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A neologism Greek_νέο-_''néo''(="new")_and_λόγος_/''lógos''_meaning_"speech,_utterance".html" ;"title="Ancient_Greek.html" ;"title=" from Greek_νέο-_''néo''(="new")_and_λόγος_/''lógos''_meaning_"speech,_utterance"">Ancient_Greek.html"_;"title="_from_Ancient_Greek">Greek_νέο-_''néo''(="new")_and_λόγος_/''lógos''_meaning_"speech,_utterance"is_a_relatively_recent_or_isolated_term,_word,_or_phrase_that_may_be_in_the_process_of_entering_common_use,_but_that_has_not_been_fully_accepted_into_mainstream_language._Neologisms_are_often_driven_by_changes_in_culture_and_technology._In_the_process_of_origin_of_language.html" ;"title="Ancient Greek">Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"">Ancient_Greek.html" ;"title=" from Ancient Greek">Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted into mainstream language. Neologisms are often driven by changes in culture and technology. In the process of origin of language">language formation, neologisms are more mature than ''protologisms''. A word whose development stage is between that of the protologism (freshly coined) and neologism (new word) is a ''prelogism''. Popular examples of neologisms can be found in science, fiction (notably
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel univers ...
), films and television, branding, literature, jargon,
cant Cant, CANT, canting, or canted may refer to: Language * Cant (language), a secret language * Beurla Reagaird, a language of the Scottish Highland Travellers * Scottish Cant, a language of the Scottish Lowland Travellers * Shelta or the Cant, a la ...
, linguistics, the visual arts, and popular culture. Former examples include ''
laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The firs ...
'' (1960) from Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation; '' robot'' (1941) from
Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech ...
writer Karel Čapek's play '' R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)''; and '' agitprop'' (1930) (a portmanteau of "agitation" and "propaganda").


Background

Neologisms are often formed by combining existing words (see compound noun and adjective) or by giving words new and unique suffixes or prefixes. Neologisms can also be formed by blending words, for example, "brunch" is a blend of the words "breakfast" and "lunch", or through
abbreviation An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...
or
acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
, by intentionally rhyming with existing words or simply through playing with sounds. A relatively rare form of neologism is when proper names are used as words (e.g., boycott, from
Charles Boycott Charles Cunningham Boycott (12 March 1832 – 19 June 1897) was an English land agent whose ostracism by his local community in Ireland gave the English language the verb "to boycott". He had served in the British Army 39th Foot, which b ...
), guy,
Dick Dick, Dicks, or Dick's may refer to: Media * ''Dicks'' (album), a 2004 album by Fila Brazillia * Dicks (band), a musical group * ''Dick'' (film), a 1999 American comedy film * "Dick" (song), a 2019 song by Starboi3 featuring Doja Cat Names ...
, and
Karen Karen may refer to: * Karen (name), a given name and surname * Karen (slang), a term and meme for a demanding woman displaying certain behaviors People * Karen people, an ethnic group in Myanmar and Thailand ** Karen languages or Karenic la ...
. Neologisms can become popular through memetics, through mass media, the Internet, and word of mouth, including academic discourse in many fields renowned for their use of distinctive jargon, and often become accepted parts of the language. Other times, they disappear from common use just as readily as they appeared. Whether a neologism continues as part of the language depends on many factors, probably the most important of which is acceptance by the public. It is unusual for a word to gain popularity if it does not clearly resemble other words.


History and meaning

The term ''neologism'' is first attested in English in 1772, borrowed from French ''néologisme'' (1734). In an academic sense, there is no professional Neologist, because the study of such things (cultural or ethnic vernacular, for example) is interdisciplinary. Anyone such as a lexicographer or an etymologist might study neologisms, how their uses span the scope of human expression, and how, due to science and technology, they spread more rapidly than ever before in the present times. The term ''neologism'' has a broader meaning which also includes "a word which has gained a new meaning". Sometimes, the latter process is called ''semantic shifting'', or ''semantic extension''. Neologisms are distinct from a person's '' idiolect'', one's unique patterns of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Neologisms are usually introduced when it is found that a specific notion is lacking a term, or when the existing vocabulary lacks detail, or when a speaker is unaware of the existing vocabulary. The law, governmental bodies, and technology have a relatively high frequency of acquiring neologisms. Another trigger that motivates the coining of a neologism is to disambiguate a term which may be unclear due to having many meanings.


Literature

Neologisms may come from a word used in the narrative of fiction such as novels and short stories. Examples include "
grok ''Grok'' is a neologism coined by American writer Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 science fiction novel ''Stranger in a Strange Land''. While the '' Oxford English Dictionary'' summarizes the meaning of ''grok'' as "to understand intuitively or ...
" (to intuitively understand) from the science fiction novel about a Martian entitled '' Stranger in a Strange Land'' by Robert A. Heinlein; "
McJob "McJob" is a slang term for a low-paying, low-prestige dead-end job that requires few skills and offers very little chance of advancement. The term "McJob" comes from the name of the fast-food restaurant McDonald's, but is used to describe any l ...
" (precarious, poorly-paid employment) from '' Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture'' by
Douglas Coupland Douglas Coupland (born 30 December 1961) is a Canadian novelist, designer, and visual artist. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller '' Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture'', popularized the terms ''Generation X'' and '' Mc ...
; "
cyberspace Cyberspace is a concept describing a widespread interconnected digital technology. "The expression dates back from the first decade of the diffusion of the internet. It refers to the online world as a world 'apart', as distinct from everyday rea ...
" (widespread, interconnected digital technology) from '' Neuromancer'' by William Gibson and "
quark A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. All commonly o ...
" (Slavic slang for "rubbish"; German for a type of dairy product) from James Joyce's ''
Finnegans Wake ''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is well known for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the Western canon. It has been called "a work of fiction which combines a bod ...
''. The title of a book may become a neologism, for instance, '' Catch-22'' (from the title of Joseph Heller's novel). Alternatively, the author's name may give rise to the neologism, although the term is sometimes based on only one work of that author. This includes such words as "
Orwellian "Orwellian" is an adjective describing a situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. It denotes an attitude and a brutal policy of draconian control by pro ...
" (from George Orwell, referring to his dystopian novel ''
Nineteen Eighty-Four ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also stylised as ''1984'') is a dystopian social science fiction novel and cautionary tale written by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final ...
'') and "Kafkaesque" (from Franz Kafka). Names of famous characters are another source of literary neologisms (e.g., '' quixotic'', referring to the romantic and misguided
title character The title character in a narrative work is one who is named or referred to in the title of the work. In a performed work such as a play or film, the performer who plays the title character is said to have the title role of the piece. The title of ...
in '' Don Quixote'' by Miguel de Cervantes), '' scrooge'' (from the avaricious main character in
Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...
' ''
A Christmas Carol ''A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas'', commonly known as ''A Christmas Carol'', is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. ''A Christmas Ca ...
'') and '' pollyanna'' (from the unfailingly optimistic character in
Eleanor H. Porter Eleanor Emily Hodgman Porter (December 19, 1868 – May 21, 1920) was an American novelist, most known for ''Pollyanna'' (1913) and '' Just David'' (1916). Biography Eleanor Emily Hodgman was born in Littleton, New Hampshire, on December 19, ...
's book of the same name).


Cant

Polari is a cant used by some actors, circus performers, and the
gay subculture Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures are subcultures and communities composed of people who have shared experiences, backgrounds, or interests due to common sexual or gender identities. Among the first to argue that members of sexual m ...
to communicate without outsiders understanding. Some Polari terms have crossed over into mainstream slang, in part through their usage in pop song lyrics and other works. Example include: ''acdc'', ''barney'', ''blag'', '' butch'', ''
camp Camp may refer to: Outdoor accommodation and recreation * Campsite or campground, a recreational outdoor sleeping and eating site * a temporary settlement for nomads * Camp, a term used in New England, Northern Ontario and New Brunswick to descri ...
'', ''khazi'', ''cottaging'', ''hoofer'', ''mince'', ''ogle'', ''scarper'', ''slap'', ''strides'', ''tod'', ''
ough Ough may refer to: * Ough (orthography), a letter sequence in English orthography * Ough (surname) Ough is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Bruce R. Ough (born 1951), Bishop of the United Methodist Church * Onyinye Ough, Nig ...
trade'' ( rough trade). Verlan (), (''verlan'' is the reverse of the expression "l'envers") is a type of
argot A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argot ...
in the French language, featuring inversion of
syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of Phone (phonetics), speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered t ...
s in a word, and is common in slang and youth language. It rests on a long French tradition of transposing syllables of individual words to create slang words. Some ''verlan'' words, such as ''meuf'' ("femme", which means "woman" roughly backwards), have become so commonplace that they have been included in the '' Petit Larousse''. Like any slang, the purpose of ''verlan'' is to create a somewhat secret language that only its speakers can understand. Words becoming mainstream is counterproductive. As a result, such newly common words are re-verlanised: reversed a second time. The common ''meuf'' became ''feumeu''.


Popular culture

Neologism development may be spurred, or at least spread, by popular culture. Examples of pop-culture neologisms include the American
Alt-right The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a far-right, white nationalist movement. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late 2000s before increasing in popularity during the mid-20 ...
(2010s), the Canadian portmanteau "
Snowmageddon Snowmageddon, Snowpocalypse, and Snowzilla are portmanteaus of the word "snow" with "Armageddon", "Apocalypse", and "Godzilla" respectively. Snowmageddon and Snowpocalypse were used in the popular press in Canada during January 2009, and was also ...
" (2009), the Russian parody "
Monstration A monstration is a public performance similar to a demonstration but intended as creative performance art, often parodying a serious demonstration. The term was coined by Russian artist Ivan Dyrkin in 2004, and the phenomenon has been most popula ...
" (ca. 2004), Santorum (c. 2003). Neologisms spread mainly through their exposure in mass media. The genericizing of
brand names A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create an ...
, such as "coke" for
Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atlan ...
, "kleenex" for
Kleenex Kleenex is a brand name for a variety of paper-based products such as facial tissue, bathroom tissue, paper towels, tampons, and diapers. Often used informally as a genericized trademark for facial tissue in the United States and Canada, the na ...
facial tissue, and "xerox" for Xerox
photocopying A photocopier (also called copier or copy machine, and formerly Xerox machine, the generic trademark) is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopiers ...
, all spread through their popular use being enhanced by mass media. However, in some limited cases, words break out of their original communities and spread through social media. "
DoggoLingo DoggoLingo is an Internet language that is created from word conversion, meme lexicon, and onomatopoeia. Emerging in the 2010s, DoggoLingo is implied to be a dog's own idiom, and is presented as what humans have long believed goes on in the c ...
", a term still below the threshold of a neologism according to Merriam-Webster, is an example of the latter which has specifically spread primarily through Facebook group and Twitter account use.Boddy, Jessica (April 23, 2017)
"Dogs Are Doggos: An Internet Language Built Around Love For The Puppers"
''National Public Radio''.
The suspected origin of this way of referring to dogs stems from a Facebook group founded in 2008 and gaining popularity in 2014 in Australia. In Australian English it is common to use diminutives, often ending in –o, which could be where doggo-lingo was first used. The term has grown so that Merriam-Webster has acknowledged its use but notes the term needs to be found in published, edited work for a longer period of time before it can be deemed a new word, making it the perfect example of a neologism.


Translations

Because neologisms originate in one language, translations between languages can be difficult. In the scientific community, where English is the predominant language for published research and studies, like-sounding translations (referred to as 'naturalization') are sometimes used. Alternatively, the English word is used along with a brief explanation of meaning. The four translation methods are emphasized in order to translate neologisms: transliteration, transcription, the use of analogues,
calque In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language w ...
or loan translation. When translating from English to other languages, the naturalization method is most often used. The most common way that professional translators translate neologisms is through the Think aloud protocol (TAP), wherein translators find the most appropriate and natural sounding word through speech. As such, translators can use potential translations in sentences and test them with different structures and syntax. Correct translations from English for specific purposes into other languages is crucial in various industries and legal systems. Inaccurate translations can lead to 'translation asymmetry' or misunderstandings and miscommunication. Many technical glossaries of English translations exist to combat this issue in the medical, judicial, and technological fields.


Other uses

In psychiatry and neuroscience, the term ''neologism'' is used to describe words that have meaning only to the person who uses them, independent of their common meaning. This can be seen in schizophrenia, where a person may replace a word with a nonsensical one of their own invention (e.g., "I got so angry I picked up a dish and threw it at the geshinker"). The use of neologisms may also be due to
aphasia Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. The major causes are stroke and head trauma; prevalence is hard to determine but aphasia due to stroke is estimated to be 0.1–0.4% in th ...
acquired after
brain damage Neurotrauma, brain damage or brain injury (BI) is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells. Brain injuries occur due to a wide range of internal and external factors. In general, brain damage refers to significant, undiscriminating ...
resulting from a stroke or
head injury A head injury is any injury that results in trauma to the skull or brain. The terms ''traumatic brain injury'' and ''head injury'' are often used interchangeably in the medical literature. Because head injuries cover such a broad scope of inju ...
.B Butterworth, ''Hesitation and the production of verbal paraphasias and neologisms in jargon aphasia''. Brain Lang, 1979


See also

*
Aureation Aureation ("to make golden", from la, aureus) is a device in arts of rhetoric that involves the "gilding" (or supposed heightening) of diction in one language by the introduction of terms from another, typically a classical language considered to ...
* Backslang *
Blend word In linguistics, a blend (sometimes called blend word, lexical blend, portmanteau or portmanteau word) is a word formed from parts of two or more other words. At least one of these parts is not a morph (the realization of a morpheme) but instead ...
* Language planning * Nonce word *
Mondegreen A mondegreen () is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning. Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to hear a lyric clearly, substitutes w ...
* Morphology (linguistics) *
Phono-semantic matching Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of a word into one language from another, often creating a neologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it with phonetically and semantically similar words or roots from ...
* Portmanteau * Protologism * Retronym *
Sniglet A sniglet () is an often humorous word made up to describe something for which no dictionary word exists. Introduced in the 1980s TV comedy series '' Not Necessarily the News'', sniglets were generated and published in significant numbers, along wi ...
* Syllabic abbreviations * Word formation


References


External links


Neologisms in Journalistic TextInterpretation of the Formation of Internet Neologisms


* ttps://books.google.com/books?id=3x-umCIwEYQC Algeo, John. ''Fifty Years among the New Words: A Dictionary of Neologisms, 1941–1991''
WordspyRice University Neologisms DatabaseNeologisms from the Internet – with Esther Dyson, Jimmy Wales and more...
{{Authority control Lexicology Terminology