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Neologism: Difference between revisions
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* ''[[Brave New World (Literature)|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.
* ''[[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 [
* [[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 'Wendy', which was not a common English name before J. M. Barrie's character (it might have been an occasional shortening of the Welsh name "Gwendolyn," which is usually shortened to "Gwen" nowadays). It was derived from a toddler's inability to pronounce the letter ''R'' properly, so when she called JMB her "friendy," it became "fwendy-wendy."
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== Web Original ==
* 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 year old girl. [[The Other Wiki]] has [
** And of course, there is the googolplex. The name of the headquarters of google, this is the number 1, followed by a '''googol''' of zeros.
* 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.
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