Linguist Uwe Pörksen has studied the movement of "technical terms into the pool of ordinary language"
to fall into this category, they cannot be "mere slogans" or conceptual "key words" (a la Raymond Williams), nor can they simply be "the names of new devices, such as transistor or chip"
a few examples: information, process, sexuality, production
Duden notes that these words go through a process where they "lose practically all power to denote and acquire an unlimited power to connote" (74)... put another way, "any number of amoeba words picked at random and lined up in a string result in a sequence that [can create the illusion of] legitimacy" (75)
"A short version of Pörksen's argument can be found in his article 'Scientific and Mathematical Colonization of Colloquial Language,' Rivista di Biologia 81, 3 (1988) 381-400"
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additional research: the concept of "amoeba words" comes from Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society (1971), in which "Ivan Illich briefly alluded to a class of words 'so flexible that they cease to be useful.' 'Like an amoeba,' he said, 'they fit into almost any interstice of the language.'"
Illich and Pörksen are colleagues at the Wissenschaftkolleg, or Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin circa 1981
"Pörksen renamed them plastic words and undertook a detailed study of the phenomenon, Seven years later in 1988, he published Plastikwörter: Die Sprache einer Internationalen Diktatur (The Language of an International Dictatorship.)"
"They form a distinct class, numbering not many more than thirty or forty. The list includes obviously puffed up words like communication, sexuality, and information, but also less obtrusive terms like problem, factor, and role."
all quotes here from David Cayley, Pörksen's translator
https://www.davidcayley.com/podcasts/2017/2/18/plastic-words