Terafy

“To instill fear by mentioning the U.S. deficit.”

Christopher Buckley introduced his neologism in The Daily Beast:

How much is a trillion dollars, anyway? … Well, in the most basic terms, it’s a 1 followed by 12 zeros. Or as Austin Powers might say: one millionmillion. Let’s see … if one million contestants on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” won the big prize … well, the producers would probably be sacked. The prefix for trillion, as we know from super-computer lingo, is “tera.” I propose a neologism for our times: terafy. (V. tr.: To instill fear by mentioning the U.S. deficit.)