PUBLISHED BY IDEAPRESS PUBLISHING
A Non-Obvious Glossary of Terms That Don’t Exist (But Soon Will)
Coming This November!From Rohit Bhargava and futurist Henry Coutinho-Mason: a book for word lovers, trend spotters, and anyone who has ever wished for a word that didn’t quite exist. This is a book nearly two decades in the making, inspired by trend predictions from two of the most popular futurists in the world. Across ten themes it coins 100 terms for the ideas, behaviors and frustrations we can already feel but have no name for yet.
WATCH AND READ
FIFTEEN EXAMPLE WORDS
Relationships, identity, technology, travel, leisure, parenting, work, money, health, and (our favorite chapter) future insults.
TECHNOLOGY
The inability to remember whether you discovered something yourself or were served it by an algorithm.
TECHNOLOGY
An algorithm engineered to convert your outrage into engagement, learning exactly which furies keep you scrolling.
RELATIONSHIPS
The ache for a memory that was AI-generated and never actually lived through.
TRAVEL
An outlying location transformed into prime real estate by the arrival of aerial transportation options and convenient drone delivery.
WORK & CAREERS
Declining or choosing not to seek out a promotion or high-level role in order to avoid the added pressure, risk, and loneliness that often comes with management positions.
TECHNOLOGY
The vindicated delight of watching supposedly godlike technology fail in public.
WORK & CAREERS
The act of (over)confidently narrating a future you haven't tested or researched, often with slides.
PARENTING
Caught between tracking your child responsibly and becoming obsessed with the flood of real-time parenting data.
LEISURE & PLAY
A retail or service experience that is entirely automated, yet still sold as luxurious, personalized, and premium.
MONEY
The disorientation of earning from multiple sources and being paid on no set schedule.
LEISURE & PLAY
A simpler, faster spin-off of a demanding sport, designed to be easier to play or watch.
TECHNOLOGY
The cognitive cost of having to constantly verify the authenticity of everything you see and hear.
PARENTING
The fading of curiosity when questions can be answered instantly, removing the need to wonder.
HEALTH
The conviction that something is wrong, sustained by personal health data that confirms your anxiety.
MONEY
The ongoing accumulation of accidental and intentional monthly subscriptions.
INSIDE THE BOOK
A few spreads from the book: every word gets its definition, a usage example, and the coinage notes behind it.
WHY THIS BOOK
“When the world changes faster than our language, we make new words.”
Language has never sat still. Words such as serendipity and cyberspace began as inventions: writers reaching for something no existing word could hold.
Future Words names the emerging tensions already reshaping relationships, identity, work, money, health, technology, leisure, parenting and travel. Smart enough to provoke. Playful enough to give to the logophile in your life.
THE AUTHORS
Together, they previously wrote the global bestseller The Future Normal, correctly anticipating 30 shifts shaping how we work, live, and play.
WASHINGTON DC
Rohit Bhargava is on a mission to inspire more non-obvious thinking in the world. He is the 3-time WSJ bestselling author of eleven books on marketing, innovation, trends and the future including his #1 bestseller Non-Obvious Megatrends. Rohit has been invited as a "non-boring" keynote speaker to events in 32 countries. He is also an adjunct professor of storytelling at Georgetown University and a frequent contributor to multiple publications including INC, GQ Brasil and Entrepreneur magazines.
LONDON
Author of two previous award-winning books on future trends - The Future Normal: How We Will Live, Work & Thrive In The Next Decade, which launched as a featured keynote at SXSW; and Trend-Driven Innovation. Henry is also the creator of the multiplayer interactive keynote, VisuAIse Futures. As a global keynote speaker, Henry has given more than 150 inspiring and actionable keynotes and workshops in 30+ countries; he is a guest lecturer at HEC business school in Paris.
As co-founder of 3Space, Henry is also an award-winning social entrepreneur. 3Space's innovative solution to urban regeneration was commended in Fast Company's World Changing Ideas.
Fun fact: Henry was featured in GQ's Most Connected Men in Britain list.
ABOUT OUR EDITOR: EDITOR, AUTHOR, ETYMOLOGIST
Jess Zafarris is the author of several books on word origins, including Once Upon a Word (Rockridge Press, 2020), Words from Hell (Chambers, 2023), Useless Etymology (Chambers, 2025), and Into the Words (Chambers, 2026). She has also authored and co-authored several works on general fun facts and tabletop gaming, and she served as a guest editor and contributor for the word game The League of the Lexicon.
She is a longtime video content creator who has built a devoted social media following on TikTok and Instagram, and she co-hosts the popular YouTube podcast Words Unravelled with Rob Watts, a.k.a. RobWords. Her blog, UselessEtymology.com, has been educating curious word lovers for more than a decade.
THE DETAILS
GET AN ADVANCE LOOK AT THE BOOK
Get a preview of the book, more backstories behind the coinages, some lost words from our research, and more occasional linguistic mischief.
BRING THE FUTURE TO YOUR STAGE
Rohit speaks on the trends and the language shaping the next decade, and he tailors every talk to the audience in the room.
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Rohit Bhargava is on a mission to inspire more non-obvious thinking in the world.
© 2026 Rohit Bhargava. Washington DC.