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THE BOOK NOOK
REFERENCE CENTER Characteristics & Elements of Words

Welcome to the Library! The articles will help you understand the elements of language and words.

​COINING A WORD
​To Form a Neologism

The etymologist finds the deadest words to have been once a brilliant picture. ​Language is fossil poetry.
​Ralph Waldo Emerson

RELATED ARTICLES
Etymology - Tracing the Origin of a Word
Words Coined by Writers
Words Coined by Shakespeare

​COINING A NEW WORD
In linguistics, word formation is the creation of new words. It is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning. It also refers to the ways in which new words are formed on the basis of other words or morphemes. This is also known as derivational morphology.
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Neologism, in its literal sense, means a “new utterance” which is translated as the creation of new words. It is commonly known as “coining a new word.” It refers to any word in any stage of the formation process having not yet gained legitimate acceptance. In some cases it can also be a new meaning applied to an existing word or phrase.

FAST FACT:
Forming new words became colloquially known as “coining” back in the early 14th century. The word derives from the minting process that creates currency (coins).

Neologism was coined at the beginning of the 19th century when English speakers borrowed it from the French nèologisme. It derives from the Greek neos (“new") and "logos" ("word").
  • Neologisms pass through three stages: creation, trial and establishment.

The process starts by coining the new word. The word is new, unstable, and has had limited exposure.

This word then becomes known as a protologism. To be accepted it must fill a gap in the language. Once a neologism goes viral it is considered for acceptance in dictionaries. Once accepted, it is longer considered a neologism. This is called stabilization.

  • Neologisms are distinct from a person's dialect, one's unique patterns of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.

Words coined for special occasions without any concern for their permanence are called nonce words. They are created for a specific purpose.

One of the best known coiners of nonce words is Lewis Carroll. You may recognize them in his nonsense poem "Jabberwocky.” This poem appears in the book Through the Looking Glass and is filled with words of Carroll's invention.

HOW A NEW WORD IS CREATED
There are several ways words are created.

Derivation creates a new word by adding a prefix or suffix to an existing one.

Back formation is the creation of a new root word by the removal of a phantom affix. The noun sleaze, for example, was back-formed from “sleazy” in 1967.

Compounding is the juxtaposition of two existing words. Compound words begin as two entities, connected by a hyphen, and eventually form a single unit. Generally nouns are formed this way (fiddlestick, bailout), but words from other classes can be smooshed together too: into (preposition), nobody (pronoun), daydream (verb), awe-inspiring, or environmentally friendly (adjectives).

Repurposing is taking a word from one context and applying it to another. Thus a crane, or lifting machine, derived its name from the long-necked bird.

Conversion is taking a word from one word class and transplanting it to another. The word “giant” was a noun describing a creature of enormous size. In the early 15th century, people began using it as an adjective.

Eponyms are words named after a person or place. You may recognise Alzheimer’s, atlas, and cheddar, as eponyms – but did you know that hooligan, marmalade, and panic are too?

Abbreviations are an increasingly popular method. There are three main subtypes: clippings, acronyms and initialisms. Some words that you might not have known started out longer are taxi/cab (from taximeter cabriolet), mob (mobile vulgus), and goodbye (God be with you),

Loanwords borrow words from other languages.English itself is a voracious word thief; and is suggested to have borrowed from 350 languages. Most words come from French, Latin and Greek.
  • Calques are translations of loan words.

Onomatopoeia is the creation of a word by imitation of the sound it is supposed to make. Like, ow, barf, or cuckoo.

Reduplication is the repetition, or near-repetition, of a word or sound. Consider flip-flop, goody-goody, and helter-skelter as examples.

Nonce words are words pulled out of thin air, bearing little relation to any existing form. Confirmed examples include quark, bling and fleek.

Errors are misspellings, mishearings, mispronunciations and mistranscriptions that rarely produce new words in their own right, but often lead to new forms in conjunction with other mechanisms. Scramble, for example, seems to have originated as a variant of scrabble; but over time, the two forms have taken on different meanings, so one word has now become two.

Portmanteaus are compounds with a twist. Take one word, remove an arbitrary portion of it, then put in its place either a whole word, or a similarly clipped one. Examples include sitcoms, paratroops, internet, gazunder and sexting.
  • Some linguists call this process blending and reserve the term portmanteau for a particular subtype of blend.

WORDS COINED BY AUTHORS IN LITERATURE


CHAUCER
Chaucer is considered one of the formidable, formative masters of English language and literature. He's the man behind expressions like "Love is blind," "Love conquers all," "Time and tide wait for no man," and "shaking like a leaf.” He was not afraid to play around with language and create new words. There are around 2,000 words credited to the works of Chaucer.

TOLKIEN
“Bewuthered' is a word coined by Tolkien. According to the Tolkien dictionary, it may connect to the British word "wuther" which means "to blow with a dull roaring sound" which can describe the sound of Bilbo rushing about his house. The alliteration of the phrase "bewildered and bewuthered" suggests the adjectives are synonymous.

His other contributions include 'flammifer' which has Latin roots suggesting 'flame-bearer' or 'light-bearer' from the Latin definition meaning “fiery” and 'eucatastrophe' meaning a sudden and favorable resolution of events in a story; a happy ending.

DICKENS
Dickens was one of the first to use “abuzz” which is defined as "characterized by excessive gossip or activity."

He also created “flummox” meaning
"to confuse; perplex." The origin is probably an English dialectal word which Dickens brought back into popularity.
  • According to the OED the formation of the word "seems to be onomatopoeic, expressive of the notion of throwing down roughly and untidily; compare to flump, hummock, dialect slommock sloven."

Another creation by Dickens is “on the rampage” which comes from the earlier verb form of rampage meaning “to act or move in a ramping manner; spring or rush violently; rage or storm about."
  • The word rampage may come from ramp, "to rise for a leap or in leaping, as a wild beast; rear or spring up; prepare for or make a spring; jump violently."

COLERIDGE
Samuel Coleridge, a poet, contributed the well known words "soul-mate," "actualize," "narcissist," "psychosomatic," "intensify" and "selfless." All words befitting a poet.

RELATED POSTS
Shakespeare’s words here and the words of more writers here.
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