{"title":"You Too Can Coin a Word","authors":"R. Keyes","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190466763.003.0020","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"What literate person hasn’t dreamed of creating a word that others adopt, thereby staking their claim to verbal posterity? This is far easier to dream about than do. Creating a neologism is hard. Getting others to adopt it is even harder. A gap in our vocabulary is the best precondition for a successful coinage. We need new words to help us discuss changing circumstances: technology, climate change, pandemics. Even when addressing verbal voids, neologisms must strike a chord, capture a widespread sensibility with a word or phrase, preferably one that’s vivid. Terseness helps, as does alliteration, and use of forceful letters such as b (bubble, bunk), k (ok, knockout), and z (sizzle, Zoom). Anyone who successfully creates new a word and gets it adopted can join Jefferson, Dickens, and Seuss in the annals of successful neology.","PeriodicalId":209135,"journal":{"name":"The Hidden History of Coined Words","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"The Hidden History of Coined Words","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190466763.003.0020","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
What literate person hasn’t dreamed of creating a word that others adopt, thereby staking their claim to verbal posterity? This is far easier to dream about than do. Creating a neologism is hard. Getting others to adopt it is even harder. A gap in our vocabulary is the best precondition for a successful coinage. We need new words to help us discuss changing circumstances: technology, climate change, pandemics. Even when addressing verbal voids, neologisms must strike a chord, capture a widespread sensibility with a word or phrase, preferably one that’s vivid. Terseness helps, as does alliteration, and use of forceful letters such as b (bubble, bunk), k (ok, knockout), and z (sizzle, Zoom). Anyone who successfully creates new a word and gets it adopted can join Jefferson, Dickens, and Seuss in the annals of successful neology.