat was voted the third best word in our contest, as a substitute for the phrase automat za naplatu parkiranja.

Novosnik
Novosnik is a morphologically sound word: someone who or something that brings news.
Novosnik could replace "newsletter", a common, but unnecessary foreign word. Based on the above, the word has not yet been considered.

Obnovnik
The word obnovnik is morphologically and semantically straightforward -something that regenerates; we could, for example, be using obnovnik za kosu instead of regenerator za kosu (hair conditioner).
In contemporary thesauruses, regenerator is defined as obnovitelj (restorer), preporoditelj  (Šonje, 2000, p. 1066). One of the meanings given in Vrh (Jojić, 2015) and on the Croatian Language Portal (Regenèrātor, n.d.) is "a product that is applied to the hair before rinsing to make the hair soft, shiny, and easy to comb."

Prebrisač
Prebrisač was suggested to replace korektor (correction fluid). The word's creator defined it as "the white substance applied to correct errors in text." The word korektor, of course, st-open.unist.hr 13 has several meanings, including "proofreader" and "something that helps correct or corrects [vision correction, concealer, correction fluid]" (Kòrektor, n.d.). Prebrisač refers to the latter meaning (correction fluid).

Preklikati
The word screenshotati (to screenshot) is not orthographically integrated in Croatian. It is common in speech, especially in computer jargon. Its morphology has been adapted, as it is formed from the English "screenshot" and the Croatian suffix -ati. The English word "screenshot" is a compound word, combining the nouns "screen" and "shot", having the meaning of "photograph" or "recording". In computer terminology, the compound word "screenshot" refers to a captured image of a display on the television, cell phone, or computer screen. Instead of the English "screenshot", we are better off using the phrase snimka zaslona in standard Croatian (Screenshot, n.d.).
As stressed in the quote, the borrowed word refers to "shooting" and capturing the screen; however, preklikati describes the action taken to produce a screenshot, as we literally click on the screen (with the mouse) to capture it.
These compound words describe devices we use to observe distant or very small objects; suncozor turns this around, as this is a device that "looks toward" the sun, not a device we use to look at the sun. After all, a solar panel that faces away from the sun cannot serve its purpose.

Šekspiriti se
Šekspiriti se is an evocative word with a sardonic meaning. The creators interpreted their new word as follows: "to put on airs as if one were a great writer (poet, playwright, etc.), especially if this is unjustified, such as bragging (naturally, without a leg to stand on) to be William

Shakespeare's equal; we formed the verb šekspiriti se by building on and alluding to the verb šepiriti se (to strut)."
The contestants, Denis and Anita Peričić, are already known to the Croatian public as the creators of the award-winning words in 2016, for istovrijednik, "equivalent" (Ham, 2017).

Zabranjenica
Zabranjenica is a would-be Croatian word for tabu. Its architect did not provide an explanation, so its usage is not completely clear; "taboo topic" and "taboo word" would, we assume, be tema zabranjenica or riječ zabranjenica.

The three best new Croatian words in 2020
Three words received the award -dišnik for "ventilator", kihobran for "sneeze protector", and rukozborac for "signer".

Dîšnīk
Drago Štambuk has already been acknowledged for his successful word formation efforts (Štambuk, 2009; 2019). His award-winning innovations in the Šreter contest are proširnica (stent), oznak (brand) and now dišnik. In addition to these three words, Drago Štambuk is also credited with many other Croatian terms in the field of medicine; I shall only cite kopnica (AIDS) and ritmodajnik (pacemaker). One of Štambuk's greatest achievements is his hard-fought success in getting the Croatian dialects declared as a Croatian cultural asset in 2019 (Editorial Board, 2020).
Dišnik is a well-formed substitute for respirator. It is a noun formed by suffixation from an adjectival stem -the adjective dišni, "respiratory" and suffix -ik. The creators did not mark the accent, but since the suffix -ik is always long (-īk) and the adjective from which the noun is derived has a long rising accent (dîšni), dišnik should be accented as dîšnīk.  (Bašić, 2016, p. 89), with a short falling accent: Dȉšnīk. Dišnik is also recorded in the Dictionary of Croatian Settlements, but without an accent (Grčević, 2008).
A Google search (accessed February 28, 2021) returned 10,400 hits for Dišnik, but none for dišnik; the toponym and general noun are not semantically related, so dîšnīk cannot be taken as an existing word.

Kȉhobrān
Kihobran was coined by Marin Perić. His neologism is a borrowed translation from "sneeze protector" in English. In the last year, the synonymous phrase zaštitni vizir za lice (za usta i nos) (face shield) has become a common name for the device that protects from droplet transmission.
Kihobran is a compound word evidently formed as an analogy with kišobran (umbrella): kišobran shields from rain (raindrops), kihobran provides a shield against sneezing (droplets produced by sneezing). Various compounds formed in this way derive their meaning in a similar fashion -an object that defends against the first noun in the compounds: blatobran (mudguard), burobran (wind fence), gromobran (lightning rod), ledobran (ice shield), windshield (wind fence), padobran (parachute), suncobran (parasol), and vodobran (skirting board). Beyond this, such compound words may also refer to a person or place:
The compound words kišobran is thought to be a neologism from the first half of the 19 th century. Its first confirmed usage was in Mažuranić and Užarević's Němačko-ilirski slovar (Deutsch-illirisches Wörterbuch) in 1842. Compound words with -bran as the second element first appear in Šulek (1860), as his neologisms. Vince (1990, p. 548) writes:
The creator of kihobran did not suggest the accent, but the noun fits neatly into the existing system -a short falling accent on the first syllable and a long last syllable: kȉhobrān (the same as kȉšobrān).

Rukozbórac
Ms Ana Mihovilić won the third place for rukozborac (signer, sign language user). She suggested two words, a noun and a verb: rukozboriti (to sign), rukozborac, alongside a definition: to speak/use sign language for the deaf; a person who speaks sign language for the deaf.
Croatian already has words for these concepts -znakovati (to sign) and znakovatelj (a signer). This makes rukozborac and rukozboriti completely new words rather than substitutes for existing words. It should be noted that, although an entry in Jezik's contest, rukozborac is by no means meant to be a rival word to znakovatelj. We have no intention of trying to impose it on speakers -especially in the jargon, as znakovatelj has been gaining ground there recently. Rukozborac is an expressive but stylistically marked word and may become part of the general language; however, znakovatelj is a technical term. Technical terms in the field of Croatian sign language are just being formed and a lot of effort is made to make the terminology more systematic and widely used.
Regarding sign language, it must be noted that research in this field is still lacking. However, there has been an attempt to provide a systematic description of the grammar of Croatian sign language since 2003 (Pribanić & Milković, 2008).

The 2015 Croatian Sign Language and Other Communication Systems of Deaf and Deafblind
People in the Republic of Croatia Act, Article 5, states: "(1) Croatian sign language is the original language of the deaf and deafblind community in the Republic of Croatia and an autonomous language system with its own grammatical rules and is fully independent of the language of hearing people.
(2) Signs or words of a sign language are formed by simultaneously broadcasting linguistic information using several sources, such as hand, arm, torso, head and face movement, and linguistic signals thus produced are tailored to a mode of visuospatial communication" (Zakon o hrvatskom znakovnom jeziku, 2015).
The abundance of unnecessary borrowed words emitiranje, lingvistika, informacija, producirano, signal, vizuospacijalni, modalitet, komunikacija (broadcasting, linguistics, information, produced, signal, visuospatial, mode, communication) in the legal definition under item (2) aside, the Act, alarmingly, does not provide terms for "signing" or "a person using the sign language". In technical usage, znakovanje and znakovatelj fill this gap. Znakovanje is used in scientific and research papers; however, it is often italicized, indicating that the term has not been fully accepted (Kavčić, 2012;. Nevertheless, znakovanje is a necessary, well-formed Croatian word; consequently, znakovatelj is an appropriate word for a person who signs (znakovati). In the sign language community, znakovatelj is on an equal footing with govornik (speaker) in the hearing community -izvorni znakovatelj (native signer) is gaining ground by analogy with the common collocation izvorni govornik (native speaker). Other words and phrases in use are majčinsko znakovanje (mother's signing), manualno brbljanje (manual babbling) (Kuvačić, 2017), prevoditelj znakovnoga jezika (sign language translator), tumač znakovnoga jezika (sign language interpreter), govornik/znakovatelj (sign language speaker/signer), manualna komunikacija (manual communication), izvorni znakovni jezik (native sign language), and čujući (the hearing) (Bradarić-Jončić, 2000). The Croatian Sign Language Act makes frequent use of ručna abeceda (hand alphabet) and dvoručna abeceda (two-handed alphabet) and these phrases provide grounds for the word rukozborac.
It should be noted that none of these words and collocations have been included in any of the Croatian dictionaries. For example, no dictionary has an entry for znakovati or znakost-open.unist.hr vatelj. However, znakovati and znakovatelj have some currency and are not recent inventions, as they have been gaining ground as technical terms.
Trbuhozborac appears in every contemporary thesaurus with the same basic meaning -"a person who speaks without moving their lips, so the sound appears to come from their stomach." For now, rukozborac may be defined as: "a person who speaks the sign language of the deaf, a signer." The Academy's dictionary lists several meanings of the verb zboriti, "to speak", but also notes that "in figures of speech, body parts can also speak" (Akademijin rječnik, 1884-1886, p. 673). Modern dictionaries provide a more modest definition of zboriti, but ascribe to it an expressive meaning.
When it comes to the accent, we may adopt the accent pattern of formatively related nouns, especially trbuhozborac. Two modern dictionaries (Šonje, 2000, p. 1269Hrvatski jezični portal, n.d.;Babić, 2002, p. 85) mark a long rising accent on the fourth syllable in trbuhozborac, in front of the suffix -ac: trbuhozbórac. Alongside trbuhozbórac, Jojić (2015) also gives trbuhòzbōrac, with a short rising accent on the interfix and a long syllable preceding the suffix. Stjepan Babić has this to say about the fluctuating accent: "The accent of such compound words varies between the short ascending on the interfix and the long ascending on the syllable in front of the suffix, but the latter is preferred. It is seldom short-falling on the syllable preceding the suffix" (Babić, 2002, p. 84).
Preference should be given to the more common accent in trbuhozbórac, and, accordingly, rukozbórac as well.
Also, since there are female sign language translators and in keeping with the spirit of gender equality, the word znakovateljica should also be included in dictionaries, alongside znakovatelj i znakovati. In keeping with the word formation system, the feminine form rukozborac would then be rukozborica (Babić, 1981). Mile Mamić, a Committee member, proposed the derivatives: rukozborac, rukozborica, rukozborstvo, and rukozborenje.

Discussion
Neologism contests are not a novel phenomenon specific for Croatia but are held all over the world. Words-of-the-year may be words that are already in use or completely new inventions; in any case, provoking interest in language always has one goal -to raise language culture to a new level and raise awareness about different linguistic options. They enrich the language, but also foster the language skills of individuals and entire language communities alike. There is a growing awareness that every new concept needs a name in our own language, and that this is good, desirable, and worthy of public praise and award.

Neologisms in Germany and the US
As already mentioned, Germans and Americans do not hold contests nor announce calls for entries but rather select words that have gained frequent use in the public discourse that year. In other words, they elect existing words rather than hold a contest and select new words, as is the case in Croatia.

Neologisms in German
In 2018, the German word of the year was Heißzeit (hot age), denoting an age of climate change and global warming (the antonym is Eiszeit [ice age]). Brexit-Chaos, which also made the cut, is self-explanatory. For their English word of the year, Germans chose words that largely reflect American and European striving toward (linguistic) gender equality and the application of gender theory -Gendersternchen, Gender-Sternchen, Genderstern and Gender Star. This denotes an asterisk (*) that serves to include male, female, and non-binary identities into gendered language. It is placed between the noun stem and the feminine suffix (Kolleg*innen) or between the male and feminine suffixes (Verkäufer*in).
To ensure that the utterance is grammatically and syntactically accurate (correct), both pronouns and articles are gendered, for example, jede*r Leser*in. Croatian does not make such use of the asterisk -we do not write svak*i čitatelj*ica (every reader), but one may st-open.unist.hr encounter the phrase spelled as: svaki/a čitatelj/ica. Although this typographic style also seems to draw inspiration from the quest for gender equality in language (and is equally disruptive to communication), its first use in Croatian hails back a century, albeit normative rules discouraged its use (Guberina & Krstić, 1940, p. 72).
In 2019, the German word of the year was Respektrente. The word refers to an increase of the minimum pension to show respect to the poorest pensioners, or a "respect pension".
The second German word of the year was Rollerchaos, a word for a traffic jam caused by electric scooters in many German states (Respektrente ist Wort des Jahres, 2019).

New American words
In 2018, the American word of the year was "tender-age camp/shelter/facility", a euphemism for separating children of asylum seekers from their parents and detaining them in shelters. The political word of the year was "the wall", with "nationalist" coming in second.
Of course, "the wall" was the wall along the Mexican border and "nationalist" referred to

Comparing Croatian, German, and American new words
Rather than choosing words that provide new lexical value to their language, Germans and Americans primarily focus on social concepts and societal affairs that marked the year -words are chosen only to name them. Without any knowledge of German and American reality, their words of the year are largely indecipherable. Whether these words can survive and remain intelligible in the changing social climate remains to be seen. On the other hand, Croatia also had to deal with its own rollerchaos this year. Electric scooters are taking over cities. However, in Croatia, the focus is on the word itself, and we still do not have a name for "a traffic jam caused by scooters." The Croatian contest is a quest for new words that would provide lexical value, regardless of the social or general concepts described by these words. In truth, we have had two successful entries for social constructs (which were neologisms) so far -udomitelj (refugee host; foster parent, a person who welcomes other people into their home and provides them with shelter) and bocar (canner, a person who collects discarded plastic bottles to sell them).
Udomitelj appeared during the Homeland War (Perković Paloš, 2020), as refugees from areas under fire and occupied regions used to be relocated (given shelter) to parts of Croatia that were unaffected by war. Udomitelj was already a commonly used word and was not a contest entry. It was first used in the Vjesnik daily, on 28 February 1992, on page 8. Today, udomitelj is a legal term for a person who is the guardian of children deprived of parental care. In general use, the word may also be applied to someone who has adopted an animal, such as a cat or dog, from a shelter.
Bocar, a reflection of poverty in Croatia, is a word that describes a person who searches through waste looking for plastic bottles to sell. In short, before 2020, only one such socially and/or politically motivated word drew any notice. However, in 2020, our word creators also became preoccupied with societal issues -naturally, the culprit was the COVID-19 pandemic that brought the whole world to its knees in 2020.
To put this into context, the best new Croatian word contest in 2020 received 244 entries from 166 creators. 19 words were shortlisted; out of the 19, eight words were attempts at replacing pandemic-related borrowed words. By comparison, that same year, the American Linguistic Society chose "Covid" as the US word of the year; "Before Times" came in third, denoting the time before covid; "pandemic" was in the fifth spot and "social distancing" in the sixth. In Germany, the word of the year was Corona-Pandemic, and Lockdown came in second.

Conclusion
Every day, we witness the wealth and diversity of the Croatian vocabulary. New words are constantly cropping up and coming into use; however, if we fail to draw attention to them, they stay in the shadows. This creates an illusion of a lexical standstill.
Every day, one may encounter a new word even outside the Jezik contest -susramlje, "second-hand embarrassment," has become a common fixture in the political jargon and is frequently heard in the Parliament; obaloutvrda (levee -this specifically refers to the Drava River embankment near Osijek), igračkar (toymaker), kartodrapac (ticket collector, literally: ticket tearer), izbornica (an ironic word for a monetary bonus received before an election, similar to a Christmas or Easter bonus).
When they are appropriately formed, neologisms do not "stick out"; they follow well-established, fertile word formation models (Babić, 2008a). This is true for many of our contest entries, for example : uspornik, zatipak, proširnica, borkinja, alkomjer, osjećajnik, ispraznica, sebić, bilješkinja, istovrijednik, dišnik, kihobran, and rukozborac. New words are not mandatory and their usage is not imposed; they only indicate the will of native speakers to replace borrowed words with native Croatian lexemes and adopt an active attitude toward their language. These neologisms may catch on, but data on their use is difficult to gather -this requires human and financial resources that the journal simply cannot spare.
Nevertheless, we can confidently claim several words that have gained a more wide- Borkinja (female fighter) is used daily in martial arts-related sports reports in Croatia.
Nowadays, nobody says žena borac (literally "female fighter"), as was the case before the introduction of borkinja.
Zatipak (typo, and its derivatives) is the only word with accurate quantitative usage data.
More specifically, Šandor Dembitz, the word's creator, is also the creator of Hašek (a Croatian spell checker application, see Dembitz, 2019), so he has access to data on the frequency of word use. According to his data on zatipak and related words:  (Babić, 1995, p. 80).
Linguistic purism, defined above by Babić, is not an exclusively Croatian phenomenon. In the 19 th century, the movement spread across Europe, as well as Croatia (Kovačec, 2006); it has remained prominent in both Europe and Croatia.
Purism is most pronounced and most easily recognizable at the lexical level -there is an urge to protect the native lexicon from unnecessary foreign words and replacing these with native neologisms. This is especially important for Croats and the Croatian language.
In Croatia, the attitude toward the native language and words is very emotionally charged.
The emotional relationship between Croats and their language should not be linked with any political ideology, especially right-wing, as described in Gvozdanović and Petrak (2018).
By preserving their vocabulary, Croats have resisted unitarism and Serbization -not by promoting a political ideology, but by protecting the autonomy of the Croatian language.
From 1918 and the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, the first joint state with Serbs, to the disintegration of the last joint state of Yugoslavia in 1991, the Croatian language suffered Greater Serbian pressures (Bašić, 2021). These pressures sought to annihilate Croatian linguistic, and especially lexical, creativity. More specifically, the lexicon clearly emphasizes the unique features of the Croatian language and its differences from the unified "Serbo-Croatian" -a fever dream of unitarist strivings.
Preserving the Croatian language has preserved Croatian autonomy (Ham, 2019). Today, when the Croatian language has survived, this is a matter of the Croatian language culture -it means respecting the tradition and laying the foundation for the future. The aim of the Jezik contest is to contribute to this effort.