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{{trope}}
{{quote|''Kickassery is a real word! That was not just rhyme for rhyme's sake. You can look that up in the Dikinjiary.
|[[Ask a Ninja]]}}
A made-up word. Like all the other words, but ''new''. We like 'em. We ''make'' them.
Differs from the [[Perfectly Cromulent Word]] in that the [[Neologism]] is born or constructed from existing words either via [[Portmanteau]], using actual (if misused) grammatical rules, or by an idiosyncratic but systematic and understandable transformation - for example, phoneme substitution or shifting your fingers one key to the left on your keyboard. Some neologisms are deliberate; others are accidental, errors which caught on.
Not to be confused with [[Personal Dictionary]], which is pretending existing words mean something else.
{{examples}}
== [[Comic Books]] ==▼
▲== Comic Books ==
* On ''alt.comics.2000ad'', newcomer writer Simon Spurrier referred to a troll as an "arsegike", misspelling "arsehole" by typing the letters to the left of some of the ones he required. The term has now joined the standard ''2000AD'' lexicon, alongside phrases such as "zarjaz", "grexnix" and "Squaxx dekk Thargo".
** Webcomic artist David Willis did the same thing, accidentally inventing the exclamation "wiigii!" by typing the word "woohoo!" with the right hand shifted one spot to the left. It became the [[Catch Phrase|favorite expression]] of the title character in ''[[
* ''[[Tom Poes]]'': This Dutch comic strip is well known for creating many neologisms.
* Lobo frequently calls people "bastitches", a [[Portmanteau]] of "bastard" and "bitch".
== Fan Fiction ==▼
* Arguably, "Sexily" "Gothically"/"Goffically" and quite a few of the other words (usually verbs or adjectives) in the infamous [[My Immortal]].▼
* [[Forbiden Fruit: The Tempation Of Edward Cullen|Forbiden Fruit the Tempation of Edward Cullen]] gives us "plimpled". It's apparently a way of speaking, that can inexplicably be done "mutely".▼
* [[Legolas By Laura|legolas by laura]]: "and then Legolas was happy for somerising."▼
▲* Arguably, "Sexily" "Gothically"/"Goffically" and quite a few of the other words (usually verbs or adjectives) in the infamous ''[[My Immortal]]''.
▲* ''[[Forbiden Fruit: The Tempation Of
▲* ''[[Legolas By Laura|legolas by laura]]'': "and then Legolas was happy for somerising."
== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[Mary Poppins]]'': Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
* ''[[The Producers]]'': "Creative accounting."
**
* Harold Ramis notes on the ''[[Ghostbusters]]'' commentary track, "I take full credit for turning 'slime' into a verb."
== [[Literature]] ==▼
* ''[[A Clockwork Orange (novel)|A Clockwork Orange]]'': "Horrorshow," a corruption of
▲== Literature ==
* ''[[Brave New World (novel)|Brave New World]]'': though it didn't create the word
▲* ''[[A Clockwork Orange (novel)|A Clockwork Orange]]'': "Horrorshow," a corruption of 'khorosho', the Russian word for 'good'. This book had an entire [[Future Slang]], much of it based on Russian, some of which has trickled into common use. "Ultraviolence" and "droog" are some of the more popular ones.
* ''[[Finnegans Wake]]'': source of the nonce word
▲* ''[[Brave New World (novel)|Brave New World]]'': though it didn't create the word 'Soma' (Huxley borrowed the term for the unknown drug that ancient Hindus used to "bestride the Universe"), it is responsible for its modern popularity and connotations.
** At the time, some scientists (among them [[Richard Feynman]] and Murray Gell-Mann of Caltech), were working on a theory that explained the way that protons, neutrons, and other hadrons as being composed of smaller particles. Feynman referred to them as "partons
▲* ''[[Finnegans Wake]]'': source of the nonce word 'quark', later used by scientists to refer to a subatomic particle. It comes from a mispronunciation of the word "quart," and is not related to the German word ''Quark'', meaning a type of cheese.
▲** At the time, some scientists (among them [[Richard Feynman]] and Murray Gell-Mann of Caltech), were working on a theory that explained the way that protons, neutrons, and other hadrons as being composed of smaller particles. Feynman referred to them as "partons," since they were "parts" of the proton (and "on" being the Greek suffix meaning "thing" that can be seen in "electron," "proton," neutron," etc); but Gell-Mann objected that this was an unholy combination of Latin and Greek roots, and sought to come up with a better name. He eventually started calling them "quarks" after a line in Finnegan's Wake, and it caught on. Gell-Mann was being a little weird, but you know what they say, physicists have [[wikipedia:Strange quark|strange]] [[Incredibly Lame Pun|quarks]].
* [[William Gibson]] coined "[[Cyberspace]]" in a short story (incorrectly attributed to ''[[Neuromancer]]''). Gibson says that he was able to imagine it because he had absolutely no idea how computers worked; in fact, he was said to be disappointed by the real thing when he finally got around to getting a computer. "Meat puppet" was a [[Shout-Out]] to a band name. The same concept may or may not have been intended when the band was named, but Gibson definitely popularised the term.
* ''[[Peter Pan]]'': Introduced the name
* ''[[Stranger in
* ''[[Alice in Wonderland|Through the Looking Glass]]'': [[Lewis Carroll]] adopted the term
** "Slithy," a mixture of lithe and slimy.
** "Frumious," furious and fuming.
** "Mimsy," flimsy and miserable.
** "Manxome," "tulgy," and "frabjous" are also pretty good. The kicker? All of these (and "vorpal")
*** In addition to that,
** Slightly less popular but still in usage is "galumphing," meaning "move energetically but clumsily
** Another good movement verb is "whiffling
** The only one to have actually come into real usage is "chortle",
* [[William Shakespeare]] invented numerous words and phrases during his career, "doorknob" and "eyeball" being only two of them. He also popularized the name [[The Ophelia|Ophelia]], which had been invented by Jacopo Sannazaro in the 15th century. Though many words attributed to him in fact are of [http://www.volokh.com/posts/1191875215.shtml earlier origin], Shakespeare indeed had a gift for coining new vocabulary. He did not let such a pesky thing as the lack of a relevant word stop him.
* Karel Capek's play ''[[R.U.R.
* ''Isaac Asimov'' coined "robotics" and used the term "fundie" as an abbreviation for "fundamentalist" decades before it came into widespread usage.
** It's worth noting that Asimov coined it accidentally: he assumed somebody else had already used it, due to its logical construction.
**
* A 1530 translation of [[The Bible]] misinterpreted the name "Azazel" as "ez ozel," literally meaning "goat that departs." This eventually changed through [[Memetic Mutation]] to "escape goat," then to the modern "scapegoat." So, the word scapegoat literally originated from a [[Rouge Angles of Satin|Rouge Angle
* ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'': [[Big Brother Is Watching|Big Brother]], doublethink, [[Unperson]], doubleplusungood and others, mostly derived from [[Newspeak]]. "Doublespeak" is a [[Beam Me Up, Scotty]], although he described the phenomenon itself.
** There are of course plenty of other examples from the novel: these are merely the most well-known ones.
* ''[[Who Censored Roger Rabbit?
** This is also a common synonym for one's avatar or character in various online role-playing games.
* The word "ansible" was coined by [[Ursula K. Le Guin]], and has since been appropriated by a great deal of science fiction for any device which allows faster-than-light communication, including [[Subspace Ansible|right here on this site]]. (Supposedly it was a corruption of the term "answerable". Also an anagram of "lesbian", though the actual relevance of that tidbit is disputed.)
* The word "baticeer" was coined by Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket, in the ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'' books. It mean "one who trains bats"
* ''[[A Christmas Carol]]'' gave us the term "Scrooge" for a miser.
* The nonsense word "fnord" was first used in the ''[http://principiadiscordia.com/book/1.php Principia Discordia]'', where it represented no clear meaning or part of speech and was never presented in any sort of identifying context. ''[[Illuminatus]]'' popularized it, using it as a subliminal [[Brown Note]]. Today, it's used more as a shibboleth for Discordians and assorted fellow-travellers than anything else.
* [[J. R. R.
* ''[[The Meaning of Liff]]'', by [[Douglas Adams]] and John Lloyd, consists entirely of invented meanings for various place names. Entries include "Sheppey" (a distance roughly 7/8 of a mile, the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque) and [[Zeerust]].
** An idea directly swiped, without attribution (but with a belated and muted apology) from Paul Jennings's article ''Ware? Wye? Watford?'' which contains such gems as '''Letchworth:''' ''n.'' A libertine, and '''Wembley:''' ''adj.'' ('I feel a bit wembley') used of the feeling ''before'' taking to bed.
** According to ''Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by [[Neil Gaiman]], it was directly swiped from Adams's English teacher, although Adams later
* The book ''Brain Droppings'' by [[George Carlin]] has a list of "Words and phrases we should have," including "pocketry = a garment's pockets," "firmth = firmness" and "unpark = drive away."
* The narrator of [[Fyodor Dostoevsky]]'s novel ''Demons'' coins the term "Shigalyovism" (''"Shigalyovschina"'', in Russian), describing the ideology of a minor character. A member of the town's secret cadre of nihilists, who range from laughable idiots to terrifying psychopaths, Shigalyov argues that [[Powered by a Forsaken Child|it is legitimate to subject 90% of humanity to abject slavery in order that the remaining 10% may enjoy a utopian paradise]]. The term came into common usage in Russia during the Stalinist era, for obvious reasons.
* ''[[Harry Potter]]'' and "[[Muggle]]"
* Edward Lear and
* The movements of Spinfer and Mawk in ''[[Welkin Weasels]]'' are described as "smooling". The narrator points out that this isn't a real word but it describes the action perfectly.
* The Brazilian author [[The Devil to Pay In The Backlands|João Guimarães Rosa]] is well
* ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'' introduced the word
* The Roman poet [[Catullus]] coined the word
* ''[[The Peter Principle]]'' by Raymond Hull and hierarchiologist Laurence J. Peter has several, with a glossary in the back of the book.
* [[Steve Miller]] spoke of the "Pompatus of Love" in "The Joker" and the earlier, less well-known song "Enter Maurice." This word, spelled "pompitous" in the printed lyrics of "Enter Maurice
==
▲* [[Steve Miller]] spoke of the "Pompatus of Love" in "The Joker" and the earlier, less well-known song "Enter Maurice." This word, spelled "pompitous" in the printed lyrics of "Enter Maurice," was a corruption of "puppetutes" (a [[Portmanteau]] of "puppet" and "prostitutes"), which was used in the Medallions' 1954 hit "The Letter."
* ''[[The Far Side]]:'' One cartoon featured a classroom of cavemen, with the professor pointing at a picture of a Stegosaur's tail spikes: "Now this end is called the thagomizer ... after the late Thag Simmons." After it was found out that no term had indeed been coined for the spikes, "thagomizer" has since semi-seriously entered paleontologists' lexicon.
▲* ''[[Peanuts]]'' famously coined the term "security blanket."
▲* ''[[The Far Side]]:'' One cartoon featured a classroom of cavemen, with the professor pointing at a picture of a Stegosaur's tail spikes: "Now this end is called the thagomizer ... after the late Thag Simmons." After it was found out that no term had indeed been coined for the spikes, "thagomizer" has since semi-seriously entered paleontologists' lexicon. Seriously enough that it's appeared in ''Nature''.
* ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]:'' Calvin, complaining about scientists' unimaginative naming, says that The Big Bang should have been called "The Horrendous Space Kablooie." Some physicists use that term now.
** There is another strip in which Calvin notes that "verbing weirds language" -- "verbing" being the practice of using nouns and adjectives as verbs. The main example given was that of the word
*** As a rhetorical device, this is known as "anthimeria," and was heavily used by, yep, Shakespeare.
** "Verbing" itself is actually an interesting case: it is a noun, used as a gerund.<ref>a verb used as a noun</ref>
== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
* [[Stephen Colbert]]. While
▲* [[Stephen Colbert]]. While 'Truthiness' already had an archaic (different from the modern) definition, 'Wikiality' is a whole new word.
* In 1995, Conan O'Brien was looking for a word to [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|outwit the censors]]. He came up with the word "Crunk." Ice-T used the word several times during the broadcast. Nowadays, there's barely a rapper alive that doesn't have "crunk" in his vocabulary...and there's now even an [[Crunkcore|entire genre of music]] named after it...
* As discussed on an episode of ''[[QI]]'', the sketch show ''Not the Nine O'Clock News'' once used "flange" as the collective noun for
{{quote|'''Stephen Fry:''' What's the collective noun for a group of baboons?
'''Rich Hall:''' The Pentagon.
* On ''[[Not Necessarily the News]]'', Rich Hall created a segment which encouraged viewers to write in examples. The segment was called "Sniglets
** Krogt
** Lactomangulation
** Bovilexia
**
** Flopcorn
*** There ''is'' a
* In ''[[Blackadder]]'', Edmund torments Dr. Samuel Johnson by making up words such as "contrafibularities", "anaspeptic", "phrasmotic", and "interphrastically".
== [[Video Games]] ==
* The ''[[Deadly Rooms of Death|DROD]]'' series extends "once, twice, thrice" as follows: quarce, quince, sence, septence, octence, novence. All of these combine Latin numeric prefixes with the "-ce" ending of the first three. They have begun to show up in other places outside the series.▼
* ''[[Nethack]]'' uses the word "cornuthaum", which was specifically made up for the game, and refer to a wizard's trademark pointed hat.
* ''[[Septerra Core]]''. The title contains "Septerra", which is the name of the planet the game takes place on
==
▲* The [[Deadly Rooms of Death|DROD]] series extends "once, twice, thrice" as follows: quarce, quince, sence, septence, octence, novence. All of these combine Latin numeric prefixes with the "-ce" ending of the first three. They have begun to show up in other places outside the series.
▲* [[Septerra Core]]. The title contains "Septerra" which is the name of the planet the game takes place on. However, "Septerra", while a made-up word, can be taken to mean "Seven Lands", which is [[Fridge Brilliance]] because the game contains exactly that.
* Google. Its usage as a verb has become so widespread that [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|it is now in the dictionary.]]
** Named after googol, which is also a neologism, and means 1.0 * 10^100, a one followed by a hundred zeroes and was invented by a 9
** And of course, there is the googolplex. The name of the headquarters of
* Woot. Not as famous as Google, but it has found its way into a number of dictionaries. WOOT [[Backronym|purportedly stands for]] We Own the Other Team.
** Alternatively, it's a portmanteau of "Wow, loot!"
* If you need proof that [[All the Tropes Will Ruin Your Vocabulary]] (and the vocabularies of everyone around you), "[[Narm]]" (for what is technically
** As has "[[Peggy Sue]]".
* Much like the "flange of baboons" example above, RPGMP3 is attempting to popularize "shower" as the collective term for a group of bastards.
** Perhaps after this exchange in an episode of ''[[Father Ted]]''?
Line 120 ⟶ 116:
'''Father Dougal''': A shower of bastards. }}
** 'Shower' is common Irish slang.
* [[Twitter|"Tweet."]]
** Just as long as they don't use
*** See also the question "how many tweets make a twat?" which only really works in British English....
* ''[[SMBC Theater]]'' presents: the Shitbag. Combination of shithead and douchebag.
** Warning: It will eat your fucking Olive Garden leftovers and leave its laundry in your hamper like you're its goddamn maid.
** Suggested treatment is a direct injection of cold motherfucking steel directly to the shitbag's perpetually smug face.
* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'', naturally, has a lot. Which doesn't mean they're happy when some low-brow reality TV host [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2006-04-14 makes up words].
{{quote|'''Serge''': Now let '''us''' amaze '''you'''... with fashion tools only available to the flakymost layer of society's '''upper crust'''.
'''Kevyn''': Did he just say "flakymost?"
'''Ennesby''': Death is too good for this one. }}
== [[Western Animation]] ==▼
▲== Western Animation ==
* The term "''[[The Grinch|grinch]]''" has entered public lexicon thanks to ''[[How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (animation)|How the Grinch Stole Christmas]]''. The term means someone who hates a holiday (particularly Christmas), and tries to make it miserable for everybody else.
* ''[[The Simpsons]]'' has produced a number of neologisms which have come into varying degrees of common use. In particular, [[Retirony]] and [[Perfectly Cromulent Word]] are named for terms originating on the show, as well as the popular remark "Meh."
Line 134 ⟶ 133:
** Don't forget "[[Jerkass]]!"
*** Note that the Wiktionary link for "embiggens" dates the coinage at 1884: the Simpsons merely popularized it.
** To say nothing of "D'oh!", which is in the Oxford English Dictionary. Misspelled, no less! The correct spelling is "(ANNOYED GRUNT)". The Simpson's use of "D'oh" wasn't new. It was a copy of James Finlayson's usage of the term. For those who don't recognise the name, Finlayson was a friend of Stan Laurel and frequent actor in [[Laurel and Hardy]]
* [[Titan Maximum]]'s "replacement", Titan Megamum.
{{quote|'''Troy Hammerschmidt:''' Titan Maximum, say hello to Titan Megamum. The most advanced robot ever built and the perfect match for the most handsome pilot ever born.
Line 140 ⟶ 139:
'''Troy Hammerschmidt:''' Neither is ''vaginacillin'', but that didn't stop you from using it as the title for your third album... or your fragrance line. }}
== [[Real Life]] ==
▲== Real Life ==
* People with various mental/neurological conditions and brain injuries are prone to forming neologisms of their own, which are often consistent enough that families and friends learn and use them. Examples of conditions where this could happen include autism, the aphasias, schizophrenia, post-stroke or brain-injury, and the various speech/language disorders. Typical toddlers, while learning to speak, may also form neologisms.
* Santorum. Once
** Dan Savage also midwifed the verb form of Saddleback. '''saddleback''', ''v.'' To have anal sex in order to [[Technical Virgin|preserve one's virginity]]. [[Older Than Dirt|Historically practiced by pretty much everyone]].
*** Named after Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in Orange County.
** After George Rekers, an anti-gay conservative, claimed that he hired a male prostitute to help him lift and carry his luggage, Savage popularized replacing the phrase "whatever floats your boat" with "whatever lifts your luggage."
** I think it was Dan Savage's column that came up with "pegging" to refer to a woman doing a man up the bum with a strap-
** Later, after former Sen. Santorum returned to the public eye, Savage re-defined "Rick" as "to remove with with one's tongue" in order to turn "Rick Santorum" into the most vile verb-noun combo imaginable.
** Savage did back off from a threat to re-define "Toews" after a bigoted Canadian politician when [[Logic Bomb
* "Quiz". [[Multiple Choice Past|Opinions differ,]] but a commonly held belief is that the word came up because of a bet that someone could create a word and have it be absorbed into the public lexicon within a week. It was chalked on the walls around Dublin sometime in the 1800s, and [[Memetic Mutation|was soon talked about enough -- by people assuming that the act was some kind of test -- that it made its way into the lexicon.]]
* In 2004, George W. Bush referred to "the Internets" in a presidential debate. In 2006, Alaska senator Ted Stevens defined the internet as "a series of tubes." Today, "the tubes of the internets"
** "Interwebs" and various dialect-styled variants (such as "intarweb") have also become popular.
* The word ''blurb'' originated in 1907. American humorist Gelett Burgess's short 1906 book ''Are you a bromide?'' was presented in a limited edition to an annual trade association dinner. The custom at such events was to have a dust jacket promoting the work and with, as Burgess' publisher B. W. Huebsch described it:
{{quote|"the picture of a damsel — languishing, heroic, or coquettish — anyhow, a damsel on the jacket of every novel"}}
** In this case the jacket proclaimed "YES, this is a 'BLURB'!" and the picture was of a (fictitious) young woman "Miss Belinda Blurb" shown calling out, described as "in the act of blurbing." The name and term stuck for any publisher's contents on a book's back cover, even after the picture was dropped and only the complimentary text remained.
* Gerrymander (v) - to improve prospects for re-election by tampering with electoral boundaries or populations. Named after one such redrawing by Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry in 1812, resulting in one particularly convoluted constituency that resembled a salamander. It was then referred to as the "Gerrymander" in an editorial cartoon published by the ''Boston Centinel''.
* During Prohibition, a magazine held a contest to create a word for a person who illegally drank alcohol. Mr Henry Irving Dale and Miss Kate L. Butler both send in the winning entry, ''scofflaw'', and thus shared the $200 prize. This word is still used today for anyone who ignores a minor law.
* Alex, the Grey Parrot that was the research subject of Irene Pepperburg, had difficulty learning how to pronounce "apple", and created "banerry". A linguist colleague of hers suspected it was a portmanteau of "banana" and "cherry", reasoning that the apple might taste a bit like a banana to the bird, and looked like a giant cherry.
** Alex also used corknut for almond, which was later used by Margaret Atwood in ''[[Oryx and Crake]]''.
* The ''Washington Post'' often holds a contest to create a new word by adding or removing a letter from an existing one. One of the winners: "Sarchasm"
* It stands to reason that ''every'' word had to be made up by somebody. [[Not So Different|Thus all words were]] originally
* Know what "dord" means? Density is represented in science by D, or alternatively by d. This was submitted to the Oxford English Dictionary as, "D or d: a term used in science to mean density." Of course, someone misread it, and for decades "dord" was in the dictionary.
* Science Fiction fandom has generated a few from typos in early fanzines, the best-known of which is [[Filk Song|"filk"]] -- born of a typo for "folk song".
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Wiki Tropes]]
[[Category:Language Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Neologism]]
|